Putting our feet up in P(h)uket
Phuket (pronounced Puket) is relatively close to Koh Lanta. That is — it’s only about a four hour car ride through the southern Thailand countryside, studded with Malaysian-style mosques, pictures of the Thai royal family, 7-11s full of onigiri and unusual sliced fruits, beautiful greenery, and mountains that seemingly extruded straight up from the ground
Having already spent more than a month in Thailand, Phuket would be our last place of stay (about 10 days) before leaving the country. Phuket is a large island of several towns. Most of its areas are quite pricey, but for a chunk of the time we got a good deal on a giant penthouse apartment five minutes walk from beautiful Surin beach. The view from our apartment-long balcony more than made up for the worn state of the apartment (with the couch literally coming apart at the seams)
The penthouse was clearly intended to be the lap of luxury, with the master suite separated from the main apartment by the balcony, and sporting a massive tub with jets. One time, Masha tried to turn on those jets. Suddenly I hear the girls screaming from that bathroom. I run in to find the jets shooting like broken fire hydrants (at least 6 of them) in all directions, with walls and ceiling already dripping. Apparently, you’re not supposed to turn those on before filling the tub and you are supposed to know how to use them. Even worse, to turn them off, you had to cycle through all the modes of one out of 10 unlabeled buttons — assuming you figured that out. Luckily, Masha is an expert at escape rooms and bizarre interfaces and figured it out before we flooded the entire building.
Phuket is notoriously Russified, even more so in the past two years
Seen around town
but unlike, say, Turkey or Goa, it was dominated by a very specific strata of Russian society — middle age upper middle class and famous musicians. At the time we were there, Makarevich was posting funny pictures of tangled power lines in the south of the island and members of Bi2 were arrested and in danger of being extradited to Russia on the North.
The real draw of the stay, of course, was the beach, with light waves and gorgeous golden sand. We thankfully avoided the jellyfish invasion which apparently occurs frequently here
Masha was still on crutches after breaking her ankle in Cambodia, but luckily our hotel owner also owned a restaurant right on the beach, and we got free rides there and back in a little open-back truck whenever we wanted
We quickly got into a glorious routine — breakfast at the hotel, then go get a beach side table at the restaurant surrounded by 95% russian folks, and spend the next four hours swimming, playing games, eating, pretending we don’t understand anyone around us and drinking $3 rum coconuts
AND the food was delicious!
Phuket was also our last place for absurdly cheap Thai massages, so the girls took full advantage on a daily basis. After several massages at the same studio, it turned out they also do hair braiding. Which meant nothing to me when I first heard it but, it turns out, they do this:
The poor women doing this quoted us $90 originally, planning for this to take one person 2.5 hours. They, however, were blissfully unaware of the thickness of Alya’s hair from first look. In reality, after 4 hours of continuous work by four people
their team was exhausted. But the results were pretty spectacular. For the next two weeks Alya would walk around like this, sometimes with less glaring
Since Phuket is so large and varied, some of it is barely touched by humans, some spots — like Surin beach — are crowded but pleasant, and some are overrun, more “adult”, and indeed obnoxious like Patong. We spent a few days near there too.
We stayed at a resort near Patong, with our friends visiting from the US — Alina, Zack and Aria. The property was similar to what you’d find at a Mexico all-inclusive, but compared to Patong, it was blissfully quiet and beautiful. Quite luckily and conveniently, they also gave Masha’s foot a break by providing us a wheeled chair to push her around for the week. Yey to not having to move across a large resort on crutches the whole time!
We luxuriated in the convenience of the place and its sizable rooms with comfortable pillows, blankets and working AC. (Mike almost took his pillows in a suitcase with us…) On top of this , the food was delicious, the kids had plenty to do all on their own, and the adults got to chill by the pool, enjoy the views on the beach and really… be kids again. It felt like a vacation from our style of travelliving. On , and we also got to watch a Muay Thai fight, which we had yet to do
We also made it out to town center on Mike’s Birthday to try this fancy Georgian restaurant. It may surprise you, there are several of those on Phuket! The dinner was a veritable feast —
— otherwise, though, neither the beach in Patong nor the jam-packed town was particularly appealing.
On the other hand, we did also go to the city in the center of Phuket (where locals live) for a dentist visit. We discovered it to be similar looking to the beach side of the islands — and similarly laid back — but less dressed up, more authentic and more real. We were grateful to see so many sides of the island, and find the ones that fit our vibe. And, we were glad that we went to put our feet up for a while in Phuket.