Blogs from Phuket, South-West Thailand, Thailand, Asia - page 3

We arrived at our accommodation just after midnight (home time). The next morning we explored the Resort. It is very spacious. Lovely pools and 4 restaurants. Our room overlooks the lap pools. The gardens are beautiful.... read more

Geo: 7.97501, 98.3515We are doing nothing. We are not taking any boat trips or excursions; we are simply hanging out in this calm, quiet spot. Nice big room, AC, swimming, eating, reading, washing laundry, catching up on our lives through great Internet. Good sleeps, nice meals. It has been awhile. And part of our reboot in Panwa, Phuket, Thailand is to jettison unnecessary baggage as we realized that the 15kg that discount airlines allow is a lot less than what we are carrying and very costly to pay the extra fees. I had been trying to reduce my baggage by giving away a little of this and that...a small leather backgammon game went to Si Thu in Mandalay, some medications and markers went to a couple in Pyin Oo Lwin who do volunteer work. But here, ... read more

After 3 days of lying on the beach in varying stages of discomfort/numbness, reading a lot and deciding that the activities in Patong were too expensive (3400b for half a day's ziplining) it was time to move on. We never really jnderstood the sunbed thing. When I tried to ask some western people lying on them what the score was with hiring/buying suddenly they couldn't speak English, although they just had been having a conversation with the Thai vendors. Not helpful at all! So the mystery remained..... Our little street was good, quiet and clean enough, but others smelled the worst I've ever encountered in Asia, rancid and disgusting, even outside quite swanky hotels. And nowhere gets going very early, so breakfast before 9 was impossible except for the v expensive hotels with buffets. This is ... read more

Another two hour ferry ($250b) led me to Phuket on the far western Andaman coast here in Thailand. Phuket is known as the Las Vegas of Thailand or the "Sin City" if you will. I'm not even sure why I came here as usually massive nightclubs with techno beats are not usually my thing. I guess I just wanted to see the show. Phuket is quite large and as I arrived at the pier I had no idea on how I would get to the west coast resort town of Patong some 8km away. The taxis of course wanted a ridiculous $500b for the ride. As per my usual policy I side-stepped them and the other tourists and walked into Phuket Town 2km away. Once there a friendly local drew me a map to the bus ... read more

We've arrived in Phuket! It's absolutely baking hot, so a 40 minute car journey is not what we want right straight off the bat, especially when part of that is the cab driver stopping to get petrol! We arrive at our hotel, dump our bags and walk directly across the street to a biker bar where we have the tastiest food this whole trip so far! All washed down with ice cold Coke and Sprite! Once we are sufficiently fed and watered we head back over the road to actually check in, I'll be honest are hotel isn't the best, it's small, noisy and grotty looking, but we're here for two nights and it's in a good location! It also has a really good shower in it so we're all good! We head out to Patong ... read more