As I mentioned in my previous blog, we walked home after school to get packed up to go to Phuket for the weekend. We left the apartments around 5:30 and had a two hour taxi ride to the airport and checked in as soon as we arrived. We had a bit of time before our flight when we got there so we had supper at the food court and got ice cream! When it was time to board our plane we went through the ticket counter and had to take a bus to our plane. When we got to the plane we boarded the plane from outside (went up stairs right into the plane). I had never boarded a plane like that so I was excited! The flight went by quickly and was a lot smoother than our flights to and from Chiang Mai, and there were no stinky pork buns!
We arrived in Phuket around 10:45 and got a taxi/van to take us from the airport to our hotel. On our way to the hotel the taxi driver said that we had to stop at their travel agency and that we had to go inside to sign something for the taxi ride. Geordie went in because we were a little sceptical of the situation. He came out and showed us a brochure he found of a tour we could take on Saturday morning. The tour was going to take us to Koh Phi Phi (an island) and Maya Bay (an island where The Beach was filmed). It sounded awesome, so we gave a 1000 baht ($30) deposit. From the travel agency we went to our hotel. It was BEAUTIFUL!!! We went up to the rooms and they were gorgeous, everything was made with dark wood and granite. Just when we walked in the room our phone rang... it was the travel agent that we booked our tour with. She was phoning to tell me that she had to cancel our tour because there weren’t enough boats to take us to the islands. I immediately told her to bring our deposit back to our apartment ASAP. After that phone call we went down to the hotel lobby where there was a tour information booth. The booth was closed but we insisted that we wanted to book something so the receptionist phoned their travel agent at home... she was in the shower, lol. I explained what had happened with our other tour and she helped us book another one. We booked a similar tour going to the same islands. Once we got that sorted out we went up to our rooms and figured out our sleeping arrangements. We ended up getting a cot in our room so everyone could have their own bed. We went back to our own rooms to get ready for bed and 15 minutes later Amanda knocked on our door to show us that they had actually dropped off the 1000 baht! I was so excited, everything was falling back in to place and we were booked in for an awesome tour the next morning. By this time it was 2:30am and we were all exhausted and had to be up at 6am to go on our tour so we went straight to bed (in very comfortable beds)!
Saturday, June 18
6am is way too early to wake up on a Saturday morning after you went to bed at 2:30am... but we did it! We rolled out of bed and got ready to go on the tour to Koh Phi Phi and Maya Bay. We were just finishing packing our bags when Geordie came over to our room to inform us that the travel agent phoned and said our tour was CANCELLED!!! I just about blew a fuse... actually, I’m pretty sure I did! We were all furious, so we decided to go down for breakfast to cool off. Breakfast was included with our room, it was amazing! They had everything you could think of – bacon, eggs, toast, pancakes, French toast, fruit, potatoes... and the list goes on and on! During breakfast I was on the phone with the travel agent trying to figure out a tour we could go on, but by this time it was too late to get on any of the day tours. I “politely” reminded her that this was her fault and that there should be some compensation for what had happened. She didn’t care. We decided to take a taxi to the pier ourselves to hop on a boat... but of course when we got there all of the boats were gone and there weren’t any more going until 1:30... but the boats that left at 1:30 weren’t coming back until the following day. There was one boat leaving shortly after we arrived and we begged the driver to let us go, but apparently it was too full so they drove away right in front of us. Oh they also said we could book a private boat which would cost 18 000 baht ($600 CDN)!!! By this time we were tired, frustrated and annoyed, so we took another taxi back to our hotel. When we arrived at the hotel the travel agent was at work... I did not want to look at her, so Jill went and talked to her. We ended up booking a different tour to do in the afternoon. The tour didn’t leave until 12:45pm so we sat by the pool from 11-12:30. The pool was beautiful and the weather was gorgeous. They had really comfortable lounging chairs so we sat in those for a while and then spent some time in the pool. At 12:30 we walked down to the main road to meet the tour bus. We had an hour and a half drive to a Monkey Cave Temple and Sleeping Buddha. We all slept on the way there. At the Cave Temple thing there were wild monkeys roaming around outside. Geordie wanted to feed them but we were too scared and Amanda wouldn’t let him! It was cool to see, but really, who wants rabies?! It started raining so we decided to go in and check out the cave. It was SO cool. The structure itself was amazing. Geordie, Amanda, Jill & I climbed to the top of the cave, it was quite the hike but we did it... we even saw bats along the way and didn’t turn back!
