Phuket

Today we got picked up from our hotel at 6:30am for our half day visit to the Phuket Elephant Jungle Sanctuary. The majority of the elephants at their facilities are rescues from the trekking and logging industries. There are many companies that offer rides on elephants, which doesn’t sound that bad but apparently when they’re not being ridden they’re treated badly...

After lunch we had time for one more stop so we decided to give Tiger Kingdom a try. The premise is you get to visit with a tiger f your choice, the choice being by size. Horrible to say but small, medium and large. Depending on the size is what you pay. The babies are the most sought after so most expensive. The large full grown tigers were the cheapest. We choice...

About 20 minutes away from the Big Buddha was Chalong Temple. It’s really three temples in the one complex. The most important of the 29 buddhist temples of Phuket is Chalong Temple, located in the Chalong district in Phuket. It is dedicated to two highly venerable monks, Luang Pho Chaem and Luang Pho Chuang, who led the citizens of Chalong Subdistrict fighting...

Our next stop was The Big Buddha. Phuket’s Big Buddha is one of the most important and revered landmarks on the island. The huge structure sits on top of the Nakkerd Hills between Chalong and Kata and, at 45 metres tall, can be seen from as far away as Phuket Town and Karon Beach. The lofty site offers the best 360-degree views of the island, with sweeping...

This place our drive suggested we stop at. It’s apparently great to view a sunset. Unfortunately it was only approximately 11am so a bit early yet. The views were pretty incredible but there was an area that appeared to be some sort of worship area that was filled with elephants. It was hard to get a good photo of the whole thing at once so here are a couple close...

After we landed at Phuket Airport, we took a minibus shuttle to our hotel. It was cheap but took forever, almost 2 hours to get there once they dropped everyone off along the way. The hotel is quite nice and very modern in design. After checking in, we made the mistake of taking a shower then laying down to rest for a “few minutes”. Almost 15 hours later, we finally...

Our 6-hour flight from Tokyo to Bangkok is done. Customs and immigration was a breeze (thank god!). One more flight to go to get to Phuket and then we can finally relax. We’re taking a discount airliner to get to Phuket. The bad thing is that all those airlines only fly out of another airport. So we boarded the free inter-airport shuttle bus and spent the next 1.5...

So we got home from the Mexico flight at 6am and our flight to Thailand via Tokyo was at 4:15pm. This gave us a few hours to do some laundry, finish packing and have a nap. I ended sleeping for 3 hours while Eduardo opted to not sleep (he’s able to sleep on planes so he had gotten a lot of sleep on the Interjet flight). After a quick shower I gathered the rest of my...