The flight down to Phuket from Bangkok was an interesting trip. Whilst in the terminal, I was keeping an eye out for our plane which was all of a sudden running late, only to see it taxi on past our bit of the terminal building before turning around and coming back…mmm a pilot that does not know his way around the airport, hope he can find his way to Phuket. Then once on the plane we sat in the front row and listened to the cabin staff radioing the captain to say that a yellow strap had got stuck in the rear door during closing. Well we did not stop taxiing, so I assume that there was a seal on the door.
Anyway, we eventually found our way to the end of the runway and into the air, with great views out over Bangkok. The actual flight down to Phuket went without any issues. We were sat next to this guy from New Zealand who has been working in Phuket for the last 11 months on and off. He has been working identifying bodies and things after the tsunami and was telling us about what was still to do and how they did things. It was quite interesting to hear all about it and how they are trying to move everything up to Bangkok, so that Phuket can move on.
After our arrival in Phuket we managed to find a taxi to take us down to the south of the island. Our taxi driver did not speak a lot of English, but he tried to have a small conversation with us during the 50 minutes journey. Everyone had to pull over to the side of the road at one point and turn all the headlights off. It turned out that the King of Thailand was coming by and this is what everyone has to do in that situation.
We finally arrived out our very nice resort hotel. We decided that we were going to splash out a little on a nice hotel for a few days and managed to get a very good deal on the internet, paying about 25 % of the walk in rate. The place had a couple of pools, which we spent most of the time lounging around, gym and a great restaurant. It was also right on a great little beach and the sea temperature down here is a lot warmer than the pool.
You could see as well signs of the tsunami here. All the little palm trees along the water front had all been broken off at the same height. There were also a lot of fir trees just behind the beach. The bottom 20 or 30 feet of these trees were looked to all be dead. The top parts of the trees were all alive. The trees were also on a slight slant, leaning away from the beach. I think there is probably only one thing that could have caused all this!
We hired a little motorbike (kind of a moped with gears) for a day and went up the coast a little, to check out some of the other beaches. There are some pretty steep hills separating each of the beaches, which you have to climb up and then down the other side, which was a bit of a laugh on the moped, but the views from the top were amazing.
After a few day relaxing in Phuket it was time to move on and catch our boat to Phi-Phi!
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