Eddie wasn’t too thrilled with me from having to wake up at 4am to make a 730am flight to head over to Phuket. We got to the airport starving, and not many choices for breakfast other than McDonald’s cannot remember the last time I had that, but I think that’s my choice so I ordered a Big Breakfast. Just like I remembered it was, I just hope I don’t get sick…Eddie got 2 Krispy Kreme donuts, and I was tempted to get one too, but I know how overly sweet foods make me feel and didn’t want to do that 1st thing in the morning, so I just had a bite of his…wow that was overwhelmingly sweet, I’m so glad I didn’t get my own…

We flew row 1 on Air Asia, but it’s nothing like 1st class lol, seemed to be similar to Spirit Airlines, so nothing to brag about.

We were greeted at the airport with a sign just like the movies after a short tad over an hour flight. The ride was just about an hour to the resort Amari, that we will call home for the next two nights.

The lobby is large and open (not enclosed), therefore HOT…no fans, no air conditioning, and all the staff had beads of sweat on their faces…shit, me too…our room isn’t ready yet, so we went to one of the restaurants to kill some time. We chose the Amari because it is on the beach, and the ocean view is incredibly beautiful, plus was walking distance to tons of shops and street food!!

Service at the restaurant was much slower, and was so difficult to communicate what we wanted to order even though we were pointing to what we wanted-it took 3 servers to take our order of a hamburger and Vietnamese spring rolls. Our drinks came, and melted within 10 minutes. I actually had to bring mine back because the “Cool Down” beverage I ordered didn’t agree with my palette, so they took it away after 4 minutes of trying to tell them I didn’t like the drink. When we got the bill, it took 2 people to tell them to remove the drink off our bill. Ok, maybe I’m hot and irritated, but this experience was a struggle! The guests at the Amari is so diverse, I assumed everyone here spoke somewhat decent English besides the front desk.

Thank goodness our room is ready, so we went back to the sauna (front lobby) to get our keys and head up to our room. Wowwwww this view from our balcony is beautiful!!!

Then we headed up to the concierge to plan our trip to Phi Phi island tomorrow and get a driver to take us around for the afternoon.

First stop…Karon view point

Next was Big Buddha. I had to put on a hot shawl and skirt coverup, so needless to say I was dying with the sun barreling down.

Then we stopped off at a Temple

We had him drop us of at Patong Beach, about 2 miles from Amari so we could walk and browse thru town.

One thing we really noticed was their electrical situation everywhere…doesn’t seem safe, but seems to work for them.

We found a pink building that said “massage” so we went in to check it out, we had to go upstairs and there were cameras everywhere. Clearly, we didn’t think anything of it till we got to the top of the stairs…and saw a bar set up and about a dozen women with full face makeup and dressed up sitting on mini bleachers, with what looked like they were sitting behind a glass waiting to be selected for whatever you want to pay for…oh, ok umm this isn’t a massage place…so we awkwardly left and moved on…

We found a ”normal” massage place and finally did our 2nd Thai massage today…yes, thankfully it was much better than yesterday…I caught myself snoring 8 times I can’t believe it…I’m embarrassed, and I’m sure it happens often, but I won’t see her again so I didn’t care…

All I have to say is wow…I LOVE this little big area! Shop upon shops upon shops upon STREET FOOD!! It seems like the locals either own little shops and street food places, or they work in the tourism industry. I would only guess the rent is cheap enough for so many people to be entrepreneurs, clearly there’s enough business for everyone here! I didn’t feel like the shops were overly repetitive like how Mexico can be.

We had our street food and knocked out a few of Thailand’s beer. Their bar setups are kind of neat-they have several bar setups in a big bar, if that makes sense. We went to the little bar that had the most action and music. After “bar hopping” we walked the rest of the 2 miles back so we can turn in early since we are leaving at 730am for some island hopping…

xox~j