Adamas Resort & Spa, Phuket

... proved for a much smoother ride. First stop on the journey was James Bond Island. A pretty cool island acutally. We walked around the island and climbed through the little caverns that were all over the place. The next stop was Hong Island where we got canoe rides through the caves and into lagoons. It was then onto Panak island for more canoeing before going to Lawa island where Kevin was in his glory jumping off the side of the boat doing flips into the water ...

Our plan for today was to do the throughly illegal and rent motorbikes. I must admit, I was pretty nervous and barely said a word all morning but, wanting to push myself, we went for it anyway. There is one rule to riding motorbikes in Thailand and that is that there are no rules about riding motorbikes in Thailand. The seemingly unimportant clause about 'needing' a driving license on the rental sheet is an interesting one, we didnt even need to lie ...

... my roommates canoe, each carrying one other person, happened to go under this tree. Not thinking of it we look over and notice that my roommate and her canoe buddy were practically standing up screaming. Not knowing why my canoe buddy looked back in our boat and noticed that not 1, not 2, but about 12 spiders (bout the size of wolf spiders) WERE JUMPING around in the back of our canoe. We started freaking out and screaming as was the other canoe, but luckily our canoe guide just ...

... Phuket. After the mood got a little ugly among the tourist they loaded up the few of us that had bought tickets to Phuket and took us into Phuket and dropped us off at the bus station. We had to fight thru the normal throng of taxi drivers to find an internet café, so look up the address of our hotel...guess what...it was in Patong. A couple of drivers tried to gouge us for a ride there but we have learned ...

... girls had run over accidentally and kept after bringing it to the vet. Stray animals are quite common and walk through stores and sleep on the road, so they had just started collecting a few. Everyone hopped on their bikes and rode to Nai Harn to watch the sunset and went to a hippie bar around the corner for drinks and to listen to Thais sing "Sweet Home Alabama." All of this was a little surreal but I throughly enjoyed myself ...

... so we counted them....38 on one foot, 39 on the other - 77 in total! Let's just say Michelle never has itched so much in her life! We relaxed by the pool for the rest of the day where Michelle took a long nap and Mitch read. Then we took a long walk on the beach and watched the sun set. For dinner, we walked across the street and found a nice little Thai restaurant in one of the many night markets.

... bring Wall-E to clean up the island please...."


And don't you think that this limestone karst harmonized with ...

... about my cheap airfares....the plane did have 2 wings, the pilot was over 16 years and had a license. The bus ride would have been 13 hours, the plane ride 1.5 hours. The dinner (small pizza, three drinks at the airport 900 THB 30$, the plane ride for 3 600THB 20$ CRAZY!!!!!!!! Tonight we got the camera hooked up but the computer doesn't have a program to load so still no photos...... K

... on this island. I hope this ucky experience was just confined to Patong Bay, where I unfortunately chose to stay, and the other beaches on Phuket are very different. Let's hope. I can't review Phuket, and especially Patong Bay Beach, without mentioning that it was one of the towns that was devastated by the Tsunami in Dec '04. There were hawkers on the street that had booths set up to sell photos and videos ...