Our arrival in the Phuket airport was a strange shock to us in comparison to Surin. Instead of being greeted by smiles, we were shuffled around for a bit by people in search of a taxi. After finally finding a shuttle to our hotel, it ended up stopping at a random travel agency to try to get us to buy tourist packages. By the time we got to the hotel, we were all a bit crabby. At least we were pleasantly surprised by our big rooms with A/C and hot showers!
On Saturday, we woke up and wanted to get to the beach as quickly as possible. It turned out to only be about a 10 minute walk from our hotel, so we camped out there for a few hours to swim and lay out. We found a nice restaurant to eat lunch at, and had to adjust a little bit to the price difference from Surin. We had been really spoiled with the prices there because Surin is such a rural community without much tourism. It rained for a little bit so we just stayed in the restaurant until it stopped, letting us walk around and explore all of the shopping areas near the beach. We decided to walk back toward our hotel and stop somewhere along the way for dinner, and ended up finding some decently priced Thai food. We all added our usual amount of chili powder, only to find out that it was much spicier than anything we had in Surin. By the end of the meal we were holding ice cubes on our lips and tongues.
After a short nap, we got ready to see what Patong's night life was like. There is a strip of bars and clubs on Bangla Road, so we bar hopped for a few hours. We decided that in choosing a place on this street, you can either drink at a decent price or dance...not both. All of the bars have bells at them, and if anyone pays 1000 Baht (about $32) to ring one, everyone at that bar gets a free shot. Unfortunately we did not get to experience this, but we liked the idea!
Since we were out so late, we slept in pretty late on Sunday. Once we had breakfast and were ready to go back to the beach, it started raining again so we postponed a little longer. By the time we got there it was mid-afternoon, so we stayed until evening. We had looked online for Mexican food (which we are definitely craving at this point), and walked in search of a restaurant with dollar tacos to no avail. Instead, we stopped at another small restaurant with Thai food before heading to the night market. There they had many vendors with street food and typical touristy stands for shopping. We decided to experience the fish "pedicure" that seems to be very popular here. We sat with our feet in the tank for 15 minutes trying very hard not to move, while hundreds of fish nibbled on and tickled us.
Monday was an early morning for us because we booked a day trip to see the Phi Phi islands! We drove to a pier where they put about 30 people on a speedboat to take us island hopping. The water was very rough and we were sitting on the front, so the boat rides were quite an adventure. Our first stop was in Pileh Bay, where we got to jump in and swim around for a bit. We went past Viking Cave, which is illegal to enter without a permit because there are tons of birds that nest there and apparently bird nest soup is a delicacy worth a lot of money here. The next stop was Monkey Bay, where the monkeys swim and run around in the trees hoping for food from all of the boats. Then we headed to Phi Phi Don, where we snorkeled in the bay. We weren't expecting to see much, but tons of colorful fish came right up to us! When we swam away from the crowd, they even kept trying to nibble on us. After we gave them a snack, we stopped for a buffet lunch and walked around on the island before heading back.
On the way back to Phuket island, we made one last stop at another island to lay out, swim, and have snacks/drinks. We splurged a little on fun drinks served in pineapples and tried snorkeling some more. By the time we got back on the boat to head in, we had had our fair share of sun for the day.
After our ride back to Patong, we were absolutely starving. For dinner, we went back to the hot chili powder place and this time we were more sparse with the seasoning. Kelsey and Colleen walked down to the beach in hopes of seeing the sunset, but the haze over the water was too thick to see much.
This morning, we woke up early again to get to the bus to take us to Hat Yai to stay with Garrett's family friend, Wongchan. After an 8 hour bus ride, we made it and found Wongchan's daughter Bas and her husband!