Keep calm and smile...

Thong Ta Resort is in the Christmas spirit.  :)

This morning we checked out of Thong Ta Resort and took the shuttle back to the airport.  We found the food court tucked into a corner of the airport and had my first pad thai in Thailand for breakfast.  It had giant whole shrimp served with it (eyeballs, antennae, etc), and if you have ever read my blog before you know how that freaks me out.  :)  Then I made the mistake of looking closer at the pad thai, and noticed miniscule whole shrimp fried up in it! By miniscule I mean about the size of my thumbnail; I have never seen shrimp so small.  I probably ate a bunch of them before noticing, but of course once I saw them I had to pick them all out…  :D  For the rest of the trip I am just going to try not to look at my food too closely.  Ha!

Pad Thai in Thailand!

The beautiful gardens of the Bangkok airport.

After breakfast, we still had about an hour before our flight took off, and we noticed the other side of the food court had a lovely view of the gardens and shrine of the airport.  So we sat there and used the internet for a while before heading to our gate.

Our short flight on Thai Smile airlines was uneventful, but they sure were into the “smile” part of it.  Every item they gave us, from water bottles to snacks encouraged us to smile…

Seriously, even the VOMIT BAGS tell you to smile...

We landed and took a taxi to the south end of Phuket to the town/beach of Kata, where we will stay for 3 days.  About halfway there the driver stopped and said he needs to go into a building for a minute.  As soon as he left the car, a woman came out of the building and started asking us about if we needed her to reserve a flight or a ferry off of Phuket, or hotels on the other islands, etc.  Looks like we had arrived an a “fleecing station” that drivers stop at to get commissions…  We told her we already have our flights, hotels, and ferries booked.  Then she asked if we wanted a tour of “James Bond Island,” which I guess is a famous island here.  Since we didn’t have anything specific planned for our time on Phuket, this sounded fine to us.  So everybody got their commission, though I usually don’t buy at “fleecing stations” out of principle.  :)

Also on the way to Kata we could see the Big Buddha looking benevolently down on us from his mountaintop; supposedly one can see him from over half of the island.  After checking in at the Metadee Resort, we walked down the street in search of lunch and mopeds.  We had lunch in a cute little “Swiss Thai” café, which seemed an odd combination… I had a delicious spicy red curry chicken, which was not at all sugary or creamy like Thai curries in the US; it was really tasty, and had a nice combination of sweet, fresh, and spicy flavors.

After lunch we rented two mopeds to drive around the island a bit.  Lonely Planet had recommended a sunset drive down to Rawai, the southernmost beach on Phuket.  So we started down the road, and within five minutes of setting out, it started pouring rain.  We pulled over at a restaurant high on a cliff and had a coconut smoothie (IN the coconut!) and another Thai iced tea, which is just called “tea with milk” here.

Gavin enjoys a coconut smoothie while we wait out the rain.

The rain stopped in a few minutes, so we set out again.  We stopped at the first small beach we saw, with soft, golden sand, smooth-as-glass water and a mini-karst to climb on.

A cute little beach between Kata and Rawai.

Obligatory yoga pose on the beach.  :)

We continue on to Rawai, where the beaches were fill less with beach-goers and more with colorful, tourist-toting long tail boats, called this because the propeller is on a long pole extended away from the body of the boat.  We walked down the beach for a while, then we decided that instead of going back to the hotel we would drive to see Big Buddha.

Long tail boats anchored on the beach in Rawai.

At this point we had been driving the mopeds for about 45 minutes, and we noticed we were starting to acquire some of the “habits” of the locals already.  We did some lane splitting, passing on the shoulder, driving on the sidewalk when the traffic was stopped on the road…  I guess it didn’t take us long to assimilate.  :)

Big Buddha was just that; a giant Buddha statue on the top of a mountain, with a smaller golden Buddha behind it.  We arrived just a little before sunset, perfect timing!  They had a “clothing check” station before we could get near the statue, and they made me cover my shoulders with a scarf.  But before I had even reached the clothing check area I had come out of the restroom to find about ten monks walking down from the temple. (one was smoking a cigarette while texting on his cell phone!)  So pretty much all the monks in the place saw my shoulders uncovered anyway.  :)

Walking up the hill to the Big Buddha.

Big Buddha with the little golden Buddha behind.

View of Phuket Town from Big Buddha.

A rainbow showed up while we were up there!

There were a few gongs and bells that one could
make ring by rubbing your hands on the really fast
to create a vibration.  I NEVER figured out the
trick to doing it, and I tried every one. :)

The sunset behind Big Buddha.

Gavin's self-titled "artsy photo." There were
hundreds of these little bells hung around Big Buddha,
all with something written on the tag hanging below
the clapper.

The golden Buddha at sunset.

After visiting Big Buddha, we headed back to Kata, now having to drive in the dark.  After returning our mopeds, we walked down to the Kata beach. The beach parallel to the street was lined with dozens of street food stalls, with a small break in the middle for some souvenir stalls.  Most of them were variations on the theme “fried XXXX on a stick," but we found a stall that was making fresh fried noodles. We watched him make the noodles, and I unfortunately saw him put a massive handful of those tiny shrimp in it!  We sat at a little plastic table on the edge of the beach, and I couldn’t see very well since the light was low, so I chose to “forget” about the tiny shrimp…

At the end of the market evidently is where the people with the “cool” cars hang out.  Check out these fine specimens…

Seriously, this is ridiculous.

Back seat passengers get champagne with a build in champagne glass rack...

And front seat passenger and possibly driver get the hard liquor built into the
dash.  AND guess what kind of car this is.... a TOYOTA COROLA!!!!  HAHA!

Do you see what I see?

My NEXT CAR, that's what!!! Hello Kitty themed low rider pickup,
complete with suicide doors!

After "admiring" the tricked out cars, we started walking back to the hotel, and we saw a food stall with a crowd around it.  I realized that the guy was making little ice cream “rollups” to order, so I decided we needed to have dessert.  We ordered mango, and watched the vendor turn whole milk/cream and a few pieces of mango into a yummy fresh ice cream!

He started with mangoes and a little milk/cream/sugar liquid on his
freezing cold counter.

He chopped the mangoes and kept spreading the liquid on the counter,
letting more and more of it freeze solid.

Once it was mostly hard he spread it thin over the counter.

Then he rolled it up!

Hand made mango ice cream rolls, complete with a
little Hello Kitty frosting figure on top.  :)

I decided a cheap massage would be a great way to end the night, but Gavin was fading fast; neither of us had gotten a good night’s sleep the night before, but 3 Thai iced teas I drank during the day (and me who never drinks caffeine) was keeping me going.  So we went back to the hotel to turn in; Gavin was passed out as soon as his head hit the pillow. So we ended our first busy and jet-lagged day in Phuket.