A Thailand Christmas...Thank You Santa!

Since we live in a tiny little apartment, we didn't want to buy a lot of toys for Christmas.  We talked to the kids and asked them if they wanted Santa to bring them a trip to Thailand to play with monkeys and ride elephants.  They thought that was a fabulous idea, so after a little help from the travel agent elves, and a lot of internet research, Santa delivered.  Thank you Santa!

We absolutely LOVED Phuket.  I could spend hours writing about everything, but I don't know if you would all enjoy reading my endless comments about our amazing vacation.  So I'll just hit the highlights.

Our Hotel

I spent countless hours reading what felt like every review on the internet to find the best hotel for our family. It's one of those things where you hope you made the right decision, but honestly won't know until you get there.  As soon as we walked through the resort, I knew I'd made the right choice.  Our hotel was AWESOME!  It was located right on BangTao beach.  Literally, right on the beach.  We could see it from our room.  BangTao is a little north of where most people stay on Phuket Island, and because of this it was very quiet and not crowded at all.  The rooms were clean and quite spacious.  It had 4 pools, one with a swim-up bar, and a fabulous restaurant right on the beach.  This hotel was one of the things that made our vacation so great.  

This is the view from our room.  This isn't a great picture of our view.  You can kind of see the beach in the background through the palm tree.  This pool here was the kids' favorite.  It's the one that had the swim-up bar.

Here's another shot of the resort from the pool.  Our room is in the background.  The beach is just on the other side of the palm trees.  It was nice because you had your choice of pool or beach.  It was easy to go back and forth between the two.

Here's the pool side bar.  They had very fun kid-friendly drinks.  

 Here's Ryan trying to decide what to order.  It took a while.  Emma thought the pool chairs made great diving boards.   

 Here was the beach.  The water felt so warm, it felt like you were getting into a bath.  I could have stayed there all day.  

So as we were relaxing and playing on the beach, up walks...

 A baby elephant!  I almost couldn't believe my eyes.  It was adorable   The kids were so excited.  

 Here it is waving hello to Ryan.

 It decided to check out what was in Ryan's shorts!  

And here was the beach side spa where Pete and I got Thai massages.  They cost about $10 for an entire hour.  Ahh...life in Thailand is good!

 Here's the beach side restaurant.  The sunset over the water was beautiful from here.

And the food was DELICIOUS!  I think of all the ethnic foods, Thai is my favorite.  Usually when we're on vacation I don't like to eat at hotels because I think you can get more authentic food in town.  Here, however, the food was so good, we ate most dinners at the hotel.  I couldn't even tell you which meal was my favorite; I loved them all so much. 

Elephant Trek, Kayaking, and Monkey Temple

So you would think from my description of the hotel that we never left the premise!  While we loved the hotel, we loved all our tours even more.  The first one we took was a one day adventure in Khao Sok.  This was a tour that picked us up at our hotel and drove us to the rain forest about an hour and a half from Phuket Island.  Along the way we stopped for some goodies.  

 We, of course, had to try a little of everything!

It was all very sweet.

 We got a kick out of this cat.  It wasn't washing itself, it was just hanging out in this position.  

 We soon learned Phuket is full of stray cats.  They're everywhere.  They hangout by all the food areas begging.  I guess cats are better than the cockroaches we used to see everywhere in Hawaii!

This was the sign for the bathrooms.  Look closely.  There is no mistaking which is the boys' bathroom and which is the girls' with this sign.  :)

Finally we made it to the elephant trekking and kayaking area.  It was so beautiful I felt like I was in a movie!

First we rode the elephants.  It was two or three to an elephant, so Ali and Ryan rode on one, and Pete, Emma & I rode on the other.  Ours was named Champoo. 

            

For the most part it was a relaxing trip, but every once in a while the elephants would decide to take a detour.  

Here's Ali and Ryan's trying to take them into this cave.

Champoo took us deep into the woods for a snack.  

Riding an elephant through the jungle of Thailand was pretty unreal.  I was grateful for a friend here in Korea who gave me some good elephant riding advice.  She told me to wear flip flops then take them off when you get on the elephant so you can feel the elephant's back with your feet.  We all did this.  It was so neat to actually feel the elephant while riding it.  Great advice!

After riding we got to feed the elephants.  I can't believe how gentle they were.  

The kids also had fun petting them.

 This one wanted to check out Ryan.

And this one gave Ali a little kiss. 

