Thailand: Phuket

All right, this is the last Thailand blog, finally. This one covers our time in Phuket (Poo-ket) at the beach.

You may have seen me post something on Facebook about Phuket not being very great. I would like to explain what I mean here.

We naively expected Phuket to be wide open spaces and secluded white sandy beaches. While Phuket is beautiful, it is not wide open or secluded by any stretch. It is insanely crowded. And we were there during its slower season.

Riding in via taxi from the airport, we were in awe. The scenery was stunning. Crystal blue waters, lush green forest, enormous cliffs, one with a Buddha atop it. Our hotel was very nice too, kinda swanky even though we were basically all in the same room. We were bummed pretty quickly though because one reason we picked this place was because it seemed to offer a lot for the kids to do, even offering a kids club during the day, but we we found out that there were no special activities for the kids and the kids club was closed. Damn, bummer. We love our kids, but we were hoping to let them make friends at a kids club for a few hours a day while we did things we can't do with them like snorkel or swim without holding someone else. Sigh.

We unpacked quickly and headed excitedly to the beach, Kata Beach, the one that was supposed to be the most isolated of the 3 Phuket beaches. Patong Beach is the crowded party spot in the north, Karon Beach is the resort-y spot in the middle, and Kata Beach is in the south. We took towels and our camera and a few dollars for what we imagined would be an inexpensive seafood fry-up from the street vendors. We had no idea.

The beach was mobbed. Mobbed, pardon the pun. Immediately we saw hundreds of beach chairs and umbrellas. You have to pay for those. Not much (I think like $4 a day or something per chair) but we thought the beach would be more of a throw your towel down kind of place. And we didn't ask how much then or it wouldn't have been that big a deal. There wasn't a lot of beach left (with the tide in I guess) to throw down towels, but we did. Lots of leathery skin, topless leathery skin. And then we were swarmed with all kinds of people trying to sell us stuff: sunglasses, hats, food, necklaces, handbags. No, thank you. And because there were so many people, and because our stuff was just thrown on the towel--and there were only a few of us cheapskates with towels--we didn't feel we could leave Ted's wallet and the nice camera there. So Ted swam with the kids and I chilled. When it was time to look for dinner, Ted found that while there was some sea food and local stuff, it was mostly pizzas, burgers-n-fries, and stuff. For $15 each. Okay, $15 is not a lot of money, that's not my point. It's only that we were expecting something completely different. We're not in Bangkok anymore. You know? It just wasn't our scene.

Yep, that's my "Oh no" look. 

Looking back, it was still a very nice moment. I mean, we are at a beautiful beach paradise, no responsibilities, just relaxing. We should have just enjoyed it. But instead we panicked a little. We wondered if we were nuts for planning this trip. You see, we have found a great beach escape in Malaysia that's only 3.5 hours away and less than 1/4 the price probably. The sand is white and powdery but the beach is excellent and the scenery perfect. We were nervous we had a made a bad decision. We only had one chance to take a Thailand beach getaway and we were afraid we chose the wrong part of Thailand. Would Ko Phi Phi be any different? Hua Hin? Somewhere else completely?

Anyway, as time passed, we got over it. We hired a hotel sitter that night after the kids went to bed and Ted and I went out to explore for a few hours. This night happened to be a full moon night, the full moon of the 12th lunar month. This meant they were celebrating Loy Krathong, one of the festivals represented in the Siam Niramit performance we saw in Bangkok a couple of days earlier. As we were walking along Karon Beach, we started seeing some lanterns in the distance. Then, we saw dozens of them rising up into the sky, filling it. I hate to compare something to a cartoon, particularly a Disney movie, but it was like the end of Tangled with all the paper lanterns floating up into the sky. That's what was happening. It was so pretty. We didn't realize this was only a one-night thing. I thought they did this for the whole week so we decided we wouldn't go wake the tired children to show them, but we probably should have because that was it. The next night, when we walked with the kids on the beach they did get to see maybe a dozen overall, which they thought was pretty cool, but it really was nothing like that first night.

