Since Summer is now here, many of us will be travelling. Although I’m only planning on going to CABO this Summer, I have been to quite a few places in the past. I’ll be posting my travel journals online about once a week so you can get a first hand view of what to expect should you be travelling to a certain city. Our third installment features Phuket, Thailand:::>> 

So we left Shanghai in the evening with our flight scheduled at 10:00 PM.  After landing in Bangkok, we were then supposed to catch a connecting flight to Phuket at 7:30 AM.  Things didn’t go as planned.  Because the plane was delayed in it’s city of origin (Mumbai), our Air India flight didn’t take off till 2:30 AM.  What made it worse is the cheapo Chinese turned off the a/c in the airport at around midnight so we spent 2 and a half hours in a sauna.  Not happy! 

Air India

We get on the plane and the captain speaks in a very heavy indian accent “looks like the weather gods have not been smiling down upon us today”.  hahahaha.  I couldn’t help but laugh.  Me and Shien repeated that classic quote the rest of the trip (in the heavy indian accent of course).  =)  Anyway, so we land at 7:00 AM and by the time we get through customs, we have entirely missed our flight to Phuket.  I’m pretty pissed at this point cuz the ticket was nonrefundable plus Air India refused to pay for another flight out.  I was very tired and irritable and was not very happy with Air India’s poor excuses.  Soooo, we marched on down to the other part of the airport to the office where we demanded to see the manager where we wasted another hour arguing with him.  I was REALLY angry at this point and pretty much tore into him and basically alluded to the fact that there would be hell to pay if this situation wasn’t resolved (actually i really couldn’t do anything)  hahaha.  After much contemplation, he finally gets the Air India General Manager of Asian Ops on the phone with me and she invites us down to see her at her office in Bangkok.  So her driver picks us up and whisks us away to downtown Bangkok.  I meet her and she basically says there is nothing that she can do (in terms of vouchers or compensation).  Only then do i find out that Air India is a state run airline (which means they are ghetto and cheap).  Obviously she was very apologetic and had her secretary take all of us out to lunch.  hahaha.  Soooo…at least we got a free lunch out of it (yippeee).  

You see how unhappy I still look?  hahaha.  More on that “free lunch” later on. 

So anyway, we buy another damn ticket and fly out to Phuket around 4:30 PM. 

Our First Transvestite Experience

We land and it’s friggin raining.  hahaha.  On our way to the hotel, the taxi driver stops off at this “travel office” and the “activities director” strolls out to greet us.  Turns out we meet our FIRST of many transvestites.  Bryan was sitting closest to the door while i was happily sitting the farthest away in the back.  Immediately I could see Bry start to bug out.  hahahah.  He literally lurched back in his seat away from the door.  Here’s how the convo went:

Tranny:  Hellooooo….my name is Mary but you can call me Mosquito!
Bryan:  Uhhhhh….hey…uhhhh.
Me:  Hi!  My name is Justin but you can call me Bug!
Tranny:   If you need any help with activities in Phuket be sure to call me!
Bryan:  Uhhhh….uhhhh
Me:  Yah we’ll have Bryan call you (pointing to Bryan’s cowering in his seat) 

Ghetto Hotel

Hahahaha…Classic!  Anyway, we check into our hotel (Hotel Tropica Phuket) and we’re greeted by the biggest dump since I stayed in Boracay last year.  Allen’s face immediately went to depression mode after he saw the room.  He had a very blank stare and glassy eyes….kinda like a muppet.  I started giggling at the poor sight of him.  hahahaha.  So we look around and find some other inhabitants of the room….Mr. Spider…and Mr. Centipede:

Both were friggin HUGE.  Scared the bejesus out of me I tell ya. 

After we get rid of our unwanted guests, we decided to head out for some seafood dinner.

Looks delicious huh?  Well too bad i didn’t get to eat any of it cuz as soon as I sat down, my stomach started having that VERY unsettling feeling again.  Looks like our “free lunch” courtesy of Air India had come back to haunt me.  I had to excuse myself from dinner and run back to the hotel to use the nasty restroom facilities.  

