What 'U' turn you may ask?
Well, I live on the Isle of Penang (Pearl of the Orient as some will call it). And that's just about 45 mins out by flight towards Phuket (Pearl of the Andaman).
Somehow or the other, the company manages to get my connecting flight to Phuket via Kuala Lumpur LOL!
So I had to fly from Penang to Kuala Lumpur, spend a night there at a hotel in the middle of nowhere at the airport because it was just too expensive to get a train into the city just for one night. So I reached KL at 3 pm and with no where to go (trust me.....KLIA is right smack in the middle of palm oil plantations), spent the day and night flipping through channels on tele (nothing interesting there either) and sleeping half the day off waiting for the next day to arrive.
Woke up at 6 am for breakfast (of coffee & toast and eggs - everything else wasn't too appetising) before taking the transport to the airport to meet up with the rest of the crew (and our tour guide - i sooo don't look forward to tour groups) to check ourselves in for the flight out at 10.
We headed out our own separate ways after that before boarding, with me just sitting for the flight out as have been in KLIA a few times so there hasn't been much I haven't seen already.
Phuket
We arrived at the airport 2 hours later, waited at the long line at immigrations. A few moments later (after someone losing their luggage and baby (!)) we boarded the bus to the town centre.
Our tour guide, Jong, is an amiable fella. Started explaining to us about Phuket before and after the tsunami which devastated parts of the island, and how the number of mortality was hugely played up (Phuket is only one part of the total province which was effected - but everyone only identified Phuket). Taught us a couple of phrases to use in Thai, bargaining skills, pick up skills (LOL) etc.
As and such this WAS an arranged tour (of course) went through the usual 'stop and purchase' places like the Cashew nut factory (ok so I was a bit curious with cashew nut juice - never knew there was such thing!) where my colleagues whom I swear probably never been shopping before....bought tonnes of items to be brought home - and this was just half of the first day here!
Also went to Wat Chalong, one of the oldest and well-known buddhist temple in Phuket.
We proceeded towards the gemstone factory after lunch (which was good), and promptly was stuck there for 2 hours as someone wanted to practise her bargaining skills on an item. Most of us got restless after a while.....and we still had Promthep Cape to go to.
Managed to convince the tour people to let us off at the hotel first before adjourning to seafood dinner (arranged...of course) where our photos were unceremoniously taken as we walked in LOL! (This of course was brought to us on the 2nd day of our meeting with a price tag of 100Baht each - I had the look of a startled deer encountering headlights there LOL).
Got back to the hotel late and went straight to bed not welcoming the next 2 days of meeting awaiting us!
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