Arrival in Phuket

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After a night on the bus and managing to get around 6 hours each, not bad although probably not the best quality sleep we arrived at the place where we were to transfer. We all got in the back of a big tuk tuk, there were 8 of us which would have been a squeeze anyway but everyone had their big bags so it was crammed! The tuk tuk dropped us off at a tour office where we waited for about 30 mins to get on the minibus which was going to take us to Phuket. The driver was absolutely crazy, he drove very fast, swerved quite a bit and was very harsh at braking, no wonder we got pulled over by the police and he got a ticket! We finally arrived in phuket town at just after 12 when we had been told we would get there for 10. The minibus drivers tried to get us to go with them to the places where we wanted to stay and assured su they were giving us a good price. However 6 of us were all heading for Karon beach so we decided we would try and get a taxi or find the local buses which were much cheaper. After a stroll around the town we found the buses which were big trucks with seats down the sides in the back and open at the sides and were much cheaper. We got to karon beach and had no idea where we were going to stay so wandered around a bit. there were lots of resorts, all very nice but all very expensive. we knew the prices here were much more expensive then in the north because it was a popular holiday destination. We found a hotel at a reasonable price which was very nice and just set back from the beach. By this time is was 2 so we grabbed some lunch at the hotel and then went off to explore a bit. We headed to some tour agents to try and arrange to go to some of the islands but all the trips were very expensive so we decided we would get a ferry there and stay for a couple of nights. again all of the hotels on the island were a lot more expensive so we searched the internet trying to decide on one, but we couldnt! We sat down and had a think about what we wanted to do and realised that if we were going to go to the islands on the east coast everything would be very rushed so we had a rethink and decided that we would quite like to come back to Thailand in the future so we would skip the east islands and visit them another time, that way we could enjoy it. this meant we could spend another day in Phuket at Karon beach, which was lovely (a bit like Woolacombe, not quite as long with good waves!) and then from there we would move onto Ko Phi Phi and stay there a couple of days before heading back to mainland and then onto malaysia. After deciding this we headed to the beach to watch the sunset and then onto a very nice restauarnt for dinner. We were handed connect 4 to play whilst we were waiting for our food which was good fun. the restaurant was near the hotel so we walked about 200m back to our room.

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Comments

[R's Mum]

Sounds lovely. could do with a bit of sun and sea although it is a bit better here at the moment and have been sitting in sun in garden. Love Mum.

[R's Mum]

received your text photo of sunset. impressive!