September 17-20
The view was so beautiful that they decided to try this landing twice.
A little scary, but I’m a big fan of the pilot taking a second try if the first one isn’t looking just perfect. By the second landing attempt, the rain had stopped and we made a clean and safe landing.
Our time in Phuket was spent making two day trips and relaxing around our resort, which was really easy to do. Welcome tea and flower bracelets? Yes, please!
It was easy to relax at the resort because it was super beautiful, we had our own compound (private pool and three buildings for the four of us? Seems about right), and the beach and pools were pretty empty.
Rainy season may be a bit dreary, but it has its advantages. Plus, with our euchre obsession, we don’t really mind the rain all that much anyway.
So Ken and Janine’s house was to the left, mine and Michael’s was to the right, and that middle house in back was our living room. Obviously. The sofas up front were for outdoor lounging next to the bbq grill. On the far left you can see just the edge of the swing.
Here are pictures of our outdoor bathroom which was behind our portion of the compound. It was wonderful!
Here was my snail friend on the wall by the shower:
Seriously, the resort was super luxurious. And the food was great.
We did run into a bit of an issue with breakfast, though. Michael has an incredibly detailed toast making process. That process requires the butter to be soft and a bit warm so it melts completely on the warm toast when applied. It makes the best toast, but it is a very specific process. On the first day at breakfast, the butter was too cold and hard. So he put the bread into the toaster with the butter which then fell off the bread and had to be abandoned in the toaster.
The next morning we were greeted with this sign:
Just a little note asking Michael not to put anything in except bread. Haha.
The first day trip was an hour and a half drive to Patong Beach. The drive home that night took only 45 minutes. Part of the difference was that the second driver drove like a maniac. But also the first driver stopped for gas. Never good for your time when you make a gas stop.
The visit to Patong was to meet up with Tom – a friend from home who is in Thailand for a month studying Muay Thai boxing and jujitsu.
We met up with Tom at a brewery for a few beers before…
… heading to the beach. Patong Beach has more of a California vibe than our resort beach, where there is a ton of stuff going on and lots of people wandering around.
And a lot of activities, like this gem of a parasailing operation shown in the video below. The boat nearly flipping several times wasn’t even the most messed up part of the process. Check this out:
placeholder://You might not believe this, but they put that woman down in almost the exact same spot she left. We didn’t believe it even though we saw it.
After watching a few brave souls go up, we wandered over to grab a couple more beers at a craft beer shop before heading to the main strip. Tom was only going to have a beer or two with us, but it was pretty easy to convince him to stay out all night.
We weren’t planning on staying at New York bar for very long, but the band was great and they were quick to play our requests. Also, thanks to Tom, the band believed that we were from New York. Not entirely true…
We had a lot of fun.
A lot.
Really, all J9 and I need is a little Whitney Houston and we’re all set.
And tell me this woman doesn’t have a crazy good voice:
https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/img_4411.trim_.movThe video doesn’t do her justice. She sounded amazing in the bar. The video does do justice to exactly how annoying that blonde girl in front is. She was one of those girls who has to be the star of the show all the time. She kept getting up on stage with the band and being escorted back off the stage. Super annoying.
It was hard to leave the bar that night because we were having such a great time, but we had an early morning.
We got picked up early to drive across the island for a boat ride through Ao Phang-nga National Park.
First stop on the ride was to get on some smaller boats and check out caves. Now, I know Thailand and caves aren’t two words that we like putting together right now, but it was really safe. We were mostly gliding along the rocks and peeking into a few cutouts in the rocks.
Our guide thought he was incredible for insisting on taking our picture inside this leaf cutout:
He kept saying “VIP treatment” while I just sat there panicking that he was going to drop my phone in the water.
Ok that last one was a bit tight, but it wasn’t a cave, it was just a cutout in the rock that we slid under.
On our ride we did get to see these little fish:
https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/img_5586.movThey are fish that have evolved to be able to walk out of the water in addition to swimming. I tried to find them on the internet. These may be mudskippers who can spend days out of water and can even climb mangroves. Which would make sense as we observed them near the mangroves.
On next stop on the boat tour was to Khao Phing Kan island, also known as James Bond Island. This island was the hideout for the antagonist, Francisco Scaramanga, in the 1974 Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun. You may recall that Roger Moore didn’t make the list of our favorite “bands” when we were in Belfast.
It was cool seeing it, but there were so many tourists. I cannot even imagine what it would be like during busy season. Just one big insta photo shoot.
This area of the island was pretty cool. Apparently it was formed from a crack and slide of rock due to gravity faults. The base of the rock was scoured out by the tide, which made the higher rock too heavy to support, resulting in it sliding down and resting in a leaning position. But that info is my interpretation of the poorly translated sign, so who really knows what happened.
Per wikipedia, this island was also in Tomorrow Never Dies, but they identify it as Vietnam in the movie.
Finally, we grabbed lunch at this little village that is built on top of the water.
Complete with a mosque, school, and soccer field right on the water:
We had some delicious crabs:
And Michael got to have fish pulled right from the water by this guy and his net.
Here it is all ready to be eaten:
Our last full day on Phuket was spent sitting at the pool. Yes. The entire day. It was glorious.
Do we have pool shots? Sure. Do you really want to see us lounging around in swim suits drinking tiki drinks? Meeeehhhhhhh….
That night (and the night before), we wandered about half a mile away from the resort to eat dinner at a little beach shack. The food was great and it was super cheap. Plus the women loved that we came back a second night for dinner and some cards.
Plus they served us huge beers in equally huge koozies.
We loved Phuket – it was a little piece of paradise for a few days.
A few important shout outs before we head to Bangkok:
1. Shout out to MVB and LGDB. I forgot to post this picture from Bangkok. It’s a sweater tree just like the one in your neighborhood!
2. A huge thank you to Kev/Pop and Janine’s parents. Without you all, we would never have had a chance to sit by a pool for an ENTIRE day doing nothing but relaxing with not a care in the world. We owe you, big time!
“It’s ok POP is here” – LGDB
3. And a big shout out to Donna – we miss you!
