Phuket 2019 Day 2 – Phuket Aquarium, Upside-Down House and Chaofa Variety weekend market

Day 2 started with a overcast skies as expected. We were all up by 9am (which was early by holiday standards) and went out for breakfast at the Loca Vore restaurant that was near the reception. It was quite crowded but we managed to get a seat on the outside. The variety of breakfast was ok but there was egg benedict, a special version of it made with crab meat! The food quality was very good and that compensated for the its variety I supposed.

After breakfast, the sun began to emerge from the clouds and K wanted to visit the kids pool. So I went back to retrieve his swim wear while mommy brought the excited boy over to the kids club.

I made a detour to check out the beach and was shock to see the waves of the beach – waters were very rough. The red flags told the same story of danger at the seas and I quickly return to the kids pool with the knowledge that we weren’t going to the beach, at least for today.

Dressed and K found himself in the pool in a flash. I made a second trip back to the room  to retrieve a beach ball and we spent about an hour there in the water while mommy perched herself on the sun beds with her hp.

After many last rounds of the beach ball, we finally left the pool and walked towards the beach. K was disappointed that he couldn’t crash into the wave like when in other resorts but we didn’t get our feet wet with a little sea water as the waves spread towards the seashore. We washed up near the pool and returned to the room for a quick shower.

Went back to Loca Vore for lunch where we ordered fried rice for K and mommy and I shared Tom Yum Goong and fried noodles, having learnt of the enormous portions that they served. Again the quality of food was good, except that noodles tasted a bit Chinese.

We wanted to get a private charter so that we could get from places to places without the need to get a taxi and Grab app had an option for that. However, booking it didn’t result in any acceptance. We spoke to the Navigator, a travel coordinator at the desk and he proposed we book a ride to where we wanted to go and negotiate with the driver directly. Punching the aquarium as a destination, we got ourselves a Grab driver, and with the help of the Navigator for translation, he agreed to a price of 2400baht for the entire day.

Boarded the vehicle and it was a long, almost 1.5hrs to the Phuket Aquarium. During the journey, we fell asleep most of the way and awoke to find ourselves traveling towards Panwa beach. We alight at the aquarium, used the restroom before heading into the aquarium close to its closing hour of 430pm. After paying the tickets for 2 adults (for K it was free as he was short) for about 16sgd in total, the staff assured us that we had enough time and sure enough, the place was small enough to clear under an hour.

I was busy on the phone trying to fix an issue with our domestic helper who was trying to fly back to Singapore after her leave. Had to coordinate with my mother back home with the documents and in the end that didn’t turn out well and had to leave it till she visits the embassy.

K was pretty fascinated with the display on the other hand and had a connection with some of the displays like the zooplankton and phytoplankton ones, some knowledge that he picked up on TV. On the other hand, he was spooked by the creatures of the deep sea display. We were impressed to see gigantic giant groupers near the end. We took a quick walk around it’s store, which was also bringing down their shutters and got ourselves a snack before getting into the car.

We got to the upside-down house Baan Teelanka in a 30mins journey and paid about 40sgd for the 2 adults and 1 child tickets. The staff then helped us with the photos showing us how to take them and we were off to explore the 3 levels building. K was excited just to climb the steps and not really interested with taking photos. Had to take a few to show him how it would look like on photos and he then reluctantly do a few. We spend the entire 1hr there till it closed at 6pm, even though it wasn’t that big but K was busy climbing up and down the stairs. After a visit to the restroom, we headed for our last destination, the weekend market.

About a 15mins drive, we parked at a carpark just opposite side of the road and the driver guided us to the market. Crossing the super busy road was a challenge and the skies decided to start raining too. We found shelter inside a shop that sold ponchos for 30baht and we got ourselves 3 adults one as there were none for kids and we had to cut K’s one to size using scissor borrowed from the shop owner.

After we got the poncho on, we walked into the Chaofa Variety Weekend Market. Then we realized the rain stopped, its like we had been pranked by the rain.

The market was split into 2 sections, one for food and the other for goods and we bought ourselves a Thai milk tea first before heading into the goods section. There were many shops selling mostly clothes, some toys shops and some souvenirs. We ended up buying quite a bit of stuff, negotiated for some of these goods. I got myself some shorts for 150baht per pc, got K a swimming vest for 200baht, a jigsaw toy for 200baht and a set of clothes for 200baht for K.

We looked for a place for dinner and just near the entrance was a restaurant that had seats and had our dinner there. Ordered fried rice for K and mommy to share, a plate of vegetables, a bowl of green curry and a Phad Thai for myself, all this for under 500baht. The food didn’t taste good though.

After dinner, we went over to the restroom at the end of the market, paying 3 baht per person to get in. The toilet was not the best as expected but we did what we had to do and returned back to the market. Spent a bit of time marvelling at the toys in a toy store selling a variety of mini blocks before walking back towards the entrance where we met the driver. It was then already 830pm.

The rest of the journey back was smooth after an initial jam near the market and we arrived at about 930pm. Paid the driver 2500baht for his additional hour although he wasn’t going to charge and we went back to the room.

K had fun with his jigsaw while I packed the tub with water and we tested whatever we bought and were satisfied with the purchases. The swimming vest was initially having an issue with keeping the air in as the stopper kept popping out but I fixed it.

We spent some time at the tub, then it was straight to bed. There was a pee spillover from the K’s diapers which resulted in a PJ change before finally going off the dreamland.