幾鬼秘的部落格

A few days ago we were having a hard time deciding which island to visit for snorkeling.  Phi Phi (from The Beach), Raya, Coral and Egg islands (Koh Kai) were all on our list.  We finally decided on the latter because it’s close enough to Phuket to be a half-day trip. 

We were picked up from our resort in a private car to go to the pier.  The driver made a strangely long stop under a bridge on a busy street to make a few calls.  I would guess that he’d gotten lost, but that seemed so improbable considering we were on a pretty small island.  No matter.  We got to the pier before 9am, and after a short speedboat ride, we arrived at a virtually empty island as we were the first tour group there.  Before we left the hotel CL was smart enough to grab a few bananas so we could feed the fish.  I didn’t realize how brilliant the idea was until I was in the water.  Instead of just throwing bread crumbs and see the fish rush up to the surface, we snorkelled with the bananas in our hands and watched the fish feed on them right in front of our faces.  There were a lot of fish and we didn’t even have to swim far.

I was anxious to get back to the resort and check out of there since we’d booked a
very nice villa to stay at for our last day in Phuket.  We checked out of Naithonburi at 2pm and arrived at Malisa around 3pm.  The moment we stepped into our villa we were greeted by our own private pool.  Even though I’ve seen photos on their website, I was still very impressed.  I was so happy that I was barely listening to the staff explaining to me what all the different switches were for.  The waterfall by the pool must be a very popular feature as the staff made sure that it was turned on before leaving us.

We took our time to enjoy the huge place, surfed the net and took a dip in the pool before going out for dinner around 6pm.  Luckily we decided to walk out to Kata Beach before eating, and caught the beautiful sunset just in time.

We window-shopped as we looked for a place to eat.  And before we knew it, it was after 8pm when we sat down for dinner.  Soon after, the evening rain promptly came pouring down.  We were hoping that it would stop before we finished our dinner since CL was wearing her new Campers.  But it was not to be.  I decided to walk back to the villa to bring back her flip-flops.  My shorts were completely soaked by the time I got there so I changed to my swimming trunks before I headed back to the restaurant.  By the time I got there, the rain had stopped.  How timely.

Today was a packed day with no time wasted.  We started the day early driving down to the Patong beach area for elephant trekking.  We arrived before they officially open at 9am.  I read from a guidebook that riding on an elephant was not a particularly enjoyable experience.  A few minutes into the 1-hr ride I was beginning to agree with that assessment.  When we reached the top of the hill, our guide instructed me to sit behind the elephant’s head instead of the "chair".  That proved to be much more comfortable, and also more dangerous, especially during the couple of times when the elephant made sudden movements of its head.  Even though the ride was fun, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for the animal and guilty for "abusing" it this way

Next we drove east across the island towards Phuket Town for our next destination - a 2.5-hr spa treatment.  The package included hydrotherapy, foot massage, full body scrub and massage, facial and deserts.  We’d forgotten our swim wear and opted out of the facial, so for the bulk of the time we were having our body and foot massaged.  It was so comfortable that I couldn’t blame CL for falling asleep

We finished around 1pm and had two hours before having to return the rental car.  We stopped by the big "Central" mall to do a little shopping and bought some fruits and snacks for lunch later on.  By the time we returned the car and got back to the resort, it was after 3pm.  We ate our snacks and barely had time to rest before leaving for the final event of the day - FantaSea.  I had high expectations of this place since I’ve read about it on many guidebooks.  At the end I was a little disappointed.  The place was filled with souvenir shops and game stalls, and nothing else.  We had a buffet dinner at the restaurant - the food was nothing to praise about.  The highlight was the live show which was a mishmash of dancing, magic, and elephants performing, with no congruous theme as far as we could tell.  The show was probably better than my biased review since both of us were pretty tired and fell asleep many times during the show

Today is the raison d’etre of this trip.  J&M’s wedding ceremony took place @11am @ the Trisara resort, just a few minutes drive south of our resort.  This was the first beach ceremony that I’ve photographed, and I was a little nervous… for my equipment :), as sand is the enemy of all cameras.

The short and small ceremony was attended by about 30 people.  The noon sun made the photography a little challenging, and the heat was barely bearable.  But otherwise the ceremony went well.  After the ceremony we visited the newly-weds’ private villa, which has an amazing view of the Andaman Sea.

We had some free time in the afternoon so we to the Naithon Beach.  The waves were quite high, easily going over our heads.  That’s probably why this beach area is so quiet and the resorts relatively affordable.  We soon went back to the resort to swim in the pool instead.

