Mark's Posterous

Our fourth day turned out to be our most eventful. The day started the same as the rest, breakfast and the Kid’s Club for Hayden, except this time, while he was at the Kid’s Club, the wife, my mum and me drove down to the Premium Outlet, this huge plot of land where they had factory outlet type shops for all the big brands like Nike, Oxbow, Levis, Wrangler, etc. we reached the place at about 10am and while I didn’t really care to shop at all, the women were having a field day. I browsed around most of the shops before sitting myself down and the Coffee Box, a small little place in the middle of the outlet serving all sorts of coffees and teas. Think Coffee Bean on a much smaller scale. I ended up spending an hour in the place waiting for the wife and my mum to be done with their shopping. In the end, after two and half hours, they still were complaining that they hadn’t had enough time! In any case I didn’t want to be late in returning the rental car, so I hurried them to finish up and we headed back to the resort, reaching there just after 1pm. We tried to get the resort manager to extend the return time for the car for us because I had inadvertently topped up the tank the day before when the rental people had given me the car on an almost empty tank. Over our trip to Tesco, Patong beach, Central Festival, back to the resort and then to the Premium Outlet and back, I had used only just more than a quarter of the tank. Unfortunately, the manager wasn’t able to extend the time by much, only giving us till 3pm – a miserly one and half hours more. We figured we couldn’t do much in that time at all so we just decided to stay in the resort. I went up to slip into the jacuzzi for my daily soak while everyone else chilled and our helper prepared the pasta and corned beef for lunch. The food turned out to be pretty good and we still had some food left over. At 3pm, Hayden wanted to go back to play at the Kid’s Club and I went back down to the lobby to return the car to the rental folks. As I got there I saw the guy who brought the car from the day before. As I went to give him the keys, he pointed me to a scratch at the back of the car and said I had scratched the car! I was furious at the guy but luckily I had taken a video of the damage when the car was delivered to us the day before and also had the manager witness all the damage. I told the guy I had the video (my phone was upstairs) and also had the manager as a witness but she was in a meeting at the time. I asked him to go get the lady that had acknowledged all the damages the day before. He drove off to get the woman and I waited for the manager to come back. When she got back I explained the situation and showed her the video (Ani had brought my phone down by the time the manager came back) and I told her I was not paying for any damage I didn’t cause. She said she remembered the scratch from the day before and that she would deal with the woman and the man when they came back. She took the car keys from me and I headed back to the penthouse.

When I got back, the wife said that we should probably try Yamu Seafood for dinner (the place we wanted to go on the first night but it had been closed), especially since this was our last night in Phuket. I didn’t have any objections to the idea, but before we could do anything else, our helper came running back with Hayden saying that the Kid’s Club staff had told her to get everyone an assemble in the lobby because there had been an 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Sumatra and that the whole of Phuket (and the neighbouring countries) were on tsunami watch. My mum obviously went into panic mode, while me and the wife just gathered everyone and headed down to the lobby. We checked with the manager and she told us that we were not in any target zone as we were on the east side of the island protected by the mountains on one side and by the islands on the other side. The only way a tsunami would hit us is if it had a 200 foot height wave and that wasn’t likely. None the less, the entire island was asked to move to higher ground. This was funny, because when we got to the lobby we saw other guests all lazing about, some were still swimming in the pool like there was absolutely nothing wrong. I guess everyone knew how protected we were and so were not concerned at all. After about 30 minutes of waiting in the lobby and nothing was happening, I told the manager that we would go back up to our penthouse and that when everyone was ready to head to higher ground, to call us. We went up and as a precaution we packed up all our stuff into our bags ready to leave if necessary. By the time the staff told us to move up the hill (still in the resort) it was nearly 5.30pm. We gathered some of our stuff and headed up the hill where we were greeted by some of the other guests, mainly Caucasians who had brought up their whiskey and wines as well. I joked with one of them that we were going to have a party. After about 20 minutes of waiting at the top of the hill, the resort staff opened a nearby bungalow – a 3 story bungalow, that was under going some renovations. You see the resort is split into privately owned bungalows (much like a condo estate) and the resort area where tourist can book the penthouses. This bungalow was a privately owned one which wasn’t being used at the moment and it was actually quite well designed. 3 stories, roof top garden and patio for BBQs and stuff, private swimming pool. Huge all and outdoor porch area with a view of the bay and a private garage space for 4 vehicles. All of us piled into the porch area next to the private pool and it just had this old school BBQ feel to it. People were having wine and chatting about current affairs and stuff, the kids were running about, playing with iPads or just dipping their feet in the pool. The resort staff also cooked fried rice for everyone since we couldn’t go anywhere for dinner (no Yamu Seafood for us) and we waited things out until the tsunami watch was cancelled. All in all it was quite an experience, but not unpleasant other than the mosquitoes and the heat.

