Phuket first impressions

After some problems during the flight we finally landed on Phuket. The problems we had were with the Polish airlines - LOT. It turned out that they don't respect some agreements with other airlines or are to lazy to check the conditions of these agreements. The company we bought our tickets from (LTU Airlines) assured us that we can transport diving equipment free of charge, and the guy at Okęcie Airport checkin wanted to charge us for that luggage. This additional fee was so big that we decided to leave our luggage behind:/ Thankfully our friend offered to ship it for us, but we will have to wait before he arranges the air freight. Until then we only have our masks, fins and snorkels, one regulator, diving computers and compasses. If you can, try to avoid LOT.

We landed on Phuket and are staying in a hotel in Phuket Town. We are (or at least I am) a bit overwhelmed by this place (the Phuket town). It's so much different than any other city I have visited. Phuket Town seems very dirty to an average European person. In addition everything smells different, everyone seems to want to kill you with their motorbike, the traffic rules we are used to are "just guidelines" here.

We don't know the town and although we have some maps (and of course our Lonely Planet guide) we are clueless how to get to places we want to go. Thai people are very friendly, that's true, but the don't speak English:/ To make things worse, they are very good at hiding this fact from you. They just say "Ohh.. yes.. aaa.. yes" and when you think you they understood it turns out that they do something quite opposite in the end. When it comes to navigation maps don't help either - they don't seem to understand what you try to show them. We've learned that lesson trying to get to the divecenter we are doing our Assistant Instructor course in. Of course there thankfully are some exceptions:)

The next thing that was different than I expected was the weather. I thought the rainy season was over so I expected the weather to be hot, moist with lots of sun. I was wrong, the rainy season was not over yet and it was cloudy, warm and there was some rain.