Day One in Phang-Nga

Our first day in Thailand we mostly just chilled out and recovered from travelling. We were a bit confused about what time it actually was once we had gotten up to the room the night before, since there was no clock in the room, and my cell phone didn't automatically compensate for the time zone change. I thought we were two hours behind, but these numbers that appeared to be the time on the room phone said different, and I stupidly believed it. Consequently we woke up an hour earlier than intended on Sunday.

After a massive American breakfast, we trekked (for like two minutes) down to the beach. It was wicked windy, and the surf was pretty rough. It was so windy, my kanga flew at 90 degrees when I held it up, as seen below:



Here's some video of the waves. We went in the water some, but it wasn't the greatest that day.
After that it got more tranquil and also clearer, since the sand in the water calmed down.



There were many crabs:


The hotel's website advertised a private beach called Kukkak beach. I think Kukkak is the name of the long stretch of beach we were on, but our little piece of it was certainly private. Because there wasn't another hotel for quite a ways down the beach, the area right by our hotel was empty pretty much the whole time we were there. We saw a fair number of tourists down in front of other hotels when we took walks, though.

This is the (empty) beach to the left:


This is the (empty) beach to the right:


After the beach and doing some swimming in the pool and washing up and all that, we went into town. The hotel just calls a taxi, which is a pickup truck with a cover and two benches in the back, to come, and we have to choose when we want to come back, so the driver can meet us in town. We tried one time to just get our own taxi back, but it ended up costing twice as much. That was surprising.

Here's the Khaolak Strip. It's kind of hard to see anything. Sorry. Suck it up.


It was lunch time for us when we got into town, but not for everyone. The first restaurant we tried to go into was closed. It was 4:00 or so. We ended up in this little restaurant and bar called D. Time. We think the D. stands for Drunk. Ha. The food was good. They served us our rice in the shape of a bear. I think the lady who I assumed was the owner was a transvestite. Thailand allegedly has a lot of those. I think we saw three or four during our stay there. It was pretty funny.

Here's some Thai food:


And a rice bear:


And a rice bear whose head exploded into Thai curry. Yum.


After lunch, a bit of shopping. I bought a sarong, a skirt, and a dress and Kent got a Red Bull t-shirt (in Thai, of course). We got all that for 1000 baht, which is about 30 dollars. The stores strategically place calculators around so you can use that to bargain without anyone getting confused on how to say the numbers. The shopkeepers spoke good English pretty consistently, but I guess the calculator just makes things easy, and allows them and customers to do math on multiple item purchases. I'm not the biggest fan of bargaining, so I was lucky to have someone who is.

After a light pizza supper, we went home to go to bed fairly early, as we had our first excursion the next morning and had to get up at 6am.

Khaolak Orchid Beach Resort

We stayed at the Khaolak Orchid Beach Resort, a 4-star hotel in Phang-Nga, which is a little bit in the middle of nowhere. There were still plenty of resorts around town, but we were alone for at least a kilometer in both directions. I had no idea we were going to be this out of the way.

I also had no idea it was going to be as empty as it was around. One of the travel sites I was looking at before going said that July is a secondary peak season, so I figured there'd be a decent crowd at the hotel and around town. Kent got information from another source that said July is the low season, and that seems more accurate. The first morning we woke up at the hotel, we encountered two families of three or four, and a group of four American guys who we later concluded were most likely there with some sort of security group, and not on vacation. These "frat boys," as we called them, were there the whole time we were. The two families were gone on Monday, but were replaced by a Belgian family with two very cute 8-year old twin daughters, with whom we spent a fair amount of time. The daughters didn't speak anything but Flemish, but their parents spoke English and French fluently, and maybe German, too?

It being that empty, though, we got excellent customer service. This is a really great hotel, and it only cost about $42 a night. Plus, because they were in the middle of construction of a new wing, we were given 20% off meals at the hotel restaurant. Breakfast was free, of course. Full, hot breakfast with coffee, juice (although the orange juice was actually orange beverine), toast, American or Thai main course, and fruit. I don't think I ever finished my breakfast. Almost, though.

I'll walk you through the photos backwards, since I always forget to upload them backwards so they come out in the right order.

This is the view to the right from our balcony. It's pretty washed out in the background, but that's the beach, just off the property.

This is the view straight on from our balcony. That pool was really nice. You can see the bar in it, but it wasn't open to so few guests. The new wing is being constructed in the background.


There was a big window with hinged shutters in the bathroom. So you could sit in the bathtub and have the shutters open and look out through the glass doors on the balcony. It was totally suite.

