Arriving in Phuket and exploring Phuket

There we were. Our first night in Phuket. To check into the hotel cost 900 baht and to get something to eat 100 baht each. We had dinner at a very cool Chalkboard Restaurant close to our hotel:

 We had another 1400 baht left – and we still had to stay until the end of the month before we (might) get paid. We walked to the ATM to withdraw some cash from my South African credit card and the ATM was nice enough to keep my card for safe protection and in return spit out no money. (So much for my creditcard-backup-plan).So maybe the agent had an ounce of decency and paid the salary that she still owed me. Checked my Thai bank account – and alas she paid my salary. Half of it… Somehow we had to pay for an apartment for the month, pay deposit, buy food and cigarettes, pay for transport and entertain ourselves with 1100 baht left in our wallets and 4800 baht (of 8600baht) that was paid in by the agent. She somehow managed to take money from my salary for weekends that I did not work – and was not supposed to work. Anyhow, we were in Phuket and nothing was going to hamper our amazing Thailand adventure. Tomorrow will provide for itself hey.

Typical of 2 adventurers we decided to go look for a pub and enjoy a drink before we go to bed. WE ended up in a blues/jazz bar that played crap music and sold expensive alcohol. One beer each was enough to get us heading back to our hotel.

The next day we rented a scooter to go to the office of ECC at The Village mall. At the office we met our new contact person – Martin. A very friendly, helpful guy. We filled in all our forms, wrote an English test – Steven copied mine. Hahahaha. And keeping in mind that I suck a bit with the 1milion English tenses, it might not have been the best idea.

As we stepped out of the office a million and two over eager guys offered us a taxi. (There are 2 things in abundance in Phuket – massage parlors and taxi drivers. And they will drive you insane offering their (very expensive) services.) So we just waved them away with a “mai khrap” (no thank you), went in search of our scooter that we had to find in all of this:

We eventually found it and went to look for the ocean. It took us less time to find the ocean than what it took us to find our scooter… and WOW WOW WOW. The pictures that you see on the internet and in magazines of Thailand’s blue ocean and white beaches – well those beaches you find in Phuket.  

After getting lost we got back at the hotel. Paid for one more night, and we had to move all of our stuff to a different room. And since we only had the scooter for one day, we wanted to make the best use of it so we went out to the streets again. About 1km from our hotel was the coolest (most westernized) market that we have seen thus far in Thailand – there even was a “Waterorrel”. Veerrry cooool. So we grabbed some sausages and bread from the food vendors, rode down to the ocean, had our dinner on the beach and headed back up to see the 21:00 Water-organ show whilst drinking cheap wine out of the bottle.