So
Phuket was amazing, everything that you think a tropical paradise should be. Complete with the flower garlands they put on your hands when you arrive, Buddhist welcome I think. Gorgeous, gorgeous.
We stayed in this totally posh hotel. It was only 4 stars, but it was the nicest hotel I have ever been in. I can't even imagine how you would upgrade. Even our shower was amazing. Check it out, there was a fountain in it!
The hotel was right on the beach. The water was a beautiful color blue and the sand was white and there were chaises with umbrellas on the beach. Unfortunately the red flag that meant the undertow was really strong was up every day, so we couldn't do much more than play at the edge of the water, which to tell you the truth freaked out Mom even at that. She worries so much!
Yeah it basically is a postcard that I lived on this vacation. Did I mention Thailand is gorgeous and a half?
This is the view of part of our hotel from the beach. This is like an
eighth of the whole thing it was huge. And so pretty. I am not used to the hotels being almost as pretty as the scenery.
In one of the lobbies they had this hoop chair made from some crazy wooden
viney stuff. It was my mom's favorite chair so I had to take a picture of her in it. Every time we went through there she had to sit in it.
Our tour guide took us up to the top of the island, you can see several of the beaches behind us. The beach we stayed on was Kata Beach, that is the second one behind us. I am getting nostalgic for Thailand as I write this, it was so gorgeous.
At the lookout, as in many places we saw, there was a shrine to Buddha. I guess he really likes elephants because the tradition at this shrine is to leave statues of elephants as offerings. He has a lot of elephants here.
Our guide also took us to the Buddhist temple on the island, which is famous for some monks that lived there who were really great monks and they have a piece of Buddha's finger bone. Before anyone gets grossed out, Catholicism does the same things with saints. So anyway, he took us to the temple and we got the traditional offerings. The candle, which used to be for the monks to read by, incense, which I am lighting, , the lotus blossom which you put in an urn inside the temple, and a little piece of gold flake which you put on the statue of the famous monks. It was really cool of him to explain it all and let us participate.
This is inside the temple, this is our guide who was really nice, but I forgot his name.
Ooops! He was explaining something about Buddhism to my mom, she loves learning stuff. I am sure she will kill me for putting this pic up, but I had to. The dragon protected Buddha at one point so that is why there is a carving of it for the
banister.
After a long day of temples and sightseeing, we decided to relax by doing some shopping and getting manicure and pedicure. Did I mention it was $12! It is so cheap in Thailand. In the shop, this little girl was running around, her mom worked there. She was so cute. Mom wanted a picture so the little girl posed for one.
That night we went to the "
girlyboys" show. Thailand has some of the most famous drag shows in the world. It was really good. My mom kept going, are you sure they are guys?
The next day we took a boat to James Bond Island. It rained a lot that day, but we were in the water anyway, so who cares? It has to rain to keep that gorgeous green jungle thing going. You can see the boat we took in the picture below.
Once we would get to the islands we would go around in the little inflatable canoes, they could get us into little
grottoes that you cannot get into when the tide was high. The guys who paddled them were so funny, they would get in little dominance contests about who could paddle fastest and splash each other, etc.
The
grottoes we paddled into were absolutely gorgeous, like places they film exotic movies. It was such amazing green color, total
rainforest. It feels like an outdoor cathedral.
We had to go through the low hanging caves to get into the
grottoes at low tide. Sometimes we even had to lie down in the canoe to get through without hitting our heads. It was quite the adventure and well worth it.
Here you can see the actual James Bond Island. It was used in one of the James Bond films back in the 70s I think. I forget which one, my dad probably knows. Anyway, once you put something in a movie, American tourists have to go see it. Seriously though, it is a good pick for a movie, gorgeous, exotic and a bit foreboding.
Then we got to go on a safari. Probably my favorite part. I do love the animals. Our other tour guide gave us a big palm leaf full of fruit for breakfast. So tropical! Here, my mom shares some of our breakfast with our little monkey friend. He peeled and ate it so fast I barely had time to get it on film.
They showed us how to make Thai curry and then let us try it. I tried the really mild kind and managed but my face is still a bit red. Spicy food is hard for me. They had three levels, green, yellow and red curry, just like a stoplight, green is mild, yellow-medium and red-hot. But I am actually doing better with it after eating South Korean food for a while. My mom liked it.
