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Published: August 20th 2010
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What about here?
Cath regrets letting Brent choose the night's accommodation Phuket
The next morning we said a sad goodbye to Koh Tao having thoroughly enjoyed our time there. We had a long journey a head to get to Phuket in one day. We had a two hour ferry across to the next island Koh Phangan. We then had to get our bags and disembark and wait on the wharf for 20 minutes for another boat to come along. The second ferry took us to Koh Samui, ending at the port of Surat Thani From there we caught a bus to little hut where everyone got off and waited for about 10 minutes before we were hearded onto a tuk tuk that took us to another mini bus. We then got off at another little hut on the other side of town and were told to wait. Over an hour later we got on another minibus which drove us for about five hours until we were dropped off and what did not look like a bus station in Phuket town. We left at 9:00am in the morning and didn't get to Phuket Town until nearly midniight! Pretty much the journey from hell!
The Beach
Our hotel in Phuket was
The Beach
Recognise this? called the
Boat Lagoon. We chose it because on the website we booked on, it said the hotel was situated 5km from the centre of town. We had heard Phuket town itself was quite seedy so thought it would be nice to be a bit out of it but close enough to still explore the town - well we were misled! The hotel was actually more about 15km (!!) out of town and very expensive taxi there and back. So we stayed in our little hotel bubble for three days, which fortunately had a lovely large lagoon shaped pool.
The first time we jumped in the pool we met an American man and his two daughters. Originally from Kentucky they were now living over in Hong Kong. We bumped into the family many times during our stay, both in the pool and at the (just about) only decent restaurant within walking distance of the hotel. They were a lovely family and we had a good time chatting to them.
After one day to relax and recover from our Journey From Hell then we booked a day tour out to Ko Phi Phi - which included Maya Bay, the
setting for the movie The Beach. The tour was well organised with free water and soft drink all day and a buffet lunch and fruit in the afternoon. We first went to Maya Bay, with enough time to walk a little bit around the island and have a quick swim. Then it was time for some snorkelling, then back to another island for lunch, Then more snorkelling after lunch and then some more beach time. Enough variety to suit everyone's tastes. While we were on the trip we met a lovely Kiwi couple from Timaru. While we were out snorkeling some of the people back on the boat were throwing out fish food into the water. Unfortunately the fish could not always tell between what was fish food and what was human flesh! So we ended up getting “nipped” by all these little fish on our way back to the boat - more so because the Kiwi couple targeted us and purposely threw fish food in our direction!
Patong Beach
Four nights later we were a bit sick of our hotel bubble and decided to go somewhere else in Phuket. We had heard good things about Patong Beach
Two fish
In the sea so packed our things and got a taxi over to the west side of the island. We had a lucky break with our accommodation. We noticed the hotel we were originally looking at staying in also had a separate apartment building with the same access to the Aspery hotel facilities, pool and breakfast, but at a fraction of the price. The apartment was only about a 50m walk from the hotel itself and we had an excellent time there. Patong was a lovely sized town, although we were not impressed by the state of the beach. Instead spending our time in the pool, shopping for cheap knock-off label clothing (mainly Brent!) and enjoying some of the local bars.
We had a scary experience on our last night in Patong while up swimming in the rooftop pool. We suddenly felt a strong gust of wind on our snorkels and stuck our heads up to see what was going on and saw all our stuff was blowing along the roof, so we scrambled out of the pool to collect it and were hit by another powerful gust of wind. It was then we noticed this huge swirling mass of debris
from the hotel next to us which was being renovated. Another gust of wind suddenly started bringing the debris right towards us so we hightailed it off the roof and into the hotel for cover. To date neither of us have experienced winds that powerful before and it was quite scary! At the same time the weather (which had now turned into torrential rain) had knocked out the power and phones. As we stood in the hotel lobby drying to dry off when heard the ominous sounds of multiple sirens charging down the streets. When we finally decided to make the 50m dash to our apartment we could see some of the debris which had been flying around lying in the street. The power returned about two hours later, in time for a much needed cup of tea and it thankfully calmed down by the morning for our 6.55am flight to Cambodia.
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