Travel in Thailand – Phuket and Koh Phi Phi

Travel is nice. Travel cheap is more than nice. Travel for free is ultra nice. The worlds no. 1 low-cost airline is the Kuala Lumpur based airline AirAsia and they sometimes gives away tickets for free, the only hook is that you need to combine it with a hotel which you probably would need in any case.

A free return flight to Phuket, Thailand occurred a few weeks ago. Phuket is 99% about tourists and that means beaches, islands, food, parties, and whores. June is not high season but it was pretty crowded anyway, I have hard to imagine how crazy it will be there in December/January when half of Scandinavia goes there. Luckily weather was perfect including a couple of small showers and a flood that came when the plane left back for Kuala Lumpur.

The place is around a few hundreds percentage more expensive then other parts of Thailand but we found out a good strategy of saving a few baths – not having enough cash. So similar to what happened in Genting it sometimes happens the bills are gone or the credit card won’t be accepted in the local fruit shop. Once went to a restaurant to kill a few minutes while the rain was hovering over our heads. The waiter said they accepted cards but when it was about to pay only orders over x hundreds of baths were accepted. We kindly said that was not part of the deal and they agreed of letting us eat for free. Taxi is also relative expensive and to get a good deal the best thing is to have a couple of hundreds bath left in the pocket when starting a negotiation. From now on I am never bringing cash playing confused foreigner and can enjoy free riding.

Phuket itself as a very beautiful place. Best way of exploring is to rent a bike, alternative a car, and go from one beach to the next one. In the night one can go to Patong to drink, party, and spectate the prostitute business. One of the days we went on a tour to Phi Phi island. The tour was excellent and the scenery fantastic. If you are looking forward to have your own paradise beach for yourself then going to Phi Phi island, and of course Phuket, is not a good idea. The first stop on the tour was an awesomely handsome beach but one could barely see the it when it was packed with tourists taking pictures all over and boats coming and going to drop of and pick up people. Another stop worth mentioning was a monkey beach, due to high water levels there were no beach anymore but monkeys were still there playing in the trees. Before the tour started one could buy peanuts to feed the monkeys. It lead to around 200 happy tourists where throwing peanuts in the face of the animals who were already trying to eat the food they already had in their hands, it was strange indeed.