This was our elephant driver. We got to go for a ride on an elephant. Very, very fun. The safari is actually a preserve that educates people on the animals, especially the elephants. Each elephant has a driver/
trainer type person who works with the elephant like their whole life. They are like best friends. Wouldn't that be cool?
Here is a picture of us on the elephant in our little chair that wobbled back and forth with every step. You can see the whole jungle spread out behind us.
Afterwards I got to feed the elephants. They are greedy! They would take whatever you held out in their trunks and hold onto it until they could eat it. I saw one of them holding like five pieces of fruit at a time. The ends of their trunks are kinda slimy but really soft.
Then we got to go meet the baby elephants who they are training. The babies do all kinds of things like paint and play soccer and dance and make
elephanty noises on command. They are really smart. And adorable even though as babies they are like 8 times the size of me.
They had three babies when we were there. In this picture they are waving goodbye to us with their trunks.
The safari ended with a lunch at a lookout over the valley. The food was so good. I love Thai food! It was delicious. The safari might have been my favorite part, way better than a zoo since you get to touch and feed and ride the animals. The animals really did seem happier than the ones in cages at the zoo anyway. So all in all a fantastic day.
Of course we did lots of shopping and eating that I do not have pictures of. I was too busy bargaining. My mom always wanted me to bargain, I only got her to do it like twice. She kept saying I was better at it. I don't think that is true, she just like to laugh at me trying to do it. Anyway, this vacation was absolutely amazing. Thailand is the prettiest, friendliest, cheapest country I have ever been too. I totally want to go back one day. Bit of advice if you go though, it is really really freaking hot! And don't go in the summer, especially July, August or September. It rains nonstop, we just made it in under the wire going at the end of June. We only had one day of rain. Thanks for going with me Mom!
Sueji and Maggie mugging for my camera. This is after we had already been dancing for a while. Sorry if some of the pictures are not completely clear, there was a lot of that dance floor smoke stuff. Sueji talked us into this, we were not sure we wanted to go. I am glad she did cause we all had a great time.
This is Liz's brother Dave and I dancing. Dave spent a year in China and crashed with his big sis in Korea for a few weeks on his way back to the States. Amazing as we get older we actually begin to like our siblings. My face is all red cause we were in there dancing for hours!
Liz always is so great at mugging for the camera. She cracks me up big time. I am not sure what Maggie is doing in the background there. I think by this point we had all chucked our shoes.
We had gone through Seoul on our way to DongHae for a Couch Surfing event. We ended up sleeping for about an hour or so in the sauna in Seoul before getting on the bus to DongHae. Couch Surfing, for those who do not know, is an international community where you can sign up to host people visiting your area and then you can crash when you travel. It is really cool. Anyway, sometimes they have big events for people from an area to all get together. So this is what we were doing. Patrick was hosting it at Kathryn's house. It is a really cool thing. So we were supposed to go hiking on Saturday morning. We did sorta. But everyone was kinda hung over and sleep deprived from the night before and it was pouring all day. Check out Maggie in her rain gear.
We went to the National Park there and some us us decided to hang out at the Buddhist temple under the covered porches instead of continue getting soaked. This is a picture of the shrine. You can see a Buddha to the right.
Because of all the rain, there was this gorgeous mist over the green mountains that surround this temple. It was totally amazing. I took a zillion pictures, but I can never seem to get mist to look as cool on film as it does in real life.
It was a shame it was so rainy, it was really pretty. But we were towards the end of the Korean rainy season and I was just so sick of being wet all the time, that I was not going to brave it. On the other hand, the rain and mist give it a whole different beauty too.
Trying to stay a little dry, Dave, Maggie and Liz - my crew from Cheongju, posing on a bridge.
This was part of the group who went to the Couch Surfing event, the die hard hikers were swimming in the river at this point I believe.
One of my favorite parts of the trip was Kathryn had brought her kitty and two minature poodles with her. I totally miss having animals around to play and cuddle with so I had fun with that. You can see me giving the kitty love.
Kathryn posing with her two dogs, so cute. It was a lot of fun, but totally exhausting weekend. I think I slept like 5 hours in 2 days.
But I definitely reccomend checking out couch surfing for anyone who wants to travel or who wants to stay home and still meet people from all over the world. Their web address is: www.couchsurfing.org.
