Kal Patong

... or is it my Karma..? anyway...let it be.

Our plan was actually to have a bit of a holiday on Thailand. Phuket that is. We were suppose to meet up with Dave the Dog as we call him, our good friend from Spain. He moved down here about 9 months ago and we always said we would meet up if we would sell the business.We stayed in touch as we lived in Spain and now we made it to Thailand!.So he recommended to take a flight with Air Asia as soon as we landed to fly ...

... we find a fairly large area of shops and restaurant places to look around. It is extremely hot but we end up walking for miles. The buses only . run until 6pm and so we jump on a bus to Patong at about half 5, the bus is mostly full of school children but again a good cheap option at just 25 baht each. Patong is the biggest tourist area in Phuket and is very different to Karon. There are literally hundreds of bars, clubs, restaurants and shops.

... I drove straight to my favorite - Kata Noi - and got a chair under a big umbrella. I brought along two books, Blood Brothers and Slaughterhouse Five, both of which turned out to be excellent. I spend almost the entire day laying on the beach, reading. I did a fair amount of people watching, and one thing I noticed was that all of my chair neighbors got visibly redder as the day went on. I watched at least a dozen different people drag their chairs out from under their umbrella and into ...

... afterwards that it was in fact a terrible deal. Oh the joys. Anyways, upon arrival we were bombarded by a number of travel agents trying to sell us hotel rooms. We told them that we researched some places to stay and we will just walk around till we find one. One of the travel agent ladies told my girlfriend, in Thai language, that we would die if we try to find a hotel on our own. The point she was trying to make was that it will be ...

... so the overcrowding was copeable, and the bus journey got underway. We managed to get to Krabi with minimal disruption, apart from brief stop to rescue the roof bags from the thunderstorm! And also a couple of drop offs for people along the way. But then we picked up more passengers and the bus became overcrowded once again. At 7.30pm, 11 hours after setting off, we still were not in Phuket. What happened to 10 hours?! We finally arrived at a ...

... have been a number of raids at bars/clubs lately where all Muslims were removed and fined while everyone else was allowed to stay. The girl that ran our hostel was Muslim, but people thought she looked Chinese, so she said she had no problem buying, or drinking, beer). Thailand - Singha and Beer Chang. These two brands dominate the market. A nice change of pace from the last 5 countries, beer in Thailand is cheap both in stores and at bars. At a shop you ...

... the virtues of tropical fruit and gives a fruit lesson to anyone and everyone on board who will listen to him. "This is rambutan, this is very special banana with very thin skin, this is orange...this is...." . An American man asks Dad "Where are you from?" Dad replied "Australia", the American man says "You don't look Australian" and then they were inseparable all day. Dad told him that before he retired, he was a Corporate Lawyer. Mum ...

... our way to the monkey cave (Suwankuha Temple), which was about an hour drive across Phuket. Once we got there we bought some corn for the monkeys. They came running for us when they saw it. A big fat monkey grabbed my skirt and tried to get at the bag of corn. I tried to lose him but he jumped right up on me and I squealed. Shortly after that, the fat monkey attacked Ian for corn as well. He jumped on to Ian's leg and pulled himself up towards the bag of corn. There ...

... the waterfront, but then to have gone only a short way inland to find everything as it should be with not even so much as a blade of grass out of place. I also have heard some stories from some of the other people that were on the boats during the tsunami. They are also reinforcing to us that we're getting to experience Thailand as it was maybe 20 years ago before the Western world all got wind of this being a nice place to holiday in. We all feel somewhat bad about the fact that we ...

... there are tons of cave to check out), hiking, and of course relaxing on the beach. I'll send pics and tell you all about it. The last couple days have been bliss. Starting to tan pretty well and not burn, but still limiting my time in the sun. Yesterday, spent pretty much the whole day on the beach; tanning, shading up listening to music, and swimming. Carrie and Dana came down after they were done with there class ...