So Ted and I walked around the different street stalls and poked our way through the alleys, eventually finding this one bar playing Bob Marley. When I heard it, I laughed, thinking how out of place and random it was to hear Marley in a resort town in Southeast Asia. But then I looked at the place. It was perfection. It was down an alley of an alley and was all open, no doors on the outside, no walls at all actually. There were several sections of this place, each area was like a college house living room, you know? with beat-up old couches, and tables carved from driftwood, and melted candle wax everywhere, and incense burning everywhere, one of those places. The furniture and decor were second-hand and perfect and all the money was spent on the fantastic sound system, which really was quite good. There was even a hammock hanging next to the bar and a dude sleeping in it. And even though they were playing songs we have all heard thousands of times before, we decided to stop in and have some cold beers. And they were cold. And they were good. And we took off our shoes and sat down in one of the living areas and breathed. And then the music changed. It got good. This is where we spent the rest of the night. And I felt much better about Phuket.

Our routine for the last couple of days was to have a giant buffet breakfast, then get ready and head to the beach where we would rent two beach chairs and hang out until lunch time. We had bought bread and peanut butter for that. We would stay a little longer and then head back to the hotel pool. Here are some pictures from around the hotel, called the Peach Blossom Resort.

This is the view from our balcony toward Karon Beach.

There were a couple of pools with a waterfall between them.

Wyatt enjoyed some ice cream.

The hotel staff tested out their boat for the Loy Krathong ceremony.

The best feature of the hotel? The swim-up bar! Even Ella and Zoe recognized its potential. They were dancing to some music blaring from the bar.

The view in the other direction from our balcony.

These are the fun babysitters who stayed with the kids for a couple of hours our last full day there. They were very playful and excited about watching the kids. Our children were excited to have someone eager to play with them!

Waking up is hard.

The bartender was never very busy so she played Jenga with Zoe and Wyatt instead.

And someone else came to join them.

So our hotel ended up being a very nice place to stay. The location was excellent and everyone liked to talk to the kids. Even though it wasn't what we expected, it all worked out great.

One thing I never like to do but that looked like fun here was to go miniature golfing at this place called Dino Park. It had cool Jurassic landscaping and dinosaurs everywhere, even a volcano that erupted every half hour. We had to give that a go, right?

And this is when Wyatt freaked right out. He screamed and refused to budge. We kept telling him it was okay and he was looking at us like "what kind of parents are you?" and saying "There's a volcano. And DINOSAURS!" It was very funny. Ted eventually calmed him, but it took a long time.

There were even holes inside the volcano!

Do you know how long it takes a family of 5 to play 18 holes of miniature golf? Yikes, it was a long hot night--especially with the fire from that volcano--but we made it. Wyatt even had a hole in one! But I won by one stroke, I had to squeeze that in here.

Then, outside the place, they had a baby elephant. I know, I know, we shouldn't encourage it, but the kids fed her and petted her.

One random thing to note about Thailand in general is the electricity. My gosh, the wires are everywhere! And low! And humming! We always switched to the other side of the street when we could and rarely could put Wyatt on shoulders.

Then suddenly it was Saturday afternoon and time to head home. Well, home to Singapore. We took a big bus from our hotel to the airport--

--and had some ice cream on the plane. For some of us, that was the last meal we had for a long time--

--because we were all sick for the next 4 days, except Ted who must have super cells.

But we did all survive. And while we were busy sleeping (and puking) Ted planned our next trip, which is to the Cameron Highlands and then to an island off the west coast of Malaysia. That trip is in about two weeks. Time to start planning again!

Thailand: Nights Out in Bangkok

We were very busy in Bangkok during the day, but we had adventures at night too. The first night there we had some babysitters at the hotel watch the kids so that Ted and I could go out for dinner and drinks with an old high school friend, Andrea Tracy. She had big plans for us to have drinks at the rooftop bar at the Doubletree and then go to a fancy French restaurant in what she called the seedy part of town. Unfortunately, the French restaurant was closed that day and a nasty storm rolled in just in time to foil any thoughts about rooftop lounging. Andrea scrambled and found us another spot, Eat Me.

