Adventures While On Vacation In Phuket - Day 3

Breakfast as usual at the hotel early in the morning. We had arranged for Laguna Resorts to pick us up at 10am for a tour of their resort. You know one of those arrangements where you spend 90 minutes of your time touring their resort and understanding their 'plans' and you get something for free? We had come across this at the airport when we arrived and they were giving out 2 Phuket Fantasea tickets inclusive of transfers. So we thought, why not? (You're going to think, cheapskate!) But hey, those tickets normally cost 1500 Baht per person and the transfer costs 300 Baht per person. So we saved 3600 Baht. That's a lot of money!

Pickup arrived punctually at 10am. There was another Swedish couple with their baby joining us from our hotel. They had come across this at JungCeylon Shopping Centre and were also interested in getting hold of those free tickets.



Laguna Resort is really beautiful. Sheraton is there. So is the exclusive Banyan Tree. One can move around to all the resorts there by boat or bus available free. So we spent our 90 minutes touring and having a consultant explain to us their "plan". But of course, they'll never be able to make us pay anything. All we want is the free tickets... haha

We got what we wanted and they let us off pretty easy. Our friends, the Swedish couple, was there for 5 hours! Amazing how they manage to tolerate all that nonsense.

By the time we arrived at Patong, it was past 2 pm. Head for lunch (again!) at Break Point. Ordered tom yum koong again. Hahaa.. When in Thailand, this is what I do. Tom yum koong whenever I can get my hands on them. Well, lunch was again an affordable affair (I wouldn't say cheap). Less than 400 Baht.

Walked around a bit after lunch. Did some window shopping. One thing I realised this time is that many of the traders seem to be foreigners and not Thai. Strange. Gotta investigate. These foreigners sell the same stuff and at higher prices.

I was interested in a silk scarf. A local trader offered it to me at 150 Baht (after a 50% discount). But stingy ol' me wanted it for 100 Baht. So I kept asking other stalls. One stall I came across, the trader (who happened to be Nepalese) gave me a starting price of 800 Baht. I asked for a discount and she lowered it to 500 Baht. I asked for more discount and offered 100 Baht. She said it wasn't even enough to buy stock. She offered a final price of 400 Baht. Since the price wasn't right, I walked away. As I was walking away, she said to me from my back, 100 Baht can't buy anything in Thailand nowadays. Sigh... The rudeness!

After some 'window shopping' , we took the 6pm shuttle back to the hotel to get some rest before the pickup arrived from Fantasea.

At 6.50pm, our van arrived to shuttle us to Phuket Fantasea. It was a boring ride. Nothing interesting along the way. But when we arrived at the main entrance, it felt like a whole new world was waiting for us. The lights and colours were just simply amazing! All the staff were dressed up in traditional Thai costumes.

I went on to the ticketing counter to collect our tickets and proceeded to enter the theme park. It is just awe-inspiring to be inside this Fantasea world. There were stalls selling all sorts of souvenir items, there were games stalls, there were food stalls. It was a fun fair at night.



The show started at 9pm in the Palace Of The Elephants Theatre. Everyone was required to deposit any sort of photo / film recording type of equipment at the counter before entering the theatre. We were wondering why and then we saw it. After depositing the cameras, videocams and camera phones, there were stalls where one can have their photo taken with girls dressed up in traditional costumes, elephants, baby tigers and so on. You pay and have your photo taken. At the end of the show, you can collect it at the exit counter.

When we entered the hall, it was huge! Rows and rows of seats. Our seats weren't too good. It was high up and on the right side of the hall. But since we didn't pay for it, we shouldn't be complaining at all.

The show started with a parade of elephants entering from the side of the hall and walking up on stage. It was a story about Kamala beach. Amazing show I would say but personally I'm not too keen on watching animals perform. Humans performing, yes, I will be interested. But definitely not animals. It's not their nature to be performing. It's unnatural. It's torturous to them. I always wonder why people force animals to train for shows and stunts when it's not in their nature to do those things. Sigh...

Anyway, after the show, we took the shuttle back to our hotel. It was late and we hadn't had dinner. With the light drizzle, we decided to just have dinner at the coffee house in the hotel. Expensive and nothing to shout about. Just get our tummies filled.

And that's Day 3 in Phuket.