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An Unexpected Layover in Phuket

Our lackadaisical, non-committal approach to planning this holiday has backfired a bit already: we decided last night that we were ready to move on from Bangkok to Ko Phi Phi, but all flights from BKK to either Krabi or Phuket were fully booked. There were plenty of flights to Samui, but we aren’t ready to go there just yet, as we have a flight from Samui to Chiang Mai eight days from now. Our Bangkok hotel offered to book us on an overnight bus, but we politely declined. We finally settled on a flight to Phuket through Samui, which is a bit crazy (it’s like flying from Seattle to Los Angeles via Phoenix) and takes twice as long as a direct flight, but it will get us there.

The only real downside is that we’ll be arriving in Phuket too late to catch a ferry to Ko Phi Phi, so we’ll need to wait another day. But I suppose there are worse things in life than being forced to spend a day on one beautiful tropical island before moving on to another (high class problems). If we like Phuket, we might spend two nights.

I’m not really sure what to expect out of Phuket; many of our friends have told us to skip it, proclaiming it “the Miami Beach of Thailand.” But it looks like there are quite a few different beaches, and we may do just fine as long as we avoid Patong (and thinking about it, Miami isn’t such a bad place…)

Bangkok in one Day

We only have one day in Bangkok – at least for now, we’ll be here again in two weeks for our departure back to Seattle – so we tried to hit the major hotspots today. We spent the first half of the day at the Wats in the historic part of town – the Grand Palace (home of the Emerald Buddha) in the morning, followed by Wat Pho (home of the Reclining Buddha). We experienced our first Thai massages at the massage school in Wat Pho – highly recommended! We will certainly be getting more – at these prices we could get massages every day.

After lunch, we took a cab to Chatuchak Weekend Market, which was huge and crazy and like nothing I’d ever seen before. We weren’t in the market for anything in particular – we ended up purchasing a couple pillow covers and Thai pants – but it was fascinating just to walk through the maze of stalls selling clothing, kitchen appliances, food, puppies (!), and just about anything else you could imagine.

The Grand Palace

Kids playing at Wat Pho

The Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho

Papaya salad stall at the weekend market.

Thailand Itinerary Thoughts

I haven’t heard much of interest out of Thailand since writing this, and I’m assuming no news is good news. So unless something changes drastically in the next week, we’re going. Here’s a rough sketch of the plan:

Arrive BKK after an 8-hour layover in Hong Kong. Check out the city for a day or two before heading to the beach.
Fly to Krabi. Spend a couple of days of beach time in the area — either in Railay or Ko Phi Phi or Ko Lanta (or perhaps split our time between two of those three, depending on time and transportation options).
Fly to Ko Samui for more beach time on Samui and/or Ko Phangan (but no Full Moon Parties for us — we’re way too old for that).
Fly to Chiang Mai. Either do some trekking or a day at the elephant farm if it’s not all booked up; maybe a cooking class. We’ll most likely be in Chiang Mai for New Year’s.
If we have time, I’d love to see Sukhothai. But I don’t know if it’s too tight of a squeeze (if we had another day or two I’d also love to squeeze in a side trip to Ayutthaya on the way back to Bangkok. But I don’t think it’s going to happen).
Head back to Bangkok and fly home.

The flights from Krabi to Samui, and Samui to Chiang Mai are already booked (had to book those this past weekend, as all the direct flights were booking up, and we want to avoid flights through BKK as much as possible). Nothing else is, but I’ll probably grab a hotel room for our first night in Bangkok before we go.

Can’t wait!

Thailand

Knowing that no matter how many frequent flyer miles one has, it can be difficult to actually use them, Kenny and I booked our upcoming vacation early. In fact, I believe we weren’t back from last year’s winter trip to Vietnam for six weeks when we reserved our tickets to Thailand for the second half of December.

We had some vague knowledge that there had been political unrest in the country, but we assumed that the situation was no worse than the usual rumblings coming out of that part of the world and that it wouldn’t impact a couple of tourists on a beach holiday. We never dreamed that the country’s major airports would be besieged by protestors and shut down for over a week not long before our scheduled departure.

Now that our departure date is only two weeks away, we’ve obviously been paying closer attention. Or perhaps I should admit, I’ve been obsessively scouring various online media and travel forums for any information I can get about the situation. And it appears to be improving, although it sounds like tensions are still running high.

On Monday, a court ruling declared that the prime minister and his party were guilty of electoral fraud and must step down. The PAD protestors proclaimed victory and ended their airport takeover. As of yesterday, service has resumed at Bangkok’s international airport, and it looks like Cathay Pacific (where we have our booking) will be in full operation by tomorrow. My understanding is that the situation is still somewhat fragile, and it’s anyone’s guess whether the looming discontent will lead to further demonstrations or even violence. Tomorrow is the 81st birthday of popular King Bhumibol, and his annual birthday eve address was much anticipated — in the past, he has been able to quell unrest by appealing to national unity — but it was canceled at the last moment due to a throat infection.

We’re still watching the situation closely, but the working assumption right now is that we’re going. It feels absurd to be headed to a place that 300,000 tourists are trying desperately to get out of, but on the upside I expect that we won’t have any trouble avoiding crowds or finding hotel rooms. And while this incident has severely tarnished Thailand’s image and threatens its heavily tourism-dependent economy, Kenny and I both feel that the best thing we can do to help Thailand recover is to go be tourists and do our small part to revive their economy. If things turn sour while we’re there but we can still make transit connections, we may retreat to Laos, Malaysia, or even back to Vietnam (I won’t cry if I have to spend a week on the beach in Nha Trang). Fingers crossed.

Venice Under Water

The LA Times has an interesting photo gallery with images of the flooding in Venice, caused by an unusually high tide. A few favorites:

Venice experienced some heavy rainfall when Kenny and I visited just over two years ago — the water level was high, but it was not quite a flood situation. Here’s a shot from our final day in Venice, shortly before we boarded a train for Bologna: