this is gonna be a long post... seriously, way longer than my bintan post...
normally i like to sleep the whole experience over before reflecting, but since its still pretty early on saturday morning, i might as well get a headstart...
and also coz i had some time to reflect on the plane ride back, looking at the lights of singapore etc...
so let's start with that shall we?

tiger airways flight 155 from phuket intl to changi singapore was as smooth as any 1 1/2 hour flight can be...
we did fly through some clouds that were having some serious cases of lightning going on, but it was pretty cool to look out of the window...
i wasn't cramped to death coz jake/sam/me got the emergency exit seats, so there was tonnes more leg room...
the flight attendant (same for both flights) did the whole emergency procedure briefing for us, and i shuddered to think of having to toss a plane door out into the open sky...
i did have thoughts of doing that to get out the plane quicker after it landed, but yeah...
listened to jake's RAZR most of the flight back, and rediscovered my love for disney classics (vanessa williams) and was reminded of the joys of orchestral pieces (the imperial march)

flight 152 from changi singapore to phuket intl was arguably harder to bear, coz sam/jake/me were really squashed, and it was really hard to sleep or do anything else... jake and i just chatted about anything and everything for the hour or so...
post-landing, we were zipped to the JW Marriott in a Honda CRV, one of many different cars our driver, yung (is that how you spell it?), would ferry us to and fro in...
arriving at the hotel lobby, we received the perfunctory welcome or an orchid wreath each, then we waited by the gorgeous eternity pool before heading for breakfast at the Marriott Cafe...
breakfast, you ask?
well, after SYC COP on sunday night, i cabbed home at midnight, watched OTH 4x10 (so good!), slept for an hour, got up, blogged and was the the budget terminal at 4plus on monday morning, and because phuket, just like bintan, is an hour behind singapore, we arrived at 8plus at the hotel, just in time for breakfast...
the buffet was nothing to yell about, but it was certainly presented very lavishly, as we would soon realise was the concept of the entire hotel...

initially i was worried about how much space we would have, coz in bintan, when they said "villa", it didn't quite come up to as large a compound as i had envisioned, so when the same word "villa" popped up here, i had my apprehensions...
but i was so wrong... so so so wrong...
opening the door to 2213, we entered into a suite large enough to accommodate a wild part of 30 or so, and then some...
the smaller bedroom had 2 larger-than-normal super single beds, and the ultra big master bedroom had an ultra ULTRA big king-sized bed that could have easily fit 5 ppl.. i was shocked...
and if i had thought the bed was the largest piece of furniture in the suite, i had yet to be amazed by the gigantic hot tub in the enormous master bathroom, which came with separate frosted-glass particions for the lavatory and shower...
we had 3 tvs, a dining table, a fully stocked fridge with alcohol and everything...
whatever inconvenience caused by the startling language barrier was quickly made up for by the luxury the staff provided us...
room service folded my laundry on the floor, so that whatever articles of clothing i left the night before would be miraculously neat again after breakfast the next morning...
everything we could possibly need for comfort was provided for, albeit after a bit of cross-cultural communication, but hey, i ain't complainin' when you've got what we had... and double that, coz sam's parents had one suite to themselves...

so we watched some TV on the 20-odd channels (i told jake i would have killed for mtv at that moment) before adriel and sam went to sleep...
jake and i stayed up to watch Lemony Snickett's A Series of Unfortunate Events and the first half of the Arsenal-Chelsea match i had missed last night (i was supposed to join ET and clarence's place to watch)
then we set out to explore the compound, but ended up immediately at the billards room...
so when i was in bintan, there was a tonne of stuff i didn't do, either coz i didn't know how to or just didn't get the chance to, and it is really cool how i got to do all that stuff on THIS trip...
first and foremost: I HAVE LEARNT THE FINE ART THAT IS POOL!
jake taught me the proper handling of the cue, the various rules of the game (i kinda knew already coz i hang around my pool-playing classmates so much) and whatever else, and its really quite addictive...
didn't think it would entertain me for that 2odd hours, but it certainly did...
sam and adriel joined us after their nap, and while we waited for the table to be vacated, jake and i played the silly PS2 games that were on...
a bit more pool, and then it was back to the room to change for the night out at Patong...
our driver picked us up in this huge passenger van that had 12 seats, most of which reclined, and drove the 45minutes to the seafood restaurant...
super good pineapple rice and tom yam, but the crab was a tad disappointing...
we walked around the various stretches of the Patong shopping district for the next 2odd hours, rarely stopping to look at the stalls coz they were ALL selling the same stuff... literally...
i didn't buy anything the 2 times we went there coz i'm just not a fan of imitation designer goods, and the original stuff didn't really vary much from the singaporean prices...
there were tonnes of gender-confused ppl around, and it was sometimes a little hard to distinguish who were born with genetically-endowed boobs and who weren't...
i was totally exhausted by the time we got back into the car, so all through the trip to Tesco, the wait while groceries were being shopped for, and the trip back to the Marriott (all about 2hours in total), i just slept...
watched a bit more TV when we arrived before going to sleep...

