Thailand is such a beautiful country with so much to offer. Despite its small size, 4 days was not nearly enough time to see everything that Phuket offered, which gives me incredible incentive to go back. My vacation away from vacation was 4 full days of fun travel, relaxation, beautiful scenery, and a great way to begin the end of a tremendous 5 month experience.
After a 2 hour bus ride to the airport, 5 hour red-eye to Singapore, 4 hour layover in Singapore airport, 2 hour flight to phuket, we finally made it! The feeling of making it to another continent was amazing!
The first day we went to a village to eat on the beach (amazing pad thai!), have a few drinks, and shop around. Since it was not the prime tourist season, many of the people expresses their surprise that a large group of Americans showed up. As a result, one lady called in all of her bar staff and opened up her pub for us (it’s 10 AM at this point). Needless to say, we had an excellent time and met some great people to tell us about their culture.
A few hours later, we finally were able to make it to the Marriot. Our resort was the most beautiful hotel/resort I’d ever seen. I could have been perfectly content doing nothing but sitting at the pool the entire week. We were treated like royalty, which was a nice change since the hospitality service in Australia definitely capitalizes on their ‘laid back’ identity being pretty lazy. We had to do a little sneaking around since there were 24 of us and we only had room for 18, but it ended up being no problem. We were all greeted with drinks and lays upon arrival J
The first night, we went into Patong, which is the big city on the island of Phuket. It was a weird feeling because although we were in Asia, I saw more burger kings, Starbucks, American currency, FREE KETCHUP, and American companies that I EVER have in Australia. It was a nice little preview of whats to come in two weeks J We mostly just walked around and explored the city to see what nightlife was like. Since I’d like to get a job at some point in time, I’ll refrain from describing many of the odd sights we saw during our stroll around Patong, but it was clear that the city became a totally different place once night time came along. The following nights we opted to stay at our resort and have fun at the pubs and in our condo instead, for good reasons.
Monday we went back into Patong to do some shopping during the day. It was fun to barter with the shop owners as well as see some Thai Art and crafts. Tuesday was Spa Day! We got massages, took ice baths, sat by the pool, and relaxed all day. Wednesday we went back into patong and played at the Beach. Since we had to get up early to travel back on Thursday and the Thai food was getting the best of us at this point, we were pretty calm all day.
Like I said, it was a very fun and relaxing vacation, but since I still have finals to complete (and pass) I have to get studying! I’ll post pictures as soon as I steal them from the others in the group!
