After an emotional farewell to family, we headed off to Thailand (on our way to England) for a relaxing honeymoon. We spent the first four days in Phuket, at Patong Beach. It was a very busy place, full of tourists and assertive Thai people, trying to coax you into their stores to buy clothes, make suits for you, give you cheap taxi rides....things we weren't used to. We soon learnt to barter for cheaper prices and keep our hands in our pockets so you wouldn't reach to shake someone's hand and be pulled into a store! We discovered lots of yummy dishes, like chicken fried rice and chocolate coconut pancakes sold cheaply at roadside stalls. Thai food had much more intense flavours to what we had experienced, some good, some not so much to our liking.
During this time, we did a tour to the Big Buddha, visited a cashew nut factory, a snake farm, and rode an elephant-which was all really awesome. We got to be inches away from cobra snakes too, which I felt a little uncomfortable with! We did manage a photo together posing with a snake wrapped around our shoulders.
We then spent 9 nights at Club Med, Phuket, which is based at Karon Beach. We made the most of relaxing, eating and drinking far too much, swimming and socializing. We did manage a day trip to Koh Phi Phi, the island where they filmed 'The Beach', which you may recognize in our pictures. There were some beautiful snorkeling spots around there which we made the most of. We managed to spot the big lizard there too...just walking across the grass in front of us...it was approximately 80cm long. Thai New Year also occurred during our stay, its called 'songkran' and its celebrated up and down the country by throwing water at eachother and rubbing a purfumed paste on people's faces. It was a whole two days of water throwing, with the locals and tourists joining in together. James and I bought water guns and joined in the fun. Some threw buckets of ice cold water. It was really awesome and would recommend this.
We then spent the last four nights in Bangkok. There had been protests in the capital the week before, so we were very grateful they had settled and that we didn't have to change our travel plans. We did a fair bit of shopping here and otherwise, did a tour of the Grand Palace, where the Thai King used to live. Also visited the floating markets by boat, just out of Bangkok. It was amazing to see the locals selling their goods, some spices, mangoes, and lots of tourist items too. Well worth the visit.
