Phuket Trip - Phuket Airport

Arrived at Phuket International Airport. It was not a big airport, almost the same size with Ngurah Rai International Airport, Bali. We were very excited. We get down from the plane and took several picture while walking to the immigration area.

Arrived at the immigration area, Pdik took our picture without really noticed the sign above his head. The sign was a camera in a crossed red circle. Yes, camera was prohibited on that area. After a shot, Pdik was warned by an official with a quite loud voice. Some of the tourist directly turn their eyes to us -_-" what a shame.

After passing the immigration lines, we went to the baggage claims area. on the way there, i took some brochures and maps. Then a person approached me giving me free local GSM SIM card. I directly asked her whether the provider have the Blackberry Internet Service and how much is the Blackberry Internet Service. It was 60 Baht for 3 days, It's quite cheap and the services are good.

More info about the Sim Card, Tariff, and Blackberry Registration, please visit The TRUE MOVE blackberry website. Yes, 4 out of 6 persons who brought their blackberry along with them (Fenny didn't bring her blackberry to Phuket) uses the TRUE MOVE blackberry internet service. by the way, the free simcard have a free value of 10 Baht.

Then we queued up to take our luggages. Ci elly seems to be interested with the Fantasea stand. she asked Pdik to take a picture of her. We didn't go to FantaSea because the bad list of review and the price for those show are quite expensive. Perhaps we will go to FantaSea show and Simon Cabaret on our next trip. =)

After all the luggage are collected, we went out to find the person pick us up. Outside the airport, no one seems to hold the paper with my name. There were many people offering a transfer to the hotel. We politely turned the offer down. Some of them are quite pushy in offering the service. I tried to tell them that somebody will picked me up and I already paid for the service. Some of the driver offered me to use his mobile phone to call the tour manager. I don't understand at this moment and I really thought he is really generous. However, I didn't use the phone. After waiting several minutes, I decided to call our tour manager. I try to use my Indonesian Mobile phone, but no luck in using it. Luckily Pdik has put the TRUE MOVE SIM card into his Blackberry. I called the tour manager and it turned out that he forgot about the change of the schedule. He asked us not to worry and that in less than 5 minute, somebody will look for us and send us to his place. Meanwhile, we decided to buy some water and TRUE top up card in the convenience store inside the airport. We bought 100 baht top up card with the price of 110 baht.

When we got out from the airport, a person was calling us, then we ready to go to the tour manager's place. Chatting with the driver on the way to the tour manager's place, I found out that this car and driver are chartered by the tour manager and are not owned by the tour and travel. Thats why on the airport, there was a person who offer me a cell phone to call the tour manager, he might earn money when the tour manager charter his car. We found out that the road environment in Phuket is almost the same with what we got in Indonesia (less the traffic). The tour manager's place is only 5 minutes away from our hotel. It placed in the area behind our hotel. The trip from airport to our hotel area took around 40 minutes.