We found the Mermaid Resort - which is the first place you come to when you enter Patong - around 11pm - the woman at reception told us that we were "very late very late" to which I tried to tell her our flight was delayed - she didnt understand so I gave up - too hard. We got our key and went to our roomss - very nice - mini bar big king bed and a pool out side our room to dive into. Yes !!!
The next two days concisted off getting up at 9am having breakfast, walk into town (10min), have lunch and hit the beach - I have to say the beach is awesome - White sand and the water is warm and buitful. Deck chairs are availble to hire, they come with two unbralliers and a table, all this for 140 baht.
We moved to a new hotel today PS2 - half the price of Mermaids. As we were walking to our room Dave noticed the pool with 4 topless tourists (woman). He quickly put his bags away and went for a swim.
Ko Yao
After staying 6 nights in Patong Beach in Phuket we thought it would be nice to get out of a the hustle and bustle and head for a quiet island - we chose Ko Yao.
Talking about hustle and bustle - I counted the number of times I got asked if I wanted a taxi or a tuk tuk in Patong - 31 in the space of one hour. I got asked if I wanted a suite made 10 times and massagers 15 times. these guy just dont stop hastling you. Any how...
We got a bus from Patong to Phuket town which only cost 50 baht each ($NZ 2) but half way there we realised we had left out spare visa card and 3000 baht in the safe. So back we went on another bus to see if it was still in the safe back at the hotel....we were very surprised and incredibly lucky to find that it had indeed been found in our safe - Cheers to PS2 Hotel - I gave them a big thank you and 100 baht - NZ $4 - I know a big spender, some things dont change... We had to catch another bus back to Phuket Town and then another local bus (open air - with bench seats down each side and a plank of wood down the centre for more seating!) to the pier where our ferry for Ko Yao departed from. This 'bus' turned out to be kind of like a courier and stopped throughout the journey to pick up 18 bags of onions, two old motorcycle wheels, 4 bags of mail and some bike parts - it took forever and there was 16 people crammed into a area around 5 - 8 feet. Erin had a dirty old man touching her up most of the way. Gross.
An hour or so we got to our destination - which at the time did NOT look too spectacular (we thought lonely planet was lying again) it was late afternoon, overcast and low tide so the beaches looked crappy - and we were tired, then to top it off - despite the lonely planet guide saying tuk-tuks should only cost 50baht anywhere on the island, the set charge was 160baht... grrrr.
We're currently staying at 'Tabeak View Point bungalows' and it is the best place we have stayed at so far. The owners are excellent hosts (they also have shit-loads of cats and kittens - yay!) and is bloody cheap - 600baht ($25 nzd) per night but there is no hot water or a TV and its up a 100 meter dirt road which has a lot of steps... However, the view and tranquility defininately make up for all that! We're staying for a week (2 more nights to go) before heading back to the mainland, to a place called 'Krabi'
View from the deck View from our deck in the morning
On our second day the owner took us (for Free !!) to neighbouring island that has a small beach about 20 minutes away in his long-tail boat. We spent the day swimming and generally being lazy, whilst he cooked fresh crabs and prawns on an open-fire bbq! Served with fried rice - was a choice-as feed!
We've met a English couple at our bungalows who we've been out for a few meals and drinks with, and to make things a bit cheaper we teamed up and split a tour to some other neighbouring islands and caves etc. Tours around these parts are blimmin expensive otherwise!
V
Shots of the caves from the long boat
Inside the caves
The very kind owners of our Bungalow let us use their motorcycle. so we wnet into town today as its about 4 or 5 kms away from where we are staying. Lets just say that I've never riden a motorcycle before and with erin on the back it made for a very interesting ride.
Dave on the motor bike - god help us !!!
We will update you all again early next week - when we get to Krabi.
Phuket - Patong
Hi all
We flew into Phuket on Tuesday - our flight was delayed two hours so after an hour flight we landed at Phuket airport and got a taxi (who sped at 130 km the whole way - white knuckle stuff) to Patong.
We found the Mermaid Resort - which is the first place you come to when you enter Patong - around 11pm - the woman at reception told us that we were "very late very late" to which I tried to tell her our flight was delayed - she didnt understand so I gave up - too hard. We got our key and went to our roomss - very nice - mini bar big king bed and a pool out side our room to dive into. Yes !!!
The next two days concisted off getting up at 9am having breakfast, walk into town (10min), have lunch and hit the beach - I have to say the beach is awesome - White sand and the water is warm and buitful. Deck chairs are availble to hire, they come with two unbralliers and a table, all this for 140 baht.
We moved to a new hotel today PS2 - half the price of Mermaids. As we were walking to our room Dave noticed the pool with 4 topless tourists (woman). He quickly put his bags away and went for a swim.
Touristy Day
Today (Monday) we got up early, went and found some breakfast - good old Mcdonalds was really the only appealing option... Spent a good 1-2 hours trying to update this website but managed to lose half of our work thanks to the crappy iternet connection and our hotel - so went and caught a Skytrain (mono-rail) to the part of Bangkok where longtail boat tours go from. Paid for too much for a longtail boat tour through the river and surrounding canals to the 'Temple of Dawn' or 'Wat Arun' as it's known here.
The river and canals are filthy and full of rubbish, catfish and these cool water lizard things that look like a bright green, miniature kimodo dragons - when I say miniature, they're still about 2-3 ft long. People still live on the canals in very dodgy looking stilt-houses/shacks, we even saw several groups of kids swimming in the murky canals... gross. When we were passing a little temple in the riverboat, a little old thai woman extended a basket of bread down to us, (apparently baked by monks) we paid 10baht for a loaf to feed to the hundreds of catfish around us. It's supposed to be good luck, and was pretty cool - you can hold the bread and they grab it from your hand.
Once we find the photos we'll post some more about this day... stay tuned!