Emma was a little nervous to get close, but eventually warmed up.

Emma's favorite was the baby elephant named Baby Haha.

After the elephant ride it was time for a Thai lunch.

And then on to kayaking.

It was beautiful.   We saw some snakes and frogs.  We also saw a lot of rain!  We got poured on in the middle of our trip.  Luckily it was warm out and we had swimsuits on.  The kids thought it was fun to get rained on in the rain-forest.     

On the way back to our hotel we stopped at what our guide called the monkey temple.  It was a little Buddhist Shrine built into a mountain.  Monkeys have taken over the area and steal the offerings people leave.  This was one of our favorite parts because it was just us and one other family there, so the monkeys paid a lot of attention to us.   

 The monkeys started off patient.

And then got more aggressive...

At one point, one monkey even stole a banana right out of Peter's hand when he wasn't looking!

I managed to coax this one into my lap...

I must say, I've wanted to play with monkeys ever since I was a kid, and I was not disappointed in the least. It was exactly as I imagined it would be.  They were super fun.  The kids absolutely LOVED it.  This was one of the highlights of the vacation.

 Notice the little baby hanging on to the mom here.  This was Emma's favorite.  Emma was a little nervous around the monkeys but insisted I keep feeding this one.  Notice too how I'm clutching the rest of the food tightly in my other hand so it wouldn't get stolen.  They were sneaky little guys!

After playing with the monkeys for a very long time, we stopped by a fruit stand to sample some local fruits.  Yum!  

Phuket Town

                 We spent one day sightseeing Phuket Town and enjoying the Buddhist culture here.  

 This is a giant statute of Buddha set up on a mountain.  You can see it from anywhere in the city.  

There were monks chanting here, offering prayers.  

 The view from here was amazing!

 It was so interesting to see the difference between the Buddhism practiced here in Thailand and the Buddhism practiced in Korea.  The religion in Thailand seems to have adapted a lot of Hindu practices as well.

We also visited a Buddhist temple.  

 We burned some incense.   

 And offered some prayers.

We got a coconut to drink, hand chopped by this guy.  I was a little nervous about his fingers as I watched him swing his machete!

 We spent the rest of the evening shopping in this enormous market.  The kids enjoyed spending their money in Thailand because it went a lot farther than it does in Korea.

Peter found some shorts he liked, but there weren't any changing rooms.  The man selling the shorts motioned for him to try them on at the back of the store.  I, of course, had to snap some pictures of this!

Phuket Zoo

So this place felt a little scary.  We had a great time here, but I'm pretty sure it should be closed down.  I'm not sure where the admission money goes, but it isn't into maintaining the zoo!  

We took another elephant ride, this time bare back.  

The kids loved when the elephant stood up!

Emma on the other hand was terrified!  She was very happy to get off.

They had some fun shows and very interesting animals here, but again, something was just a little wrong about it.  The cages were incredibly dirty and some were so worn down I was waiting for the animals to escape! 

 This guy actually put his head into the crocodile's mouth.  Seriously!?!  I like doing dumb things, but even this one was more than I would ever do.

Peter wasn't that impressed though.  He thought it was easy.

Ryan was a little more scared.

 Here we are at lunch sharing our meal with the cats.  They literally were everywhere in Phuket.  No one seemed to mind having them sit all over the tables and chairs. 

 For a zoo, the food was amazing.  I wasn't expecting much and was pleasantly surprised.  And if you're wondering, yes, that's toilet paper on the table.  We carried it everywhere.  You have to bring your own toilet paper into the bathrooms here. It's not provided. 

 This was the entrance to the aquarium.  This was by far the worst part of the zoo.  Many of the aquarium tanks had cracked glass.  Some even had duct tape around the base to keep the water in.  Seriously, this part of the zoo needs to be closed down! 

Again, we hit the gift shop at the end for some fun souvenirs.

Phang Nga Bay Tour

This was THE BEST part of the entire trip and worth every penny to come to Phuket.  If I only did this one thing, I would have been happy.  The funny thing is, we didn't plan to take this trip.  We had planned a trip to Phi Phi Island simply because it stopped off at Monkey Island and the kids could play with the monkeys.  But the weather for boating was not great while we were in Thailand.  It was fine for us, but for boating in the open water, it wasn't safe.  So they had to reschedule us for this tour instead since protected by the bay.  I can't believe we almost didn't see this!!!  If you ever make it to Thailand, this is a must.  It's like nothing I've ever seen before.  

