The Clan's China Adventure, Episode 29: Taking on Thailand, Part 2: Beaches, Islands, and Ladyboys

Our first full day in Thailand was an exhausting one, so we got a bit of a late start on Day 2. After breakfast and a nap, we headed to Patong Beach to play in the sand and the water. The water was just the right temperature, and the sand on Patong Beach was very nice - very fine and pleasant to stand in, unlike the beach at our hotel which, while very clear and beautiful, was set on a very rocky lagoon, which makes it not so fun to walk on or lie in.

We were fortunate that the weather forecast showed stormy all week. It didn't rain hardly at all, but we were spared from the fierce sun, yet not entirely - I got pretty badly burned in the few minutes that there was sun.

Thailand Observation #1: Thailand, or at least Phuket, has a LOOOOOOT of foreigners. I am not sure I saw any Thai locals that were not working.

Thailand Observation #2: Thailand is a lot cleaner than I expected it would be. The staff at the beach was really keen on keeping sand out of the bathrooms so you could shower off and go back to Bangla Road sand free, and there was very little trash in the streets despite not being patrolled by armies of cleaning staff like in urban China.

Thailand Observation #3: Thailand is really serious about its royal family. There are images of the late King everywhere, and when you attend a movie or a live show, people stand up at the beginning of the show for the Royal Song and an image of the current King. Kind of neat but kind of surreal at the same time!

That evening, however, we found a better, cheaper way to see the sights and sounds than doing bookings from the hotel. You see, Patong Beach is littered with private tourism companies that will vend tickets and do pickups and dropoffs to basically wherever you need to go. This is pretty key because getting cabs is not the easiest thing in the world to do and I didn't really see any other public transport options!

In any case, our next adventure in Phuket was a visit to the world famous Simon Cabaret, basically a lip sync-and-dance show featuring the famous lady-boys of Thailand:

Photography was not allowed, so you'll have to settle for the advertisement...

For reasons not quite understood by myself, Thailand has this very interesting sub-culture of transsexuals who do a very convincing job of doing their thing. While the show itself was fun, featuring hit songs from major sources of tourists to Thailand such as the U.S., China, India, Japan, and Korea, the after-experience was somewhat terrifying - the lady-boys line up, baiting you to take photos with them and charge per person that was captured in the photo!

For our third day, we decided to head out on the ocean once again, this time on a charter boat to the Koh Khai islands around Phuket. The first stop was to a spot where colorful fish are readily accessible without even really even getting wet!

The second stop was purely a snorkeling stop - Cherry and the kids were pretty tired so they slept onn  the boat while I snorkeled. But the last stop was a nice island that the family was able to relax on!

On our last day in Thailand, we spent most of the day in our beautiful resort. The staff was kind enough to let us hang out in the hotel grounds despite checking out at 4PM, since our flight was not leaving until 2AM!

Playing Connect 4

And Air Hockey!

Went on a little hike

Demonstrating some awesome monkey bar skills!

Sunset on the private beach

Evening movie!

Thai Santa!

Saying goodbye to our Phuket home...

The hotel made our last day very pleasant! Kudos to Merlin Beach Marriott!

And that concluded our 2016 Winter vacation!

The Clan's China Adventure, Episode 28: Taking on Thailand, Part 1: Land of Elephants!

In keeping with recent tradition, we once again took a trip outside of the borders of the Middle Kingdom this year. This time, our destination was the tropical island of Phuket, Thailand!

It started right on my return from my last business trip to the U.S. I'd arrived back in China at about 8PM, and less than 24 hours later, we were on our way to the airport again for a red eye flight. In retrospect, what better way to take advantage of your jet lag?

Packed and ready to go!

Shanghai Pudong airport finally updated their lounge! Good eats all around!

We arrived at Phuket airport at a groggy 2 AM, when we had our first encounter with Phuket's extremely inefficient night time airport operations. For starters, despite at least four planes arriving in the middle of the night, there were only 3 customs agents that seemed to be working. Secondly, the first thing I looked for when arriving was a deck of "arrival cards" - I have experience having to fill these out in China. When I saw there weren't any, I assumed that we wouldn't need them, that is - until we got nearly to the end of the line when Cherry decided to wing it and go back to the information desk to ask for them. Why wouldn't you have these cards more readily available if every entrant needs to fill one out?!?

We didn't leave the airport until about 4:30 AM, at which point we took a taxi, which I found to be very clean and generally pleasant, quite in contrast to most taxis we find in China and in fact more similar to those we experienced in Japan. There is still a difference, however - taxis in Phuket don't have meters; instead there seems to be pre-assumed prices depending on the general region you want to go to.

We finally arrived at our resort at about 5:30 AM, at which point we took a shower and went
'sploring before we had the first of many excellent breakfasts at the resort:

Exploring our resort

We see our beach at low tide

The pool system is pretty sweet

Not the first, but one our many excellent breakfasts!

Then we took a loooooong nap.

After we got up, we took another overpriced cab ride over to Jungceylon Mall, which is in the Patong Beach area, where we got our first look at life in Phuket:

Phuket is quite clean and seems to have good infrastructure, but what is with these crazy telephone wire nests?!?

The mall is pretty huge

Not having any plans for the day, we decided to go and catch a movie - what better movie than Rogue One: A Star Wars Story?

The tickets were cheap, and it was actually my second time seeing the movie (I'd seen it on opening weekend a few days before at a company event). I enjoyed it just as much, if not more, the second time - I really think it might be my favorite Star Wars film of them all, despite some flaws in character development and spooky looking CGI human faces. Lukas especially loved the Darth Vader scene at the end!

After the movie, we took a walk down the (in)famous Bangla road, which is  Patong Beach's main bar and club street, but also has a lot of cool seafood and Thai food restaurants along the way.

Finally, we took an iconic Tuk Tuk taxi back to the hotel - it's kind of like a tiny pickup truck with a tarp over it. Quite an experience careening through the mountains to get back to the hotel!

Our first (and sadly only) Tuk Tuk experience in Phuket

The next day, we booked an Elephant Safari. Booking tours is one of the best ways to get around the arbitrary taxi fares because the tours will pick you up and drop you off from just about anywhere in town. Of course, it does take a while since they have to pick up and drop off everyone who booked the tour, but usually this meant us and one or two other stops. Regardless, it took us a pretty good deal of time to get to the elephant safari.

Two riders per elephant for an hour in the wilderness

Strictly speaking, the mahouts, or elephant drivers, are not supposed to dismount the elephants, but they did anyway to help us take some great photos!

Feeding the elephants after the hour-long ride

We closed day 2 by taking another ride out to an evening show. There are two large scale evening shows in Phuket - the arguably more famous Phuket FantaSea, which is supposed to be more circus like, and Siam Niramit, which is a stylized history of Thailand. We decided to go with the historical Siam Niramit show.

Muay Thai Demonstration

The photos above are from the pre-show activities in the park area, which included a Muay Thai demonstration as well as an elephant military procession!

Clearly, Thailand likes its elephants!

Stay tuned for Part 2!