Around South East Asia: Part Thirteen

How did the mountain person reach,

Once in a blue moon on the beach!

This post is in continuation of the South East Asia series. Part 1 to 5 are for Malaysia and Part 6 to 12 for Singapore. Part 7 onwards for Thailand. I happen to see the tour details while I was attending a birthday party. Tour price was almost half the usual price, a day less and packed itinerary of minus 3 sightseeing from the original tour! I am not a person who will blindly book a tour just because it's pocket friendly and tick off one more country. I realized that it's a good deal to check whether I am an island person or not! If you are interested in knowing the answer, read till the end of this series. Since the tour included only 3 working days, I thought atleast one of my friends might join in. I whatsapped a few, only to get disappointed. Finally I booked the Women Special Phuket Krabi. The visa was on arrival and I had to buy mandatory 10000 thai bahts.  Other things like hotel reservations, flight bookings, etc was taken care of by Veena World. We got a WhatsApp message from our Tour Manager Kamlesh Devrukhkar. It elaborated on the reporting time on 24th Sept, airlines and baggage details, weather, etc. One duffel trolley bag and one handbag was my luggage. I always pack as much as I can pick up on my own. Well the packing style varies from person to person. The most important thing to be packed was the PASSPORT. I gave one copy of passport, flight details, hotel details and itinerary to Mummy. So in this way I got ready for the next few days to make new friends, get to know more about the places I would visit, capture memories in my camera and my eyes and have loads of fun.

Departure from CSMIA (Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, Mumbai): 24.09.2025

I entered the airport a night prior at 11pm. My passport was checked and I entered Gate 7. Then I had to kill time till 03:30am. I met Kamlesh, he mentioned the check-in counter will be D. I was waiting in the seating area, observing others. Ladies started coming in, wearing yellow, they had baggage tag and passport pouch. Its easy to guess that there were mom daughter duo, the lady and her younger version. There were sisters as well. It was 4am and we queued up for the boarding pass. Here I found a group talking to each other, tags made it clear they were part of our tour. It was taking quite some time in the queue. Here I met Ashwini Lokhande, Priyanka Jagtap and Rajeshwari Nandennavar. The flight was delayed by 30mins. I gave my luggage and got the boarding pass at 04:50am. This has so far been the longest boarding pass queue! Then I passed the security checking and immigration counter in just 10mins. 

I had breakfast at 05:30am at McD for half an hour. There is a free wifi (1 hour) kiosk near Crossword store. We must scan our passport and boarding pass to get the voucher code. Login to airport wifi, enter voucher code and the otp sent on our mobile number.  I started walking to Gate 85B, to my surprise it was so near! Few co-travellers clicked photo with Sunil Gavaskar sir. We got into a bus to reach the flight at 07:45am. 

The Akasa airline QP618 was flying to Phuket, had seat arrangements as ABC | DEF. My seat no was 21F. Madhuri Khandekar, on adjacent seat, was reading a book. I didn't knew her name then. The flight took off at 08:30am and I dozed off for rest of the journey. The flight attendant woke me up for the meal, she gave a ready to make pack of chicken noodles. I figured out that the meal option has been incorrect, same must be informed to Kamlesh and Vasai office. I had orange juice and slept again till the landing announcement. 

The island view was awesome and we landed at 1pm IST on the Phuket international airport. This means 02:30pm THA, local time. Now onwards the time I mention will be local time. We were one and half hour ahead of India time. We gathered and Kamlesh took our attendance.

After clicking the photo, we queued up for the immigration counter. Absolutely no questions asked, no currency check. Post the bio metric, the passport was stamped. We descended a level and picked luggage from the belt. Then we had to freshen up at the airport washroom. It was a task to get ready in 30mins. It was 03:30pm while we walked out of the airport. We queued up to load our check-in bag in a small tempo. We boarded the bus and the journey began at 03:45pm.

This bus was different, there was neither luggage load nor carriage inside. Packed lunch was served and to my fear, it was Non-Veg written against my name. My anger took over the hunger, I said no to food even when Shivaganga and Dipti Acharya were offering to share with me. While I am considerate enough to understand that humans make mistake but not at that moment after a sleepless cold night at airport and tiring flight journey. So I was quietly watching out from the window. Kamlesh introduced us to Joey, our tour guide. When in Rome, be like the roman. She taught us a few words in thai language. We were driving towards the Central Phuket mall, reached there at 5pm.

AR Trick Eye museum

An interactive art museum that combines 3D optical illusion art with Augmented Reality (AR). Its divided into five sections. It starts with an interactive kiosk screen. 

Aqua section includes: a sea dragon and waves hitting a ship, flying unicorn, whale, mermaid world, etc.

Masterpiece section includes: Monalisa look-alike holding the fortune crystal, be a ballet dancer, be partners to a lady and a dancing guy, coffin, etc.

Best Trick Eye section includes: horse racing, diving, volcanic eruption, glacier, angels, shark attack, etc.

Slope section includes: underwater world, dolphins, clown fish Nemo, sea lions, sea turtle and a mermaid dropping pearls.

Jungle section includes: Panda lazing on the bamboo forest, jurassic world, king kong, etc.

We spent an hour here clicking photos. We got back to our bus and drove ahead to our hotel Baumanburi. On the way, Kamlesh announced the roommates, surprise element on women special tour for solo travelers. We reached the hotel at 7pm. 

Luggage was already placed at the reception area but people were more interested in getting the wifi password, so was I! We had to submit our passports to Kamlesh for the room formalities. Room keys were alloted. My room no was 3408 and roommate was Devashree Kirtane. 

We were asked to assemble at the reception area at 08:30pm for the dinner. The restaurant was at a few minutes walk from our hotel. We reached restaurant Indian Delight at 08:45pm. I was super hungry. I had dinner with Devashree, Janhavi Bichukale and her mother Archana. 

Post lunch few travellers had the energy to go street walking cum shopping while few went for a relaxing Thai massage. My roommate and I went to our room, prepared the bag for next day and dozed off.