Day 3: Boys Day Out!

Today was officially Boys Day as the girls were having a Girls Day, doing girly things like getting manicures and pedicures (on the other hand there's plenty of ladyboy's who would do the same thing) anyway, Shaun and I set out around 10:30am to connect with the hotel's free shuttle bus into Patong, not surprisingly we ended up on deckchairs right on the beach to drink some beers and be hassled by touts trying to sell us fake The North Face bags. Soon after we made our way into the alleyways of Patong and stumbled upon a quaint little restaurant where we sat in and ordered the awesome Thai dish... Pad Thai!

We caught a tuk-tuk to Karon Beach which is a place I had planned to visit, which is the next beach down from Patong. Turned out to be much less touristy and only 1 main street with lots of clothing and jewellery stores. Shaun and I relaxed on Karon Beach for at least an hour or two, under a huge purple beach umbrella we lazed drinking more Singha's.. bought a few metres behind us in a makeshift bar. Funny how anywhere in Australia you'd need council permission to erect a place of business, but anyone seems to be setting up shop almost anywhere they want here! I ended up going for a swim even though I didn't bring bathers, which meant that afterwards I was walking around holding my shirt as to not get it soaked. It's cool how you can just be chillin on the beach and people will walk past with snacks for you to buy! Shaun and I found a tiny ice-cream shop with air-con so we sat in there enjoying some amazing ice-creams, until heading off. We were about to catch a tuk-tuk back to Patong and even questioned this guy sitting on the back of a tuk-tuk, instead of hopping in the front.. he walked off to some brand new Nissan with leather seats and all that crap, turns out he's a taxi driver pretending to drink tuk-tuks? Was all good as we paid the same price as a dingy tuk-tuk, had wet clothes as well haha..

On the way back to our hotel we bought quite a few Beer Chang longnecks (each are 6.1%) for 38baht each! Back at the hotel we cooled off in the huge pool and played volleyball and water polo, somehow popping one of the balls and even got away with it! Still not knowing where the girls were, we decided to sit outside Shaun's room and drink some Changs, then making our way to the beach for more Changs, once spotting the pier down the beach we decided to go on that to drink more Changs and sat there four hours, took some fun photos and had good chinners (conversation). it was night time when we got back to our rooms and decided to visit the Marley Bar which we pass each time we leave and get back to our hotel. The Marley Bar was run by 2 Thai guys, had loads of reggae posters on the walls and stalls and even played good Bob Marley music, actually they were playing a Best Of cd which I have!

Marley Bar was epic!! We played free pool with the 2 Thai guys, drank more Changs and somehow talked one of the Thai guys into cooking us noodles. Now I have no idea how this came about because all we were asking for was to know if there were any food stalls nearby! Anyway we had noodles and a boiled egg each, best boiled egg we ever had! Pretty sure the bar was kept open as we were the only customers and soon as we left, the place closed! We meandered along the winding roads back to our hotel, only to find the girls there, relaxing. I'm not sure what happened next but it was good and I woke up in my own bed the next day without injury and loss of possessions.

Shaun and I waiting for the minibus to Patong.

Lunch, delicious Pad Thai.

Huge mythical statue on Karon beach.

Awesome beach umbrella.

Drinking Changs on the pier looking out into the bay.

Day 2: Phuket

Continuing on from the last blog, I arrived at Phuket airport around 9am or so, a good time to start the day! Leaving the airport was tricky, we had so many sketchy locals wanting to be our drivers, and took atleast 10 minutes to get some help finding an appropriate minibus, and were soon on our way to Thavorn Beach! My beach bungalow was pretty amazing, situated about 20 steps form the beach, in fact I could see the water from my front door! I had a double bed all to myself, a tv with a bunch of channels in Thai.. the only 2 in English which I watched was a movie channel and the Discovery Channel, strange, as it's my favourite one!

Since I had gotten to my room the quickest, and speed-settled in, I ended up in the hotel's pool's swim-up-bar (a bar in the water, with seats) and had started relaxing over a Singha beer sometime around 11am, what better start to me day?.My friends gradually rocked up 2 at a time, by then I was already onto my 2nd beer and had made difficult conversation with a bar tender; who was 30 (looked 22), had a huge dragon tattoo covering his whole back and had only recently started learning English.. so talking to him was a lot of fun :)

After the bar and many beers and Long Island Iced teas, we all went for a nap, napping longer than expected, and eventually made our way into Patong for dinner around 7pm. Catching our first tuk-tuk was really fun, they have bench seats without seatbelts, and you can dangle out of the windows or back door (which has no door) but I advise not to do this as everyone in Patong speeds and chances are someone will drive into your face/limb if you're not careful. With that said the traffic seems to work! There are signs reading "DRIVE FAST, be careful".. which is how it goes, along with a lot of horn beeping!