We walked back to our penthouse, showered down and Ani made us some egg sandwiches and I had the left over pasta too. I popped in the “Toy Story 3″ DVD which I had borrowed from the Kid’s Club in the morning and Hayden and I watched that while the rest started playing “Rummy ‘O’”. After the movie ended, we hit the sack.

Day 5 started off no different from the rest. We had our breakfast and Hayden went off to join his friends at the Kid’s Club. We had a 4pm late check out so we weren’t too concerned about the time. I was determined to have as much time as possible in the jacuzzi and the pool before leaving the resort. Ani made sandwiches again as I slipped into the jacuzzi for the 2nd time that day just before lunch. Hayden, back from the Kid’s Club also joined me in the jacuzzi splashing about. After an hour or so we headed down to the pool to swim and play with Hayden and as the sun got hotter, we went back up and the wife and my mum got into the jacuzzi with Hayden. The wife also scheduled another massage at 3pm so by the time she had to leave for the massage, the rest of us got showered and ready to check out. By 4pm, we got the resort staff to bring our luggage down and we headed off to the lobby to settle the bill.

The transport dropped us off at the airport at 5pm and it was packed. The airport had been closed for several hours the day before and lots of tourists missed their flights as they couldn’t get to the airports due to the tsunami watch, so all these people were trying to get out of Phuket then. We got our boarding passes and checked in our bag (it was 7kg over weight due to all the shopping) and we had to take out a bit of stuff. Mind you that was 7kg overweight for our luggage, not counting the 8 plastic bags full of stuff we were hand carrying. Talk about your shopping sprees. The rest of the journey home went without incident and we reached home close to midnight.

Was a good holiday, but I think next time I’ll come on my own, just chill in the room and jacuzzi and spare myself the needless scurrying about just to do shopping.

Day three started off like day two, breakfast, then the kids club for Hayden while the rest of us chilled at the penthouse. At noon time we went down because we had requested for a rental car. We were able to get a private rental from outside the resort. The resort has its own rental car, but it was booked and was more expensive because they need to add tax. In anycase there was a miscommunication with the front desk who booked the car for us and they thought we had booked it for the 12th of April instead of 12 noon. They did their best to correct the mistake, but with short notice, the rental car came to us at nearly 1.30pm. I checked over the car and even took a video of all the dents and scratches (which turned out to be a good thing) and also made sure the resort manager witnessed all the locations of the dents and scratches and made it known to the woman and the man who brought the car. The woman verbally acknowledged all the current damage and kept repeating “Ok” to every scratch that was highlighted. The car was a 1.8L Honda Civic, and it was actually in pretty good condition. We piled in and I drove off, with the wife as navigator, checking on the map as we went along. I had my iPhone GPS software and I had the Thailand maps on it, but without my car charger, I didn’t want to risk running my phone flat. Using the maps was comfortable enough since I was roughly familiar with the roads from my last driving outing in Phuket back in 2006 and also half of our journey had already been traveled by cab the on our first day. Our plan was simple enough – drive over to Tesco (their version of Giant with eateries all over) and get a few groceries, have lunch there, head off to Patong beach where the touristy stuff was, drive back to Central Festival for shopping and dinner and then head back to the resort. We reached Tesco at about 2pm and decided to have lunch first since the boy was getting hungry, but not before my mum and the wife had their fill of raiding Boots for cosmetics and what not. We settled in at Black Canyon for a very affordable yet tasty Thai style lunch. While waiting for the food to come after our order, the wife and I headed off to the supermarket area to grab some groceries and drinks. We decided to also buy some pasta to cook for lunch the next day but we couldn’t find any meat to add to the sauce. Everything was pork, which our helper doesn’t take. We couldn’t find chicken sausages or even beef. In the end we gave up looking for the meats and decided to just get the meat at Central Festival’s marketplace. We bought the rest of the stuff, and headed back to Black Canyon to eat and then it was off to Patong beach.

