Phuket- Day 3!

Day 3 was our extravagant splurge day! Knowing we had to be out of the hotel by midday yet our flight wasn't until 10pm, we decide to kill a majority of the day on huge boating and snorkeling trip out to the Phi Phi Islands (where the movie "The Beach" was filmed). They were gorgeous!! Some of the most beautiful islands I have ever seen!

We checked out in the morning, left our bags with the concierge and took the shuttle across to Phuket to the marina. From there we took off on our hour long, 40km, speedboat ride. The water wasn't rough but going that fast across the waves sure made for some hard splats against the water. Unfortunately the rocking boat didn't provide for good photo taking opportunities but here's a rough video as we approach Phi Phi.

We took pictures at various stops before having an half hour at the first beach. Then we headed over to Monkey Beach where we weren't allowed to alight, because "the monkeys have rabies" yet they fed the monkeys bananas and encouraged them to come up onto the boat! Makes a lot of sense.

Monkey photos have become a majority of this blog!

From there we went on to our first snorkeling spot. The crew on the boat LOVED throwing bread onto my back so I'd get mobbed by fish. I'd look up and they all were laughing. Other people had bread tossed in front of them- I got this special fish mauling treatment :) From the video I posted a week ago (and below) you can hear me laughing through the snorkel while having fish swim into my legs.

Where Vikings landed

The lagoon our boat was "too big to enter"

First 30 hour stop.

This guy filmed me the ENTIRE trip. Not creepy at all.

After snorkeling, we stopped by a resort and took a nice hour long lunch break. Here is where I discovered my supposedly water-proof camera was not cooperating. It would not turn on! It's back to working now, but for the rest of the day I didn't get to take any pictures unfortunately. The last stop after lunch had some of the best snorkeling I had ever seen!

After about 7.5 hours out a sea, our boat returned to the marina and we got shuttled back to our hotel. Having no hotel room, we took some towels from the pool area and cleaned off like homeless bums at the pool shower then went and changed in the lobby bathroom. It worked, we were fresh enough , and bartered for a cab to the airport.

At about 1:30am I was back safely in my hotel room in Singapore. I was tired the next day at work having only slept a few hours, but Phuket was AMAZING and I would totally recommend it! It wasn't as rough as Bali, it had some of the nicest people, the local folks had a great sense of humor and it had an awesome relaxed beachy feel!

I can't wait to someday be able to explore the other parts of Thailand!!