Landing in Phuket was a bit of a culture shock for me. I knew Thailand was not going to be as developed as Singapore or Europe, but I wasn’t prepared for how different it would be. In Europe and in Singapore transit was pretty easy, there were subway stations or trains for the most part to get us where we wanted to go. For the most part it was a matter of just looking up subway lines on Google maps.
Landing in Phuket immediately felt different. When we landed at the small airport in Phuket, we had no clue how to get to our hotel. There’s no train or subway. What they did have were these minivans and taxis. We decided to go with a minivan, mainly because it was much cheaper than the taxi, but also because it seemed like everyone else was picking the minivan as well. So we went with the minivan, and found that it wouldn’t leave until it was completely full. And then before the minivan would drop off any of its passengers at their respective hotels, it would make a stop at a tour agency to try and sell us tour packages. We had already planned out our days in Thailand, so thankfully it wasn’t too hard a sell. We really only had two full days in Thailand, the first of which was dedicated to scuba diving.
This might be the first selfie I’ve ever posted on this site, me and my dive buddy Tim. Unfortunately for us the one time I post a selfie is the one time it’s impossible to not look like a dork. Being underwater makes for an automatic bad hair day, and having a scuba regulator in your mouth causes extreme duck face.
My first impression of our divemaster wasn’t too great. He introduced himself as Philippe. He barely said anything to us in the beginning, and on the boat ride to our dive site he basically went off by himself and chain smoked. But he actually turned out to be pretty cool. He was a diver for the French navy, and had served a tour in Iraq. (I didn’t know that the French navy had any part in the Iraq war– you learn something new every day.) When our boat started to get close to the dive site, he started to get friendlier and went over the safety protocols and dive site information with us. And at the end of the trip he talked about his life as a divemaster in Phuket, which actually sounded like a pretty sweet life.
Philippe had a little pointer with him that he would use to point out stuff to us from time to time. Unfortunately for the most part I didn’t really understand what he was pointing at. He did point at some cool stuff that I did see though, we saw a little string ray that was camouflaged in the sand, and we saw a little parasitic fish that was latched onto a larger host fish. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of that stuff, for some reason every time I pulled my GoPro camera out of my buoyancy control jacket while he was pointing I got nothing.
This dive trip resulted in a number of firsts for me. It was my first time diving from a boat. It was a bit scary at first, taking that big first step off the back of the boat. And dropping down to the bottom was a bit scary at first too, since it was my first dive in a couple of years. When we got to the sandy bottom our divemaster had us practice regulator recovery and mask clearing, which eased my mind, and as we started swimming around the bottom I began to relax a bit. Getting back on the boat was a learning experience too. We had to hang onto the ladder and pull off our fins, meanwhile the boat is rocking back and forth and there’s a heavy tank on your back making things a bit more challenging.
Another first for me, swimming through an obstacle.
Being underwater all day made us crave fish for dinner. We found a little outdoor seafood restaurant that seemed fairly popular, we stopped there and ordered some fish. It turned out to be pretty awesome, it was covered with aromatics, lime, chili, garlic and cilantro and steamed to perfection.
Our second day in Phuket was spent doing an elephant tour. I’m not usually big on organized tours, but the high five with the elephant at the start of the tour made me think that this would be pretty awesome.
The tour started with an elephant ride. During the ride there was a beautiful view of the bay. I think one of the islands at the far end of the bay was where we had gone diving the day before.
The tour wasn’t all just elephants, it was a cultural tour of Thailand. They had Thai cooking demonstrations with amazing fresh made curry powder, along with coconut oil making, rice farming, and rubber harvesting demonstrations.
They even had a water buffalo tuk-tuk to ride.
The tour ended with a buffet on a boat ride in the bay.
After the tour we walked around a bit to work off the buffet. We explored the touristy areas of Patong (the town in Phuket we were staying in) and walked on Patong beach. There are a ton of tourists from all over the place, but it seemed like the majority of tourists were European.
My first impression of Phuket wasn’t too great, but by the end of my time there I was enjoying it. I can see myself coming back. The food is awesome and cheap, and the scenery is beautiful. There’s not too much of the shady go-go bars and massage places that I heard other parts of Thailand has, it’s definitely more family friendly, especially if you stay away from the center of Patong. And apparently the diving is pretty good, our divemaster was telling us that the Similan islands which we could reach by liveaboard boat from Phuket has some world class diving.