In the evening we drove down to the Patong Beach area for dinner at a restaurant hanging over a cliff that would have offered a great view of the sunset, if the weather cooperated.  Just after we arrived a light rain started.  During dinner, instead of a sunset view, we heard a symphony of lightning and thunders.  By the time we left the rain was pouring hard.  And I thought I had the worst driving experience of my life the night before.  Now I got to top last night’s challenge with rain!

We took a morning flight this morning from Bangkok to Phuket for CL’s sister’s wedding ceremony tomorrow.  After learning that each taxi ride would cost a minimum of 300 Bahts, we’d decided to rent a car.  I didn’t think that would be an option since I didn’t bring my driver’s license.  But as it turned out, nobody cares

Inevitably, I would drive on the wrong side of the road from time to time.  For some reason, that seemed to happen most when I turned left.  Most roads in Phuket have only one narrow lane per direction, sometimes right beside deep ditches.  The roads along the coast line are especially hilly and twisty - it could actually be quite fun only if
I knew where I was going, without having to constantly look for road signs, which were non-existent outside of the main roads. 

Driving to the resort was relatively easy - only ~10 minutes from the  airport.  Although our room is a lot bigger than the one in Bangkok, it is older, and its decor is nothing to praise about.  The most interesting feature is the window above the bathtub that opens to the rest of the bedroom.

We had nothing planned for today - only to arrange for an island tour and elephant trekking in the weekend, after the ceremony tomorrow.  We decided to drive to Phuket Town.  Surprisingly I didn’t get lost after making educated guesses a couple of intersections.  The old town was small and offered nothing much except for some Sino-Portuguese architectures.  We popped into a few shops that were also travel agencies and asked about island tours.  We were on our way back to our car after collecting a few quotes and phone numbers, when we stopped at one that didn’t
even have a store.  The friendly owner had simply put up a table in front of his friend’s store.  He explained that he’d lost millions after the tsunami, and will be opening his store soon.  He offered us the best price by far, and really tried to work out the logistics for us as we had to return the rental car in the weekend, which put some time constraints on us.  After 2+ hours at the storefront, we’d booked 10,000+ Bahts worth of tours with him.

We’d decided to drive to Patong beach and have dinner there.  In retrospect perhaps that wasn’t such a wise decision.  But I couldn’t have known how lost we’d get.  Actually we were never really lost as it turned out.  We were mostly always on the right road, only that we didn’t know if we were really on the right road :)  We walked around the Patong area looking for a place to have dinner.  This beach is by far the crowdiest one on the island, commercialized to the extreme.

The drive back to the hotel was the most stressful driving experience in my life.  Manouvering around motorbikes, pedestrians and dogs was challenging but still manageable.  It’s the uncertainty of not knowing where you are that’s stressful.  English road signs are hard enough to see in daylight, if they’re present at all.  Looking for them in the dark was nearly impossible.  After making N stops to ask for directions/confirmation, we finally arrived at our hotel after about 2 hours of driving.

Today we planned to spend half a day shopping day at the various big shopping malls near the Siam SkyTrain station.  We started at Siam Paragon, where we were greeted by Hermes, Armani, Gucci and other high end stores.  We thought then that we wouldn’t be there for long as things would be way over our budget.  How wrong we were Right off the bat CL bought a pair of Campers.  We then  browsed around some stores, spending much time at The Loft.  Unexpectedly there also some auto stores - Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, BMW, Aston Martin, with actual cars displayed on the 3rd
level of the mall!

After a very late lunch, we headed to the next destination of the day, a huge aquarium at the basement of the mall, Ocean World.  The first display was of some of the weirdest and strangest sea creatures in the world, the highlight of the aquarium for me.  Next we went on a short glass-bottom boat tour, which was forgettable.  There were other live shows, such as shark feeding and a diver dressed as a mermaid dancing in the tank.

The package concluded with cool 4-D movie.  I guess the "4" refers to the tangible synchronized special effects, such as the moving seats, water sprayed at your face, etc.  By the time we exited the theatre, it was already after 7pm!  We’d spent the whole day at this one mall and we weren’t even finished.  We still had to go back to make the actual purchases since we didn’t want to carry them around in the aquarium.  By the time we were done, it was after 9pm and we didn’t even have dinner yet!

We were too tired to sit down and eat so we decided to head back to the hotel, and buy some snacks and fruits for dinner at the Carrefour next to the hotel.

Yesterday we’d arranged for a driver to come pick us up this morning and drive us to the floating market in Damnoen Saduak, 100+ km west of Bangkok.  We were a little pissed that the driver dropped us off at a rather remote parking lot far from the main market, where we were forced to take a 1-hr long-tailed boat ride for 1000 Bahts!  The first 10 minutes or so were uneventful as we approached the markets via the canals.  But even after the whole ride was over, we never experienced the chaos depicted in our guide book photos.

