"Ah from New Zealand aye?"..."Kiora Bro"..."Jonah Lomu"..."Edmund Hillary"..."Big oysters"...

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Phuket: May 19-24.

We left Bangkok at 9.30pm with Air Asia. Word of advice: If your travel agent scores you a bargain flight deal, check the company's baggage allowance before you book. We got stung with a $40 charge each way as their limit was 15kg - unlike the 20kg allowance of most NZ companies and the limit through Asia. They pointed this out to us at check-in...it was printed in line 900 of their 'font-size 5' Ts and Cs!!

Anyway, when we arrived in Phuket we got greeted by the local rep of our tour company, who on the 40 minute ride to our accommodation, told us we had been upgraded to a resort for reasons unknown, so that kinda made up for the baggage botch up! We were stoked to be staying in a spacious room with a private deck overlooking the pool and the sea.

Day 1:
After a big buffet breakfast at our resort, we met with up with our tour company rep and arranged to do a city tour a couple of days later (which like in Bangkok, came free with our airport transfer). We also booked a snorkelling and siteseeing trip to Phi Phi Island the following day. There's so much to see on Phuket's surrounding islands, it was hard to pick between doing kayaking, visiting the island where a Bond film was set or doing a safari-type wildlife adventure. In the end we chose our trip as it offered a bit of everything.

Following a second helping of breakfast, we made our way down to Karon Beach, which was just two minutes from our place. It didn't take long to realise that the only time you could escape the locals trying to hawk off a bargain, was in the water. But I guess you come to expect that in a tourist mecca like Phuket. Every second store sold suits and the shop owners knew all the customs of the visiting suckers! It was hilarious to hear the Thai men greet you in Maori when you told them you were Kiwi. On one occasion, we were most perplexed when one of them knew Joel's last name. He yelled out "Yo English," and for a few moments we wondered where we'd met him before, until we clicked he was guessing where we were from! ...Several swims, a couple of Changs and a lot of relaxing later, we walked back to a restaurant adjacent to our resort for lunch. After demolishing some deep-fried prawns we realised our togs had made massive water marks on their plush chairs. Needless to say, we avoided going back there!

In the afternoon we spent another hour swimming at the pool, then relaxing with some beers in our much-needed air-cond room, whilst watching The Corrs of all things in concert. We tried to sneak cheap beers from the shop back to replace our room ones, and then transfer the hotel stickers from the empty bottles, but they always seemed to beat us to it...

We found out earlier that day that the big weekly night markets were on Sundays. So at about 7 we made our way down the road to negotiate our first tuk tuk ride! Unlike Bangkok, where you could bargain for anything, they seemed to have become a bit wiser to the tourists and had set fares for many routes. Still, we managed to knock 150 baht off our ride which cost us about NZ$10 to travel 20 minutes away. Not bad in the scheme of things, plus we had no other way of getting there. The tuk tuks on Phuket looked a little safer than the mainland, with truck-like cabs. Didn't stop me from sitting with my back to the driver though so I couldn't see what was going on!

The markets weren't actually that great, and were probably more for locals, with a lot of fish and produce. I think we only bought drinks to combat the heat and to block out the smell of rotten fish sauce. Still if we hadn't gone, we (I) would have thought we'd missed some great clothing bargains 😉

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