Took us about 20 minutes from Tesco to Patong beach, over the mountain and down again. The area was just like I remembered it, except they had now changed the traffic to one way along the road next to the beach. I had to make a detour to get to the other side so we could walk down to all the shops. Things had definitely changed, for one, parking was no longer free. The moment I parked the car in one of the road side lots facing the beach, this guy in uniform came up and asked me how long I’d be parking for. I thought it would cost like THB$200 an hour or something, but it turned out to be just THB$10 an hour. I handed the guy THB$20 and we made our way to the beach. The parking attendant was a good idea actually. The last time we were here in 2006, I had parked the jeep we rented and we had gone off to do shopping and have dinner and when we returned we found the jeep wouldn’t start. Coincidentally, these men from the beach area suddenly showed up offering to “help”. Call it gut instinct or whatever, but the wife and I opted instead to ignore these people and walk into the Holiday Inn Hotel to request for help. The technical staff came to the jeep and found that the battery wires had been yanked off the battery. A quick reconnection and we were ready to go. I feel the guys that were offering to “help” actually either jimmied the hood of the jeep and yanked the wires or they did it from under the jeep and then they waited for us to come back so they could offer to help and get rewarded. While all this is pure speculation, the reaction of pure irritation and anger shown by the guys who offered their “help” when the hotel staff came out, kind of tells me I was right. Anyway that was back in 2006, so now with the attendant hanging about it should deter more of such things. Then again I am reminded that the police were actually part of a scam to cheat tourists some month ago. The jet ski guys would rent out the jet skis and when the tourist returned them, they would claim that the tourists damaged the jet skis and demand something like USD$3000 to repair the damage. The tourists would definitely argue and mid way through the argument, a cop would conveniently show up to find out what the problem was. He would then act as mitigator and lower the repair costs to about USD$1000. The tourist, thankful to have the costs lowered considerably would pay up. When the tourist leave, the jet ski operator splits the USD$1000 with the cop. The scam was uncovered by a tourist who smelled something fishy and it was blown up in a travel magazine. Needless to say heads rolled for that. In any case we didn’t have any such problems this time round.

We hung around the beach to take photos and let Hayden play in the sand a while before heading over to check out all the little shops but lo and behold, the endless rows of shops we saw in 2006 were no where to be seen. I could count on 2 hands the number of shops opened and they were hardely selling anything of real interest. At first I though it was the previous tsunami that had dampened business, but then I realise that I was here in 2006, after the tsunami and things were bustling. We visited a few of the shops and my wife and mum bought some bags and clothes for the boy and various other friends back home. Its unbelieveable how my mum and wife can just stand and argue with the sellers to bring their already cheap prices down. I mean is it that important to save 20 cents? When they were done, we stopped off for some yogurt ice cream and some drinks. It was about 6.30 by the time we set off again for Central Festival. The sun was going down, but it wasn’t all that dark, so it made going over the mountain to get back a lot more pleasant. In 2006 I had to go over the mountain in the dark of night with very weak headlights from the jeep and that wasn’t as fun as it should have been. We reached Central Festival at about 7pm and off the women went again with their shopping. I opted to leave them and go have a drink on my own at Ete Bistro. A simple little joint, nice coffee, situated just outside the Fuji Japanese Restaurant where in 2006, the wife and I had Japanese food up to our ears and paid only S$40 for it. After more than an hour of waiting, I got irritated and called the wife to hurry up and eventually (after another 20 minutes of waiting) they showed up and decided to eat at the Fuji Japanese Restaurant. Again, we ordered up a storm of Japanese food and at the end of dinner every one was so stuffed we didn’t want to move. The total damage for our Japanese feast? THB$1763 – thats S$70. I almost fell out of my seat laughing. My mum was actually asking if we could get a discount if we went to get this card for tourists. I reminded her of what my wife had done in 2006. We went shopping in Central Festival and the people in the shop we were at told us about the tourist card that would allow us to get a discount on our overall shopping. My wife ran up and down the mall filling in forms and submitting them and finally getting the card. The overall discount we got? 25 Singapore cents. To this day I never stop reminding my wife of this.

After getting our stuffed butts out of the restaurant the women went (again) to buy stuff. I bought a Disney Cars2 shirt and pants for Hayden and then we headed down to the marketplace to look for meat for our pasta lunch the next day. Again, no chicken or beef stuff other than whole chickens and chunks of beef. Eventually I settled for corned beef – not the type you get in cans in Singapore, but this was in packets and it was more stringy than mashed up like what we are used to. After we got the groceries, we hopped into the car and headed back to the resort.

