SE ASIA - DAY 58 - PHUKET - Free and Easy

I joined another local tour through Ctrip on going for a shopping tour at the King Power Duty free complex and then to the Fantasea performance show for a cost of SGD45.

I have heard from articles and reviews that King Power (王权）duty free complex is a rip-off place. The cost of their goods are way more expensive than what you can get elsewhere. Well, it comes with free pick-up and sending back to the hotel and a seafood buffet dinner. I thought it's a deal as the Fantasea ticket itself is already SGD66 if you book it from the official dealers. The review says that as long as you don't buy anything from there in such arrangements, you will get a great deal.

Before I move on, I saw an interesting tagline on one of the T-shirt.

The mini-van picked me up timely and send me to the King Power Duty complex.
The place is packed with Chinese tourist. All staff there speaks good Chinese.

I verified the price and indeed, it's really more expensive than what you can get at other duty free airports. A lot of the items have to be collected only at the airport when you exit the country. As for me, no way I could buy them anyway even if it is cheap.

But, I saw a lot of Chinese tourists bought trolley loads of items.  Perhaps they are not aware that there are such much cheaper options elsewhere.

Then comes the free seafood dinner. It was really satisfying.
Free flow of fresh prawns,  mussels and salmon sashimi and others.

Of course, the beer are not free-flow, two bottles of light Singha at 150THB.

Ok, the bus then send me and the rest of the 7 people in the group to Fantasea some 30mins away.
Fantasea is a mini-theme park, with the performance as a highlight. The performance is a little bit late though, start only at 9pm.

You can get yourself entertained from many many game stalls there while waiting 1 hour for the performance to begin.

This is the performance area, but they strictly prohibit mobile phones and cameras inside.

There are small elephants and even tigers for you to pet with and even take pictures at a price. That is one of the reason no cameras allowed instead.

The show is a combination of Thailand culture show, magic show, acrobatic show and animal circus. Quite entertaining though and I thought it was worth the effort going there and see that.

By the time I reach the hotel, it was already 11pm, way past my normal bed-time....zzzzzzz