So I'm now done with trips, my computer is working great, and I will finally back to normal posting on Mondays! Sorry for the irregularity recently, but now I will be back to normal! Also I'm going to try and keep this post concise, but it might be a bit on the long side. So without further ado, here is what I did on my amazing trip to Thailand.
I left my house early on a Monday morning to catch a bus to Fukuoka airport. I had a 5 hour flight from Fukuoka to Bangkok and then an hour flight down to Phuket. Leah, my travel buddy, was on a plane with a layover in Shanghai instead of Bangkok, but we met quickly and hurried off to our hotel. I was amazed at how beautiful the hotel was! We stayed at The Nap Patong near Patong beach and we couldn't have been happier. Even though we booked the cheapest room, they were full by the time we got there (around 8:00 PM) and we got bumped up to a nicer room. We had a balcony overlooking the pool, there were free sodas, juices, and water bottles in a fridge, and the staff was incredibly nice and helpful. We got in pretty late, but still wanted to explore a little, so we decided to go out in search of a late dinner. The hotel was only a minute from the beach, so we walked along the beach until we found a little alley full of food carts and tables. We sampled some different foods, got fruit smoothies, and settled down at a table. A few minutes after we sat down we noticed a small stage at the back and someone was starting to perform. He started by juggling fire clubs before starting to fire dance. It was incredible and a great welcome to Phuket. We were pretty tired after our day of traveling, so we went back to the hotel after dinner for a much needed sleep.
The next morning we tried the hotels breakfast buffet which was full of fresh fruit. After breakfast we went to the check out the different attractions for the area. The hotel has a trip planner, so we could book anything we wanted to do in her office, which was incredibly convenient. Our first day we ended up at a zip line adventure course. We started by meeting a baby elephant and getting to ride one of the bigger elephants for about half an hour. It was very bumpy, but pretty fun! After the elephants we got harnessed up and went over the safety guide lines for the zip lining. We climbed up into the tree tops on rope bridges, nets, tight ropes, and ladders before getting to zip line in the tops of the trees. It was so much fun! We climbed and zip lined for a little over an hour until the guides told us our time was up. We went back to our hotel to freshen up and get ready for dinner. We went to a great restaurant where we had some delicious food over looking the beach. The rest of the night we spent walking along the beach, playing in the water, and generally exploring the area.
Our second full day we moved to Phi Phi Island. We caught a ferry in the morning to the island. The ferry toured us around some of the smaller islands before getting to Phi Phi. We transferred to another boat that took us out to go snorkeling. I was a little scarred at first, but it was a ton of fun! We could jump off the side of the boat and swim around in the ocean over a small coral reef. I didn't see too many fish until the end, but by swimming down a little bit Leah and I saw a group of squids! Right after we had to go back to the boat and go back to Phi Phi for lunch. Lunch was family style with other people from our ferry and was nice, but we left very quickly after. We had so much fun snorkeling we booked a sunset cruise with more snorkeling for the next day before heading to our hotel. Most people went back on the ferry to Phuket, but we stayed on Phi Phi in a hotel called P.P. Casita. We had our own little bungalow(they weren't kidding when they named the hotel Casita) and we were so tired we took a nap. We woke up in time for dinner and walked the length of the island before settling on a restaurant. We had some great food and a few drinks before hanging out at the beach. Our hotel was again close to the beach, so it was an easy walk back for the night.
The next day we lounged around the pool all morning alternating between reading and swimming. We got lunch at a nice restaurant and went to the pier to catch our boat. The boat took us to five different locations for swimming, kayaking, snorkeling, and sight seeing. Our first stop was monkey beach. The boat had an upper level we sat on and we could jump off that upper level into the ocean and swim to the beach or take a smaller boat. Leah and I swam to the beach (the boat took our cameras and my glasses) and we got to feed the monkeys! It must have been high tide because there wasn't really a beach, it was all under water. There was what looked like a beach about half a foot under the water, but it was so much fun to swim around and see the wild monkeys. Our next stop was a cave. We couldn't swim there, but we got to see different painting on the wall and learn about the people who live there and search for swallow nests to make swallow nest soup and tea. After that we went to another beach which was the location for the movie The Beach. I've never seen the movie, but the beach was beautiful! There was another coral reef that we snorkeling in and saw tons of fish! My favorite were about half a foot long and beautiful blue/purple color. Leah and I also got to kayak into a beautiful lagoon in the area. The next beach we had to really work to get to. We jumped from the boat and swam to a shore full of rocks. There was a net we climbed up to get onto the island. We walked about five minutes to the other side of the island where there was an amazing beach. The water was crystal clear and it was probably the most beautiful beach from the entire trip. Leah and I played in the water for a bit before joining a soccer game with some other people from our cruise. We eventually had to go back to our boat and were exhausted by the time we'd climbed back down the net. We took a smaller boat back to our bigger boat where the guides made fried rice and spicy cucumbers for dinner. The sun was setting while we ate dinner and the boat went back to Phi Phi Island. It was an amazing day! We spent that night at the beach. The beach was lined with bars, many of which had fire dancers performing on the beach in front of the different bars. Leah and I grabbed a beer and watched the different dancers. Someone even set off fireworks farther down the beach. We knew we were going back to Phuket in the morning and couldn't have had a better night in Phi Phi.
