Lessons Learned in Phuket

The beginning of my trip will be the most vacation like portion of my two month journey. I did this because who doesn't want to start with beaches, and the fact that it would make it the most expensive part, so I would be more and more pleasantly surprised by costs as I went along. The beginning is also when I guessed I would make the most mistakes and I think it is wise to make those where the tourist road is well traveled.

These mistakes I speak of started about 20 minutes after I got off the plane. I am ashamed to admit it, but I managed to lose an ATM card immediately. In Thailand the ATM gives you your money before your card, which is opposite of what I am used to, then steals the card after five seconds if you don't take it. Luckily I am pretty paranoid about stuff like that, so I had a backup and was able to learn my first lesson with minimal damage.

My second lesson came shortly there after. The Phuket airport is quite far away from Patong Beach where I was staying, so I knew that I wanted to try to split the cab with someone. I started walking around talking to the foreigners to see if anyone else had the same idea. I quickly met a friendly British guy and we tried to talk the cab drivers down a bit, but they didn't go quite as low as we had hoped so we booked a mini bus.
They told us to wait for a bit, a bit turned into 20 minutes, this is when the taxi drivers that work for the same company started to approach us and tell us that it would be at least another 40 minutes before the bus would fill up and they would leave. They were no longer willing to negotiate the price. We waited another 20 minutes and realized that we might never leave, so we got a taxi. Lesson learned – make sure there is always a departure time.

I checked into my hostel, Bodega, which was fantastic, and met up with a friend from Korea, Garreth. We spent some time walking around the city and the rest of the day on the beach where I got properly sunburned despite applying sunscreen four times. Next lesson – aloe is very, very expensive in Thailand, so bring your own. We went out for drinks in evening, which definitely gave me a window into the seediness that is Patong Beach - creepy old men and ping pong shows are everywhere! I still had a great time, but I would recommend staying on a different beach.

The following day I spent some more time at the beach, but this time under an umbrella. On Patong beach someone comes along to try to sell you something every ten seconds. We found this super annoying till the aloe lady came along. She had giant, fresh, cold aloe leaves that for the price of 200 baht she would give you the full body rubdown. Garreth talked her down to 50, and after watching his I had to get one myself. I was left gooey, chunky, and cool. It was the best 50 baht I had spent yet.

The next day we went on an island hopping and snorkeling tour. The best part about it was that almost our entire boat was a missionary group from Korea. They absolutely loved that we could understand a bit of Korean. Having a small

window into Korean culture I had an idea of what was to come on the island. Most Koreans don't know how to swim and most beaches in Korea are not covered with bikinis, but rather fully clothed people that go about waist deep into the water. The group was made up of about 25 people, all fully clothed, and all wearing life jackets. Before getting into the water they all did the calisthenics routine that I had seen my Korean students do before every gym class while the group leader shouted out the commands. The entire beach stared.

When we got back to Phuket we headed for the food stalls. It was the cheapest and the best food of my trip so far. I met up with some girls from the hostel and spent the rest of the evening dancing.

Next stop: Koh Phi Phi