woke up at 9 for breakfast (which were all had in 2111) and the morning sermon (really quite hilarious in retrospect),
then it was off cycling... 17kilometres worth of it to be exact...
along the way, jake's tyre broke, so we had to seek refuge at a kindly phuket native's front yard for an hour or so waiting for the hotel repair person to arrive...
it was definitely an experience in itself, and it gave us a look at how thai ppl live...
after lunch it was off to the pool... of the 3 in the hotel, we only used the silent blue pool, which was probably the prettiest...
went to the beach to sail the katamarans...
note to self: if ever i'm to get lost at sea on a small boat, bring jake along... he was telling me all about the technicalities of sailing, all while maneuvering us along... even the guy on board looking after us was impressed...
swam a bit before going back for dinner...

day 3 dawned similarly, with breakfast at 830, but it turned out to be the funnest of all 5 days there...
first we went to the shooting range in our Toyota Fortuna, where jake/sam tried rifles (similar to the air rifles i used back in secondary 2), while i decided to try something new with adriel, the .45 caliber pistol...
its way harder coz the recoil is hard to control, and i got a 55% accuracy...
note to everyone: don't trust me with a gun ever, i might just kill you with it, unintentionally of course...
then we picked the All Terrain Vehicle over paintball, and it was a BLAST!
its one of the stuff i really wanted to try in bintan but it rained the day we went, so i finally got my chance...
we followed the guide through the 1-hour route, and every minute of it was exciting...
we had to weat wellingtons and shower caps, but that only added to the hilarity...
tonnes of mud all over the place, but it made for the most delightful drive...
sam had quite an accident halfway through when he was driving up the steepest upward hill...
i was directly behind him, barely 3 yards away, so i kinda saw the whole thing in slow motion...
his front-right wheel didn't catch the ground, so when he accelerated again, the whole ATV just flpped backwards, and it landed just in front of me, thankfully not crushing me or him...
but besides that, the only other time we stopped was for some photo-whoring, which cost 200baht per photo..

then it was lunch at a ubiquitous seaside restaurant before heading to look for a place to absail and whatever, but it wasn't suitable, so we made an impromptu detour to the most amazing go-kart track i've ever come across...
it had such wide lanes and cool horseshoe turns, and i made full use of them =)
20 minutes was all we got, but the first ten were better coz in the latter half, i made the mistake of starting behind adriel (the world's worst driver), and he skidded on all of the first 3 laps, causing me to crash into him on the second, and from then on i just kept a good distance away...
we drove over to Patong beach after that, and i DROVE A JET SKI!!!
the first ride out i was the passenger behind jake, and we were both like how to do this??!
but it got really exhilirating after the first few throttles...
i drove the next round, and we switched places while at sea, coz i got kinda bored after half an hour of skimming across water... adriel took my place while i lounged and read on the beach...
i fell asleep a few minutes later while the played beach soccer, and when i awoke, we decided to do a bit more shopping before heading for dinner at another of the countless restaurants around...
we then went to Central Festival to shop, and its s seriously big and chic mall...
sam and adriel were too tired to do any serious buying, so jake and i fully utilized the one hour we had, rushing all over the bottom 2 levels looking for the perfect buys...
in the end, we only bought stuff at Nike and Calvin Klein..
50% sales must never be underestimated...
slept on the trip back to the hotel, where we watched Six Feet Under and Sometimes in April on HBO...
the latter was an extremely haunting show about the atrocities in Rwanda, though only adriel and i stayed up to its conclusion...

thursday was chill out day, so i woke up at 11 local time, had breakfast and then lounged at the pool...
this was another thing i didn't get to do at all in bintan, coz all the times we went to the pool was in the evening when the sun wasn't around...
so i finally got down to some serious tanning...
i was on my 3 flip (15 minutes each side) when jake screamed for me to join them at the pool bar for tea...
abandoning my almost-tan, i had haagen daaz c&c and fries...
jake/adriel/me then went to the beach for some severe camwhoring...
played beach soccer after that for slightly less than an hour...
then it was back to the room for our room service dinner from the andaman steak & grill and the jap restaurant...
i had the delicious lobster and tonnes of salmon/maguro sashimi...
dessert was the best, with cheesecake&blueberry jam, brownies&vanilla sauce, and the chocolate/macademia nut/strawberry ice-cream...
all this while watching The Bodyguard (Whitney's best show before she went on drugs, also the movie with my 2 fav songs from her, I Have Nothing and I Will Always Love You) and playing bridge...
slept at 3ish...

woke up at 9 today for breakfast, then watched Hitched before going to the pool for round 2 of tanning...
swam a bit before heading back to pack...
lunched at the Marriott Cafe and had a non-thai meal (pasta marinara) for the first time in 5 days...
drove to the airport in 2 cars, a Honda Jazz and a Toyota Corolla...
our driver was pretty innovative, reversing on a main road for about 500metres so as to avoid having to make a long u-turn...
then it was just the wait before boarding, and now, here i am, back in singapore...

there's a lack of photos coz i need to get adriel's memory card..

half of december is over, and so is the greater portion of the hols...
i'm satisfied, no doubt, with the 2 trips i've had (really, its the company that matters), and the random stuff in between...
but i'm NOT READY to go back to real life...

before that though, is another significant milestone - CHRISTMAS '06!

get ready your yuletide joy,
jlc.