Phuket, Thailand Days 1 to 3

I'm in Phuket right now, arrived on Thursday 26th of January.  The last time I was here was pre-tsunami days, so it's been a while.  I flew from Norway to Singapore for Chinese New Year and now I'm in Thailand.

This post is an entry in progress, so I'll be updating it later with photos and what not.  Meanwhile, I'm just writing whatever's coming to my mind, and whatever I can remember. :)

Day 1

An early morning flight from Singapore to Bangkok was 2 hours followed by another 2 hour stopover.  The flight to Phuket was delayed by an hour or so, and so I didn't get here till closer to 3pm.  The ride to the hotel was about another hour by mini bus, and that cost 150 baht, about 6 Singapore Dollars.  There were a lot of people on the plane, at least a lot more than I remembered the last time I came here.  Checked in at about 4pm close to 5pm.  Had a shower after checking in Dinner at Patong Seafood (about 900 baht for 4 dishes and 2 servings of rice, about 26 Singapore Dollars) and Haagen Daaz ice cream (250 baht for 2 scoops of ice cream, about 10 Singapore Dollars, but you have to include the service charge of 10% and 7% charge for GST, it's exactly like Singapore).  After dinner I bought water at the supermarket close to the hotel.  Water from the tap here is not drinkable.  Last night I saw brown water coming out of my tap.  Not good.

View from the hotel with swimming pool and palm trees

Dinner

Haagen Daaz along Thanon Taweewpmg, Patong

Day 2

I set my alarm for 8:30 and woke up at that time.  Except I had forgotten to adjust the timezone to local time so really I woke up at 7:30.  Haha!  But that was good.  After buffet breakfast, I walked to the open market located close to hotel, literally across the road, and shopped and haggled over prices of clothes.  You have to bargain here when you shop.  If you're European that's not something you're used to.  But if you don't do it, you will get ripped off.  You have to cut the prices quoted to you by 50% at least.  And then work your way up from there.  If the seller doesn't want to budge, just walk away and if you provide something reasonable usually they'll ask you to come back, if not well then you probably quoted too little.  There's no way they would sell to you if you're not making a buck anyway.  So either way they will make some money even though they say they give you a "special price" or "their boss will kill them".  What I can't stand in these markets are the endless endless store sellers telling you to come into their stores to buy stuff, i.e. the constant patronising (Although I can appreciate when someone says my hair is sexy, but calling me a friend come on...).  Lunch was at the nearby shopping centre, I had some noodles that cost me 100 baht (4 Singapore dollars).  I was there to scout prices in order to find out what a "fair price" was at the open market.  Prices in the shopping centre are more or less the same in Singapore, make sense since all of it is retail.  Walking to the shopping centre from the hotel you get to see the life that make up Phuket.  Namely, tattoo parlours, restaurants, massage parlours, day trips around Phuket, beggars, taxi drivers, the smells, scenes of undisposed garbage, buildings, trees, greenery, numerous signs in English, Chinese, Thai and Russian (Oh yeah there's many Russians and Chinese here.  And Norwegians too, but I suppose the language isn't as widely spoken as the others.) and the signs about watching Thai boxing.  The hotel has a pool for its guests, so I utilized that in the afternoon after going back to the open market after lunch.  Just before dinner I took a walk at the beach.  Looking at the beach just made me wonder what it was like when the tsunami waves first appeared.  They have designed tsunami evacuation routes now and you can see those signs along the beach now.  Dinner followed after the walk, which was at the hotel as well, it was Asian buffet night.  Oh the hotel bar has happy hour here where the drinks are half price from 5pm to 8pm.  Walked back to the shopping centre after that because I wanted a foot massage but it was full so instead I booked a package for an elephant trek the next day that included a snake and a monkey show.  Watched 500 days of summer after that which was a DVD rental at the hotel.  The last time I came here they only provided video tapes. :)  But the DVDs in the hotel are all pirated copies, i.e. duplicates, not recordings off the cinema but still.  I guess original stuff here is hard to come by.  But you can buy a apartment for 20000 euros!

Patong Beach

Dinner

Day 3

Early start at 730 again.  Buffet breakfast was followed by mini van pick up to the place where the elephants were.  That took about half an hour.  There was a Chinese couple with their child and a Malaysian man.  I eavesdropped on their conversation, well it was more like I could not help it since they were talking pretty much next to me.  The Malaysian man had arrived the night before and travelled alone and the Chinese couple were at Krabi before they arrived in Phuket.  They were pretty much just talking about cost of living in China vs Thailand and saying how it was about the same.  The Malaysian guy says it's a bit cheaper living here  compared to Malaysia.  Things like that. :)

I'll post photos of the trek here soon. You shouted "pai" if you wanted the elephant to move forward. And there was a word for stop but I could not remember for now. :)

And photos of the snake and monkey show. They had different snakes including the king cobra. There was a little circular area which acted as a stage and you could go down and well, touch or provoke the snakes if you wanted to. Or dared to. :) The snake handler is in the same area in case something bad happens.

The monkey show had a monkey named petey that rode on a bike and performed things like picking numbers from a pile of tiles numbered 0 to 9, sit ups and push ups and he could also put his hands together to say thank you. Hmm wonder how much he was tortured in order to learn the things he knows.

Lunch was at the same shopping centre as yesterday, in the same food court. After that I had a fish spa and a foot back and shoulder massage. Then walked to another part of the shopping centre and went to a shooting gallery using rifles. That was fun. It was like shooting a bulls eye with concentric circles. I scored a bullseye out of 15 shots, which is a 10. Had another swim at the hotel after that, then it was non alcoholic drinks at the bar and seafood buffet dinner at one of the hotel restaurants.

