Thailand Part 1: Chilling in Phuket (July 2-8)

After a week in Bhutan soaking up the culture, the mountains, the countries natural beauty and a lot of great hiking, this girl was ready for a little rest and relaxation with my good Aussie friend Vanessa.  So I said goodbye to Mark at the Bangkok airport (or really see ya in a month as I am planning to visit him and Sheryl in China in August) and I boarded another flight to Phuket, Thailand.

Vanessa recently got married and moved from the Maldives to Phuket, Thailand. So far, I have been fortunate to visit her and her husband Chris in every country they have lived in together. First Japan in 2009, then the Maldives in 2012 and now Phuket, Thailand in 2014. Where will be next?

I spent a few days in Phuket in 2008, so I wasn’t planning on sightseeing here and really just wanted to spend some time with Vanessa and Chris. So this stop was more of a nice time to hang out, live like a local ex-pat and have fun. We did manage to get around and see a few things, but my visit wasn’t the normal touristy stuff you have heard about for Phuket (like what we watched during Ashley’s season of the Bachelorette in 2011)…as that wasn’t my goal here, but here are some of the highlights of my time in Phuket.

Phuket Beaches:

I wanted to go to the beaches, but as Vanessa said, most of the beaches really aren’t too nice in Phuket. Many of them are covered in trashy chairs and umbrellas that are supposed to be nice for the tourists, but they really aren’t. The government is trying to come in and clean them up.   As we went to pick up Chris from work (in the northern part of the island at Mai Khao Beach), we had a little time to kill, so Vanessa and I went to the JW Marriott for sunset cocktails on the beach.  I got a few photos of what I thought was a nice beach, but I’m sure the fancy resorts on this part of the beach keep the beach really nice.

I also didn’t realize that the Bachelorette TV show stayed and filmed at the Renaissance Resort which was the next resort down from where we had cocktails.  So I could have been walking on the same beach that Ashley and her suitors did.   I swear I’m not a total bachelorette site stalker.

 

Circle  Tour of the Island:

The only touristy thing we did was a nice drive around the southern part of the island. The southernmost point of the island is called Cape Phromthep and was a nice lookout point (and it was supposed to be the best spot for a sunset, but we didn’t want to go at sunset with all the tour buses and were fine to see it during the day). The best part of the visit was the people watching. We saw lots of people that were heading to the beach and just cruising around in speedos and bikini and giant cameras around their necks (put the stereotype tourist name in here). Plus the other tourists that were around were just tacky..so the people watching was really fun for a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was an interesting shrine at Cape Phromthep that was surrounded by hundreds of elephant statues of all sizes. Not sure why so many elephants…but it was quite a tacky and fun site to see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We continued to drive around the west coast of the island and stopped at some nice vista points, but for the most part, Phuket has become a very developed island. Phuket is still quite a draw for many tourists, but in my humble opinion, there are many amazing beach getaways and Phuket may have been one of them in years past…but it’s become very developed with hotels that the beauty has disappeared. If I was to return to Phuket on my own, I would choose a really nice beach hotel and just stay there as Phuket isn’t an island getaway to explore locale spots, but there are some beautiful beach resorts.

So we continued back to Vanessa and Chris’s house to relax as this was quite paradise and they had a lovely pool. Part of my job during my stay was to guard the pool and make sure it didn’t float away…and Vanessa and I mastered this job!

 

 

 

 

Weekend Market

Vanessa took me out to the weekend market on Sunday.  This was a fun place to walk around and see lots of knock off goods, bootleg DVDs (which of course I had to buy the first two seasons of “Orange is the New Black” as I heard this was a great season” plus there are lots of stalls with all sorts of “name brand” cosmetics at a fraction of the cost.   In addition, there is a huge food stall area and it was clean and a highlight to sample some local food. Two of Vanessa’s favorites that we had to try were these:

• Fried Fish Cakes with Basil – These were some sort of fish cakes that were fried and then served with fried basil and other herbs and some spicy sauce. We got 8 little cakes for 20 Baht ($.075) cents).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coconut meringue dessert – These had to be the most labor intensive dessert for such a low cost. We watched the entire process which took about 5 minutes for two ladies to make about 20 of these and they sold them for 30 Baht ($1). The first lady made these thin wafer on the cooktop and waited for them to crisp up. Then the next lady put a little bit of this sweet meringue on top and finally different colored coconut. They quickly had to fold them in half at the right moment – when they were stiff enough, but before they got to hard. So a lot of work, but they had a constant business and were making money so it must have been worth it.

 

 

 

Floating Restaurant

On our last day, Vanessa and I took a road trip to a famous floating restaurant on the water. This was known as a very good seafood restaurant and someplace that Vanessa hadn’t been to yet. So part of the process was to look it up online to see what the sign looked like, as it was my job to look for the sign as she was driving. So I took a photo of the sign from her computer so I had an image to look for. As we were getting close on the street, I spotted it, but the funny part was the street sign had changed colors, but we still found it.

Once we left the highway, we had to drive down a long residential road and we had no idea if we were going the right way, but this was part of the journey. After a 10 minute ride through some homes and small streets, we finally came to the restaurant at the end of the road.

 

 

 

 

We ended up choosing a fresh lobster, which we went to the lobster tank with the waiter and selected ourselves, and also a chef special prawn dish and had a wonderful seafood feast along with our giant coconuts. It was the perfect end to my time in Phuket.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Off to Ko Phangnan tomorrow with Vanessa for a few days on the island…