Plan of the day: relax. Wake up at 10.30 and breakfast at the hotel. Outside is raining so we spend the morning in the room. We go out at 15.00 for lunch. It’s full of restaurants, but we have been tring too much Thai food, so this time we prefer to go to an Indian restaurant just in front of the beach. The restaurant is nice, we sit on some pillows on the floor also if this position is totally unconfortable and we start reading the menu. The prices in this restaurant are quite high comparing to the average of Phuket. When the weiter comes to take our order I’m surprised by the way he tries to sell everything was on the list. I order some fish, Sina some rise with curry. Few minutes later the weiter comes back asking me if I wanted the fish without bones. I tell I would be glad to have it without bones. Mistake. When my dish arrive it was totally different from the picture on the menu but no complains. Also the fanta I ordered hasn’t been served in a bottle like all the other restaurants did, but in a glass full of ice. Sina got her curry that was ok. The bill was double then the other restaurants: 1140 Baths for a meal that didn’t leave me satisfied at all.

We finish to eat and we go to buy some stuff. Then directly to the beach. The sun is not too strong today, the temperature is high but tollarable also by Sina We spend 1 hour swimming in the ocean and then back to hotel to get ready for the night.

Out again around 20.00 looking for another food place, we end up in another Thai restaurant. I still was dreaming some fresh sea food so this time I order some srimps with nuddles and Sina some kind of spicy salad with rise. Food was good, and reasonable price of 1120 Baths.

It’s getting late so time to go to sleep. We pass through one of the main street of Patong Beach again full of shops with all the sellers trying to attract us to their shops in a quite oppressive way. Yesterday when we were shopping, I wanted to buy some nice slippers and the wanted price was 1200 Baths (24 euros). After negotiating the price I bought then for 200 Baths (4 euros). Surprising eh? We learnt their commercial strategy. They begin creating this kind of confidence with the customers starting the conversation with ‘Hello my friend, where are you from?’. If we were answering italian they were starting showing their italian skills trying to make us laugh before to shoot the overcharged price. Answering finland (I had the feeling) they would have thought we would have been more prepered to spend money so the price would be overcharged anyway. I wanted to try something else so tonight I said we were russian and this time their expression was a way in the middle between surprised and warned and for some reason they were stopping being so insistent. Of course they didn’t realize my shorts where having a big USA flag and me and Sina we were speaking english together.

Tomorrow alarm at 6.00. At 7.00 we have the taxi to go to the airport. At 9.55 flight to Singapore where we will change timezone again.

Phuket Lesson Learnt
- Always say hello, bye and thanks
- Always give a tip but without exagerate. Considering the avarage salary of the waiters and taxi drivers 20-50 Baths are considered a good tip.
- Always deal the price starting offering 1/5 of the amount request by the seller

Best of Phuket: water wars, friendly people, cheap shopping, nice beaches
Worst of Phuket: too hot weather (by Sina), poverty.

Before to close the Phuket chapter a moment needs to be dedicated to the history of Thailand. Patong Beach and Phuket were involved in the Tsunami of the 2004 where several hundreds of thousdand of people dead. This video is in their memory.

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