We ended up in a restaurant on the beach for dinner which was really nice. The ladies which showed us there were actually standing at the front of a restaurant elsewhere.. stealing competition perhaps! So we ended up somewhere nicer anyway. I had a Pineapple Smoothie for 120Baht (later finding this to be fairly expensive). After tea we walked down Bang La Road, possible the main night club/prostitute section, as you can imagine was pretty dodgy, but still entertaining! I found some stall making smoothies so I bought a Banana one which was awesome and much cheaper than the one in the restaurant.

No idea what time it was, but we knew it was getting late and decided to get some supplies from one of many 7/11 grocery stores, I stocked up on some bread and jam, Singha longnecks, milk and Hershy's chocolate. I find it weird that there was so much American candy there yet they didn't have American soft-drinks! Anyway, once we got back to our hotel we all hung out in 1 of our 3 rooms to do some light drinking, and ended up on the beach drinking some more. I think I finished all of my longnecks, and by the time I got to bed i'm pretty sure it was just after 2am!

View towards beach from hotel lobby.

One part of the hotel's pool

Awesome banana smoothie!!

My first haul from the 7/11's :)

Day 1: Adelaide/Melbs/Darwin

I had a 7:45am flight so was up by 5:30, and once at the airport found out that our flight was delayed by 5 hours.. but what can you really expect for a budget airline?! Jasmin and I wasted out time wandering around Harbour Town and at the airport, finally leaving just after 12, getting to Melbourne too late for a day-trip to the city, instead we lingered in the faux Irish pub in the main terminal, had some beers and turkish bread + dip, finally embarking the plane again for a 4 hour flight to Darwin. If you've never been, Darwin's airport is similar to Adelaide's old airport, but smaller. Weird thing is, anyone flying from Singapore into Australia have to go through Darwin.. which means it gets fairly packed while people wait for their flights!

We left the Australia at 3am, arriving in Singapore around 6:30am.. and we almost left the budget terminal before spotting our companions Shaun, Laura + Steph asleep on some benches! We woke them up very excitedly, and slowly made our way to our next check-in. I had some breakfast; a banana smoothie and scrambled eggs on toast, there were a few other interesting items on the menu.. Chicken Ham and Chicken Bacon (I had neither).. First real meal for 24 hours. We then meandered through to the Departure Lounge, spending some time on the free Internet and looking at a small store selling cute asian plush toys and keyrings.

Previously on one of the stop over points, possibly Melbourne, Jasmin had bought the latest Harry Potter novel; The Half-Blood Prince.. and once she fell asleep on the plane to Darwin, I started reading the book and found myself enthralled to its amazing story-line, so when we were leaving Singapore I made a quick dash to the book store and bought the same novel haha, the very start of the Going-To-Phuket- Harry-Potter-Book-Club.

11 hours and counting

It's official, while I sit here listening to The Wombats, there's only approx 11 hours till I fly out of Adelaide for my holiday in Phuket. I have 7 days of wonderful, tropical, monsoonal weather ahead of me, with days averaging 30degrees; nothing too warm.. or wet :) On the way I have a nice lay-over period in Melbourne where my buddey Jasmin and I will be chillaxing in the CBD doing.. anything really. I also have the same stop in Melbourne on my way back which is awesome as I thoroughly enjoy the place.

I also have an International Drivers Permit which is sweeet, I do plan on eventually getting some light mode of transport when I settle down in Edinburgh come late August, whether that be a rickety old bicycle or a sweet scooter.

So now for the details of Phuket. I'm staying in a hotel resort for my first 2 nights with my friends at Thavorn Beach, Patong. My next 4 nights will be spent in a hostel in the middle of Phuket Town.. where i'll be based, [hopefully] making trips down along the east and southern coastlines to places like Cape Panwa, Rawai Beach, Promthep Cape, Nai Harn Beach, Kata + Karon Beach.. and hopefully up to the north of the island.. I have no idea what's there and I want to find out!!

There's some popular islands a lot of tourists go to, such as Phi Phi island which is unfortunately being destroyed much thanks to unsustainable tourism, so I wont be going there. Chances are i'll stick to Phuket unless I can get a boat to a small island called Ko Racha Rai just below Rawai. Although if it's stormy I wont bother with this island.

I might try do a blog while i'm in the Phuket Town hostel, i'm sure i'll have time.

Oh wow.. only 10 hours and 59 minutes to go...