Lindsay and Ryan Do the World 2008/09

We flew to Phuket Island on February 20 from Bangkok. 55 minute flight.  We checked into Square One Hotel.  It is so nice.  Huge room, pool, and its new.  $35/night.  We are staying here for 8 nights.  It actually feels like a vacation now and not travelling.  There is quite a difference!

We are staying on Patong Beach.  It is the party area of Phuket.  Very Americanized, reminds us of Miami Beach or Cancun.  The beach is crowded with bright umbrellas and sun-burned white people.  All the typical fast food retaurants as well but you don’t come to Thailand to eat Burger King! haha. 

We walk around every night and look at all the shops and try to barter for good deals on souvenirs.  There is a huge mall where we go to get our groceries and Dairy Queen. There is so much to see and do here.  But it is really crowded here too.

This beach saw the worst damage from the tsunami back in 2004.  You don’t see any of the damage at all today though.  There are a lot of Tsunami Evacuation signs along the beach.  Ryan and I have our route planned out. 😛  I’m just going to stand on Ryan’s shoulders.

Today, February 23, we went on a day trip to Phi Phi Islands, Maya Bay, Monkey Beach, Viking Cave and other little stops.  Maya Bay is where the movie “The Beach” was filmed.  If any of you have seen it, its a deserted island and turquoise waters.  So beautiful in the movie but when we got there it was a totally different story!  There was about 20 boats, 1000 people all crowded on the small, white beach.  We could hardly take a picture without getting an old man in a speedo in our picture!  It was very dissappointing but it definetly was the place where the movie was filmed.  You could tell that much at least.  Ryan and I were really looking forward to Monkey Beach since we are professional at feeding wild monkeys now.  Its where there are wild monkeys playing on the beach and you can feed them.  The tour guide only gave us 10 minutes here!  We even went and bought sunflower seeds to feed them! We were a little upset about that.  It was funny though because people were trying to feed them bananas but the monkeys get bananas every day, so they came straight to us and the seeds.  haha.

We had a buffet lunch on Phi Phi Don Island.  I started feeling really sick on the island but it passed.  Maybe too much sun.  Ryan took good care of me.  We spent the rest of the afternoon on Khao Kai Island.  Nice relaxing time there.  The sand was covered in coral so it was a little hard to walk on.  Very beautiful turquoise waters though.

After 6 hours on a hot, busy, old bus, we made it to Lopburi, the city beseiged by monkeys.  There are monkeys everywhere, climbing on the telephone poles, all over the ruins in the middle of the city and running across the street with their arms full of food.  Its quite a sight.

We each took a motorcycle taxi to our hotel, called the Lopburi Inn.  Ryan took one and I was on another behind him.  I lost sight of him for a few minutes and I had a terrible thought that I was going to the black market for my organs to be sold.

Its a nice room with air-con and our own fridge for 700 baht (25 dollars a night!)  We are staying here two nights and then heading south to some islands.  I am very much looking forward to that!

We went and took some pictures of the monkeys at the ruins today and we had no idea what we were in for!  When we got to the ruins, it was 50 baht each to get in and a little baggy of sunflower seeds to feed them.  We had no idea that we could hand feed them or even get close to them.  They are wild monkeys after all.  It was sooo much fun.  It was the highlight of Thailand for sure for us so far.  Their hands look just like ours!  They would take the food right out of your hands so nicely and they would just sit there and eat it in front of you.  The older ones are by far calmer and nicer. The younger ones are crazy though!  They jump on your legs and bounce off you like a trampoline and climb up your hands and try to grab whatever they can.  At first it is quite scary because you are afraid they are going to hurt you.  As soon as we got into the temple where they all hang out, we started feeding them and from behind this little one climbed up my back and sat on my shoulders and stole my sunglasses right off my head!  It scared the crap out of me. I was screaming “Ryan, Ryan, HELP” but all he did was take a picture! haha.  Then the monkey ran up the side of the temple with my glasses and put them on! LOL. Kidding.  We thought they were gone for good.  So we continued to just feed and play with the monkeys.  The little ones get a little feisty and climb all over you. One bite me on the wrist and I thought I would have to go for rabies shots but it didn’t break the skin.  The guy that takes the money at the front saw that we were having trouble with all the monkeys and gave us a stick to keep them away.  Ryan gave the monkeys what they deserved!  Kidding.  But he kept them in line for me.  Without the stick we would have been in real trouble. lol.  We didnt really hit them, we just swung a little at them to keep them off of us.  We were filthy by the end of it but it was way worth it. We are going again tomorrow morning before we get on the bus! 🙂  And right before we were going to leave, we saw the monkey that stole my glasses!  We baited him with some seeds and he dropped the glasses and I grabbed them back!  There are teeth marks all over them now but at least I got them back.  🙂

 We will update the blog again in a few days when we get to the south.  Bye for now.
 

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