As you may recall, we decided shortly after arriving in India that we would cut short our stay by a week and have a little breather by a Thai beach somewhere. After a bit of emailing with Niamh and Rachel (who offered advice on how to avoid the tourist trail: no
Rach! We want touristic! It's a holiday! Western comforts!) we booked in to the Marina Cottage Hotel on Karon Beach in Phuket. See http://www.marinacottage.com. What can I say? From the moment we stepped on to the Singapore Air flight from Delhi we were back in the west. (An aside - why on a four and a half hour flight taking place between 12.30am and 5am do airlines insist on serving a meal? All around me I could hear economy class passengers whimpering and begging for mercy as beautiful but ruthless Singapore Air stewardesses thrust chicken curry, egg rice and complimentary gin and tonics into their laps. It was 4am Singapore time).
So: flight to Singapore, flight to Bangkok, flight to Phuket. Get out at Phuket, met by complimentary hotel AIRCON car, drive to hotel, step out into hotel reception, handed refreshing scented handtowels to mop our (un)sweaty brows and a fresh coconut juice served in a coconut whilst we checked-in. This would be good under any circumstances: after 5 weeks in India I cannot describe how enjoyable it was. It was the kind of week where each day you make vague plans to do an excursion tomorrow and each day disappears in a miasma of lolling around, dips in the sea, fresh lobster salad and preposterous pink cocktails. The most energectic thing we did all week was play a round of mini-golf (Paul was rubbish, I was much much worse). We seriously comtemplated ditching the rest of the rtw trip and checking in until the money ran out.
[Actually, just to let a little reality into this account, Paul had planned to do some diving but got very badly sunburned on the first day so that was out of the question.] I did a Thai cooking course at a restaurant called The Boathouse; the course was taught on a verandah overlooking the beach and the clear blue Andaman sea, and the food was fantastic. Enough already: suffice it to say, if you want a fabulous, relaxing beach holiday I heartily recommend this. More thumbnails ...
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