A brief but memorable visit to Phuket

Friday, December 26, 2014
Phuket Town, Phuket, Thailand
Now that we *did* make the flight I still love that I was so worried about it - because the way that we made it was utter awesomeness.

Rhiannon and I awoke in our spacious and luxurious suite, dressed and packed and went down for breakfast where we had a surprising western choice of an omelet . The rest of the plate would never have happened in the states, but that's okay, the omelet was fine. We wandered out to the street in search of an ATM, which we successfully found. Strange to see such a nice hotel in the middle of a rather chaotic street.

There are plantars along the street but the water in the is a bit festered - there are actually fish living in there. (How does that happen?) 

After taking advantage of the amenities of the room for as long as possible (mainly high-speed wifi), we gathered up our stuff and hit the street to find a tuk tuk. Here we had our first (but I suspect not our last) tuk tuk ride.

So off we bounced to the bus station where we rode on this bad boy for nearly 8 hours. Loved traversing the country side of Thailand though. 

We were running late - Thai time - and we started to worry . We asked the attendant whether there was more than one stop in Phuket - was there one near the airport. We knew there wasn't - and that we would cruise right by the the airport and that the bus station was 30 minutes further - then we'd have to find transport 30 minutes back to the airport. It was difficult to convey our concern but we did have in common the word airport and the ability to hold up fingers to show what time our flight was. We had noticed that the bus was quite informal about picking up passengers in odd locations along the way. But we did not have the language to ask if they could drop us near the airport - but GMTA so before long the attendant gestures and insists that I go downstairs and sit in the front passenger seat by the driver. (That's an experience all by itself.) where gestures and conversations continued around our one shared word - airport. Eventually the driver gestured emphatically at a sign for the airport - a turn off to the right. Then the bus pulled over to the side of a busy four lane divided boulevard and unceremoniously dropped us off . Waving wildly at a bewildered Rhiannon to leave the bus, I met her at the street, we pointed out our bags and they were off. One of the notions conveyed to me is that I could walk over to the police standing at the end of the airport road and ask them to call us a cab. We walked toward them ... had a conversation in nineteen languages but were interrupted by a tiny little lady who said "Taxi? No problem. Come." She took us a ways down the road to a house. Sure enough, a taxi was parked in the yard. The younger man - son? nephew? - eyed us speculatively and announced that he would have to charge us 300 baht. We tried to put on reluctant faces but couldn't pull it off. Yes! Please! No problem! This is US$ 12.00. And voila, we were at the airport early enough to have a nice hot meal and catch our two hour flight to Chiang Mai.
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