First of all, I have to give credit to Sompong.  He was our tour guide.  He was by far the BEST tour guide I have ever had on any tour -- ever.  He treated Emma like a princess.

 We were surrounded by hundreds of these little islands that shot up out of the water.

They took us into several of these little lagoons.  The rock formations were so interesting.

We passed by this cave.  I don't know if you can see, but there is a man inside here.  He lives here and takes care of a bird's nest.  They make a soup out of pieces of the nest that is supposed to help with infertility.  Apparently it's insanely expensive so this guy's job is to protect the nest.  Can't say that would be my favorite job!

Next we headed to this little beach attached to this island for snorkeling and relaxing.  It looked like something right out of a movie!  It was much more beautiful than this picture shows.

The water was so clear and warm.  

The kids are holding bananas here to feed to the fish.  I had no idea fish like bananas.  Who would have thought? 

Emma was a little afraid of the fish.  Peter eventually coaxed her in to the water to feed the fish some banana.

We snorkeled in between these two rock formations where we saw the largest school of fish I have ever seen in my life.  The entire water was dark.  I thought it was a shadow until I saw it start to move.  It was a little creepy at first when I realized it was a giant school of millions of fish.  We had fun swimming into it and watching them all scatter.

The beach had some fun tree swings. 

After a fun time of playing on our own private beach, we headed for another island full of mangrove trees.  When we got there it started to pour so we headed for this little tree shelter.

 I felt like I was on an episode of survivor!  After the rain let up a little bit we hike out to this massive mangrove tree.  It seems like it had some significance, like possibly one of the largest in Thailand, but honestly I can't remember.  

Here's Sompong teaching us how to hang on the tree like Tarzan.  We all, of course, had to have a try.

 And here we are standing inside part of the tree.  It was massive!

Sompong came to Emma and Ryan's rescue by making them little umbrellas.  We loved Sompong!

When we got back on the boat, Sompong broke out some delicious fruit.  He peeled it for us and fed it to us.  

 He shoved in more than we could eat at one time.  It reminded me of playing Chubby Bunny!

Did I mention how great Sompong was!?!

Our next stop was the Village on Stilts.  It truly is an entire community built above the water.  It was amazing!

This village started with three families who found an island to live on.  Eventually, as more and more families grew out of these original settlers, they ran out of room, and started to build into the bay.  

Here's Ryan looking down into the water from the village.  It was so crazy that this entire settlement was above water.

They even have a floating soccer field for the children.

We had seen this featured on the Amazing Race as a pit stop for one of the legs, so it was fun to actually be here in person.  Unfortunately, Phil Keoghan wasn't here to great us.  

 The village had everything the people living here would need including a medical clinic, 

 a school,

 shopping,

 and even a restaurant.  It was pretty amazing that the entire thing was built on stilts.  In fact, one of the kids broke a glass while we were at the restaurant, and when I told the waiter so he could clean it up, he just swept it into the water!  I guess that's one way of taking care of your trash when you live over water.  

Next we stopped off at James Bond Island.  My parents would be ashamed that I didn't know the James Bond film that was shot here.

It was a beautiful place.  We had a short time to explore and we were off again.  This time for some amazing kayaking. It's right up there with kayaking the Napali Coast of Kauai in my book.   Unfortunately the pictures don't do it justice.  It was one of the most beautiful things I've seen!

We kayaked in and out of sea caves.

Our guides made us these flowers for us out of some type of plant floating in the water.  It was pretty impressive.

This guide took a liking to Emma.

Pete found a yummy crab to eat along the way.

There were tons of amazing rock formations.  This was a crocodile.

 After kayaking we hiked into a sea cave you can only go through at low tide.  We needed flash lights for the hike.  It was pitch black and very wet.  At one point we were hiking in water up to our knees.  

When it finally opened up, we were greeted by this amazing area full of banyan tress. 

In the water here were these little fish called mudskippers.  I've never seen anything like them before.  They swam through the water then could get out and run across the mud to another pool of water.  Very cool.

Finally we headed back to the boat.  

Our last stop was in the middle of the bay for some fun jumping off the boat.  

It was such a relaxing way to end the day.  

We headed to the airport after this trip and caught the red eye back to Korea.  

Whew...after saying I wasn't going to write about everything we did, I sure found a way to put a lot into this blog.  For those of you who finished reading this, I'm impressed!  Maybe you'll be planning a trip to Phuket soon.  :)