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Posted by - ® Laurac on February 5, 2007 at 8:58 pm:
Hi everyone, as promised I have done a small JBR from my 4th trip to Kata Phuket Dec/Jan. I’ve only just managed to feel like doing this as we were a bit peeved with Phuket this time round.
We arrived at Manchester airport hours too early armed with our frequently flier membership, we were first in queue determined to get our exit seats. Got to the check in girl and politely asked for the exit seats only to be told that the flight is full and she wasn’t about to start moving people just for us, I replied I wouldn’t dream of asking you to do that and that was not what I was asking for. I told her we are first here and surely all the exit seats would be available as you can only get allocated them on arrival at check in, she replied you can?? I thought this was a safety thing, you have to be seen as able bodied inorder to sit here? Obviously not with Emirates, she didn’t even look at my F flyer membership. Got on both emirate planes and we were not impressed at all. Emirates are the worst airline we have ever travelled with. Complete cattle class with scruffy looking staff who needed a good wash and iron. Seats have an annoying metal thing at the bottom of the seat that sticks in your back. The planes are old and we thought the doors were blow off on take off!. Never again.
Got to our beloved hotel Katathani (bhuri wing). The staff are still beautiful lovely people but the standards have dropped dramatically. The hotel were serving young lads with bottled alcohol in the pool were they were getting rowdy and smashing the blinking things in the pool.
We didn’t do much this time round, we met a couple who we have become friends with over the years, then my sister and Brother in law arrived and then our best friends from home knocked on our door suprising us ( they were supposed to be in spain!!).
After a few days of relaxing on our lovely kata noi beach(that has become over crowded by chairs/umbrellas, seems to be treble the amount this year) I came down with food poisoning, Mark had to get a doctor from Phuket Bangkok hospital to come to our room to give me injections and antibiotics. That left me with 4 lost days of our hols. After getting over this, the entire hotel came down with full on head colds/chest infections and a barking cough.
My sister and brother in law have never been to Thailand before so I said we must go on phi phi tour so that they can see the beauty of maya and koh kai nok. When we were pulling into maya I couldn’t believe what we were seeing. So many people on the beach you couldn’t see it, so many boats we had to queue. Gang of lads with alcopops in the water making it look like blinking Ibiza. I was so upset, the beauty and serenity of maya is lost.
Koh kai nok was the same, too many boats you couldn’t get near the sea to swim, they have even built bars on there. Here I was starting with my food poisoning, I legged off the boat straight to the toilet before I threw up everywhere, they wouldn’t let me in till I gave them 20 baht, I pleaded with them to let me in and I will come back with the money, they wouldn’t let me, I had to leg back to the other side of the island to get some money whilst holding my vomit in and clenching my cheeks so not to loose my bowels!!!!!
We did go and see Charlie and lamlai again at the elephants rehab centre at koh chang. Nothing has changed much except for more people again. BTW lamlai is not pregnant as everyone has been saying.
Our trip this time round was not very exciting, we tried to relax as much as possible.
On a whole we feel Phuket has been discovered. In bars/restaurants etc, there seems to be a lacking in thai hospitality as if they are getting way too many tourists and are taking us for granted now. I know it’s brill for the thai tourism to have lots of people there for them to make their living but we feel on a whole Phuket could easily have been Spain on a long haul journey. Once upon a time Thais loved you to speak a little thai but this time round they spoke more English and wernt that bothered by our attempts to speak thai. Everything has gone a little more expensive too.
Sadly this was now our last trip to Phuket, we shant be going back any more.
Oppologies for this report being very moany like. Just very upset and disappointed with the place.
Reminder to everyone – Do not fly Emirates. They tell lies, they are so unprofessional. They are totally hopeless.