Back to Paradise

View from the balcony at the hotel in Phuket
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After managed to get a small amount of sleep in our hot and noisy room, we got up and got ready to leave. We checked out and left our bags at the front desk to be taken to the ferry later. Some bags had tags on them for what ferry their owners were going on, so we asked if we had to come back to the hotel before the ferry and we were told yes.

To kill time (and hang out in air conditioning) we got massages from one of the many places offering them. They were OK, but not nearly as good as the ones at Lullaby. The woman doing my massage was trying hard to sell me on a manicure and pedicure too, but I kept telling her that I didn't have time before the ferry. She kept telling us that there was no ferry at that time even though our ticket said that there was. We finally extracted ourselves and went to grab some lunch. The hippie's bar was right there, so we went in. After being there for a good 5 minutes and no one even approaching our table, we decided to go elsewhere. Even though we weren't anxious to patronize the hotel we were staying at, we headed to their restaurant and ordered sandwiches to go. While we were waiting for them to make our sandwiches, Jeff ran into the little store and got a couple bottles of water. I got the finished sandwiches and went over the the hotel to see when our bags would be leaving for the ferry.

Why I thought that anything would be easy or go as planned at this hotel is above and beyond me. It was 12:55 and I asked where we take our bags for the 1:00 departure to the ferry dock. The worker at the desk told me it was to late to go to the ferry now, we had to wait until 2:00pm and then catch the 3:30 ferry (we had been planning to take the 2:00pm ferry). I pointed out that it wasn't even 1pm yet, and I hadn't seen anyone leave with bags (you can see the front desk from the restaurant). At this point, I was so frustrated with everything at the hotel, that I announced that we would take our own bag to the ferry. At this point the manager noticed all the commotion and said that it was in fact to get our bags taken to the ferry now and pointed out the sign to the staff that had the schedule on it. We paid the fee to have our bags taken. We could have taken them ourselves, but the path to the ferry is not all the even so the small wheels on the bags make it had to roll them along. We discovered then as well, that we could have paid and left our bags this morning and met them at the ferry dock around 1:30pm (like some other people were doing). This goes along with our whole stay at this hotel. Again, I would NEVER stay here again. We arrived at the dock and the hotel employee who pushed the cart with our bags had the nerve to demand a tip. I hate it when people demand a tip! We paid the tip (ransom) to get our bags and got on the ferry. As pretty as the island is, I am SO glad to be heading back to Phuket. We settled on the ferry and ate our lunch

We arrived at the ferry dock and got on a shuttle to go back to the hotel. We were on the shuttle with two families from Sweden. We were heading to their hotel first, but we discovered en route that the family we were with didn't have reservations anywhere, just somewhere that they hoped to stay. The driver tried to find them a place to stay, where I would assume that he had some friends working. After driving to two or three places with them, the driver finally took us to our hotel. It was so refreshing to get back here. Our bags that we left had already been taken to our room, and they brought us cold towels and cold lemongrass tea to our room. It was so nice to be somewhere that the air conditioning worked in! We settled in and then got dinner at one of the restaurants nearby. I know that I said that I would tell you about the hotel when we got back, but today's entry is quite long already. Stay tuned tomorrow for hotel info! It gets pretty boring for the next couple of days, so I need something to be able to write about. :)