The restaurant was really very nice and we had excellent food, fantastic drinks, and interesting conversation. Andrea and I graduated together from Athens High School in Ohio and now she works for the US government out of Bangkok. It's hard to say she lives there, though, because she is always traveling for work from Africa, the Middle East, to all of Asia. Ted and I were fascinated by her job. She works, as I said, for our government organizing and delivering humanitarian aid in times of crisis or disaster. Pretty cool stuff. It was great to catch up. We certainly had too much to drink but at least it was an early-ish night because Andrea had to catch a flight in the morning to Butan. Hmmmm, where is Butan?

The next night we went to see the coolest production I have ever seen, Siam Niramit (http://www.siamniramit.com/SNawards.php). It was amazing.

Our night started with taxis refusing to take us there because of traffic jams. Sigh. Eventually we asked the concierge at our hotel to help us and he had his friend/taxi driver take us a few blocks away to the underground train station. We hadn't taken a train here before. It's Thailand so everything is in Thai, which means we can't even go by letter recognition. Eventually, with help, we determined that we were on the correct train line and wouldn't have to switch. We bought our tokens and took the train about 5 stops away and got off, making our way then to the shuttle to the theater. It was pouring, but we were able to wait in a dry van/party bus thing for other theater-goers like ourselves. We arrived at the compound just in time to have a quick look-around (but not walk-around) and then head to our seats. First, we were pinned with flowers and had our picture taken with a woman dressed in a traditional Thai dance costume. The theater was like a fancy movie theater. We didn't know what to expect.

It was breath-taking. Siam Niramit is the story of Thailand told in song and dance. I will elaborate a little because this was so impressive. Act I tells the history of the North (ancient kingdom of Lanna), the South Seas, the Northeast (Khmer civilization) and the Central Plains (the capital of Ayutthaya). Each act had an elaborate set and theme change. The South Seas one started as if we were looking into an aquarium or a slice of the sea. They had jellyfish crossing the stage, fish swimming around, and even a diver retrieving a pearl from a clam at the bottom. It looked so real and cool. I feel like I have mentioned before about the front part of the stage suddenly turning into a river. I thought it was a special effect until one of the characters actually jumped in! There were boats floating along it, too. Act II covered the afterlife and this grabbed our kids attention more than anything. The Fiery Hell scene showed what happens to people when they break different rules. There were demons, people writhing all over the place with what looked like actual fire in their bellies, scary loud music and everything. It was absolutely terrifying. Truly. This, more than anything else, is what the kids say they will remember about Bangkok. The next scene was probably the most beautiful. It showed the mystical forest of Himapaan with fairies, okay, gods and goddesses, flying everywhere. Eleanor really believed they were flying. She grabbed me and said, "I knew it! I knew this place was magical! Look, they are actually flying!" So sweet. This scene ended with some thunder and lightning and then a storm coming down. The ceiling actually rained water down (into the river from before) and it was the coolest, most magical thing. The act ended with a dramatic depiction of heaven. The play ends with a celebration of festivals. All the dancers come onstage in these gorgeous costumes. Elephants join them. There is music, celebration, light. . . so cool. Anyway, if you visit Thailand, you don't want to miss this show. It was spectacular. And of course, we couldn't take pictures.

Our last night in Thailand was a bit more subdued. We rode a tuk-tuk from our hotel to the main street and walked around until we found a place to eat. Here are some pictures.

This is where we decided to eat. Good decision. The kitchen and some tables are on one side of this busy street and our tables and many others are on the other side. Okay.

Yummy cool drinks. And forgetting to turn down the ice did not come back to haunt us.

Pretty simple idea. And it was. Less than $20 for all of us to eat and have plenty of drinks. It may even have been less than $15, but I can't remember. 

Can you see that truck and scooter zip by? Maybe a foot away from our daughters' shoulders? Why didn't Ted and I sit on that side? Who knows.

Here he is, the Man of the Year!

So trendy.

And we rode the tuk-tuk back to our hotel and went to bed. We woke up very early the next rainy morning to take a taxi to the airport and headed to Phuket for a relaxing finale to our holiday.