The Thailand You Don't Hear About On The News

When we arrived at the Bangkok airport I was a little nervous and again trying to get transportation from the Phuket airport I kept expecting for people to screw us over or something…boy was I wrong!

This is just my overall opinion after just 4 days in Thailand but I have to say that Thai people are some of the nicest, most welcoming, joyful people I have met.  The people in the airport that work behind the counter will bend over backwards to help you, the people in the market will joke around with you while you haggle, the people that you see walking on the street are always smiling.  Either there is something to be said for the sunlight or they are genetically predisposed to happiness.  When we told our cooking school teacher we were living in China her comment was “no one there smiles I asked someone why they don’t smile and it’s because they don’t have a job or money”.  I didn’t see anywhere in Thailand where it looked like the local people had money but they are happy anyway.  Never mind that we were on vacation, but walking the streets of Phuket with the smiling Thai people made me very happy.

I Eat Seafood Now

Bit by bit Adam is helping me learn how to enjoy eating fish.  He is wonderful about starting off easy and hasn’t pushed me into anything too crazy.  Monday our plan was to visit Old Phuket Town and have lunch there.  We asked the taxi driver to take us to a good place for lunch.  He took us to what he said was a cheap seafood restaurant.  It looked like one of those hole in the wall places that have amazing food so we decided to try it out.  I thought if anything we can stop for a snack somewhere else.  We picked out our fish from a pool and waited for them to do what they do to turn a live fish into lunch.  The lunch ended up being more expensive than we thought it was about 400 baht (34 baht = $1 US).  Apparently we picked a heavy fish and prawns.

talk about fresh!

Down town was full of little antique shops and we did our part to support the economy by collecting some treasures to remember our trip forever.

Monday evening we went to the Phuket FantaSea show…google it I can’t explain it very well but in a nutshell it is an awesome experience showing off the history and culture of Thailand.

A Couple of Islands, a Whole Lot of Monkeys and Mexican for Dinner

Saturday was more my thing well Sunday was defiantly more of an Adam thing.  We couldn’t go to Thailand without snorkeling.  We took a day tour of Phi Phi (pronounced Pee Pee) Island.

This was the town where our boat launched

This was a map of where we went

We saw where part of the movie Beaches was filmed,

we saw where the big Tsunami hit a couple years ago

and stopped at monkey beach where we stood at a safe distance while monkeys grabbed wraps off women and fruit out of hands.

We of course snorkeled and saw some beautiful coral and brightly colored fish.  We had a blast!

I didn;t spend much time in the water...fish kinda freak me out

 

 
The night before we spent hours walking up and down the street looking for a Mexican restaurant that we saw advertised (there is nothing even close in China).  Saturday we decided to ask the people in our hotel and take a taxi there.  We had a pitcher of margaritas and some chips and salsa.  It’s amazing how good something so simple tastes.

LOVE the big hunk of Guacamole

A Day At The Beach

Friday we spent the morning sitting by the pool, at lunch at the poolside bar and spent the afternoon on the beach (after getting a Thai massage of course).

Before our trip I researched and researched for hours until I planned our trip activities.  We had dinner at a wonderful Thai restaurant. 

Then I couldn’t have picked a better activity for our first evening in Thailand.  We played mini golf at Dino World.  I know it sounds strange for anyone to spend the time they have in Thailand playing mini golf, but it is one of the little things we miss from living in the states. 

Not necessarily mini golf, but the little dates we used to have with some healthy competition.  I won of course…

however I can’t brag because one of Adam’s shots were ruined by a girl running through our course.  You can’t leave dino world without stopping at the dino bar for some dinosaur themed frozen drinks.

The Journey

We left on the Airport bus from Huizhou at 12:20 on Thursday and got to the airport around 3:30 for our 6:30 flight.  Since we left from the Hong Kong airport mid trip we have to get off at the China border get on a different bus and get off 30 seconds later at the Hong Kong border where we go through immigration again.  At the Hong Kong Airport we had real western food from a sports bar for dinner and left on Shrilankin Airlines to Bangkok.  The service on the airport was wonderful but there was a Chinese tour group that made me feel like we were on a plane with middle schoolers on an unsupervised field trip.
 I have to admit that I was a little nervous with the recent news that the Bangkok airport would be crazy with protestors.  It was exactly the opposite.  Security was extremely tight but other than that it was full of smiling Thai people and tourists.  Our flight from Bangkok to Phuket was simple and quick.

We got to Phuket at midnight and took a airport shuttle to our hotel.  It took us about 2 hours since we were the last ones dropped off.  In the end for a short plane ride we ended up spending a lot of time traveling.

We Packed Our Red Shirts And Headed to Thailand!

Just kidding about the red shirts, we weren’t anywhere near the dangerous area.  We also made sure not to pack any red or yellow shirts.  We didn’t want anyone to worry.  We had a wonderful time!  I have a lot of pictures to post as well as details about what we did and what we saw.  All in all Thailand is my new favorite place and Thai people are my new favorite people.