Phuket Tourist Trap Tips by chatterley

After our tour to Phang Nga, we headed for our way back to the hotel (hotel transfers included in the tour package). En route, the minibus stopped at a huge jewellery store (near Phuket Town). My tour guide told us to go in and "have a look", "buy souvenirs". It sold mainly jewellery with expensive stones and metals (gold, sapphires, diamonds, rubies etc). We came out of the store in just a couple of minutes, empty-handed of course.... we've encountered these "discount stores" in our travels in Asia far too frequently (Korea, Hong Kong, China etc)....No way are we going to spend our $$$ on these "souvenirs"!

When we came out of the store, we saw loads of buses "offloading" their passengers here...the store must be doing brisk business!

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At Least Do This: You can go in and take a look, but don't show interest in any of the products or ask the salesperson to show you anything from the showcase (if you have no real intnention of buying)....once you do that, you'll be stuck there for a long long time....generally, the sales staff in these stores are rather persistent.