Ghosts

So basically I’m laid up for the rest of the night and into the next day.  I’m even more sick than I was in Shanghai.  Curses!!!  I get up the next afternoon and attempted to eat at Mc D’s.  While there, Bryan brings up the fact that he saw a ghost in our room when he woke up in the morning….and not only was the ghost in our room…the ghost was ON TOP OF ME.   Apparently Bry woke up and saw a woman on top of me.  So he’s thinking to himself, “damn…Justin already got a hooker in here and it’s only the first day!”.  He looks back and the woman is gone and he freaks out.  I kinda laugh it off but the next morning he again says he saw somebody out of the corner of his eye walk quickly by the foot of his bed.  Freaky or what?  Or maybe Bry is just plain crazy but later we find out that a lot of ghosts are wandering around Phuket now since the tsunami tragedy that happened a couple of years ago.  Vork and Shien decide to check out and move to the Holiday Inn down the road and Van decides to move his bed into our room since he is afraid to sleep alone.  I later noticed faint watermarks on the walls of our room AND our hotel just happened to be sitting about 100 yards from the shore.  Oh well…as long as they didn’t follow me home.  What can I say?  I just attract all the females….living or dead!  hahahaha.  

Bangla Road

We stayed in the main city of Phuket which is called Patong Beach.  Let me say this…it is a CRAPHOLE!  And the main drag of Patong Beach is called Bangla Road.  We renamed the street “the gates of hell”.  Why do you ask?  It’s seriously the biggest cesspool of every bad thing you can think of.  The street is TEEMING with hookers……nasty hookers.  Kinda looked like a roach farm.  The street smells like an open sewer  and it is composed of about 90% bars haphazardly constructed along both sides.  I mean i’m a definite fan of females but this was just too much.  It made the idea of sex seem VERY dirty and disgusting.  All around me I saw white men leading away their Thai hookers (ladies and ladyboys) for a night of ”pleasure”.  I just wanted to go back and take a shower.  Disgusting.  Here’s me with some of the locals. 

As you can see NONE of these girls are cute.  I may be smiling on the outside but inside I was weeping like a small child.  hahaha. 

Crazy shiet was happening all around.  Men dressed like women, women looking like men, thai boxers, nasty white guys, etc etc.

Phi Phi Island  

This was the highlight of our Phuket trip and the part I was looking forward to the most.  Any of y’all seen “The Beach” with Leo?  Yah they shot that at Phi Phi island and I’ve been wanting to go there ever since (ok dont’ ask me why a heterosexual male would be watching “The Beach” anyway)  

 

Anyway, I was still sick as a dog but I wasn’t going to miss this for the world.  It was about an hour boatride away but the day was rainy.  Just our luck!  We get to the famous bay where they filmed most of the beach scenes.  I’m having visions of bright aqua water, sunny skies, and swimming with hot French woman named Francoise.  Instead, we are greeted by sheets and sheets of RAIN.  But the show must go on!  They still dump us off at the beach and we scurry under the rock overhand for cover.  Luckily the rain let up and the rest of the day was quite pleasant. 

 

The day ended up being quite lovely except for the ride back.  Seas were ROUGH mang! 

We were all thoroughly soaked and were tossed around pretty violently.  I made the mistake of not wearing my flip flops on the boat ride back.  The Japanese chickie next to me then got sick and threw up all over them.  Niiiiiiice.  What was funnier is that after she threw up, one of the crew saw it and threw up too.  hahahaha.  I laughed inside.  Tee hee!   Reminded me of that scene in Stand By Me.   

So yah, our stay in Phuket was not very enjoyable.  I can safely say that i will NOT be ever visiting there again.  It’s just too nasty.  I felt like i caught a STD just by staying in the city.  None of us touched any of the females out there, well…except Shien…he seemed to have caught the eye of this lovely dame:

Hahahahaha.  This is my FAVORITE picture of the trip.  Anytime I feel sad, I just look at this picture.  It friggin cracks me up!  The best part is how she’s doing a sexy pose while he’s holding her.  The first time i saw this monkey, i thought it was a stuffed animal.  It totally tripped me out when i saw it the next day eating a mango.  Shien is totally fascinated with monkeys and I think this picture was the highlight of his life.  How do i know?  Cuz everytime I have seen him since this trip, he has a picture of him and the monkey that he carries around.  Like a lovestruck boy and his new girlfriend.  hahahaha.

Next stop…..BANGKOK!