Thailand

First vacation not to the US: Bangkok + Phuket, Thailand

So here are a bunch of photos that slightly represent my trip through Bangkok and Phuket. What we did: 2 flights, 2 boat trips, a day of snorkeling, the Flying Hanuman (famous zip line course), an elephant ride, browsing markets, and eating wonderful food. 

Arrived at and departed from Suvarnabhumi Airport. Not only is it architecturally impressive but culturally as well. Visit it and see for yourself, you'll be impressed.

We took a "high-speed-low-drag" boat tour on the Chao Phraya River around Bangkok to feed over sized blue channel catfish, watch what seemed to be an endless amount of temples fly by our boat, and finally get dropped off at the Asiatique market. 

Our Cap'n throwin up the DEUCES Asian style. 

We spotted two large monitor lizards swimming in one of the many channels we zipped through.

A temple.

Another temple but up close.

After spending an hour or so browsing the vendors at Asiatique we tried the fish foot spa. It felt like a million miniature sticky hand yoyos (you know the ones that you'd slap onto someones paper in class back in the day when sticky hand yoyos were cool) were slapping and getting pulled off your feet for 15 minutes. It was unbearable for the first 10 minutes but the last 5 were just a minor tickle. 

We flew to Phuket where we took an hour long taxi ride to our hotel at the southern-most tip of the island. Every day it rained quite heavily but only for a few hours in the day, so anything we planned was done with limitations.  

We took a boat ride in hopes of seeing Mia Beach where the movie "The Beach" staring Leonardo DiCaprio was filmed. Unfortunately the weather got the best of our trip and the tour had to cancel entering Mia Bay because of high swells.

Practically the whole boat was from mainland Chiner. 

Phi Phi Island. Home to where the nests used for birds nest soup are plucked from caverns in particular Viking Cave. 

Pulling into Phi Phi Lagoon. The water was nice and clear but fish and coral were unfortunately eliminated from this area possibly due to tourist boat trips stirring up the water. 

One of our stops was Monkey Beach near Koh Phi Phi. These little guys were just as aggressive as the ones in Hong Kong so I didn't bother with getting off the boat. Mainlanders loved em though. 

 

One of the proudest moments I've had in maybe 7 years...spotting this tree that looks like a lama while riding an elephant, BOOM! 

The last evening of the trip I was informed that I could have rented a scooter/motorcycle without a license instead of paying for a taxi to get anywhere...