Phuket Island, Thailand

We took a flight to Phuket Island in Thailand on Sunday night. Our intent was to have 3 peaceful days at the beach. My original thoughts of Phuket were of long sandy beaches and quiet, idyllic resort towns Those ideas changed as we read the description in our guide book and heard from others including Stephanie, Andrew’s girlfriend, that they were not keen on Phuket.


We took a minibus with about 8 others down the island to our hotels. We stopped at the town of Patong after midnight, which we had read was a party town and indeed, it was raucous as we dropped off some passengers there. Our town, Karon, was next and as we pulled into the hotel, which was supposed to be on the beach, it seemed to us that we were opposite a seafood company. However, as we saw next morning, our open-air breakfast/dining area was indeed just across the road from the beach, the road being, however, the main road down the coast. The beach was long and pretty with 2 rows of beach chairs on its entire length. The town was a tourist maze of hotels of all calibers, shops and street stalls selling anything you could need, restaurants for all tastes, tattoo parlours, massage parlours etc., etc.

In spite of Karon not matching our expectations, we did have a relaxing visit. Our hotel consisted of small bungalows set in a tropical garden a bit away from the road. The rooms were clean and adequate. The hotel had a pool and Tim and I moved each day from the pool in the morning to the beach in the afternoon. The weather was hot and the sun constant. On Tuesday morning, we hired a tuk-tuk (a little minibus ) for 3 hours and went down to the end of the island, stopping at other beaches along the way A couple were smaller and quieter than ours. We were a bit annoyed at our driver in the end, as he refused to do a round trip around the tip of the island and instead brought us back the way we came. No tip for him!
On Wednesday morning, Tim went on a 6-hour snorkelling expedition to two different islands. He enjoyed that trip very much and saw a lot of fish. I walked in town, read and swam.
We enjoyed some good meals both at our hotel and in the town. We left at 5 a.m. on Thursday morning to fly to our next destination, Bangkok.

PS I used my Olympus 850SW underwater camera for the snorkelling trip. It was the very first time I had taken it underwater. I had checked and cleaned it the night before but within 20 min of being in salt water the viewfinder went dead. However it still seemed to work so I kept taking pictures blind. They actually were recorded, but the camera is a probably a write-off.