Arrival at Phuket airport was a good and unique experience, as there was section at airport which had brochures related to Island attractions and that too along with Road map of the island.
I wished to have international license at that point of time, so that I would had covered entire Island on two wheels. But nevertheless wishes comes true, remember the quote “Kisi cheez ko itni shiddat se chaho ki puri kaynaat usko milane ke koshish main lag jati hai”.
I picked almost eight different brochures from the stand along with road map and moved towards exit gate of the airport.
At exit, I observed that transfer service from airport to main city was very expensive and no bus service was available. What available was, pick up vans which was eleven seater air conditioned car. The fare was very high but since no choice available so had to buy ticket to reach city. So, it is better to either book transfer from airport along with hotel or take some app based taxi service.
I had many questions in my mind when I boarded the car in front seat. The seat was very comfortable and there was no overloading in vehicle unlike our country where we have become habitual of such adjustments.
The questions of locating hotel, spending day and night, adventures planning, etc. were running inside my mind.
During the journey to city, our vehicle stopped at its local office where everyone was asked to get down from van. In van, no one could understand the reason to step down the van mid-way.
I asked the reason to the driver, on which he told that, it’s a routine checking and verification of passengers tickets as the vehicle’s in Phuket are being operated by private companies and they look similar to that of government services. This explanation was a bouncer for me.
Than a lady came towards the van and asked us to send one member from each group to office for reporting. After hearing this my blood started boiling, as I had already faced toughest verification of myself ever, just couple hours back and in frustrated mood I got down from my van and moved towards the office.
But suddenly this frustration turned into anger, when I saw that the office was a travel agency office which was having tie-ups with cab operators where they ask passengers about their travel plans in the name of document verification and then they try to sell their plans in the name of mandatory requirements.
One of the office staff saw me standing in office and came towards me, offered me seat to sit and asked me to produce travel tickets and hotel bookings details. After checking my travel details all his marketing tactics failed as I was already having hotel booking and other travel related bookings.
There they took details of hotels from all passengers and divided them into different groups. They asked us to wait for few minutes so that other vans who were scheduled to reach should also arrive. After 3-4 vans reached, they separated passengers based on their location of hotel booking and each van was assigned a specific location so that it is less time consuming for each passenger to reach their respective hotel. There I came to know that the van will drop on the hotel gates and no passenger has to worry about location of the hotels booked.