We reached back at about 9.30pm and after putting the groceries away and freshening up, I let the boy watch “Surf’s up” on my iPad, streamed off my laptop. I didn’t really care for the movie, but the boy certainly liked it. It was close to midnight before the movie finished and we all knocked out.

We planned absolutely nothing for day two in Phuket, well at least I didn’t plan anything and I insisted that we were going no where. I just wanted to hang at the resort and chill, enjoying the jacuzzi, the pool and anything else we could enjoy without having to leave the resort. The wife protested of course, but I wasn’t listening. We headed down for our daily breakfast buffet (nothing spectacular, same old stuff) at about 9am and after stuffing our faces (we wanted to have as heavy a breakfast as possible so we could skip lunch), we took Hayden over to the Kid’s Club. It was actually a double story penthouse, right next to the pool, but it was fitted with a ball play pen, a mini rock climbing wall and an assortment of toys. The second story had a billard’s room and a few X-box and Wii stations for the older kids. The staff in the Kid’s Club were very good with the kids and they had various programmes for the children (face painting, paper bell making, etc). Guests could either leave their kids there on their own or with their helpers (which we did) while they went of roaming the town. There were several European and Australian parents who left their kids there and disappeared for over half a day. In any case Hayden was occupying himself with colouring his favorite Disney Cars characters which the staff had given to him and was lining up all the toy cars/vehicles he could find in a straight line – why? I have no clue. He just lines them up and goes off to find something else to play with. They also allowed guests to borrow kid’s movie DVDs and I borrowed Chicken Run for the boy to watch at night. I had brought some movies in DivX format, but seeing how there was no USB interface on the DVD player or TV in our penthouse, I had to hook up my laptop to stream the movies to my iPad for Hayden to watch. I figured supplementing the movies I brought with the DVDs from the Kid’s Club would be good too as the boy could actually watch the DVDs on the bigger TV screen instead of just on my small iPad screen.

We left Hayden and our helper at the Kid’s Club and headed up to the penthouse and I slipped into the jacuzzi while the wife and my mum watched TV. Theres something about a cold beer in hand, aromatic bath oils and suds that just relax the heck out of person. After about an hour of soaking, my wife and mum wanted to try the jacuzzi too, and there was definitely not enough space for all three of us, so I let the ladies in while I got out and dried off, swapping places with them to watch TV while they soaked. They were probably about 30 minutes into their jacuzzi time when my boy and our helper returned to the room. Hayden of course seeing his mother and grandmother in the jacuzzi, bubbles all over, wanted to join in and he dashed off to get his swimming costume. I helped him into the jacuzzi and he had a ball splashing everyone. It was about 2pm by the time they finished and after a quick shower and something to nibble on (from the shopping the night before), my mum went to rest, my wife went into the master bedroom to watch TV and our helper Ani was cleaning up, leaving me and Hayden with nothing much to do, so I got out my iPad and streamed “Tangled” (the Disney take on Rapunzel) and we both sat down to watch it. Was pretty hilarious actually and the boy was more than tickled by the “silly horsie”.

I left him to do some colouring (we took a few of the drawings up from the Kid’s Club for him to colour) for a while and by 5pm when my wife and mum had to go for their pre arranged body massage, I took the boy down to the pool. We had fun there, playing with the inflatable raft again and basically just jumping into the water from the edge of the pool. My wife and my mum joined us after their massage at around 6 and after our showers we decided to head down to the Oriental Spoon for dinner. Nothing fancy, in fact I had the Khao Pad again while my mum and the wife tried some spicy seafood rice dishes. After that it was back up to the penthouse where Hayden and I watched the Chicken Run DVD which I had borrowed from the Kid’s Club in the morning, while my mum and Ani started playing this game (Rummy ‘O’) that my mum had brought with her. The wife was in her couch potato mode again, under the covers and watching TV in the master bedroom. After Chicken Run had ended, all of us went off to bed.

First vacation of 2012, and it was supposed to be back at the Hard Rock Cafe Hotel in Penang, where we (at least Hayden and me) had a blast last March. However, the wife wasn’t keen and she wanted to go to Thailand instead. So when I spied Yasminne’s (Class 95 DJ) pics on Facebook of her vacation at Club Yamu in Phuket, I decided thats where we should go. Prices were very reasonable, cheaper even than the Hard Rock Cafe Hotel in Penang and the 2 bedroom Bayview Penthouse I booked looked gorgeous. Booked the flight for me, then wife, Hayden, my mum and our helper Ani on the 8th of April (since the rooms were all booked up for the days leading up to Good Friday and Easter Sunday) for a 5 day, 4 night stay at the resort.