After the cave we had another short bus ride to the pier where we got on a long-tailed boat to tour around Phag-Nga Bay. It wasn’t the most pleasant boat ride... there was water splashing into the boat and we all got pretty wet, but it wasn’t a big deal! Our first top was at James Bond Island. There were small market stands in the middle of the island where people were mostly selling jewellery. The island itself was fairly small and the view was amazing. There was a beautiful beach and massive rock formations; it was like something you would see on a postcard. We looked around for a while and had a little photo shoot before getting back on the boat to continue on our tour! Our next stop was at a gypsy village. It was a village built solely on stilts. There were a lot more buildings than we expected. There were a lot of little market stands inside the buildings, and there was also a school on stilts! It was neat to see, but a little bit depressing to see how differently they live their lives. I had a hard time believing people actually lived there. After the village we had a 45 minute boat ride back to the pier. The scenery and view was amazing, and it was cooling off a little bit so it was nice to breathe in some fresh air rather than hot and humid air. When we got back to the pier we hopped back on the bus for the hour and a half bus ride back to the hotel. We all slept on the bus again! The bus driver drove right past our drop off point and wouldn’t go back, so we had about a 20 minute walk back to the hotel. Ugh. So frustrating!
We got back to the hotel around 8:15 and went up to our rooms to shower and get ready to go out for supper! We left the hotel around 9:30 and walked around looking for a cool place to eat. We ended up finding a restaurant called the Rock Hard Cafe. It was in the middle of a busy party street so the atmosphere was really cool and the food was really good! Amanda and I shared a clubhouse sandwich and nachos... everything was delicious! After supper we went to check out a couple of bars as we had intentions of going out for the night. We found one good place that gave us a ticket to buy one get one free so we went in! Jill & I used her ticket and got the same drink. As soon as we took our first sip we immediately knew that it was just juice so we went back and asked the bartender about it. He disagreed but added a tiny splash in each of our glasses and told us to go away! So we did... all five of us. We were planning on going down to walk by the beach but we were all too tired so we started walking back to the hotel. On the way home we decided to stop and get foot massages! It felt SO good and was so relaxing... we were all falling asleep in the chairs. After our massages we walked back to our hotel and went straight to bed, as it was 1:30am!
Sunday, June 19
We were all really excited to sleep in this morning, but for me sleeping in was only until 8:00 apparently. Everyone else was still sleeping so I quietly got ready and went to lay by the pool while I waited for everyone to wake up. It was already SO hot when I went down! I was laying there for about 15 minutes and my body was already so warm and I felt like I was burning. Thankfully Jill came down around 9:30 and we went in for breakfast. Amanda and Geordie had just come down for breakfast as well so we chatted with them while we ate and then we all went back out to the pool. We hung out at the pool until 11:00 tanning, swimming and playing a little bit of volleyball. Yes, I even played even though I am the most uncoordinated person on earth! We went up to our rooms to pack up and check out. The hotel allowed us to leave our bags at the front desk for the day. Once we got organized we walked down to the main road and took a tuk-tuk to the beach. The beach was beautiful! There was an amazing view and the lounging chairs were super comfy. The sun was very hot but it was fairly windy so it was quite comfortable. We tanned on the chairs until 1:45 and then Jill and I took a walk down the beach. There wasn’t anything exciting so we just took a few pictures in the sand and went back to where Amanda, Geordie and Tori were sitting. The five of us had a little photo shoot and then we grabbed a tuk-tuk back to the hotel at 2:00. When we got back to the hotel we all showered off in the pool showers since we were all full of sand and salt water, and then a taxi picked us up to take us to the airport at 2:30.
We checked in first thing when we got to the airport. We had no problems on the way there on Friday, but for some reason our suitcase was overweight on the way back! We don’t understand why, because we didn’t shop or add anything extra to the suitcase. We had to fill our carry-on bags and reusable shopping bags to take as carry-on bags with us in order for them to allow our suitcases on the plane! While this was going on, a little boy puked everywhere and it splattered on Geordie’s foot! Ewww. Once that was all over we grabbed Subway for lunch and boarded the plane.
When we finally took off we had an AMAZING view of Phuket and other islands. It was nothing like I have ever seen. It was a very smooth flight and the landing wasn’t too rough either. When we got back to Bangkok we took a taxi back to the apartment, quickly dropped of our bags and went to the Big C to grocery shop one last time and get snacks for on the plane. Once we finished shopping we were planning on going to Swenson’s to get ice cream fondue, but when we got down there it was closed! We decided to settle for Dairy Queen so we walked over there... and it was closed too! KFC was the only place still open that sold ice cream and we were desperate so we got some from there. I don’t know if life would have went on if we didn’t get any ice cream! We had bought quite a few groceries so we took a taxi back to the apartment, which only took about two minutes and only cost 40 baht (just over $1). When we got back we unpacked our bags from the weekend and got things ready for our last week at Lertlah!
We had a very rough start to our weekend and there were a LOT of bumps along the way, but it turned out to be a great weekend with great friends. We had our minds set on getting a lot of sun and we definitely got that on Sunday, and we have the burns to show it! It was a great ending to our Thailand adventures!
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