Preparation for Phuket Island in 3 Days

20 – 23 June 2009

This has been a long awaited trip and much time has been invested to plan for it. There will be a total of 7 persons involved in the trip i.e. William + Jeannie, Jeff + Jane, Pooi See & Dana + yours truly. I have undertook the role of coordinator so in this posting, you will get pretty much of the things that I had gone through and areas that you may want to take note of with plenty of tips along the way.

I have broken down the trip into a few sections as follow:

i) Accommodation;
ii) Transportation/ Logistics;
iii) Program;
iv) Meal; &
v) Budget.

ACCOMMODATION
Accommodation has not been a big issue as we have decided to stay in the Marriott Beach Spa & Resort located in Mai Khao beach, which is the northern part of the Phuket Island. The reason we stayed in this place is due to the free 4D3N package that was offered to us upon our Marriott Vacation Club International (MVCI) membership upgrade, thus we invited the other 5 to join us by chipping in a token amount. There are many choices of accommodation that you can choose from and of course, what you pay is what you get. Plenty of cheap lodgings in Patong and Karon area but personally, I do not think I want to stay there due to personal reasons e.g. crowded & filled with sleaziness in the night time.

TRANSPORTATION and LOGISTICS

After checking the info on Phuket Island’s landscape I realized that it is really quite big and transportation can thus be very expensive depending on the location of your accommodation. For our location i.e. Mai Khao beach, it is far from many places and so transportation is going to costs us a bomb. Reviews have revealed that taxi fares can goes up to as high as THB800 and even tipping THB1,000 from the resort to Phuket town or Patong beach thus the best thing to do is to do some calculation plus other X factors.

Justification:
Return trip from Airport to Resort (THB200+) + Return trip from Resort to Phuket town (THB2,000 x 2 cars) + Extra transportation fees for excursion (THB2,800) + Return trip from Resort to Patong Beach (THB1,600 x 2 cars) = >THB10,000
Renting a 7-seater car (Toyota Fortuner 3.0CC/ Toyota Wish 1.8CC/ etc.)
Rental for 4 days (THB1,800 x 4) + Fuel consumption (65l Full tank THB1,600)
= THB8,800

Other benefits for choosing to rent a car instead of taking a taxi:

*Flexibility to travel at anytime to anywhere;
*Able to explore more of the island at your own pace;
*Place to keep your belongings after checking out of the hotel;
*Be able to decide which restaurant/venue you wished to stop for a meal.

Weighing all the above, we have decided to go for the Toyota Fortuner 3.0CC which can accommodate 7 persons quite comfortably. The total fuel tank capacity is 65litres, which gave approximately 520km and each litre of diesel costs around THB24.83 in the PPT (local) and ESSO fuel kiosk. I have calculated all the places in our itinerary and the fuel consumption is way lesser than 520km. Our actual fuel consumption worked out to be around ±50l.
[Tips 01: Shell kiosks sell their diesel/petrol at a higher price per litre. The diesel per litre costs around THB25.02]

[Tips 02: When negotiating for excursion packages, watch out for the sometimes hidden transportation costs that can cost a lot! I’ve got cheaper per pax excursion price by telling them that I can drive to the meet-up point]

[Tips 03: Please note that just because you live near to other attraction does not mean that you don’t have to pay extra transportation/excursion fees, it is just relatively cheaper and that’s it]

[Tips 04: Please forget about taking the local public bus for transportation BUT if you insist, do so at your own peril… you’ll be sorry]


PROGRAM
This is perhaps one of the most difficult part of the coordination process as different people have different agendas. However, thank God that most of our guys are pretty game and accommodating. I have listed some attractions and to-dos and short-listed a few of them so that our 4D3N trip would not overkill.

The few things that we would do are:

*Full day excursion to Phi Phi Island and the neighboring islands;
*5km white water rafting in Phang Nga;
*Sightseeing in Phuket Town & nearby vicinity;
*Sightseeing in Chalong Town & nearby vicinity;
*Sightseeing in Bangla Road in Patong;

Other things that I wished we could have covered in the trip:

*Full day excursion to Coral Island + Racha/Raya Island;
*Full day excursion to Similan Island;
*2D1N stay in Phi Phi Island;
*Local Thai massage + spa;
*Taking shots from several viewpoints especially from Promthep Cape.

