Black tip reef shark. These guys are very timid and we were lucky to get this close.
I thought Thailand would be just as hot and muggy as Singapore but was pleasantly surprised. It was warm, but somewhat overcast and with a soft cooling breeze. We were lucky to have pleasant weather as this is the rainy season and it isn’t always this nice. It seemed like another great start to the next leg of the journey. We had a long taxi ride to the resort. The roads are similar to Bali but with a tad fewer motorbikes and slightly bigger roads. De did at one point get up to 120 kph, but it was short lived and the trip to the resort at Karon beach lasted about a half hour. When we first saw the resort we were blown away. I thought that the driver dropped us off at the wrong place. But no, this was it.
Dennis on the King Cruiser wreck that sank off Phuket. It was a transport ferry that went down in 1997.
Dennis asked how much I got this place for and I said about $40 US/night, and his comment was “that cant be”. I knew prices were cheap in Thailand because I was scouting the internet to find the hotel we got. I picked this one because it has two full size beds in the room. But wow, this was a 5-star resort. The grounds are beautiful and very rich looking. It has three pools, a swim-up bar, huge buffet style restaurant with entertainment, and an awesome breakfast for $10 us.
We checked in after businesses were closed so we had to wait until morning to find diving. We thought it would be easy, but after the dive boat we had lined up canceled the morning dive via email, we were told by them we would not find anything last minute. That turned out to be correct and we had a whole day to burn before we could dive. We walked all around the beach front which was not all that great; a little rundown and the beach had warning signs about swimming.
Very large lion fish. The biggest one I saw. These guys are deadly poisonous.
Apparently Karon beach has a strong rip current. To top it off, Dennis was about to cross the street and just grazed one of those many scooters going by. He was not really hurt, just a bruise, but it sent the girl on the bike down hard on the blacktop. She got up ok but was scraped up and went to the hospital. The police were very nice and only took a statement from us, however we lost about an hour and a half dealing with that.
We were able to find a dive boat going out the next morning for a discounted (low season) over night trip to Phi Phi Island and things were looking up. We had a day of great diving and that night we were dropped of on the island. Phi Phi Island is a small “party” island well off the coast of Phuket.
A sleeping Green sea turtle.
The only things to do there are drink and eat, and there are lots of bars and live entertainment. The fire twirling show was incredible. Our room on the island was not bad, but the shower water smelled funny and tasted like seawater. I guess that is what you get on a tiny island far from the main land.
After we got back the next day we got a small hotel in the town of Phuket and decided to grab a flight in the morning to Bangkok instead of taking the bus. The bus idea would have given us the sights of the country along the way, but we were discouraged because the locals said it is a grueling 13 hour trip. By plane we made it in about an hour.
