The Paperback Diary

All dressed up and all ready!

After an exciting day out at the sea, we've decided to just take it slow the following day. Since I had full control over where we could go, my girl friend was in for a pleasant surprise. :) All she knew was we're going somewhere nice for her birthday dinner.

While I had a few options at where to dine, I've decided to give blue mango bar and grill a try as it was nearby our hotel. They were also willing to pick us up from our hotel after I mentioned that I would be spending more then 100SGD with them.

What surprised me was that the owner, Claudio, personally came to pick us up. After chatting with him for a bit, I found out that his family flew in from Italian to open a restaurant in Phuket. To ensure that the food was top notch, he actually flew in his chefs from his homeland as well. So what we had was authentic Italian food. How awesome is that?

Beef and I

We ate like Queens and was never disappointed at their dishes. I love the that beef that I've ordered while my friend had lobster and seafood. The portions turned out bigger than expected and of course, we didn't mind having more.

Seafood and her

We've also ordered 2 desserts and a glass of dessert wine to share. Be warned that the desserts portions are huge! I would suggest 2 person to share 1 dessert as the portion was 2 times larger than what we have in Singapore.

Chocolate mousse in a huge serving

We left the place totally stuffed and satisfied. I can't remember the exact amount but it was roughly about $60SGD per person for everything. Considering that we've lobster and beef, this is very very decent! I've pretty much gave up eating beef and lobster/crabs in Singapore because I feel that we're paying too much for these stuff.

Crème brûlée

Continue reading if you're interested about the surprise I've presented. I gave her a pleasant surprise right before our mains arrived. As we've known each other for easily 13 years and have definitely come a long way, I thought of enhancing the friendship with a pretty friendship band. I could do the traditional way with strings but since we're all grown up now, I wanted to get us something pretty and wearable as a daily item.

Final Design

You've no idea how many malls I've walked to source for ideas and finally decided to work with precious stones. To make it unique, I've decided to add in my own design into the band. 2 sides of the band are different. Each presents a character of us. I'm very glad that she loved her gift and may this friendship continue to blossom in the many years to come.

It wasn't too busy when we were leaving, so Claudio gave us a ride back to Patong. While the night was still young, we've decided to braid our hair as well. It's been something I've wanted to do last year in Bangkok but never had the chance to. I would have preferred it if they were able to braid it slight thicker. It was a painful hair pulling experience but I guess it was worth going through it once for the punk look.

Chilling in the raft as we head towards the cave.

We woke up early, had breakfast in the hotel and when we arrived at the lobby, the guy was already there to pick us up. Though we were the first group on board the mini bus, 1 couple and 1 family joined us later. From Patong to the jetty, it was about a 30-45 mins drive.

Initially, I thought it would just be a small group but when we arrived at the jetty, there was a huge group of us (tourist) hanging around at the jetty. We were divided into 2 groups (2 ferries) and the boss, John Gray, joined us on board the ferry. I can't help but noticed that this tour attracted more couples and westerners. Don't get me wrong, it's a really enjoyable tour for families and friends, and I love people without comparing skin colour.

Captain Ina was given a chance to paddle around for a very short while.

For those of you who can't swim, you can request to have a life jacket as they have those available on board. Also, I can assure you that the rafts are super sturdy! I'm so glad that we do not have to paddle this raft on our own as we have our own guide. They would assign 1 guide per raft and the max load would be an additional 2 adults and 1 children on board.


We were brought into dark caves to see the bats asleep and in general, just enjoying nature. It's also good to note which month of the year you'll be going as the sea can be choppy at the different seasons. We were there in February and all we had was the wonderful calm sea!

Our finished Kratong

Our guide taught us to build our own Kratong and it will be let out in the evening when the skies are dark. We were brought into this cave for the last time to let out the Kratong and to also experience the bio-luminescence planktons (they're so beautiful). John Gray gave us a crashed course on how bio-luminescence planktons came about and why they glow. It's also good to note that not all guides have a strong command of English but I guess we were lucky as our guide could communicate with us fluently.

For food, we were provided lunch, tea break and dinner! Most of the food were cooked on board and I have to say that we were well fed and hydrated. After a hard day's work and good service, I was compelled to tip my guide as it isn't really easy paddling around the islands the whole day. It's not compulsory to tip but it's my way to saying "good job" and "thanks" to my guide who did their job well.

My favourite moments from this trip are enjoying the sunset out in the open sea, stargazing, making new friends and being able to experience the bio-luminescence plankton for the first time!

We love to fly!

This trip happened because of  a 1-1 OCBC card promotion that going on for Tiger Air. As this was a holiday as well as birthday trip for my taller miss twin, I volunteered to plan for this trip. While knowing Soi Bangla was the party area, I didn't want to stay too near to as it can potentially too noisy at night and I'm a light sleeper. After looking through so many hotels, we decided on The Nap and we both fell in love with this hotel. I hate dark/eerie looking hotels and The Nap theme colours are close to Tiffany blue and a lot of white! I love white. :)

The beds are in between queen and single size. By default, they provide 2 pillows per bed!

Our huge porch

Sunset view from our room.

I was told to book tours in Phuket itself as you can get them at a better rate compared to when it's booked online. So the moment we reached our hotel, we headed out to look the tour we wanted to join. You will see a lot of these stalls along the streets and they are like different agencies selling the same tours. I didn't bother to compare between the different stalls as I knew the original cost of the tour that I wanted to go. I was given a slightly cheaper rate and almost immediately, we booked with them to have the tour the next day.

Food from Banzaan Market

Once we're done with booking the tour, we made our way to Jungceylon and Banzaan market. Banzaan market was an eye-opener for me as the first level was the wet market and a hawker on the second. The interesting part of this market is that you can buy fresh seafood/vegetables at the first level, bring it up to the second level and pass it to a stall to cook it for you at a fee. How cool is that? We had to go back there twice!

Pedicure at Jungceylon Shopping Mall

The rest of the day was just exploration of the area and doing some girly stuff like having a REALLY REALLY good pedicure at one of the basement shop of Jungceylon shopping mall at an affordable price of SGD$20 ish? My definition of good is having all your dead skins scrubbed off your feet. I don't really care if the nail polishes are not from OPI (it's not anyways). Pedicures in Singapore are either good and expensive or slightly cheaper and lousy.

We had no problems deciding what to eat as food can be found everywhere and pubs/clubs comes to life at night. I just cultivated a bad habit to have a drink every night at a different pub before we head back to our hotel to sleep (alcohol helps me sleep better). Stay tune to Day 2 post on Hong by Starlight (John Gray's).