Christmas Vacation: Phuket, the place your flight attendant warned you about

It's true, he did. He said the souvenirs are way over priced and to watch out for rip offs, and that even he gets bad prices even though he's Thai.

The final (and longest) stop of the trip was Phuket, for a bit of time at the beach. The weather was just as hot and even more humid, but at least there was the water to cool you down. Phuket would barely exist if it weren't for tourism, so the entire place is mainly hotels, shops and restaurants catering to tourists. Aside from the beaches and scenery, there's nothing to really see or do. Patong (the section of Phuket we stayed in) was not to my taste at all. It is just row upon row of high pressure souvenir shops, massage parlours, sleezy bars, and sex shows. At night, the streets are full of women in mini-skirts and tube tops offering massages (but I'm guessing that's not all they were offering). If I went again, I would definitely go to a different and quieter area, probably to one of the big resorts outside of town.

I spent my days going around on day trips to different islands by speedboat for sightseeing and snorkeling. The area is full of little islands that jut up out of the water and are quite pretty. The first day I went to the area around Krabi, an area known for its beaches. It was probably the least exciting of the day trips, but still pretty cool.


The next trip was to Phi Phi island. This day was mostly visiting different beautiful beaches for swimming and relaxing, and included the beach from the movie The Beach.


The last trip was around Phang Nga bay. This was probably the best of the trips and was a mix of sightseeing, snorkeling and visiting beaches. The scenery of rocky islands jutting up from the water was really spectacular. It included the island that was used in the James Bond movie Man with the Golden Gun.

And also a fishing village built entirely on stilts in the middle of the river.


For a place that was hit by a massive tsunami just a few years ago, it is completely rebuilt and I could see no evidence that anything had ever happened. The only noticeable things were the tsunami evacuation signs everywhere and markers saying how high the waves were in that location.

The food in Thailand was quite good, though not as hot as I had expected. I'm used to Thai food being very spicy, but I didn't find anything too spicy (maybe they toned it down because I'm a foreigner). And, like Singapore and unlike Holland, Thailand also has lots of 7-elevens, Carrefours, and Tescos....

After all that, it was back to the airport for the flight back to Singapore and then Amsterdam. It was a really good trip.

The pictures are here, here, and here.