We caught the ferry at 9 AM the next morning back to Phuket. This ferry was much bigger than the last one and Leah and I had a few seats to spread out on. We napped a bit on the way and were back at our original hotel, Nap Patong, by noon. We got a quick lunch and decided to go to the Tiger Kingdom for the rest of the day. We got to go in the cage with the tigers, pet them, and even lay down with them! We didn't stay long, but it was a pretty cool experience! After getting back to our hotel we spent an hour or so checking out a temple down the street. We got dinner at an Arabic/Egyptian restaurant and the food was amazing! We went to bed a bit early because we knew we would be heading out again in the morning.
Leah and I left our hotel by 8 AM in the morning. We went to a Thai open-air food market. We had a professional cook with us who explained exactly what everything was and let us taste all the different fruits, desserts, and spices. We got some food for the day and went to a cooking school. We learned to make five different Thai dishes: fried rice, soup, chicken and cashews, curry, and banana cakes. We watched the professional cook first, then cooked the dish ourselves on our own little station. We got to try a spoon full of the professionals dish and eat all of our own. Leah and I had to take our last dish home because we got so full! The school was also on the beach, so although it was covered (thankfully, since this was the only day it rained while we were there) we got to look out over the water. We got back to our hotel around 3 PM. We figured we'd watch some TV and hope the weather cleared up, but we ended up watching TV for a few hours! We kept switching channels because it was so much fun to listen to all the different languages! Every channel was different. There were two English channels, three Thai channels, a German channel, Russian channel, Japanese channel, Italian channel, French channel, Korean channel, and Chinese channel. We didn't understand a lot of what was happening, but it was fun to listen to and killed enough time for the rain to stop. This day was my last full day in Phuket, so we went out that night and stayed out pretty late. We slept in the next morning. Leah was staying an extra day so we could keep the room. We did wake up in time for breakfast and had a relaxing day. We went souvenir shopping and although we didn't get a lot, it was fun to look around the different shops. We knew we'd be tired that last day and we were right, so we'd booked that day as a spa day. We spend the morning reading by the pool and got massages in the afternoon. I packed everything and had dinner before catching a taxi back to the airport for a red eye flight back to Fukuoka.
I got back this morning (Monday, August 18) and got through immigration, customs, and back to apartment in two hours! Considering it's an hour and half bus ride back to my apartment, that's pretty good! I spend the day doing laundry and unpacking. Patrick and Vixay came over for a few hours and I'll head back to work tomorrow morning. Time for me to get some much needed sleep.
I also had the opportunity to go to and elementary teaching workshop run by the the British consulate. Only eight Japanese elementary teacher and two ALTs went including me. Although it was small, it was really fun! Leah was the other ALT to go and we got to work with the Japanese teachers. We learned good ways to introduce the English language to the elementary students and even did mock lessons with English children's books. It was a really fun way to spend the afternoon at work.
This week my friend Caol's parents were also visiting Fukuoka and Kitakyushu. They flew over from Dublin and arrive on Tuesday. I ended up going out with them three time and we had so much fun! I first met them at 小倉駅 (Kokura eki, Kokura station) where we took the train out to Mojiko, the very end of Kyushu island. We did something I'd never done before and walked the Kanmon Pedestrian Tunnel, an underwater bridge from Kyushu to Honshu. (Kyushu is the southern most of the four main islands of Japan and Honshu is the main island where Hiroshima, Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo are located.) It's only about a ten to fifteen minute walk between the islands, I think it took us longer to walk from Mojiko station to the bridge than it took for us to get across! We first visited the Mekari shrine next to the bridge on the Mojiko side. There's an elevator that brought us down into the tunnel and semi-circle stamps at either end to collect. We came out of the tunnel on the Shimonoseki side caught a bus to 唐戸 (Karato). We had some ice cream and sat on the wharf talking until catching a ferry back to Mojiko. That night we had 焼肉 (yakiniku, BBQ) for dinner and introduced Caol's parents to karaoke. I saw his parents twice more including last night when we went to 鉄なべ (Tetsunabe), Caol's favorite restaurant with amazing gyoza. 
