A Much Needed Break - Phuket Vacation

After 7 months of life in bustling Taipei, we decided it was time for a break from city life so we headed off to Phuket, Thailand for 9 days of fresh air and salt water. It was a fantastic holiday! Great food, interesting activities and a bit of rest... yep, we finally got rid of those bags under our eyes...

We stayed at the Club Andaman Beach Resort in Patong Beach.

It was a nice place with great gardens. These gardens created an atmosphere of seclusion even though we were only about 250m (or less) from the busiest beach on the island.

Patong Beach

We spent an evening at the Phuket FantaSea show. Had a tasty buffet dinner at the largest restuarant we'd ever been too (behind us) and then saw the cultural performance. Now this wasn't just any "cultural performance" it was actually very well done and large scale! The theatre seats 3,000 people... the show included acrobats, animals, traditional dance and special effects... we both left feeling duly impressed.

During our stay there was a "Street Vendor Food Festival" on in Phuket Town. We took our only public bus ride into the "city" and enjoyed some of the best street food around.

One last sip of beach life before heading back to school! We arrived back at home 1.30 am only to wake up a few hours later for a new semester with 8am classes!

Read on for more fun and adventures from our Phuket Vacation...

Phuket Vacation - Sea Canoe Trip

This was super cool... boats, canoes, strange rock formations, sea caves, monkeys, bats... all the ingredients for a great day of exploration.

Dang, our intrepid guide

Looks like just a little island to the casual observer...

but having entered the island through a sea cave, here we are coming out of the cave into the "hong" - a room-like opening in middle of the rock island.

In one of the hongs we came upon some monkeys making a crossing from tree to tree. At first there were only two of them, but we sat around for a while and watched a whole family make the journey... pretty fun creatures to watch!

This particular trip was a "sunset cruise"... though too cloudy for a real sunset, we still went into one of the caves as it was getting dark. Inside the cave we splashed around in the water and caught a glimpse of phosphorous critters creating light in the dark waters... super cool!

If in Phuket, you've gotta go on this trip... it's worthwhile (and the food was absolutely delicious)

www.johngray-seacanoe.com

Phuket Vacation - Island hopping

One of the selling points of the trip was a drive by Maya Bay where the movie "The Beach" was filmed.

Since neither one of us have seen the movie, the significance was wasted on us...

although it was a beautiful place!

Us with our new-found hobby... notice this is day 6 of the trip and we're still almost day-glow white.

We were by far the whitest tourists around... kept slapping on the sunscreen and ducking for cover... must be the Kiwi in us.

Phi Phi Island

Phuket Vacation - Siam Safari

A common theme in Thai textile design is the elephant... after seeing so many around town we decided to check out a few live ones for ourselves. Siam Safari was a well-run tour operation so we headed out with them for a 4 in 1 adventure...

We got to experience animals (oxen, monkeys, and of course, elephants) and a bit of Thai rural life. It was a great way to spend half a day seeing something other than the beach.

Pretty fast for a 3 year old... he snatched those bananas quickly!

Not your typical road sign

I've been living in Asia for a while... the fingers automatically go up in pictures



If you go to Phuket, definitely check out Siam Safari's tour options:
www.siamsafari.com

Phuket Vacation -Snorkelling around Similan Islands

After our snorkel around Phi Phi Island on Thursday, Tony was hooked! So we saved the best for last and ventured out to the Similan Islands... it was worth the 6.15am pick up and 2.5 hour travel time one way (1.5 hours by van and hour by boat). Definitely worth it!

Approaching Island No.8 of the 9 small Similan Islands

We got in two snorkelling sessions... it was absolutely amazing!!! There were fish everywhere... vivid, vibrant, animated fish... the kind that undoubtedly inspired characters for "Finding Nemo" (though we never actually found Nemo) and "The Little Mermaid". We were blown away at the beauty and variety of the underwater world! God is so fantastically creative!

Unfortunately we don't have an underwater camera so if you want to see some of the fish we saw... click here: http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLR,GGLR:2005-39,GGLR:en&q=fish%20similan%20islands&sa=N&tab=wi

Like the Taiwanese, the Thai people have great imaginations. This bay is called "Donald Duck Bay"... can you see it? I thought it was a dog! I would've named it "Great Dane Bay" or "Marmaduke Bay"

All the way home we chatted with 2 Austrian guys who'd been out on the diving boat. Fascinating hobby... Tony was all ears! Don't know what that means... but our golf clubs are already a bit dusty...

If we go back to Phuket... we're keen to go back to Similan...

Here's some info if you're keen:

http://www.phuket.com/island/similans.htm