THAILAND... Phuket... Paradise

Our flight to Phuket went smoothly. We arrived in the later evening. We read in a tour book that we should take a shuttle into the city (that way we don't get ripped off too much by taxi drivers, etc). So we did just that. We took a shuttle, however it took a lot longer than expected. They made a few stops on the way to pick up and drop off other people. By the time we got to our hotel, it was pretty much closed. There was a receptionist sleeping on the couch waiting for us. We got to our room (which looked quite a bit different than the picture on the website) and slept sweet Thailand dreams.

DAY 1-- We woke up to the sun shining. We couldn't wait to get our day started in Phuket. We stayed in Karon Beach. In Phuket, there are 3 main beaches, Patong (the crazy party/tourist beach), Kata (the quiet, secluded, relaxing beach), and Karon (the beach in the middle). Katie and I had a great breakfast in the hotel, got into our beach attire and set out on our beach day. My friends James and Kristin (whom are good friends of mine from Busan) were also there in Phuket so we went to meet up with them. We stopped at 7-11, grabbed some wine coolers to start our journey. Karon beach was soooo nice. There were so many cute restaurants and shops. The ocean was so blue. It was gorgeous. We met up with James and Kristin and made our way to the ocean. We had a great time all just soaking up the sun. I was too white for my own good so was sooooo happy to soak up the rays. The water was beautiful, the weather was perfect, it was an amazing day. We drank Mai Tai's on the beach which were delicious and just chatted. Kristin had lived in Busan for awhile but left 6 months earlier back to Canada so we had fun catching up. We saw some people earlier parasailing and decided that we needed to scope that out. So we did and I decided that I should definitely do it. I'd never had before and really wanted to so I was very excited. I was a bit nervous at first. The guys who were in charge of it strapped me up SO quickly. Life jacket, clips, and ropes, all in about 2 seconds. Before I could even give Katie my stuff, they were saying "run, run run!" lol. So I ran on the sand, into the water, and UP in the air I went :) The water was such an amazing color of blue/green. I could see so much. To me, there's nothing in the world like the feeling of floating. When I went sky diving and paragliding, my favorite part was the floating part. Just being high in the sky looking down on the world. It's an amazing feeling. I took so many pictures. There is one (in the pic to the right) of my feet over the water and you can see just tons and tons of jelly fish below. At one point, the boat slowed down enough to dunk me in the water and I was REALLY hoping I didn't get dunked in jelly fish...I got lucky lol. It was a lot of fun. Kristin took pictures from the boat below, and I took her water proof camera case up in the air with me :) It was really enjoyable and I'm so glad I did it. Definitely a highlight of the day. Katie went next. She loved it just as much.
After a few more hours of lounging around the beach, it was getting near to sunset time. Katie and I had read in Lonely Planet about a bar called 'After Beach Bar' that was on the side of a mountain known for the sunset view so we decided it was vital that we made it there for the sunset and so we got in a tuk tuk and headed that way. We got pretty girly cocktail drinks and watched the sunset. It was gorgeous

I will start by saying that I DID wear sunscreen.

MORE PHUKET POST COMING SOON....