sleepless in phuket

Phuket vacation : Part 1
30/31 Jan '09


WOW my body felt so wonderful. i just had this wonderful thai traditional body massage at C&N hotel and it costed only 200 baht. that's like, what? ..less than 10 singapore dollars for an hour of pure relaxation and joy.

i'm in phuket, thailand right now. we just landed a bit more than 24 hrs ago, and already life in singapore felt like in a galaxy far far away.

my first view of phuket from air asia plane window

we are staying at this 2 storey hotel called the beach safari hotel, just 50m from patong beach. the hotel is pretty ok, the service is quite good, the building is not shoddy and the amenities are what you could expect from a 3-star hotel, if not slightly better. plus, they have free internet access, provided you have your own laptop, even though the connection could be slow sometimes.

so i'm writing this while my buddies are outside enjoying the beach. i already went swimming in the beach this morning, and even fall asleep for awhile on that reclined plastic rest chair facing the sea, awakened by the slight havoc when the water line reached our chairs and i had to quickly grabbed our slippers before they got washed out into the sea.

it was very relaxing. with my rayban sunglass on, i could see people of all shapes, wearing swimming suits that mostly had to work extra hard to counter the gravity pulling effect. if not because of the tropic weather, i would think i was in some european cities judging from where most of the crowd was from.

patong beach: my view of a perfect vacation

there were people doing para-gliding, and man, i would love to try that. they would tie you up to the parachute and then pull you up using the speed boat. we checked the price and it costs 1000 baht, which should be about SGD40. not too bad, considering even cable skiing in east coast back home already costs SGD30 and that's crap. you just go round and round at the same place hoping some chicks walking pass by would gawp in awe admiring your skills. duh...

only that i just spend 3400 baht just now to book for a diving day trip tomorrow to racha yai island in south phuket, so i wouldn't want to spend more now just yet. so i chose to stay in my room when my friends asked me to join them.

plus, dinara safina was battling serena williams in australian open final on tv (they have sports cable here! o bless this hotel), so i was glued in front of the tv for awhile. until i realized serena was in annihilating mode, making the whole match unbearable to watch. there goes my hope of someone defeating serena. oh well, at least i could still hope for a nadal win tomorrow against federer in men's final.

before that, i have to wake up early morning tomorrow because they will pick us up from our hotel in patong tomorrow early morning, and then charter us to the harbour and then to the island for our 2 dives trip. i'm really excited, and a bit worried too because it was more than 6 months ago when i last did the diving. man, i better look out for some notes off the internet to refresh some of the skills. the good thing is, that island is supposedly suitable for beginners.

so i wouldn't want to venture the night that much tonight. last night, we roamed the bangla street until after midnight, which includes some UNO sessions somewhere on the street. i said somewhere because the streets transformed from relatively quite, innocent roads during daytime, to become lively, loud and bustling with activities streets at night. it was really like 2 different worlds out there.

innocent daytime bangla street's hell breaks lose and gets sleazy when the sun sets

you know what, now that i think about it, maybe it's a different beach now compared to this morning. maybe i'll go hit the beach for awhile, maybe check out the the sunset by the beach too. after all the day is still young, safina already lost and it's not like it costs any money.




...ed