Korea is not alone in its bedding practices. Thailand also has the peculiar idea that it's better to lie on one sheet with no topsheet, and only be covered by a bedspread. In such a hot country, it's kind of surprising they don't embrace minimal bed coverings.

Mini-fridge. This is the first hotel I've been in where the minibar in the room wasn't exorbitantly priced. We still didn't take advantage, though.

We only watched TV once for like an hour the whole time. There were just two channels in English, both news channels. One was a Russian news channel, but in English. The rest had crappy Thai soap operas and other junk.

Kent on our balcony. In Thailand it's really gauche to hang laundry in plain sight, so each balcony had a discreet wooden laundry rack to hang wet clothes on. It's not in the picture, though. I just thought you'd like to know.



Oh, there it is. It has a towel hanging on it, and other stuff behind that.

Foyer.

This Really is Boring

Getting to Thailand took me 24 hours, almost to the minute. Here's a breakdown of all my trip legs:

Friday 11:50pm: Take taxi to bus station. Flip out a little in my head because the driver takes a slightly different route than I'm used to, and I think we've passed it. Not true, though.

Saturday 12:30am: Take bus to Incheon International Airport outside Seoul. Both Heather and her mom assured me that the 6 on my ticket below the departure time is my arrival time, but it's not written in time format, so I realize once I'm on the bus that that's my seat number. The sign on the bus seemed to indicate that our arrival time was 7:40, but that ended up being thankfully wrong, and confusing.

Saturday 5:35am: Arrive at the airport. Get off at the Korean Airways terminal, because it seems like that's the only stop the bus makes. Get my suitcase, wander around for a bit, and find the Thai Airways check-in counter, which is closed. Wander around. Wait for Kent to get there. Get worried because he didn't have a solid plan for getting there.

Saturday 7:30ish am: Kent arrives and we get in line to check in. The line turns at a 90 degree angle where we step in and a middle aged Korean man takes the opportunity to cut in line. I am so tired I let it go. What a bastard.

Saturday 8:00am: We get our boarding passes and I get a Burger King burger for the first time in about seven months. It was good. I didn't get to eat the fries, though. Too full.

Saturday 830ish am: We start to look for the monorail that will take us to the right terminal, and have quite a bit of trouble finding it. We find signs that say Airport Railroad and follow them for a while, only to find that they led to the subway system. Kent figured the monorail must be after security, so we find the security gateway and go through. Then we get to the monorail and find the “mono” part is all a big lie. It's just a regular train.

Saturday 10:20 am: Our plane departs for Bangkok. The seating arrangement on the plane is 2-4-2, so I get a window seat and Kent gets an aisle and we don't have to share our row. They feed us a snack of gross packaged almonds with our drink, and a full meal with salad, a hot bun, choice of beef curry (beef? curry?) or chicken with rice, kimchi (gross), and chocolate cake. I usually like airplane food, but this was just okay.

Saturday 1:00ish local time: We arrive in Hong Kong, where for the first time I will be one of the ones returning to the same plane after it is cleaned. It is an odd process. They tell us to come back to the gate after 30 minutes to reboard, so we were just going to wander around for a while. Right as we deplane, though, we are lined up with the other returning passengers, given a sticker and a plastic card, and sent out into the hallway, where we are herded and lined up again. I thought they were going to just make us wait in line to reboard right then, and they wouldn't even let me leave the line to find a bathroom. Apparently the liquid regulations are different in Hong Kong, though, so we have to go through security again. Then we get to wander. It's nothing special.

Saturday 2:10pm Hong Kong time: We depart on the same plane to Bangkok, and get fed again. I get noodles with prawns and some other stuff I don't remember. Not the greatest.

Saturday 3:50pm local time: We arrive in Bangkok and have a couple hours to burn. We look at some shops and take some Thai baht out of the ATM. We look for a travel book for Thailand, but ironically, there are none. Just every other Asian country. Bizarro.

Saturday 6:20pm: We depart for the quick flight to Phuket. I'm so exhausted that I start to lose body heat and have to wrap up completely in blankets. Then I crash for like an hour after they feed us a muffin.

Saturday 7:40pm: We arrive at Phuket airport, go through customs and such, and find our driver outside. He had a sign with my name on it. That's the second time this year for me, woo. He drives us back to the hotel, about a 90 minute trip. They drive on the left in Thailand. It was dark.

Saturday 9:50pm: We arrive at the hotel and check in. We get free fruity drinks, yea.

Thailand

Well, I JUST got back from Thailand, and had been so excited when I left about all the things I was going to blog about and all the pictures I was going to post. But you know, it was such a boring vacation that I'm not going to bother you with all the details. Suffice to say I swam, ate, slept, and got bitten by mosquitoes.

I'll write about some other stuff soon.