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June 28th 2011

Published: July 1st 2011

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zacandsof

Night Swimming

Life's tough when this swimming pool is in your backyard.

Our very good friends Celeste and Luke, who, until now, have lived in Laos, invited us to Phuket for a few days for Luke's birthday! What an awesome way to celebrate a birthday!

We arrived in Phuket very late at night and soon worked out that there were no real taxis and had to bargain to jump in the back of a random guy's car. Not the first time we've done this, and we'd never ended up stranded on the side of the road without a passport, until now. Only kidding. Despite really having no idea where we were going (as we'd both come off the back of some seriously busy time at work and hadn't even got around to looking anything up on a map) our awesome 'taxi' driver got us to our destination... and turns out we got the cheapest price from the airport too! Score!!

Arriving at the VIlla Rainbow Dragon we were blown away! We were welcomed by beers, cocktails and dripping wet friends! The place was amazing and we had it all to ourselves: a high end villa and a sensational pool which was soon to become the battle ground for RAINBOW BALL, the

Getting dinner ready

greatest game of all time, but more on that later.

The next day, we slowly crawled out of bed and made our way down to our closest beach. Great waves meant a few hours of bouncing around in the water and some serious body surfing attempts! The only casualty was Sof's sunglasses, as she'd forgotten about the fact that waves exist. That's what Beijing does to you (Our latest Beijing water adventure: http://stickypikelet.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/crab-island/). Lunch by the beach, leading to the first of many coconutty, lemongrassy meals. Mmmm.....

On Day 2 we went to Rawai beach for some Thai massages and body surfing. A Thai massage is very different to a Chinese massage as they use their whole body to massage your whole body! It's very stretchy and elongaty. Not as pummelly or steamrollery as the Chinese style.

For the third day, we thought we'd get out and about and take a long boat out to some of the islands surrounding Phuket. We spent most of the day on Coral Island, snorkelling, swimming, lying on deckchairs and eating fresh seafood. Actually, to be more exact, we spent most of the day getting sunburnt. No UV in Beijing, and

Dinner by the pool

Thailand sun on pasty whiteness equals red ouchy.

On our last day, we went off on an explore by ourselves and took some great pics at some of the nearby beaches and local markets. Nothing like motorbiking over tropical hills followed by tropical beach. Serenity was fantastic, as was the 4-stroke engine on full throttle. We had a swanky lunch that included mango mohitos and food served in pineapples! Then more rustic bottled beers on a 'secret' beach. Gold.

Nights were spent eating and drinking by our amazing pool, playing RAINBOW BALL. Despite being the best game ever, and probably needs a blog of its own, Sof thinks it's way too nerdy to talk about now. Cooler than backyard cricket cos instead of individual beers, there were POSITION beers, yeah, anyway, Sof says I've said enough. Apologies. Here Sof, you can have the keyboard now. We got some great take-away from local places. And on the final night we went out into Phuket town and were serenaded by a great cover band (yes, Sof IS writing now), possibly in a gay club. It was awesome!

And, we think we got away with no coriander in Thailand! Well,