Am I Ready To Fly To Phuket Tomorrow?

I’ve been following Malaysian satellite Astro TV travel game show “Ready To Fly?” lately, and am sitting here at home asking myself the same question: “Am I ready to fly?” The countdown of my Phuket vacation travel is just around the corner. If I’m not wrong (can the flight ticket wrongly printed? 🙂 ), I’m going to depart to Phuket Island, Thailand, tomorrow!

I’ve been busy preparing and packing for my latest self-travel to an island that I haven’t been to before and the decision to fly was only made a couple of weeks ago. What have I done and what else should I do before checking in? Here are somethings that I’ve done:

1. Off couse, I have booked a hotel online. I need to book it upfront as my in-law mother and sister are travelling with us and I don’t expect them to follow me searching and asking around for accomodation only when we reach Phuket. 🙁 I was looking for discounted hotels in Patong Beach area (I heard it is the hottest spot in Phuket Island). Though I would prefer to book it through my affiliate partnership with HotelsCombined but unfortunately the hotel that we chose is sold out. So I tried LateStay and got it with a last minute bargain! Though I’m not the affiliate marketer of Latestay, I still find them a goood option and competitive if you are looking for great discounted rate with plenty of hotel choices! Reservation was done smoothly. Final comment? Until I got back from Phuket… 🙂
2. Next would be the confirmation of our air tickets. Off course we have booked and confirmed tickets from AirAsia. But who knows? They are “famous” with postponed flights if less people turned out or over sold their tickets! I’ve got enough experience with them in my Bali trip and I want to make sure at least we have seats in our original flight this round. So I’ve done the web check in yesterday (within 48 hours from your flight time) and purchase checked baggage and reselect seats. Final comment? Until I got back from Phuket… 🙂
3. Another important aspect of this travel is no doubt taking many many photos that I can afford. In order to avoid dissapointment, I have to get ready my photography equipments! While still deciding whether to bring along both my D60 and Lumix FZ28 or only D60, I bought an extra 4GB SDHC card and an additional backup battery for my D60. Now I have 4 cards and 2 batteries with my D60, just in case I need them. I’m going to pack the battery charger off course and also our power socket adapter from China. So, I think it should be enough…
4. The only headache for me now is which and how many lenses should I bring along. I’m an eventualist of light traveler. I don’t like to pack any extra stuff in my luggage (SD cards are exempted since they are too light to include in 🙂 ). I have 3 lenses: 18-55mm zoom, 55-200mm zoom and 35mm prime. And I’m thinking to fill my camera in my Lowepro Cirrus waist bag only. So how? I don’t know. It would my final decision to make before check in!
5. The last thing is defintely money! How much Baht should I change for the trip? 100 baht is to RM10.60 currently. Should I change less and rely much on my credit cards? Entrance fees for Fantasea show is about 1500Baht and Phi Phi Island day trip is around 1800Baht per pax. So I think at least 15,000 Baht is needed for Jean and I for 5 days there, as part of our budget travel. Beyond that only we swipe our cards. Enough? I don’t know. Will only know once we got back from Phuket… 🙂

These are the 5 most essential preparation I’ve done for our ‘budget’ travel to Phuket Island. I hope we will have a great vacation there. We shall depart tomorrow and will post again next week. See you then. Am I ready to fly? Subscribe to my RSS feeds for free updates of my stories – Travel Feeder.

About The Author

Cecil Lee

The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.