Phuket
- Tara Larkai
- Oct 11, 2014
- 4 min read
So our way to Phuket was by Bangkok airways. ..One way ticket was $69. There are other budget airlines like AirAsia that is way cheaper for a one way flight but we didn't want to deal with paying extra for baggage. Prior to boarding, Bangkok airlines had a reception area in their terminal which included food, drinks etc for anyone flying their airlines for FREE. Boy were we glad we chose this airline because we were starving at that point. It was a short flight from Bangkok to phuket, approximately 1 hour. Oh and if you were wondering. ..yes they fed us again on the plane. Lol
We landed in phuket in the afternoon but it felt later due to the rain and clouds. It had been raining heavy since we left Bangkok but we weren't going to allow it to ruin our fun. Phuket airport is super small. One plane at a time type of airport. The town is small but big in a sense that it could take hours to drive to certain areas. We had originally booked a hotel near the airport but we were told that the "turnup" area was patong, which was south of the airport. There are hotel, tour and transportation agents at the airport so we were able to book another hotel in the "happening patong" and also get a taxi. It was an hour and half drive to patong. The drive was very scenic...breathtaking view of hills and mountains then of course the beautiful turquoise Andaman Sea around the island. It's a nice way to see the island of phuket.
Patong is a cute little area. There are lots of bars, restaurants, hotels and stores. Hotels here are very expensive because this is one of the most popular/tourist areas in Phuket. After checking into our hotel and refreshing up, we headed out to to explore the area. The beach was wet and dead because of the rain so we couldn't get our beach time in so we went to the food and drink festival just a block from the beach.
The lively food and drink festival happens every evening featuring plenty of fresh seafood such as fish, shrimps, squid, lobster, crab etc and plenty of exotic drinks. Prices were reasonable too and there was a live band singing old school jams. It is an outdoor festival setup like a beach bar. After a couple of drinks, you start to ignore the horrible singing and get in the groove. It was a good way to spend our night. I was so wasted, I do not recall how I made it back to the hotel although our hotel was right next door.
We had only one night in Phuket so the next morning before our flight to the 3rd leg of our trip, we decided to get in as much as we could before we left. After a very delicious breakfast spread at the hotel, we decided to head out to Chalong to see the Island's most popular landmark...The Big Buddha. Regular taxis cars are very very difficult to find in Patong like very hard. After walking several blocks from our hotel to the main streets, we still had no luck in locating a taxi so we settled for their version of a tuk tuk. The drive to see the big Buddha was an hour long, south of Patong. Our driver was very nice and looked like one of the indigenous people of Phuket as evident by the tribal marks on his face. The big buddha statue sits on top of the Nakkerd hills between Chalong and Kata at over 147 ft high. We saw glimpses of it during our drive there. Our driver was quite the tour guide, he stopped at a couple of places during our drive for us to take pictures. I am sure he could tell we were "instragrammers" by the way we were taking pictures of ourselves in his tuk tuk. The hills of Nakkerd provide sick 360 views of Phuket. We saw many elephant farms driving up the hill and that is also where the ATV companies are located.
The big Buddha is massive in person....I mean hugeee. It was still very early in the morning and the place had just opened so the only people around were the monks in the temple and vendors. I had on a very short dress so I was very nervous that I was going to be asked to leave by the monks since it is such a sacred place for them. But to my surprise, they did not care. I am sure they get a lot of Americans there with worse outfits. This place offers the best views of the entire Phuket. I was overwhelmed with a very strange aura the closer we got to the Buddha. I cant really describe it but I felt something. The place is very quiet and peaceful and the only noises heard are tinkling bells. After a few minutes there, we started seeing people come up to the Buddha, the first couple of people we saw freaked me out. I honestly did not know if they were indigenous to the country but they looked different from the Thai people and they had their faces painted with what it looked like cream clay. I was totally weirded out not because they looked different, but because they were acting strange too. I thought the monks had sent them up to scare us away. lol Anyway, so there are lots of gold bells that people pay a small fee for to leave their marks on, sort of like the padlocks in Paris. At the time in the morning, there was no attendant collecting money and we did not have a marker so we did not leave our mark there. Darn it!!
On our way back to the hotel, the driver decided to give us another tour and show us around Chalong for no additional fee. It was very nice of him.
After a little pool time at our hotel, Our time in Phuket had come to an end and it was time to head to the airport for our flight to Malaysia. We had prearranged for the taxi from the airport to pick us up back to the airport. Stay tuned for the ultimate scare of our trip...flying Malaysia Airlines to Malaysia.
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