summer rain
Back from PHUKET!!! it was really a whirlwind of activities since the end of my examinations. hardly have time to sit down and write a proper blog post. exams ended on the morning of 30th apr, then rush to pack up my hostel room, had bbq at night in hall, rush back home to unpack the load (which is really amazingly a lot coz i needed three trips to and fro the carpark for both fridays of the past 2 weeks to move everything!), woke up for majong session on 1st may and then dinner at my grandma's house, then pack up for phuket, and waking up at god-damned 4am to go down to the airport. and then it was phuket phuket all the way till now. Whew! finally, one day when i can just nua at home....
Day 1:
had to reach the airport at 5.40am for our 7.40am flight. lesson 1: there is no need for such things like a 2hour check-in time. well, unless you're CC gui and forget to bring your passport and only realise it when the CAAS ppl ask for it at the counter. this is like the biggest mistake that one can make while travelling - can lose everything and can forget to bring everything but you cannot forget your passport! so he had to rush back to get it. seriously le.. 1st mega joke of the trip.
nothing eventful on the trip there. just tt we have to wait for quite some time (4 hrs!) at the airport transit area. and then we had to take a freaking 5 hr car ride to phuket from krabi airport coz the driver got lost and can't find our hotel. wah.. this is the major turnoff for the trip
lo! we bought a package from zuji.com intending to go to krabi but the hotel tt we got turned out to be in phuket. KNS! wasted so much time and money to travel to and fro the airport, plus phuket is so much commericialised than krabi, which i don really like. =( lesson 2: check google earth for the resort location from the airport before booking next time!
reached our hotel at 8pm and checked in.. sigh... the 1st thing we did was to get some cheap dinner and Thai massage!! omg, i love the massages during the trip lo! the guys were so hooked on it tt we went for 2 thai massage and 1 foot-cum-hand-cum-shoulder massage for the 1st three days. it's really cheap at S$8 for one whole hour of full body pressing and cracking and massaging in a nice air-con room with clean bed and soothing music. just wad i need to loosen all the tensed up muscles after my exams... the foot was less intense than the thai one but no less relaxing. =D
Day 2:
We booked a tour package to phi phi island did stuff like island hopping, snokelling, swimming etc. it was alright, i must say. coz the places that we went to were very commericialised, like the Maya beach where "The Beach" was filmed, so there were loads of ppl and the water wasn't damn clean and clear like Redang's. the degradation of such a location was really how the prof described in school - the invasion of mass tourists, the commercialisation of such places and losing the serenity and beauty of untouched beaches. the most memorable part was the boat ride on the terribly choppy water. we sat that the front of the boat (coz the inside had no more space and coz we garang), which was open air and rocked the most. there were so many times that the boat's bow will cut through a damn high wave and plunge down. so it was like experiencing zero gravity on a rollar coaster but without the safety belts. F*cking dangerous and life-threatening lo! there was one wave tt was so high that when the boat dropped, it was so bad that one ang moh fell and hurt his back. and while he was trying to get up, another wave came and he fell again. i got so sea sick tt i vomitted too. really bad... lesson 3: never sit sideways on a rocking boat. it's suicidal.
the night was spent exploring the town and getting another massage! this one was the foot one and it was so relaxing that i slept on the armchair even though the room was bright and there was a damn loud bar opposite the road.
Day 3:
explored patong beach. nothing much.. just a lot of shops selling fake apparels and a beach with lotsa thai locals trying to push for damn ex water sports. i think we're a bunch of damn Kiam ppl, everything also wanna save. we will not do anything that needs a lot of money, hunt for the damn cheap eating places and order the minimum. but coz of that we can eat street food along the way which is very nice! we ate like damn a lot of banana/honey/nutella/chocolate pancakes, papaya salad, chicken heart/liver/meat/sausage kabab, chicken blood soup, guava, green mango etc throughout the 3 days there. i think our stomachs are quite pro. haha!
i think no matter how well i know the people that i'm travelling with and whether or not they planned the tour together, we will always have different expecations for the trip. some want it to be damn exciting and full of action, but there are some like me who just wanna explore and not plan so hard into the details. i can totally understand if the itinery does not fit into the ideal vacation that you wanted, but we all just have to make the best of the moment. only when you stop being so emo and open up can you enjoy the trip, whether or not the things we are doing is fun or not. this is one very useful and important lesson that i learnt from the trip to HK in 2007.
but the thing that really irks me is when those ppl, who nv even make an effort to plan and find out stuff, come and complain. i'm not getting defensive but it really isn't easy to plan when the place is totally foreign. and everything we wanna do is subjected to so many changes and anything is possible, tt includes not knowing what to do and walking around aimlessly (which ain't exactly a bad thing for me). if you think it's so easy then why don you try? maybe coz i have planned a trip before then do i know the pains of finding something to entertain everyone. we are all on a holiday, why not let things come as they do?
Day 4:
we got on this package to go island hopping, cave exploring and kayaking at James Bond island and other nearby island. this trip was much more enjoyable than the one we had on day 1 cos the weather was fantastic, the ship was a larger one that had good food and drinks, there were more exciting activites, lesser people, more untouched places and good looking and funny tour guides. haha! i think a job as a guide like this is kinda fun! living you life by the sea, relaxing, entertaining and stress free. lesson 4: being able to have this 海阔天空 feeling is priceless
we finally splurge a bit and ate at a seafood restaurant for dinner and the night was spent chilling at a roadside bar that had pretty cocktails for 99baht (S$4+) and HTHT in our hotel room.
Day 5:
nothing much. with barely an hour of sleep, we chionged our breakfast and hop onto a car for the long car ride to krabi airport and back. the waiting time at the transit area was better this time coz we could shop. :) i was wandering around the perfume section with cc gui and weldon. i could discuss with cc gui bout the perfume coz he could understand the stuff about the types of scent, depth and wad is good and bad. weldon just don catch any ball bout the perfume stuff and he just "i like this / i don like this" bout every perfume! very funny..
phuket was a fun trip! although we were not all high and laughing all the time, but it was a good trip with plenty of things to learn bout going overseas and the tourism industry in phuket. i am actually quite thankful for the group of people that i went with coz they were all very sporty and enthu. really thank god for having CC along coz he will be the one planning the day trips and getting all the details, dono what i will do without him.
i guess there is no need to upload pics on this blog coz there's FB. plus there were 300 over pics sia, and tt is after filtering! how to choose!
right.. next will be the intern shit.. oh man...
