Advertisement
Published: March 19th 2024
Edit Blog Post
On March 24th we arrived in Phuket. As we had been there before we thought we would go on one of the excursions to see more. We chose Highlights of Phuket. We drove first to the southern most part of the island, Cape Prom Thep. It was a very hot day but the views from the cliff top were stunning. We walked to the top of the promontory where there is an elephant shrine. People leave statues of elephants here to ensure good luck. Fletcher would have loved to steal one or two!!
A little further on was a statue of a local general and further still an unusual looking lighthouse. The statue also had small devotional figures left there by locals.An interesting place , but we were glad to return to the bus and the welcome air conditioning.
The second stop was at Chalong Temple complex. This is a series of Buddhist shrines with Thai style architecture. As always, the decoration was elaborate and there were more elephants here. The main temple had a spired roof and then there was the head monk's residence as well as a crematorium . Many people walking around, a popular spot. There were many
people letting off firecrackers, a very loud noise indeed!!
After about 45 minutes there we moved on to our third stop which was a cashew factory. Our guide pointed out the cashew tree and its fruit. Then inside were a line of young girls deshelling the cashews. It is a long and intricate process to extract the nut from the shell. No wonder they are expensive . Of course, there was a shop where we were expected to buy some but we declined.
We were then driven to Phuket Old Town and given 2 hours free time. It was very busy with tourists everywhere. We looked for somewhere to eat which would take a credit card. We saw a very modern looking restaurant with a Visa sign on it so were glad to go there and cool down .It turned out to be a Japanese place, and we chose from the menu by looking at the pictures. Then they came and place a tin of hot coals in the middle of the table and we had to cook for ourselves!! I had strips of salmon in a salad and Fletcher cooked his thin slices of pork himself!! Washed down with
some local beer it was a very nice meal and very inexpensive.
We then walked back through the streets, looking at the array of shops and made one more stop at a cafe called Juicy Lucy's! After a refreshing G and T, it was back to our meeting place, another temple. There were heaps of buses here, dropping off and reloading. We had to wait a while for ours but we were sitting in a shady spot. Then it was back to the ship. A good day!!
We then had three at sea days before arriving in Sri Lanka. Sea days fall into a pattern. There are at least three quizzes each day, I have joined the choir so there is choir practice at 1pm, we have before dinner drinks in the Botanical 🍸 bar listening to the classical music played by La Mer, a duo consisting of a pianist and violinist, Fletcher has purchased internet time so he can keep up with the athletics results. We celebrated St Patrick's Day with a special green themed dinner, all wearing green outfits and having the quiz on the top deck in The Observatory. Here there is a great duo, Salt and
Peppa, playing mainly 60s and 70s music.
We have had one more round of our Shuffleboard battle which was a thrashing of me by Fletcher, 85 to 29!! I will make a comeback soon.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.062s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0406s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb