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. 

Bus trip to Phuket aaaaannnd WELCOME TO PHUKET

After rushing like wild animals to get all our stuff on the bus (the poor busboy did not know what hit him when he had to make all our stuff fit) Steven and I took our seats. We had bags of food, 1 liter of Coke each and our pillows – we were ready for this 7 hour trip down to Phuket.

Everyone boarded and we sat back as the bus started to move – ready to watch the on-board entertainment. The movie started playing and we made ourselves comfortable with our pillows and our seats, and then *% LIB^&%$%^ !@*#%$^) ib(*^$#P))  T^RTR%$DE%$D^G*HT^&%E%GN(G^%R%$D%F&U^F&GIJOIOPOIUMYU^&$#W%WER&* . Yes you read it correct. It roughly translates to “sorry that you are a farrang, this is a badly dubbed movie and you won’t be able to understand a word of the next 3 movies that will entertain everyone else except you all the way down to Phuket.”

So Steven and I decided that maybe this will be a good time to catch up on some sleep. And since the seats in front of us were open he moved to the front and we made ourselves mini beds. Sleeeeeep – didn’t have much of this underrated human need the last week. Well it seemed like a good idea. But apparently the lady in the row next to us also did not enjoy the movie and decided to phone her mother, brother, sister, best friend, less best friend, random person 1, random person 2, her mother again, her brother again, some people she forgot to phone and just for shits and giggles she phoned a couple of people that she did not know. If there is one thing that Thai people have a lot of it is airtime. They can talk for hours on the phone – NONFU@#$KINGSTOP!!! And the problem was that she made sure that she could actually speak louder than the soundtrack of the movie (which is designed to be loud enough to hamper any conversation you might try to have).

The person that sat behind us either enjoyed the movie or the phone conversations very much since it (we could not determine if boobs with a moustache were male or female) gave a loud laugh every 10 seconds on so while it was stuffing its face with more food that can be consumed by an entire army.

So with the LOUD movie, L  O  U  D cellphone conversations and LLOOOUUUDDD laughing Steven and I gave up on sleeping and resorted to starring out the window whilst eating our chips and sweets and drinking our liters of cool drink. Now as you read this you should probably know that this was not such a great idea – the human bladder is not designed to hold a liter of cool drink while the body that it is in is being violently shaken by a bus with bad shocks and a bad driver. And here where we could not determine if our ears or bladders was worse of. The bus has to stop somewhere….right?

Well it did – 4 hours later. For 15 minutes. Now if this teaching thing gets too much for us, Steven and I will start our own magic show. Somehow we got to each smoke a cigarette, release the entire Zambezi river, buy food and be on the bus before anyone else – amazing much? WE KNOW.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful –except for one guy that somehow got all the food that EVERYONE else (including us) on the bus ate into his stomach and decided it is probably a good idea to get rid of it by ways of VOMITING  Who the f*!@#& vomits for 2 hours non-stop?! And the two babies on the bus also did not enjoy the sound too much so they harmonized The-loud-crying-baby song together.

So except for loud conversations, bad food, vomiting, crying babies, weird-language-movie, bad bus driver, bad shocks, and short pit stop and 7 hours on the road we enjoyed the aircon VIP bus trip down to the island.

Here are some photos of the hotel that we stayed in for the first two nights:

 Read in our next few blogs how we somehow survived (ie – had an amazing time, went to beaches, clubbing and ate at an expensive international restaurant)  a whole month in Phuket with only 2500 baht in our wallets. 

Koh Pitak and farewell Lang Suan

While Steven was gallivanting and enjoying the life of a hobo, I was at school sending our CV’s to different schools and language schools. One big lesson that we have learned is NOT to work through an agent and to NOT do your TESOL course through a company that is only interested in making profit. IF you are serious about finding a good job rather go through a language school like ECC or SIAM than going through companies calling themselves things like “Asia adventures” or something similar. TESOL companies pop up in Thailand like mineworkers at a Christmas dinner. And they are also only interested in feeding themselves. They will probably promise you placement at a school – which they do get you, but it is usually with dodgy agents. Anyhow, I got us a job in Phuket (WHOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO) with ECC for the remainder of the school term at Anubhan Phuket - which meant we had to leave on the Saturday.

This was very good but very sad news. We started to enjoy our stay in Lang Suan and we also started to make great friends. Our very good friend gave us a great farewell present (and birthday present for me). She paid for us to spend the Friday afternoon until the Saturday morning on a small fishing island about one kilometer from the land called Koh Pitak. ( all of the people you see in the photos are Thai and cannot speak a word of English, and Steven and I could only count and say "hello" and :goodbey" in Thai - and yet we had the greatest conversations throughout the night with everyone.)

Here are some photos:

We spent the whole night with Thai people that could not speak a word of English, we ate fried fish on sticks, soup that will let you $H!* fire for a week, crabs and all sorts of other weird things, and we played card games with our new-found friends (try learning a new card game when the people teaching you speaks a language that you can only say “hello” in). But alas Steven and I got the hang of it and actually tripled our 50 baht in our wallets. And because it was my birthday Steven and I had the honor of sleeping in the only available room while the rest had to sleep on the deck outside. This is what it looked like:

 

 

 

Koh Pitak is the epitome of simplistic living. there are about 50 people on the entire island. The island is about 2 square kilometers. Al lthe houses are made of wood and are on stilts - as you see in the picture. There is one cable that provides the houses at the shore line with electricity and no where else on the island is electricity or running fresh water. All the supplies you need needs to be brought from the main land. 

The next day we left early and Sirinan (our dear Thai friend) took us for coffee the next day and dropped us of at the bus station. Here is a picture of the 3 of us:

And of we went to Phuket, with a dustbin, stove, 3 massive suitcases, 2 big washing bowls, a kettle, iron, 2 pillows, and a newly bought blanket (oh ja, and almost no money..) Whooohooooo!!!!!!