Phuket!

Been a little bit since I posted, sorry about that! We took a trip to Phuket which is about 3-4 hours thru the jungle by van. Phuket is akin to the Las Vegas of Thailand, total party city. Which, even though I'm not a big partier, I LOVE the energy and accessibility of a party city.

We arrived there about 4pm, checked into our Marriott hotel in the Patong district and then took off for some nightlife which included a fun (tasteful) cabaret show.


Afterwards we hopped in what is probably the coolest tuk tuk I've been in yet...

Phuket tuk tuks are a whole different breed. They're all themed, we took a Toy Story one, a Transformers one, the one pictured above was Tiger themed. Really massive labors of love by these drivers and so fun to experience.

Our dinner that night was actually a pizza joint which was REALLY good and the pizzas were massive...

The next day we had a sightseeing tour, which was interesting because the itinerary was actually very different than what we had been sold but I'll cover the cool parts hahaha

First was Wat Chalong, an old Buddhist temple in Phuket built at the beginning of the 19th century. It's the largest temple in Phuket and a major tourist attraction. The tallest building there is called "Chedi" which you can climb to the top (three stories) and see a bone splinter said to be from Buddha.

I have a deep love and appreciation for religious buildings, spending a lot of my time in Europe ducking into cathedrals and other religious sites. I find them to be massive cultural cornerstones and one of the easiest ways to learn about an area, so I was grateful to have the opportunity to visit Wat Chalong.

The second site we were to visit was the Big Buddha, which is a 148 ft tall and around 85 ft wide Buddha statue that sits at the top of a hill. Unfortunately, heavy monsoon rains caused a landslide to happen which closed tours up to the Big Buddha (landslide scar below).

Our tour also took us to Old Town Phuket, which is known for its colorful Sino-Portuguese townhouses that house shops, cafes, and other trading goods. This area of the town was established in the 16th century when Chinese, Indian, and Portuguese traders settled in the area. 

Our last visit was to Rang Hill, which has an absolutely amazing view of Phuket. It also has monkeys, lots and lots of monkeys. Note: they steal anything and everything they can get their hands on and can transmit awful diseases like rabies. So, you don't want these guys interested in you AT ALL. I didn't even want to stop and take a picture of them in fear that they'd want my phone. They steal food, sunglasses, bags, etc.

Our last night in Phuket was spent mostly just wandering around, eating mango sticky rice and seeing what malls are like. They have a big complex in Phuket called JungCeylon but it wasn't anything to write home about.

Anyway, Phuket was short and sweet, we were only there about 1.5 days so not much else to talk about there!

Next we headed back to Ao Nang/Krabi to close out our time spent on the coast.

Love you guys ❤️ hope you're reading this lol

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