Fancy in Phuket

This morning, we woke up and took a taxi to the airport.  We had an early flight to Phuket which is an island to the southwest.  Here's an aerial view of some of the islands!

 Once we arrived to Phuket, we took a minibus (which is basically a shared ride in a van), to get to the Patong Beach area which is where our hotel was.  In doing my research, I knew what ended up happening next.  The minibus driver drove like a maniac, between lanes and in the shoulder, honking at people to get out of his way.  He made great time in getting to a tourist office where they we were all made to get out and hear their offerings on tours and excursions.  This finally made sense to the other people on the bus who were panicked and wondering why the driver didn't ever ask what hotel they were going to.  While this is an annoying ploy, it's a brilliant sales scheme especially since the minibus is the only way to get to your hotel unless you want to take a taxi which costs 5-6 times as much.  Knowing that they did this quick stop sales scheme, I told Will we weren't going to book anything and that we'd politely decline and get back on the minibus to be on our way.  However, I also did research on how much excursions should costs and after Will did some hard bargaining, we actually left booking a tour.  It was a better deal than expected and since we were already planning on going to a tour office to book our excursion to Phi Phi islands for the next day, it got that task out of the way quickly.  Next, it was back on the mini-bus but this time we got on buses based on our destination.  This ride wasn't that much better though.  For the first drop offs, the driver dropped the people off in the rain and pointed in the general direction of their hotels and told them to walk a few blocks.  I guess all the one way roads doesn't lend itself to door to door service.  Luckily for us, we were let out right in front of our hotel, although on the main street and not in the pull through.  Oh well.  We were finally there!

While our hotels in Bangkok and Chiang Mai were nice, the Grand Mercure in Phuket definitely exceeded our expectations.  The lobby was open and beautiful and had a fun, modern design.  While checking in, we were greeted with a welcome drink and a little cream puff to nibble on.  We were then notified that we got a free upgrade to a room with a patio with sunchairs and private pool access.  Score!  We felt like honeymooners!

 

Upon getting there, we dropped off our stuff and decided to walk around.  The Patong area is the busiest in Phuket so there were all kinds of shops and restaurants around.  First we stopped and ate a "linner" which was our lunch and dinner for the day since it was already pretty late.

We walked through Bangla Road which is a famous road with lots of bars and walked to the beach where we saw parasailers.  I've been parasailing before so I wasn't interested in doing it and neither was Will but it was pretty crazy because they were launching people from the beach, not from the water like I did when I did it in the Bahamas.  You didn't even have to get wet!  It was crazy though because they had a person go up with you (sitting on top of some ropes without a harness or anything while you were harnessed in below).  They'd take off from the beach, sail you around for about 3 minutes, and then the guy chilling out above your head would land it on the sand so you wouldn't have to worry about crashing.  They were turning people over so quickly that I imagine they made quite a profit!  After sitting on the beach and admiring the view for a bit, we decided to head back to the hotel to go swimming.

 

 

On our route we found the frozen slab ice cream!! That's not exactly the name for it but we aren't sure what to call this ice cream method that Will saw on a video that was floating around facebook.  We were so excited to find it because when I was originally trying to convince Will to go to Thailand, he wasn't really feeling up for a trip so far away with such a long flight.  However, that same week or so, he saw a video on Facebook of this ice cream that was made fresh on a slab and served in "rolls."  He was so amused by it since he's such an ice cream lover and wondered where he could find it.  Once we found it that it was from Thailand, it was like a sign of fate that we needed to go!  So far on this trip, we hadn't seen it anywhere so we got so excited when we finally saw it!  We saw more than one stand so we figure it must be a Thai beach thing.  Well, we tried it and it was delicious!!!  SO good!

Happy to have this ice cream in our belly, we went back to our hotel was some snacks and went swimming at the hotel pool.  We wanted to take advantage of our fancy room and we just hung out and relaxed.  Tomorrow: Phi Phi Island!