Royal Paradise Patong

Sat Wat Dii Khrap from Koh Phuket Thailand! In case you think I've gone crazy, that's a phonetic spelling of "Hello" in Thai. Even Jon-Jon has gotten good at addressing people with the phrase. However, the Thai alphabet is not in anyway associated with the Roman Alphabet all us westerners have gotten to know so well. And so, when translating between the two languages (which luckily is done a lot here), the English spelling varies quite a bit. Oh, and in case you didn't know, the term "koh" st...

Day 3: Phuket, Patong Beach We Arrived in Phuket after a short 1.5 hr flt. Patong beach is about 45 min away from the airport so we took one of the airport buses for 150Baht each, much cheaper than a taxi. We arrived at our hotel, the Royal Paradise Hotel, around 3:00. The place was amazing, we were really impressed with the rooms, the service, the pool and location. Food was first on the agenda... we were tired and starving so room service it was and than spent some time relaxing by the pool...

Leaving Koh Tao at 9pm on the overnight boat to Surat Thani, the boat was very different to what I had expected. With my limited experience of ferries, I had expected a night on a plastic chair but the reality was very different with a double deck boat, exch deck about 1.5m high with mattresses laid down each side and each passenger allocated a section, pillow and lifejacket. The 7 hour journey passed rather smoothly and quickly having slept for about 8 hours of it and we were then whisked to...

Finally arrived at Phuket after facing tons of problems at Bangkok airport. We accidentally put all the liquids in our handbag and then it was trouble trouble .. all the way... Patong, what a lovely place, we selected the beach which had maximum nightlife and activities. We had high hopes and all our expectations were met. Our check in was not that great, had to wait for 30 mins but ya to make it up we got a nice welcome mocktail. We have a great view directly facing the beach, seeing people ...

Sunday rolled around and I had to say goodbye to Laos. I did one farewell walk around the city and through the morning market before climbing into the back of a tuk-tuk and heading off to the quaint airport. I was able to better appreciate the location of the airport with a few hours to kill waiting for my return flight to Bangkok. It indeed was a picturesque location. Large deep green hills undulated in the distance with no visible signs of habitations. It was almost as if it had been design...

There are a few phrases or expressions that keep getting repeated amongst some of my friends. It is similar in many groups of friends there are always "in jokes" that only a particular group finds funny and everyone else finds peculiar. For example “hide the rum” can often illicite laughter as can “I hear he isn't doing too well” (in reference to Christopher Reeve’s health after he died). One of the more classic quotes revolves around a night of exorbitant drinki...