The Silent Room

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Small Talk:
For those who have been waiting for some F1.4 awesomeness, here’s a post full of it. My camera bag was packed in the luggage, so the only lens I had was mounted on the A200 which I carried in my backpack at hand luggage.

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My trip to Phuket was but a short one, but here’s a travelogue anyway. Well, it’s traveling with sort of a shoestring budget so we couldn’t really afford to stay goof around for as long as we had liked. The journey itself was pretty much an uneventful one. After all, it’s only AirAsia, so unless something dramatic happens, it’s like taking a long trip on board a levitating bus – plus whatever immigration hassles you have to go through.

We touched down at Phuket Airport and were greeted by a rather amusing sight of people who looked like Malays but sound nothing like one. I don’t know about my fellow mates but I thought it was quirky and funny to be in a neighbouring country but feel like you haven’t really left your own soil.

We all got on a van and our first stop was a t-shirt factory. True to what I’ve heard, many Malaysians visit the island and many of the islanders have actually stayed and worked in Malaysia for some time. The result is an exchange of words between Bahasa and Thai.

I first realised this when the factory owner was talking about bargaining for his t-shirts, and he mentioned, I quote, “Sure, you can find my t-shirts at the pasar malam, but it won’t be as cheap lah, eh?”. I thought hearing that was the most natural thing until I realised that I was in a foreign country.

I even accidentally called one of the workers ‘kakak’ and she responded naturally with a ‘Yes, abang?’. It almost made me wonder if it was actually Malaysians who migrated and set up shop there. I should mention that the factory had an amazing selection of t-shirts and between us we spent almost RM 100 – barely 2 hours into the whole trip.

The next stop was a jewel factory, and we were given a tour of a mock factory as well as a series of rather interesting displays before we were guided to the jewel gallery for those interested in shopping for blings. I’m not really into blings, so the guys and I went to the guest lounge for some free drinks *cough*. We left the waitresses some tip in the jar and they were more than happy to replenish our glasses.

Apparently, a lot of industries have popped up all over Phuket as we discovered that we were shipped from one factory to another. Our next stop was a cashew nut factory, and by far I had the most fun there. Well, yeah, mostly it’s because I get to sample all the variety of cashew nuts they got.

The place produces some pretty fancy stuff. There’s the usual butter flavour, honey roasted but we were later introduced to all the awesome stuff. There were garlic flavoured cashew nuts, nuts coated in sesame seeds, coffee roasted ones and my personal favourite, chocolate coated cashewnuts. It was so good I actually bought a bottle to bring back home.

After another long drive, we took a break at one of the major wats [temples complexes; where my 30mm isnt so useful] and chilled out with our guide, a wonderful Thai lady who asked us to call her Faridah. She lent us a folder with some brochures and offered to help us with booking any of the tourist activities listed in there.

Our hotel was a nice little place called Nipa Resort. Did I mention the exchange of terms between Thai and Bahasa? Yes, the word Nipa here is the exact same word as nipah, the palm tree. Oh, and Phuket, as I later discovered, was actually from the word bukit – meaning hill. Our hotel was located in a tourist district known as Patong – no prize for guessing what that word came from.

Later that night, we toured the streets of Patong looking for dinner and getting a feel for the town. You know what? It feels exactly like walking down PD town. Only way better cos it’s got all the bars and strip clubs dotting the streets.

We wrapped up Day 1 feeling rather exhausted and we went to bed early for the sake of an early morning the next day.