Thailand was amazing. Some of the most beautiful, perfect beaches I have ever been to. We arrived at our $25 hotel and since Nate is the one that made all the reservations, I was relatively terrified to see our hotel, expecting a filthy hostel with bathrooms I wouldn't go anywhere near and dirty sheets. Simpletel Hotel at Karon Beach in Phuket was the BEST deal EVER. Super clean, very basic and overall just simple - hence the name. Karon Beach was exactly what I wanted in terms of where I wanted to be in the touristy island of Phuket. Our hotel was 2-3 blocks from the beach and the streets were lined with vendors, shops, restaurants and bars.
The last stop of the tour were the Ice Cream Caves. We docked the boat and walked into the cave and were greeted by hundreds of creepy, screeching bats. The limestone cave had crazy looking formations from water dripping into it, creating ginormous ice cream looking statues.
The next day we toured the Phi Phi Islands (pronounced pee-pee islands). This tour wasn't the most amazing but it was still fun seeing more islands. Most of the tour, we were only viewing the islands from the speed boat but it was still spectacular, regardless. The sea sickness tablets I took unfortunately made me very drowsy (when they say just take 1, don't take 2) so I slept a lot of the boat ride. Whoops. But I still got to enjoy some snorkeling, swimming and good sight seeing. Maya Beach was one of the main destinations we were after and was probably the most beautiful beach I've seen yet. However, the hundreds of tourists kinda ruined it. Not that it wasn't still amazing, but it's hard to really enjoy and absorb how gorgeous it is when there are a hundred people crowding the sand. Which was the softest, whitest sand I've ever seen, by the way.
The rest of our Phuket time was spent walking around the town, laying on the beach (& letting off floating lanterns for Alex<3) and going to the bars. Our last night we saw some awesome fire throwers where Nate ended up in a chair while he did his fire-throwing-ness around him to eventually light a cigarette in his mouth. Yes, homeboy spun his fire chains around Nate's face close enough for him to light his cigarette on the fire. I was obviously terrified, although Nate claims it "wasn't scary" (liar).
Our first stop was at the Damnern Saduak floating market. Probably a much better concept than it actually was, but still pretty cool. We floated down in a canoe and realized this meant we were actually trapped at each place our canoe driver stopped at so we couldn't as easily get away from the crazy vendors trying to sell us ugly bracelets. And then there was the heat. I felt like I was about to have a heat stroke when we were caught in a boat traffic jam and didn't move for 10 minutes. However, this all was nothing an ice cold beer couldn't easily fix so we were happy campers. It was a fun experience but I wouldn't pay more than the 150 BAHT (aka $5) it cost.
Thailand definitely treated us well. I even was getting used to the millions of HUGE cockroaches everywhere. Well, maybe just getting a little less scared of them.
We'll be back Thailand!