Phuket = Whelming

We've been judging our Thai experiences based on a self-created underwhelmed-to-overwhelmed scale. In general, Phuket was 'whelming'. The food was underwhelming (expensive and not so good relative to other cities) but the resort and Kata Beach were more than whelming (but not to the point of overwhelming).

Combine low season with the economic recession and recent political instability, and basically we've had the entire country to ourselves at an inexpensive rate. The resort was half off and housed 0-4 additional guests at any given time. This was good for financial reasons, but it WAS a tad awkward when the workers sat on chairs near us and simply stared at us until we may or may not have needed anything. Sweet... but awkward.

Anyhoo, this resort was FANCY. Like... two bars in the POOL fancy.

We took full advantage of the poolside- purely for relaxation purposes.

And we obviously also took advantage of the pool...

...as well as Kata Beach which was mere minutes away on foot.

Kata Beach is the only Thai beach with surfing/boogy boarding waves... so we got down with our bad selves.

I gashed my knee within 20 minutes, fled to shore to receive Carlynne's sympathy (she didn't actually surf because of her recent knee surgery), then boogied out again.

Dan & Lowell were just plain hardcore. They got the crap beaten out of them by the waves AND the sun, but they soaked up every second of it.

The food consumed doesn't generally deserve photos, but I do sort of regret not snapping pictures of the Thai man who was belting his heart out karaoke-style at a fine dining restaurant. He sang English songs, but only used sound and syllable approximations rather than the actual words. It sounded a little something like this: "We no need no enumashun." (Can you guess what those words were meant to be? ("We don't need no education"). Bless his heart for trying, and I was glad for him that the drunk woman was totally grooving to his slightly pitiful tunes. (PS- We also clapped and tried to be supportive).

From Phuket we headed to Phi Phi Islands (pronounced "Pee Pee") where the food was far superior to Phuket (I would say nearly overwhelming) but our chosen lodging was back to it's non-air-conditioned, we-are-one-with-the-earth whelming sort.