A Vacation from Our Vacation.

You know what we’re talking about…You go on holiday for a week and end up cramming so many activities or “must-do’s” into that short week, that you arrive back home late Sunday night exhausted only to have to get up early Monday morning for work without actually ever having relaxed. By “relax”, I mean sat around doing absolutely nothing and enjoying it. After traveling for over four weeks and not having stayed in any one location for more than three nights, we decided that we needed a break. So off to Phuket we went…

Koh Phuket, as you may already be familiar with, is the largest Thai island in the Andaman Sea (read: west of the mainland) and was one of the many areas hit by the 2003 Tsunami. Since then, tourism has recovered and is one of the most popular destinations in Thailand. But we went for relaxation, which meant staying as far away from the crowds as possible and essentially isolating ourselves in the lovely world of the Resort. So although we were physically in Thailand, there was little inherently Thai about staying at a resort. Seeing that this was our week for relaxation, we were okay with sacrificing some culture for the sake of “sitting around and doing nothing”. Our “nothing” consisted of lounging by the pool, eating, reading, and diving. It was paradise.

You know you’re in paradise when:

1. You are greeted with a lei, a cold hand towel, and an ice-cold drink upon arrival. Our welcome drink was essentially a virgin mojito and was absolutely delicious. I drank one every day while in Phuket.
2. There is such an abundance of good food that you could easily gain five pounds. We stayed away from the vast majority of buffets, but that didn’t stop Andy from working on his Buddha Belly…By the end of this trip, I may not need a lucky Buddha after all.
3. There is more than one pool to relax by. Our resort had not one, but three infinity pools to choose from. Mostly we hung out near the main pool, which was prime for people watching. The most relaxing thing about the pool was that there were people that would come by and fill up your water glass and take your order for food if you desired it.
   
4. There is plenty of time to sit around and read the newspaper and/or a good book, as well as multiple choice locations in which to sit around and read.
5. There is nightly entertainment that is actually worth watching/listening to. On most nights, there was a traditional Thai lighting ceremony performed before dusk and a small band playing in the bar at night.
   

   
   

   
   
6. There is a spa featuring pretty much any treatment you could ever want. This time, I chose to forgo the Thai Massage and instead, got a Balinese massage while Andy was off Diving in the Similan Islands (more about that below). The Balinese massage could not be more different from the Thai massage we had gotten the week before, and I think even Andy could have handled this one.
7. There are plenty of activities to participate in, including yoga, Pilates, towel folding, and water sports. The only one we actually got around to doing was diving.
8. The beach is picturesque, quiet, and offers fantastic sunsets (or sunrises). Because our resort was in the north of the island away from the busy and touristy beaches, we had the beach to ourselves (well, us and the rest of the people at the resort). The water may not have been as clear or still as some of those depicted in pictures, but it was a very close second.

Diving
Ever since our Australia diving debacle, Andy has been impatient to book another dive trip. The sites off Koh Chang were fairly far from the island, and reportedly not as scenic as other areas off the coasts of Thailand. Koh Phuket however, offered plenty of opportunity for diving. We decided on doing two local dives meaning that the dive sites were located about 15 minutes from shore by speedboat. The one thing I really love about diving is that it provides the opportunity to see a part of the world that most people never get to see in-person and only through the eyes to Discovery TV programs or at an aquarium. There is really something to be said about being in the vastness of the open water and witnessing marine life up close. On these particular dives, we were able to see among other things, bright blue and purple coral, clown fish (i.e. Nemo), a spiny lobster, a cuttlefish, moray eels, lion fish, and two octopi. The octopi were awesome. Apparently they are very skilled at camouflaging themselves -- both of the octopi we saw mimicked the coral they were hiding near when we swam near and continued to watch them. As soon as we would turn to swim away, the octopi would unfreeze, relax, and begin to move. While they did this, their skin (?) would turn from looking bumpy like hard coral to that of how you normally imagine an octopus to look like. It’s a horrible attempt at a description, but in-person, it is awesome to watch. The downfalls to the dive were the dead coral (from over tourism, rising water temperatures, and the tsunami), plankton which decreased visibility underwater, and the abundance of jellyfish. Thankfully the jellyfish were small, so the stings were not too bad…but imagine a pinching and stinging sensation that lasted a good 30 seconds every 2-5 minutes for 50 minutes. Actually, it sounds a lot worse than it really was.

Andy chose to dive another day at the Similan Islands, which is ranked as one of the top ten dive sites in the world by many. Most of the trips to the Similans are on liveabords, but luckily he found a trip that offered three dives in a single day. From what Andy told me, the dive was awesome and he encountered things neither of us had seen during previous dives, including a frog fish and ghost pipe fish. You should google them -- I was completely jealous after hearing about them and seeing the pictures online!

All in all, our time on Koh Phuket was everything we had hoped it would be. Most importantly, we were able to spend almost an entire week without having to re-pack, which for us, was like finding gold!

kl.