Advertisement
Published: February 18th 2010
Kata Lucky
We spent a few hours soaking up the sun at this beautiful swimming pool. Lots of Europeans - but English is the language of travel, so we met some nice people here. On Sunday we flew from Kuala Lumpur to Phuket, Thailand on our $18 tickets (thank you Air Asia). We were not sure what to expect as Chris had not been too impressed with the city of Phuket, so we only booked 2 nights at a place that Rick had found on-line. We figured that we could move someplace else if it was not suitable.
Much to our amazement it was one of the ‘wows’ of our holiday so far. The Kata Lucky Villa was a wonderful oasis in the middle of a busy tourist area-a total hidden gem. Not even the cab driver from the airport new where it was, and he came in to take a business card when he saw it. Although a bit more than we had budgeted for, we decided to spend the whole 5 days here. The area was definitely not for the young crowd- lots of tourist markets and no surfing, but our ‘villa’ is so nice that we loved it; lovely lush grounds, our own air conditioned 2 room bungalow, swimming pool, great breakfasts. The weather was between 30-35 degrees each day, which sounds hot, but with the pool and the
Villa
Our bungalow was beautiful and comfortable. Booking on latestay.com helped make this affordable. We were about a 10 minute walk (or free tuk tuk) to the beach but spent more time here than there. beach in walking distance, there was always somewhere to cool off.
We took one day and did a boat trip to Phi Phi Island. There were a lot of great things - amazing snorkeling in beautiful clear water where you could see the coral 20 feet down, white sand beaches and beautiful bays and coves. The down side was that everyone else does the same thing and at one small island, I counted 24 speed boats (each holding 35 people). Not enough room to turn around! Not nearly enough time to really enjoy anyplace before being rounded up and heading off again. Interesting, but next time we would book to spend more time on an island rather than a one day tour.
Another day we rented a scooter and decided to check out Phuket Island. We are staying right at the south west end of the island at Kata Beach, and some people we met had told us about a Gibbon restoration center up at the other end of the island. A fairly long ride, but really worthwhile. It was interesting to see how this group of volunteers recovers Gibbons that have been poached, sold as
Kata Beach
The whole west side of the island is beaches (as well as a good deal of the east). They were a bit crowded but a great people watching place. Getting in and out of the water was an effort for Rick, so we didn't spend too much time here. pets or to the tourist industry. They have a series of stages that they go through - healing first (both physically and emotionally), learning to socialize with other Gibbons and then finding a mate (they are monogamous). If all of this is successful, they have a series of cages that are further back into the forest and they do a release system over a period of several months. Only a few have been successful, but they hope to release at least one ‘family’ a year. Slow, but considering that they were poached to extinction in Thailand, it is a good start.
Anyway, we spent the rest of the day travelling back down the island to our place, then into the pool to rest our weary backsides from all those hours on the bike. The rest of the time on Phuket was spent either at the pool or the beach- when we had to leave after 5 days, it was with regret - if we had not already booked tickets to Chiang Mai, we would have stayed longer.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.058s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 27; dbt: 0.03s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb
Rachel
non-member comment
I would love those beaches.