Phuket Frolic !!

Phuket !!! The tropical destination that one has to be in. It's got awesome beaches and white sands. Everyone with a monotonous lifestyle has to take a week-off to visit Phuket. It gets into you seamlessly and it's soothing to the core.

I went there with a group of fun loving people and we had utmost fun in the beach and waters. Frolic in the sea, jumping for friendly waves, walking in the sun, getting awfully tanned is the way to go. Such a trip between a high-stress job (filled with projects, deliverables and meetings) gives in some positive energy. We had good fun at the beaches and also city tours gave us more information about the place.

DAY 1: The first place that we went to was the Karon view point where we could get an awesome view of this beautiful tropical island. This is more of a tourist spot with some good photo-op. We got to take a lot of pictures around here. The place was very hot, especially at midday, but the beach and the beautiful view was fabulous.
The next place that we hit was the elephant trekking. We sat on wooden stools that were placed on the elephants back and it took us around a circuit in the jungle. In the hindsight though, we did not enjoy this ride much since it was a pretty sad sight seeing the elephants struggle to carry the weight. The fact that the elephants looked tired and old did not make us feel better either. My recommendation would be to avoid this, especially if you are an animal lover.

The next stop was the Phuket shooting range. They gave us earplugs to protect us from the gunshot sounds. Some of us did the shooting and it was real fun to be there.

We were strolling around the place for a while and the tour guide took us to this beautiful temple called Chalong temple. This was one of the most beautifully made temples I have ever seen. The name 'Chalong' means 'festival' in Thai - many years ago the area was named 'Chalang' after locals, fearing Burmese invaders, had moved from Thalang district. Though we dint get to go inside we enjoyed the view of it from outside. The Chalong temple had a luck hole where fireworks can be burst for good fortune or luck. We did light up a few inside but not sure what luck or fortune we might come across :)
We took a lot of pictures in and around this place but we were getting late to see the Big Buddha which was supposed to be very scenic during sunset. Next stop was at the Big Buddha. The statue was huge but still incomplete though. This statue is one of the revered landmarks in Phuket. We had some nice Thai tender coconut which was heavenly. We moved from that place because it was about to rain. We stopped at the highway to have a super view of Phuket where the sea met the sky, The Horizon. We clicked a few pictures here and drove towards the hotel.
The day was long and we were all dead tired. We decided to have dinner and sleep early as we had an island hopping tour the next day.


DAY2 : Right from the start, we were all excited about this as we've heard people say that these islands were supposed to be fabulous. We had taken a island tour package which included Phi-Phi island, Maya bay and Khai island. We started at around 7.45 from our hotel heading towards the ferry terminal. A mini bus took us to the ferry terminal were there were lots of groups waiting for their ferries to arrive. When it was our turn, we all jumped into the ferry for a speedy ride. The sea is generally rough and this is when you feel you breakfast back in your mouth. It was a fun ride and after an hour or so we reached the most beautiful place we have ever seen and that was the Maya bay.

This beach had blue-green water with a white shore. It was a heavenly experience to sit on the beach and watch the waters. This was one of the places that was captured in the movie, The Beach. This beach is considered to be the tropical paradise beach and by all means it was. Very calm and smooth. We jumped into water and enjoyed the calmness and clicked a lot of pictures. The day started with a bright and elegant beach. After an hour or so we were asked to go back to the boats to ride to Phi-Phi Lay, which was another very beautiful place to see.


After a short ride we reached the Viking caves. We were not allowed to get off the boat as it was a private property and these people manufactured the product "birds nest".
We were taken to the mid waters to do snorkelling but since it was 2m deep and none of us were swimmers it was a bit difficult and intimidating to say the least. Though there were not much corals to see but we heard from other people that there were cute fishes that they could see. Then we went to Phi-Phi Don which was also another very calm beach. This beach had a restaurant and we were provided with buffet lunch. Being a vegetarian is not easy and with usual difficulty, I had to look for vegetarian food to fill my stomach. But yes I got some amazing Thai vege food with french fries. We were left to hang around this place for a while before we left to the Khai island.

We reached Khai island in about 20 minutes. This is a very small island surrounded by waters and is 15 minutes away from Phuket. It was an isolated place and we were dropped in there to do some snorkelling. Not much of it but we could see small fishes and some rocks. It was more of a relaxing place where beachchairs and umbrellas were placed. It was extremely hot and we are got maximum suntanned there. The place was very beautiful with green waters again. It was a bit cloudy after a while and we all returned to the chairs and got ready to leave. The speedboat ride was a very short one to Phuket. We came back to our rooms to freshen up a bit.

After a while we all decided to walk in the streets of Phuket to get the feel of night life around. We walked into Bangla street which was very loud and crowded. All the pubs and clubs had pole dancers. We helped ourselves with a drink and walked back to the hotel to crash for the night.

DAY 3: We woke up early and rented motorbikes to so some beach hopping. We enjoyed our bike ride and there was something funny with the road rules there. We had to travel in the right and then left in different roads. And the gasoline pumps was something that was totally different as well. They did not have petrol stations but rather gasoline stalls. We filled up our bikes and headed towards Karon beach. It was around 9am in the morning and the beach was empty. We parked our bikes in one corner and jumped into the beach. It was a nice cloudy morning. We had awesome fun in the beach and after a while we decided to leave the place. Some of us wanted to do water activities in Patong beach so we headed towards Patong. On the way some of us though it would be great to visit Kamala beach which was supposed to be one of the beaches that was very calm and beautiful. We headed towards Kamala beach. It was a quite a long ride to the beach on wide roads, mountains, small lanes etc. We had difficulty in finding the route to the beach but we managed to find it at last. It was more like a backpacking experience this time where we were goin to a place which we had no clue of. We enjoyed each and every bit of it. At last we reached the place. The place was not as good as we expected. The only good thing about this beach when compared to the others was that this beach had beds and cozy pillows right near the beach with umbrellas. Just a look at the beach and some photo click we returned back to Patong beach. Some of us decided on jet-skiing and para-sailing. It was a new experience with these water activities. This took about 2 hours and we rode back to the hotel to freshen up for the long awaited massage. Massages and spas are very common and famous in Thailand. We had booked an appointment with a local spa. We took an assortment of Thai massage, foot massage, oil massage and back & shoulders massage. The feedback from every one of us was indeed very good. After this, we packed and checked out from the hotel and flew back to Singapore with some nice memories and heavy heart to get back to work the next day.

Phuket Rocks !!!