March 6th, 2011
We had prepared for our trip. At 2 pm, the taxi came to bring us to the airport and suddenly the sky poured down a lot of water from top. "Huh, heavy rain comes", I complained. We could only hope that it would stop right before boarding time. Arrived at airport, we did self check in and queue for dropping baggage. As usual, don't forget with your passport and airport tax fee Rp 150,000.- Oh yea, starting from 2011, there is no fiscal fee anymore, everyone can go overseas without paying fiscal though they don’t have taxpayer ID (NPWP).
We then went to immigration counter and waited for boarding time. The flight finally boarded at 5.20 pm. It takes approximately 3 hrs to reach Phuket. We had dinner on board, Thai green curry, fried noodle and 2 bottles of beverage. It costed us Rp 82,000.- (you can get cheaper price of meals by buying them online. It's called pre book meals). Reached at Phuket International airport around 8.10 pm. After settled with immigration and baggage, we looked for money changer counter. Problem, as we couldn’t find any of counter that still opened (the counter in Jakarta had only Baht in 1,000 denominations).
Luckily, there was a mini mart whose cashier agreed to exchange for us for only 1,000 Baht. Oh yeah, when waiting our baggage collection, there was a stand that giving a free phone sim card. I took one, installed it in my phone. There is only 7 Baht credit inside, you need to top up by yourself to use it. Walking out to the lobby, many of people were offering transportation, travel agent and even tour package.
We saw a man holding signage written my name, I greeted him then he brought us into the car. The car was a sedan with good condition. Good service, he gave us a bottle of mineral water for each and also our tour vouchers. He was such a kind guy, along the way to hotel, he kept chatting with us, introducing his name, telling us anything about Phuket, just one problem, he spoke English with Thai accent and couldn’t speak fluently. It was so hard to understand his speech. Once, he mentioned fish soup but it sounded more like “feet soup” (OMG!! Hahaha), later then I found out people there mention beach as “bit” and our hotel name as Patong “bit lot” (interesting..). Too bad that he wasn’t the one who drove us for city tour.
On half way to hotel, dad urged us to find a place to eat as he didn’t have dinner in flight. The driver took us to Papa restaurant because he said that this place is good and clean for food. To me, this place is an expensive restaurant, we ordered 3 packs of Pad Thai (kind of fried noodle) and costed us 450 Baht excluding tax. The driver felt so sorry for bringing us there when knowing we only bought Pad Thai (you know why, coz Pad Thai normally costs below 100 Baht per portion). He thought that we wanted to eat seafood, yeah, a mistake because of miscommunication between us.
From airport to hotel in Patong, it needs 45 minutes of driving. Passing the hills, quiet town and winding road, we finally reached to the hustle bustle area where our hotel located. We checked in and settled our tour balance payment with the driver. One thing, the hotel required us to deposit 1,000 Baht which would be returned when we checked out. Finished with all, we got into the room, we had a room with one extra bed. I heard a few complains about the rooms there, some rooms have no window. I got the same one, but I were quite satisfy with the room, although no window, it was large in space and the most important to me was that the bathroom was so clean though a bit small but it didn’t matter. So far, no problem with it. They prepared us many towels in the room and 3 bottles of mineral water as complimentary.
We still went out a while to top up my phone credit. You can top up at 7 Eleven store or many mini marts for the cheapest is 50 Baht. We went back to hotel and slept for our first night in Phuket. Huh, it was so hard for me to close my eyes and sleep well on my new bed.
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