We got to the budget terminal early and had a very short wait to check in, after which we had some food and drink at Hanis while Hayden was playing at the indoor playground. I haven’t been to the budget terminal for ages and while the outside hadn’t changed much, the departure area after immigration was bustling with shops and eateries which were not there the last time I used the budget terminal. In any case we had minimum fuss with the flight and in an hour and a half were in Phuket. The last time me and the wife were in Phuket was in 2006 where we stayed at the Hilton Arcadia, near Patong beach. This time we were going to the east side of the island, away from all the hustle and bustle and tourist crowds. We were picked up by the club Yamu staff in our private transport, which just happened to be a Volvo CX90. It was a comfortable ride and I found myself able to remember the roads pretty well – I had driven this hired, rickety old 4WD jeep the last time we were here and that ride was nothing close to the comfort of the Volvo. Within 30 minutes we were at Club Yamu and getting checked in. We needed to have lunch so we made our way to their one and only restaurant, the Oriental Spoon and had a simple, yet very delicious Pad Thai (Thai stir fried noodles) and Khao Pad (Thai fried rice) while the resort staff got our penthouse ready and moved our luggage up.

The wife was complaining about the lack of eateries and also about how far away from the touristy spots we were at but when we got to the penthouse, all the complaining disappeared (for the time being anyway). The place was HUGE and very nicely designed. Flat screen TVs in every room and the hall, a large open concept kitchen and big balcony with our own private jacuzzi. The guestroom was by itself twice the size of two of our guest rooms back home and the master bedroom was almost as big as a 3 room flat! By the time we were settled in, it was already about 4pm Thailand time (an hour earlier than home). We lazed about a bit and then at Hayden’s insistence, we headed down to the pool to swim. The boy had brought his inflatable submarine along, but it turns out it wasn’t needed since the resort provided an assortment of play toys in the pool, from balls to inflatable rafts. Hayden had his fun being “Captain” and making me row all over the place.

While me and the boy were in the pool, the wife started making inquiries about things to do and places to go and had our activities for the rest of the night planned out by the time we got our of the water. She wanted to go over to Yamu Seafood for dinner, a 2 minute walk up from the resort, which would give us an unobstructed view of the bay while we ate. After which she wanted to grab a cab and visit Phuket’s night market for shopping. Sounded like a good plan, but all didn’t go the way we wanted. Firstly, as we were walking up to Yamu Seafood, we were told by the private cab drivers (theres a private cab hut just outside the resort) that Yamu Seafood was closed on Sunday. We were disappointed, but we decided to carry on with our plans and just head off to the night market then maybe eat elsewhere. We hopped onto a private cab and it took us about 20 minutes or so to get to the night market. The cab dropped us across the road from the night market and let me tell you, it was a nightmare to cross the road. The traffic was non-stop! We finally got across the road, but poor Hayden, tired out from his swimming was starting to make noise, mainly because we had woken him up – he fell asleep in the cab. None the less, we went through part of the night market, my wife and my mum happily buying t-shirts and other knick-knacks, while I wandered around looking at all the other interesting stuff. I found this one stall selling imitation mobile phones – these are REAL mobile phones that work, with brands like Gucci, Vertu, Samsung, iPhone, etc yet selling for under THB$4000 (S$200) – think China fake branded goods and you’ll get the idea.

After the women were satisfied with their shopping, we finally made our way out of the night market (also thanks to Hayden complaining and crying cos he was tired of being dragged about while the wife and my mum were shopping). We grabbed a cab over to Central Festival, one of Phuket’s larger shopping malls for dinner. We didn’t really want to keep walking around, so we decided to just eat at one of the many eateries at the ground floor. Turns out that the Wine Connection Bistro was serving what looked to be pretty good food, so that was our choice for the evening. The food wasn’t exactly out of this world, but it satisfied our wanting stomachs and the dessert was good. with about 30 minutes to spare before 10pm, we headed off to the supermarket in Central Festival – sort of like our Cold Storage/Marketplace, where we bought bread and fruits and cans of beers and other stuff to nibble on and drink while we were back in the penthouse. Once that was done, we grabbed a cab back to the resort and called it a night.