Roasting in Phuket
May 08, 2014
This has got to be one of the least backdated posts in a long time. Recently I just left the company I was working in, which opened my eyes to a lot of things. I shall post more about that soon. To celebrate this joyous occasion alongside our birthdays, just a week before our birthdays, we booked a flight out of SG! To our favourite beach getaway location, Thailand! Since we've been to many island and parts of Thailand, we decided on Phuket. A place we only did taxi transfer towards Krabi, and we never got to explore.
On this trip, a very last minute one, we scoured high and low for cheap fares and lodging (it was a full week of holiday). We searched sky scanner (not a sponsored ad), which I think is an amazing website to search for cheapest fares, they include fares from budget airlines which is great! And of course we compared the usual, Air Asia VS Tiger Airways and Tiger won.
The few things we always compare, 1. The dates that have the cheapest fare. 2. How cheap is cheap. 3. The date that we have to get back by, is it cheap? 4. The longer the holiday, the better. The few pretty obvious things that people look out for. Right?..
So Singaporean. We always want the best out of the least amount we put in. The air tickets were cheap, considerably (last minute flight), after taxes and what not, it amounted 320 bucks for 2 people. Seriously, never compare, because you know someone out there is going to get a better deal than you. Happened to us.
To get an accommodation so last minute, I frantically searched airbnb, now my favourite place to be searching for accommodations, but every place was just a little too much. Or actually to be more exact, the place we wanted to rent, was somehow financially mis-communicated to us, and ended up way above our budget. So, back to the computers and millions of tabs, after a day of searching, through asiarooms we found another small hotel, Alfresco Phuket Hotel, what you see is what you get. I can't say it's exceptionally fantastic, however, it's passable. There's no sort of any view from their balcony because it's jammed packed around other backpacker hotels.
(Update: We booked the 4 poster bed room at Alfresco, and it costed us about 400 for 6 nights. Super huge and awesome bed room, 4 poster king sized bed, lounge sofa, tub in the bathroom. Good enough! Just a small note, the boyfriend and I don't really believe in paying insane amounts for hotels, we always budget about SGD $50/night for accommodation. Definitely depends on where we go, also, if we get cheap flights, we splurge a little more on accommodation, but not exceeding SGD $80/night. B&Bs are nice places, and we always like to go for them because we do meet nice people, like the owners or small amount of staffs, and it's what makes our trips great!)
Our flight was a Sunday morning flight out of sunny island, to be exact, 12.45pm departure, arrival in Phuket, 1.15pm. Thailand is 1 hour beind SG, the flight was an hour half. Super short flight. Everything went according to plan, until we met a bottle neck at the Phuket Immigration, 2 hours queuing just to get through the immigration was no joke. We also happened to be unlucky because it just so happened that the queue we were in, was the SLOWEST queue in the entire place!!! It probably wasn't a good start to our holiday, because it caused us to miss our airport transfer arranged by the hotel, and we loitered around the airport for a bit.
In the end, we took the mini bus service to our hotel, 180THB per person towards Patong area. Saved us a whole lot of money. Just FYI, private airport transfers are approximately 750-850TBH for one way to your lodging. And the motorbike rental, is about 300THB per day (how much we paid for ours), if you're renting from those roadside shops, most of them require you to leave your passport or ID cards, so it's better to rent from your hotel if they provide rental services.
Leaving you with photo journal of the journey, and shortly, a brief description of the different beaches and things we did there, the awesome food that we had as well!
Day 2: Surin Beach
Day 3: Kata Beach (after Karon beach)
Day 4: Promthep Cape
Day 5: Patong Beach
Day 6: Junceylon
Day 7: Patong Beach
Surin beach holds the most beach clubs, at the beach clubs there serve the expensive food, and of course they have better facilities. The beach chairs at the beach clubs cost 500THB per chair for the whole day. If you're someone who really mind about having the great facilities, go ahead! Don't forget however, just a few metre away from you, someone is having their chair for 150THB per chair. I'd say Surin beach is lovely, it's not too crowded, and there aren't too many people bugging you to buy stuff or even try out their water sports or what not.
And.. Cheap watermelon juice!
On day 3 before we went down to Kata beach, we went to check out Freedom beach, a small beach where you had to pay 100THB for entrance, which grants you an excess to their beach chair, we skipped that because I think we were a little late, so the crickets were making an insane amount of noise. Also, there were only a few shops that sold anything (probably 1 only). Off towards Kata beach!!! In fact, we decided to keep going until we found a beach we liked. We passed Karon beach, which we didn't like, didn't look fantastic, looked pretty run down, so off we go to the next beach.
Kata beach was great, they had more shops that owned the beach chairs so just find one spot you like, and start baking! The waters at Kata were much closer as compared to Surin. Because of it's size, Kata is much more busier than Surin, definitely more people, but also one of the nicer few beaches.
After 2 days of baking and roasting, we decided to take the day off, and slacked in the hotel well through the afternoon, only headed out for meals, and in the evening before the sunset. While I was searching for our hotel, I saw many reviews of Promthep Cape, many people said it was a "must go". I agree!
It was a pretty far journey on the bike through the mountains, about 2 mountains to cross to get there, and the road signs were just misleading. At one point of a Y junction, a sign says left to the cape, but in fact, if you take the right, it brings you there much quicker. I didn't take a photo of that junction, but either way, it brings you there.
Just a quick pointer, check the sunset timing on google just before you decide to visit the cape. It's really accurate, so you won't have to wait forever for the sunset, or won't miss the sunset! Just find a lovely spot, and claim it, enjoy the sunset!
Fast forward to day 6. We spent the early afternoon at Junceylon getting a gel extension and gel manicure. Junceylon is a huge shopping mall, so the place I did my gel extensions and gel manicure was probably the cheapest I could find there. It's definitely no fancy salon, but it's worth it. Paid 2000THB, about 80SGD to get a gel extension and gel manicure. It's a small shop with nice chairs in the middle of the mall, I think towards the Charles and Keith area, or near one of the entrances.
They do have salons there that do gel extensions at 2000THB and gel manicure at 800THB, one of those fancy ones with amazing chair. But at that price, I might as well do mine here in Singapore. That aside, do check out their massage parlours downstairs at B1 of Junceylon, the Asian Spirit area. There are quite a few shops, just take your pick! Most of them offer free WiFi, which you won't be using most of the time unless you only take foot massage.
Went up to our hotel's infinity pool to soak up what was left of the sun, which was probably only an hour, or less.
Some of the photos we took over the days.. Didn't take much really, anyway, no one can tell the difference of the beaches unless they've been there.
For some of the food places you can go, I'm sorry, I only can recommend these 2 because these were our favourite places.
1. DA MARIO, they practically have an outlet in every small area, Patong (right beside a night market, impossible to miss), Kata (along the main road that leads you to either beaches, hilly area) and Karon.
2. If you love boat noodles like us, and you're looking for a roadside stall, there's one right in front of family mart just a short distance away from the Bangla Boxing Stadium, Patong area. 50THB for their normal boat noodle, and 60THB for a bigger portion. Just learnt that dry noodles is also called "hang", or at least pronounced that way.
And.. I'll end this lengthy post with selfies I took on this trip!
Hope this lengthy post was worth your time, if you have any questions at all that I hope I could answer, leave a comment! Enjoy your holidays!!!
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