Asian Adventures, Part 3: Phuket, Thailand!

We apologize for not posting sooner. We've had stressful and busy weeks & we actually had written a long post that got lost due to a computer failure... anyways, here's our adventures in Phuket, Thailand!

We arrived in Phuket in the late evening on Tuesday. We managed to find a desk that sold taxi tickets for a fairly reasonable price. It definitely beat getting bombarded by the 100 people outside looking for money from tourists who did not buy tickets. The car we got into had to make a pit stop to "sign in". However, we ended up having to get out of the car too & look at all the tour offerings. That's how they make their money! We ended up paying for a boat tour to Phi Phi Island. It was a reasonable offer so we accepted. The lady telling us about this tour kept pushing the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio was filmed in a movie there.

Our beautiful room at Kalima Resort
& Spa

We finally made it to our hotel just before midnight. The hotel structure was very confusing. We were quite a distance away from our friends. But our room was very simple to get to. And the room was just beautiful! The room was very large, as was the bathroom & balcony. And from the balcony, all we saw was water. After a few moments of admiring our room, we fell asleep.

Panoramic view from our balcony

Wednesday morning, we got up & went up to the roof for breakfast. Spectacular views up there too! Breakfast at this hotel was amazing too. It had western & Asian breakfast foods available. There was a pancake maker too! Those pancakes were small though, but delicious & unlimited. There was also fruit, honey, & syrup toppings of your choices for the pancakes, waffles, & french toast. There was a wide variety of fruit & fruit juices. John especially enjoyed having guava juice every morning.

View of the hotel pool

Entrance to a temple

After breakfast we relaxed a bit & then took a taxi with our friends into Old Phuket Town. It was very interesting. We weren't exactly sure where we were so we were just walking around exploring & taking pictures. We noticed a couple of museums & a temple & of course, several shopping areas. We were offered several tuk-tuk rides. After a couple of hours of walking around we decided to go back to the hotel. Instead of taking an expensive taxi, we got on a bus that took us to an area near our hotel... or so we thought. We ended up getting lost. In the rain. It took us about an hour to make it back to the hotel but we were just happy to make it!

Museum

Beautiful fountain

We found a dark alley & followed it.
This is what we found!

Dragon statue

Beautiful Old Phuket Town Shopping Center

In the pool at our hotel.

Recreating Little Mermaid scene

Recreating Little Mermaid scene

Soon after we went to the pool to forget about our mishap adventure. We had a lot of fun being silly. There were only about 8 people in the pool total; we had a nice big space to swim around in. For a significant amount of time, we were trying to recreate a scene from the movie, The Little Mermaid. Enjoy those pictures! We were having so much fun that we didn't really notice the weather getting much worse until we realized that we were the only ones left in the pool. We made it under cover just before the harsh downpour came. We relaxed a while & watched a movie before going to dinner.

Dinner was amazing. We went to the upstairs restaurant where breakfast is served. The service was amazing & we were able to get some delicious burgers. Everyone working was so helpful & delightful. Definitely the best service either of us have ever received. Even when we left, we were given umbrellas to get us back to our room so that we wouldn't get soaked. All in all, a wonderful first day in Phuket.

Phi Phi Island

Thursday was our boat tour to Phi Phi Island. Unfortunately Nicole was feeling sick to her stomach that morning & couldn't eat much breakfast. However, by the time we were getting in the van to go to the boat she was feeling much better. Thankfully she was feeling better because the boat ride was about an hour long each way with 3 other 5-10 minute trips to each part of the island.

Phi Phi Island was so beautiful! Words can't describe the beauty, which is why there are pictures to help! It felt amazing to be in such a beautiful place. Our first stop was the beautiful beach. About an hour later we were off to our next stop.

Phi Phi Island - Maya Bay

Maya Bay

This is where Leonardo DiCaprio was
filmed for The Beach movie.

John playing with rocks in the water.

This is where we had lunch.

We had a decent lunch on another part of Phi Phi Island. Still such calming beauty on the beach. There was a tourist shop there so of course we had to stop there. We had enough time to eat, buy a few things, & play in the sand. Then we were off to our next destination.

The next stop was in the water where we got out & did some snorkeling. Saw some beautiful fish. Too bad we don't have a waterproof camera but our friends did so we took a couple of pictures from them. We had a lot of fun. It was Nicole's first experience snorkeling.

Our feet love the sand!

The final stop was at "monkey island". Except only the boat stopped & we didn't actually get off to see any monkeys. We stayed for mere 3 minutes (maybe) & then we were on our way. We didn't get a chance to get a good picture of any monkey. That was a major disappointment because that was what we were looking forward to most!

We were supposed to make one more stop after that but it was determined that the weather was not going to cooperate for us so we headed back to Phuket. An hour later we were back to land.

Our tour guide. He was hilarious. His name is Lala.

Thai Baht

It was an interesting trip. Not only did we see the beauty of Phi Phi Island, but we got to experience some very intense speed boat rides. The wind & waves were crazy that day. That being said, there were probably about 80-90 people on our boat. At the very least, 20 of them were vomiting most of the time. How pleasant! And on top of that it was sprinkling most of the day so what do the brilliant Chinese tourists do? Wear their ponchos! ...on the boat, on the beach, & in the water. Yes. In the water. Then at one point there were a group of them in front of us putting their ponchos on the benches (neatly attempting) so that they could sit on them. To waste time on the way back we tried to think of why that would be logical. Conclusion, it's NOT! But, we all got some good entertainment out of it.

After dinner, our waitress offered to take pictures.

That evening we had our free Thai dinner that came with our hotel booking. We got a choice of appetizer, entree, & dessert. We ended up having 2 appetizers, 3 entrees, & 1 dessert. Everything was fantastic! Again, we were treated like royalty from the staff. Even the manager came out to make sure we enjoyed everything. We surely did. We were over-full! At this time neither of us can really remember what we had except the large plate of fruit for dessert but we know we enjoyed every bite! Afterwards, it was already very late & we watched a movie to sleep.

Hard Rock Cafe in Phuket

Friday morning we got all cleaned up & packed again to hit the road. But first we walked around Patong Beach a little bit because we had some time to kill between checking out & being picked up to go to the airport. Mostly sightseeing because we already spent most of our money the day before on shopping. We waited in our hotel lobby for a while after that because it started to rain heavily. Once we made it to the airport, we went straight into the Bangkok Airways lounge - our airport happy place.

Just hanging out in the hotel lobby
waiting for our ride to the airport.

Unfortunately, our next 2 flights were with China Eastern Airlines again. But this time we didn't get stuck in China. We did get stuck at the check in counter for an hour for reasons we are still unaware of. Just ridiculous. After FINALLY being able to move on, we ended up being in the slowest immigration line. Then when Nicole got up to the line, the guy asked her AND the person next to him if that was her in the passport picture. COME ON!!!!! Who else's passport are we going have? Security was another story... Then we finally get to our gate.

About to be landing in Incheon, SK

Two flights later we were back in South Korea. And on a bus back to Daejeon. We returned to our apartment Saturday evening. On Sunday we rested & prepared to get back into our working routine.