Good morning from Phuket! We are staying at the Residence Resort and Spa Villas with 3 other guys from our bschool class: Dave, Jamie and Matt, although none of them get here until tonight at V's welcome reception. Oh yes, we are here for our great friend and Bali travel partner's wedding and we cannot wait! She is having it at one of the premier resorts in Phuket called Trisara. Even though our accommodations aren't 5-star by any means, we are still living the life, waking up to this...
Anyway, M snuck into the villa after V's bachelorette party around 2am. Trannies, dancing and whips were involved! But T&I stayed in and woke up early to get to Tesco at 8am to pick up some fruit and drinks for our villa. We also ran into the DOG that followed us all the way home the night before. He waited for us to leave McDonald's where we had breakfast and picked up sandwiches for K and M. T and I named him after a classmate that lurked around girls... About the second half of the title, we can talk about it now since we exhausted almost all the funds, but Karl and I had a brain fart the day before on our marathon travel day. We added a zero next to the amount of cash we wanted to take out. We anticipated 6,000 baht because that would be about $200 and we knew the island hopping trip would be about 2,000 baht. Anyway, adding a zero by accident (we were probably still in that yen mindset), we tried to take out 60,000 baht, however the machine only lets you take out 20,000 max. This didn't raise any alarms to us, so BOTH of us said "I guess I'll take the max." What a dumb moment. T exchanged her yen and USD so she was fine. Anyway, we realized we were each walking around Thailand with $600 in our wallets. Not cool. But it was fine because K&I owed M money for the Japan hotels so I ended up giving her half because she didn't have enough after the bachelorette party and K gave some $$ to our friends A (also from the Bali trip) and Andrew who hadn't been to an ATM yet.
After breakfast, we checked out the beach nearby. We could see the hotel where other friends including the bride and groom are staying, so we decided that we would walk there to get to the welcome dinner later at 7pm. When we got back "home" we swam in our private pool (the swimming portion of the triathlon) and took in some sun before heading out again. We had a lunch appointment at Taste at Surin Beach with friends plus the maid of honor. I had a beer and a nice lunch of soft shell crab sandwich while others ordered tacos. I know (especially with McD's in the morning), not quite Thai food but there will be lots of that later.
T made a 3:30 pm bike tour for us so we had to go back to the villa. With our tour leader decked out in Livestrong apparel, it was definitely the best way to explore our area. We saw Fish spas where baby fish eat your dead skin, locals, interesting neighborhoods, crazy traffic (confirmed that I cannot drive in Japan or Thailand simply because turning is way too confusing from the other side of he road. Don't even get me started on driving from the right side of the car), and a Muay Thai ring and practice.
We then biked to Laguna and we saw elephants! We met 2 at Laguna named Cindy (after cindy crawford allegedly) and her daughter Lucky. See how cute lucky is? She sneak attacked K by kissing him on the cheek. We spent a lot of time with these oh so charming and friendly animals! When we got back to the bikes, out bike tour leader had gone out to purchase waters for us! Sweet! Oh, here's Lucky doing a head stand. Yoga elephant!
After cleaning up from our amazing bike tour (but still sore from it), we got pretty to make our beachside walk to V's welcome dinner. We were hungry but energized. The sun had just set so the sky was pink and there were few people out besides a small European family with a flashlight. Who knew this would be the longest walk ever? We were using the hotel as the landmark to judge whether we were getting any closer and it never seemed like we made any progress for about 3/4 of the 45-minute trip. There were also a ton of tiny crabs out that you could see as the waves receded back into the ocean. T kept shrieking as they crossed her path! It would have been completely dark in some parts, were it not for the kid with a flashlight behind us. We were exhausted, sweaty and hungry when we saw a figure say M's name in the darkness. It was Jamie! Surely we were close to the venue! It was great to see more familiar faces. V had put together some Thai cooking stations, where noodles, papaya salad, Tom Yum soup, green curry and plenty of BBQ meats were presented. We ate lots and drank Singha beer while catching up with the bride, groom, and classmates. I think we are now getting used to the idea of eating on the beach for every meal.
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