Phuket Weekend

This weekend was definitely the most hardcore and adventurous weekend of the study abroad so far, and it has a high probability of being one of the best of the whole trip.  We headed back to Thailand, but rather than going inland, we stayed in Phuket, a town on what is basically the Indian Ocean.  This is a gorgeous area of Thailand.  The waters around Phuket are considered to be in the Top 10 Best Dive Spots of the world.  We had had a really good experience in Bangkok, especially loving how cheap everything was, so we were very excited to be heading back to Thailand (and a gorgeous beach).

Before heading out on Thursday, we had to take our first midterm in our first engineering class.  Right now we are taking ISYE 3039: Quality Control.  The class so far has focused on the concepts of quality and quality control, how it affects input and output, and statistical methods of quality control.  We only have three more full days of class.  This coming week we have another midterm on Wednesday, the final group project presentations on Thursday, and then the final next Tuesday (no class on Monday).  Whew!  When we take that final, we will be 50% done with our classes on this study abroad.  We’re nearly done with Singapore.  This is all moving so quickly!

But back to Phuket.  We left on Thursday evening, flying JetStar Asia once more, and landed in the middle of a rainstorm in Phuket.  By the time we had gotten money out of the ATM, found and bargained for a taxi to take all of us, and somehow found our hostel (at one point, the taxi drivers stopped at a travel shop to ask for directions), it was absolutely pouring.  We all got soaked just running from the taxis to the door of our guesthouse.  We stayed at M’s Guest House, and it was really nice.  We were in double rooms, and all of the rooms had en-suites, mini fridges and freezers, cable TV, and a balcony.  There was a king bed in each room, so we put two to a room.  It was only 250 baht / night, or roughly US$ 6.52 / night.  I love Thailand!

We didn’t want to waste any of our time in Thailand since this was our last weekend there, so we changed into bathing suits, shorts, and t-shirts, and went out anyways.  We got dinner and snacks from a little mart across the street and hung out in the hostel for awhile, and later when it stopped raining we headed into town.  We ended up playing pool at an almost-deserted bar for awhile, and since it was just across the street from the ocean, we wandered down to the beach.  The water was incredibly warm, like cool bathwater.  Way warmer than the Atlantic!  The beach was really nice, too, although we didn’t know for sure until the next day when we saw it in the daylight.

The next morning was my favorite activity in Thailand.  I had wanted to ride on elephants for awhile, and Thailand was our best place to do it.  When we were in Bangkok, we kept running into baby elephants on the street that were there illegally, but we wanted to find a legitimate company.  Just to be careful, we booked it ahead of time to be sure of our places, so we had everything ready to go even before we made it to Phuket.  The drivers showed up at 8am to take us through Phuket city to the other side of the shore and then up a 4WD trail into the mountains of Thailand.  We saw a short baby elephant show where we got to see how they are trained, and then we were shepherded over to the big elephants.  Unlike in some places, we were not sitting directly on the elephant’s back; we were seated in two-person chairs mounted on top of the back.  It felt like we were in some sort of time warp where rich white people traveled in that style across jungles.  We rode the elephants along a trail through the jungle, but it occasionally opened up to huge vistas of the coastline below the mountain.  We also encountered the second biggest spider (and its friends) that I have ever seen in my life (the first being in Fiji last August).  It was a really cool trip.

After getting up so early in the morning, all we really wanted was a big lunch and some relaxing time on the beach.  We made it back to the hostel, changed into bathing suits and cover-ups, and headed out in search of food.  We really had no idea where we were going, so we headed back towards the beach and figured that we’d find food along there.  We found a great little restaurant, stuffed ourselves, and then wandered across the road to the beach.  We spent the better part of the afternoon alternating between lying on the sand (when it was sunny) and playing in the waves (when it was cloudy or a little rainy).  It was just the way school should be.

That evening was slightly more ridiculous.  One thing you probably don’t realize about Phuket is that it is basically the transvestite capital of Thailand, and you wouldn’t realize it because the transvestites are that good.  They are called ‘lady-boys,’ and we had run into a few of them earlier in the day (such as our waitress at lunch), but we found all of them that night.  We had gotten tickets to Simon’s Cabaret (the Transvestite Cabaret).  It was incredible.  It was like seeing a Las Vegas show or something; it was that elaborate.  There were roughly 20 different acts, ranging from a single soloist to an all-out feathered costume full-on backdrop extravaganza.  We had a great time at the show, and some of us even took pictures with the transvestites afterwards outside.