Feeling a little ripped off after the ride, CL asked our driver to drop us off at the main market.  It was then that I realized that we’d missed the busiest of all the markets!  Even though we didn’t ride on the boat through this market, it was at least as interesting as the boat ride, especially since I now wasn’t rushed to take photos as I was while on a moving boat.

We slept through most of the ride back to Bangkok.  Back in the hotel, CL slept for hours until dinner time while I processed my photos, and wrote a little bit of this blog :)  For dinner we met up with CL’s sister who was in town to take wedding photos.  Afterwards they decided to visit the Suan Lum Night Bazaar (where we went the previous night) because it is supposedly being closed down at the end of the month.  We didn’t see anything new at the market since we were just there the night before.  But we got a foot massage, which was a first for me.  I must say it was more enjoyable that I’d expected.

Around midnight we were trying to grab a taxi back to the hotel.  Most of the drivers wanted 500 Bahts for the trip, while the night before our best offer was 200 Bahts.  Eventually we found one willing to go by the meter.  Upon arrival CL and I were shocked to see the metered cost at a mere 61 Bahts!  And we thought we got a bargain at 150 for a tuk-tuk last night!

After a late night last night, we didn’t waste any time this morning as we woke up before 7am to start our first official day of vacation.  We’d hoped to get to the Grand Palace before 8:30am, when it opens.  We took the SkyTrain to the Phya Thai station where we grabbed a taxi to our destination.  We got there around 9am and the place was already quite crowded.   I honestly could not fully enjoy the sights as I was a little overwhelmed by the heat.  It didn’t help that much of the provided literature on the sights are quite dry.

Our next destination, Wat Pho, was supposed to be a15-min walk away.  It definitely felt longer.  This was a relatively short stop as the only sight was the huge reclining Buddha.

We took the river boat for a few stops downstream to Chinatown.  The walk from the pier to the main thoroughfare again felt longer than expected in the heat.  We found a bank to exchange some money before finally stopping to have a late lunch.  Even after the rest, the heat was still too much to endure so we decided to skip our next planned stop, the Temple of the Golden Buddha.  We took the river boat and headed for the SkyTrain.  It was still early for our next stop, the Suan Lum Night Bazaar, which starts at 6pm, so we escaped into a nearby shopping center to kill some time.

After a bit of shopping and resting, I was still this close to giving in to the heat and head back to the hotel.  But I resisted, and so we headed towards Lumpini Park, where the bazaar is supposed to be close to.  The problem is, we didn’t know how big Lumpini Park was!  While searching for the bazaar, we walked into Lumpini Park to find a large group of people dancing to some aerobic music led by an instructor.  The park was pretty crowded with joggers, cyclers and generally people exercising, which was mind-blowing to us since we were so tired and sweaty.  How disciplined they must be to want to exercise under this heat after a long day of work!

The park was big and we couldn’t see where the bazaar was.  Finally CL asked somebody who, as we found later, pointed us to the exact opposite direction of where we were supposed to go.  A few hundred meters of walking later, we found the bazaar, which was indeed close to the park, but at the other end of it

We bought dinner from a few of the food stalls and ate at the open air "food-court".  There was even live music!  Afterwards we browsed through the night market rather briskly since we were both not feeling well in our stomachs.  After going back to hotel, we’d find red spots all around our torsos!  We immediately went down to the Carrefour next door to buy some medications for allergies.  No worries - except for some minor itching, we’re both fine

Two mornings ago, DF was kind enough to drive EL, CL and me to the airport.  We were there soon after 8am, quite early for our 10:30am flight to HK.  Even so, the wait to board did not seem long.  The 15-hour flight itself was barely bearable for me.  I slept on and off, for I don’t know how long.  I spent the rest of the hours reading up on Bangkok and watching Happy Feet.

When we arrived @HKG, dad was already there to take us to lunch in the big outlet mall in Tong Chong.  I was a little disappointed that they’d chosen a Thai restaurant, as I’d be in Thailand for the next 10 days!  But no need to worry - CL and I haven’t had a Thai meal so far in two days

After lunch we were going to kill some time in the mall before boarding our flight to Bangkok @8pm.  But with my backpack filled with 3 lenses and a laptop, on top of my camera bag, I was too tired to shop.  We headed to HKIA early where I surfed the net for ~1 hr while CL took a nap.

Just before landing in HK I was getting quite air sick so I took a Gravol before the flight to BKK.  That put me to sleep for practically the whole duration of the flight.  After landing, we quickly claimed our luggages and headed to the taxi line.  Luckily CL was smart enough to print out our hotel address in Thai just before leaving home, as most taxi drivers don’t speak any English at all.

We arrived safely at our hotel after midnight.  The hotel looks very new.  The decor is very contemporary.  It’s a good place to come "home" to after a day of sight-seeing in the sweltering heat.