Will update this post later with photos.

On the way to the elephant trek

Russian writing, many Russians visit Phuket

There's our ride right there

Living quarters of the staff working there?

The snake show

That's a cobra

That's a king cobra, if you get bitten, you have 15 minutes before you're RIP

Me carrying a non venomous snake

Me and my distant relative

The monkey praying to Google to set him free

Doing push ups

Asking for donations, it's hard work being a monkey in Phuket

Updated with photos (9th Feb 2012)

Riga, Latvia Day 2

This post is originally for Dec 10th 2011.  I've been busy with travelling here there and everywhere so I haven't had time but now I've finally got some time to so here I go!

I woke up quite early as I had to go pick up a friend at the bus terminal. This was around 7am or so. But the bus was late so I ended up hanging around the hotel until 8. I had a huge apple which I bought the night before from a fruit and vegetable shop along Aleksandra Čaka iela. I've never had an apple this big.

Around 11am or so, we walked around Riga's old town (Vecriga in Latvian). Very old, picturesque buildings and architecture.  I even found Santa's clothes.  He lives in Latvia too!!

Preparing for Christmas deliveries around the globe

St Peter's Tower

House of the Blackheads, reconstructed in 1995 after being bombed by the Germans in 1941.

The weather wasn't very good that morning and it began to rain shortly after.  So we sought refuge in Riga Cathedral, this was close to noon.  There was an organ concert so we stayed and watched that and then walked around the church courtyard which housed some old artifacts along its perimeter.

Church altar

Really old clockface

Courtyard

The weather was a bit better after that.  We walked around some more and had some hot wine in a little cafe that had a red tent.

We just walked around after that and went back to the hotel to rest a bit before heading out for dinner.  Caught a tram to the Lido Recreation Centre which was a tram ride that took half an hour or so.  There were a lot of people and we had to wait a while before getting our food.  It's like the Marche restaurant.  You pick what you want and then pay at the counter.

Potatoe pancake, chicken, salmon, some salad, yoghurt and the drink kvass. :)

The outside of the restaurant.  Or part of it.

They have little houses like these around the place that were stalls selling trinkets or housed some form of entertainment.  There was also a stage somewhere and it had some people in costumes dancing as entertainment for kids.

There was an ice skating rink too but we didn't ice skate then, even though I would've liked to but anyway, we caught the tram back to the hotel around 7ish, watched a movie "Soul Kitchen" and that summed up the night.

Happy New Year and 169 passengers later

Whoosh, another year has just gone... just like that.  Right now I'm back in Norway for 2 weeks before flying back to Singapore and then to Thailand.  Why did I choose not to stay for an entire month?  Because I would be bored out of my brains, I was brought here afterall and even though there have been many changes here over the past several decades, most of it is still the same underneath.  All my friends work during the day, that means I would be hanging out alone, not that that's a bad thing but if I want to hang out it's not with 100000 other noisy sweaty persons surrounding me.  By the way did you know that a quarter of the population in Singapore now consists of foreigners?  Amazing.  When I was born the total population of Singapore was just over 2.4 million and right now it's 5.1 million.  And of course the locals always complain about "foreign talent".  In Singapore it's Singaporeans complaining about the Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysians, Indians, etc.  In Norway it's the Norwegians complaining about the eastern Europeans and the rest of the world.  In Australia, there's really no complaints :)  But anyway you get the point.  While I believe there is reason for complaining, people have forgotten that at some point they were migrants too.

Last week I was a bit sick from what was previously my room now a half storage half dust bunny facility of a room.  I've brought it back to Norway.  There have been many people coughing and sneezing.  Now what I love about the weather in Norway is that I do not sneeze at all.  But in Singapore I'm always sneezing my brains out.

Me in Singapore

New Year was spent with a few married friends from Secondary school.  They then left home to count down with their wives :), how sweet.  Their lives are so much simpler and predictable compared to mine.  That's not a bad thing.  My life's not for everyone, and my route here has been complicated.  Like a tv drama series.  But it's interesting to live in a different environment and work with different people around the world.  I can appreciate that, it's invaluable and can't be quantified.  And going around the world, that's immeasurable (For example when I mentioned Latvia astonishingly many people have no idea where that is, someone thought that was a name of a girl and not a country).  Some of my friends work solely for currency (note that I do not call it money), and while I believe that's certainly useful, I don't believe in dying with big numbers in a computer, nor do I believe in gaining the most amount of material possessions (something a majority of Singaporeans are unfortunately guilty of, not that I'm singling them out but just saying.  It's actually a built in human trait to gather as much resources as you can, notice that in your behaviour on why you find it hard to throw things away.  How do I know this?  By reading a shitload!).  Not everything can be quantified, and everyone has to seek their own meaning of whatever their life is.  But enough philosophical talk for now. :)

169 passengers.  That's the number of people that flew from Singapore to Bangkok on my flight.  It departed close to an hour late and for a moment I thought I was going to miss my flight to Oslo but I arrived in Bangkok with just over an hour to spare.  I spent 45 minutes in the airline lounge then boarded the plane.  Feels surreal to be back.  It's now snowing, inches of it, and it's minus 6.  That's in contrast to the 30 degrees weather I was experiencing not too long ago.  That and the food.  I'll be eager to go back, just have to wait till next Friday!  Oh that reminds me, I brought a lot of food back with me to Norway.  I had a suitcase dedicated to food in fact.  25 kilos of it.

Epic Meal Times

Happy New Year to all :)