After the show, the main plan was to watch the first match of the soccer World Cup.  We had some avid soccer fans in our group (particularly Jaime, from Ecuador, and Jorge, from Mexico), so our general plan was to find some sort of sports bar after the show to watch the Germany / Costa Rica.  Well, because Thailand is that amazing, we found the perfect place.  Across the street from the transvestite show was an honest-to-goodness German beer hall!  It was a Bavarian Oktoberfest inside!  The Thai waiters and waitresses were running around in German lederhosen and serving dishes like spätzle, schnitzel, and German lagers.  It was so crazy!  For awhile, no one could be served beer (it was the official day to celebrate the king’s 60th year of reign, so no one could serve alcohol), but right at midnight the Thais dressed in lederhosen began serving up Thai beer for each goal that Germany scored.  It was a crazy mix of cultures, especially coming from the Thai transvestite cabaret.

The next day was also an exhausting but adventure-filled day.  We started just as early in the morning because we were spending the entire day on the water.  The previous day, while everyone was hanging out on the beach, three of us had headed into town for a little while to buy postcards and arrange an all-day snorkeling and sea kayaking trip.  We were going to plan it ahead of time, but we had heard that you could get better deals on the beach because of bargaining.  It’s a good thing we held off because Kristen is an amazing bargainer.  We got a 2,900 baht trip (roughly US$75.60) down to 1,300 baht (US$33.89).  Amazing!  It was an incredible trip, too.  All 16 of us who went to Phuket went on the adventure.  We began in Phang-nga Bay, circling around Panak Island and admiring the geographical features.  From there we headed to Hong Island, and this is where we did our sea kayaking.  Hong Island is known for its cave system, and because we were kayaking into the caves, we weren’t allowed to paddle ourselves.  We were put into three-person kayaks, two tourists and one rower per kayak.  At a couple of points, we had to lay flat on our backs to slide underneath low rock formations.  It was awesome!  After Hong Island, we headed up to James Bond Island, where – guess what – a James Bond movie was filmed.  The Man with the Golden Gun was filmed on that island.  I haven’t seen it before (Pierce Brosnan trumps Roger Moore any day), but now I think I have to.  

After leaving James Bond Island, we headed to our last destination: paradise, also known as Khai Nai Island.  This island was incredible.  It is a small round bit of golden sand in the middle of a beautiful green ocean.  They had a buffet table for lunch waiting for us when we got there, and as Patrick put it, ‘We just went from a James Bond movie to a Corona commercial.’  We spent the rest of the afternoon on this island swimming, snorkeling, and sunbathing.  It was during the snorkeling that we had our big adventure.  The water is really clear, and the fish are really cool, so the snorkeling is awesome, but the drawback is that the water is incredibly shallow.  It was so shallow that occasionally you would float into coral reaching the surface and get cut up.  (Don’t worry Mom, I didn’t get cut.)  My big adventure happened when Kevin, Kristen, and I decided that it would be cool to swim around the headland to the other beach rather than walking the six feet across the land.  We were OK for awhile, swimming around and avoiding coral, but then we somehow ended up in Sea Urchin Sea.  There were black spiny sea urchins everywhere.  Now, normally this wouldn’t be bad as they are firmly attached to the rock, but the rock is often about three inches from your face, so it made navigating very difficult.  I was leading the three of us because I had snorkeled several times before, but even I had to stop at one point.  We got through the sea of sea urchins, stopped on sandy ground, and decided that it would be better to keep going and risk getting more sea urchins than travel back over definite sea urchins.  We set out again, and oh, man, it only got worse.  We found Sea Urchin Sea II (at which point I was really having to concentrate to not start to panic), and then as we got really close to the edge of the rocks, the tides got a lot stronger, which churned up more sand, which led to a severe lack of vision.  It was bad enough seeing everything we were going over, but now I couldn’t see more than a foot and a half in front of me!

But, never fear, we made it through our adventure, and once we got past the point onto the new beach, we pretty much ran for the sand.  We spent the rest of our time on that island sleeping on the beach.

We didn’t do a whole lot that evening because we were all so exhausted from, as Marianna said, ‘optimizing our awake hours.’  We went out for dinner, then came back and watched the World Cup games that night (England / Paraguay and Trinidad / Sweden).  Those of us who left the next morning (Sunday) had to get up at 4.45am to catch our 5.30am transfer to the airport for our 8am flight.  It was crazy early, so we all slept on the plane and just hung around NUS for the rest of the day, relaxing and doing laundry.  The only other thing that I did was go out to dinner at Banana Leaf Apolo, my new favorite restaurant.  It’s this amazing Indian restaurant in Little India that rivals Tulsi as my favorite Indian food.  It’s slightly cooler than Tulsi because you eat on giant banana leaves, but Tulsi was in Wellington, so it’s a close call.