Other things that YOU might want to cover in your trip:

*Visit to FantaSea theme park;
*Watch the Simon Cabaret show (Ah kua - Transvestite show);
*Visit local Buddhist temples;
*Visit Phuket zoo/butterfly farm;
*Excursion to Phang Nga Bay/ James Bond Island.

[Tips 05: Excursion fees usually cost lesser during low season i.e. Apr-Oct]

[Tips 06: Excursion fees costs lesser if you shopped for it along Patong’s hundreds of tour operators, so happy shopping!]

[Tips 07: Check whether there are any hidden costs usually in the form of hotel transfer fees, jacked-up Maya Bay marine park fees i.e. fixed at THB200 per adult but some operators may tell you THB250-400 per pax or whatever that is NOT included e.g. snorkeling equipment, fin, etc.]

So how cheap a price did I manage to secure for our excursions? Well, I am not sure but I guess it could have got cheaper. For our Phi Phi Island tour, we opted for a private twin turbo speedboat for 8 hours and the boat could accommodate 10 pax. We paid a total THB14,000 shared amongst the 7 of us, which makes out to be THB2,000. Objectively, it is NOT cheap but subjectively, it is cheap. Taking a SPEEDBOAT tour with other people will costs each of us a mere THB1,200 and may even be cheaper depending on your negotiation skill.

The reason why we opted for a PRIVATE twin turbo speedboat:

*Only travel with people you are comfortable with;
*H1N1 period during our trip, so minimize public contact;
*Flexibility to decide how long to stop or to leave;
*Flexibility to choose areas that we wanted to go;
*Don’t have to fight with other people for snorkeling space.

Other things included in the tour are snorkeling equipment, one full icebox filled with soft drinks and mineral water, option to not go to Maya Bay’s beach, and fresh tropical fruits platter.

[Tips 08: Upon any parts of your body landing on Maya Bay’s beach, you would have to pay THB200 to the government. However, as long as you don’t land on the beach, you are free to snorkel around that area and I literally meant FREE~]

[Tips 09: If you need fins, you can rent it for THB100 for the whole day at the jetty. Make sure you checked that the fins fit and not broken]

[Tips 10: Phi Phi main Island i.e. Phi Phi Don has plenty of eating place and cheap shopping. Also note that they have an ATM on the island itself. Just in case you ran out of cash, you may withdraw THB from the ATM itself at a certain admin fee as determined by your bank]
I managed to negotiate for the 5km white water rafting ONLY excursion for THB1,100 per pax. Initially the operator quoted THB1,000 but later mentioned that she actually could not make it at that price. What heck! THB100 is only equal to a full day fins rental, thus, we just go ahead at THB1,100.


MEAL
Meal pricing may vary greatly depending on where you eat so be prepared to set aside around THB100-250 per meal unless you wanted to be game and try the local street side stalls, which may only costs you THB10-50 per meal.

Due to our location, we have opted to bring our own breakfast so as to cut down time wasted hunting food and groceries in Phuket. The rational is that the time wasted doing all these are better off spent at the beach or a session of local Thai massage. In addition, it also helped to control our costs/budget. As we are driving, we managed to go to some local areas for a meal, which costs lesser and taste more authentic too.

BUDGET
This is another tough task. As those who does budget knew, expenses can be fixed, variable or somewhere in between i.e. semi. So what I can do is to fix certain variables and make reasonable assumptions with the prudence concept in mind i.e. worse case scenario mentality. The excursion, car rental, fuel consumption (fixed at 1 full tank) and accommodation are fixed, thus can be easily plotted into the budget. Meal is the difficult part thus I came up with the breakfast plan and to fixed a total meal budget at THB500 for 2 lunches and 2 dinners, which worked out to be around THB125 per meal and the actual spending is just slightly shy of the THB125 per meal @ approx THB160 per meal.

All in all, each of us spend roughly THB7,400 excluding shopping. Not too bad for a 4D3N Phuket trip aye?

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