Chiang Mai to Phuket

We started the day early with an hour bike ride on our scooters.  We had to take advantage of our 24 hour rental. We rode through the streets and alleyways . Once when we stopped I mentioned to the group that we needed to look for somewhere shady so that we could take a group picture.  Doug, who was leading us, stopped in an alley with graffiti asking, “Is this OK?” He interpreted my shady as ‘shady’ and not as “in the shade”, which is what I meant.  It was so funny! So then we went on the hunt for a shady shady location so that we could have even lighting and really show the area that we were riding in. Its going to be a joke for a long time! We like to have all of our pictures in shady locations!

After our scooter ride the boys dropped the girls off at the hotel and went back to deal with returning the bikes. They were charged a little extra because of Brian’s incident and the scraped sides — which was just fine. We relaxed for several hours either in our hotel rooms packing up or in the Club drinking soda and eating red velvet cake and fruit tarts. Chris worked out and I tried to take a nap but was unsuccessful. We took a big van to the airport and the hotel comped our transportation because there was a time when the front desk was busy when Brian needed something. They were so nice to Brian. Terri and I were laughing because every time he picked up a suitcase they quickly took it from him to pack in the van. This happened multiple times. We checked in at the airport and waited for our flight - which left at 2:10.

We arrived in Phuket and picked up our two rental cars. Chris, Brian, Terri and I were car buddies for the duration of our Phuket adventures. We followed our google maps along the beach town of Naithon to get us to our house —- which was amazing!! A really amazing infinity pool right in the main courtyard entrance. We checked out the rooms, settled in and then headed out for dinner. I was surprised that Phuket reminded me so much of Mexico. Really poor run down areas, 7-11’s, and markets everywhere. The parking always seemed precarious and there were so many scooters. Plus it lacked a lot of the Asian looking architecture that we saw in Chiang Mai and Bangkok. There were still so many Thai/European restaurants and lots of Massage places— a few of our favorite names were ‘Perfect Massage’ and ‘The Best Massage’. We avoided them and headed to a Thai place for dinner. The Thai server didn’t seem to like us too much — especially when we asked for separate checks (which we’ve been able to do just fine so far). She dramatically ripped up the paper she had started on and started all over. Boy that was asking a lot. Most of the servers have been able to understand our English really well. All of the menus have been in English too. I ordered two entrees. Fried rice which was SO good and green curry which was hot but good. Chris got massaman- his usual. We ordered fruit mango smoothie type drinks that were good too- just not as sweet as drinks served in the US. One funny thing that happened during dinner was Doug texting back-and-forth with the leader for our next days adventure. He found out some information on how we could rent our own boat from a display at the airport and this woman was feverishly trying to seal the deal tonight. She had sent somebody to meet us where we were at the restaurant to get the money. We were all a little worried by this and when Doug voiced it she was irate. She hung up on him and then started texting him ‘Thai man never lie to woman’.  It was pretty funny. We talked it over and after being told that she has been in business for 15 years with a great record decided we would pay half tonight and half tomorrow. Yikes. While the boys were meeting and paying, the girls headed to the night market next door - nothing great just basic things that Thai people might need for clothing and necessities. Interestingly we saw some children’s clothes with Gymboree tags that were clearly not Gymboree clothes.