Phuket update

We woke to sunshine this morning, feeling a little under the weather after not much sleep but after a filling breakfast we headed out to explore. We had booked a tuk-tuk for the afternoon so this morning was wandering. We walked down towards Bangla Road looking at the shops as we went (not venturing inside as once you are in it's hard to leave) then up Bangla Road until we reached the shopping centre. After a coffee stop at 'the coffee club' it was inside to grab some supermarket supplies (Pantene shampoo for instance is about $3) while sudo husband had a haircut. Wife one and husband travel to Thailand regularly so they purchased a phone and prepaid sim to use here as it is so much cheaper than using your Aussie mobiles (either that or purchase a Thai sim card if you have an unlocked phone).



There are so many restaurants and so many quesenes to choose from not to mention the street vendors so finding lunch or dinner is easy. As the shops stay open so late most don't open till later in the morning (shopping centre opened at 11am) so consider this when planning your day.

We arrived back to the Hotel via tuktuk for our 1pm pick from there we ventured off to the jewellery shop as our first stop. You must see this jewellery shop to believe it! It's more like the size of a factory than a shop. Each group is greeted by a lady and escorted inside and given a complementary drink, from there you tour the factory area and then into the showroom. There are thousands of rings, bracelets, earrings and necklaces to choose from either with precious or semiprecious stones. The staff are entertaining as well as knowledgable and they picked straight away I had earrings on that I had purchased from them (which was 12 years ago!) Thailand has beautiful sapphires which feature a their jewellery but in this 'shop' they have everything. I was very strong and kept my wallet in my bag but both wife 1&3 purchased some lovely pieces.



From there we went to the cashew nut factory to see how they extract by hand the nuts from the shell also taste many different cashew flavours (and buy some of course). They also had a selection of other delicacies for sale including caterpillas; we passed on those.



From their it was off to the night market. We made it down two isles before we ran out of time! Lugging our purchases back to the tuktuk we decided we would come back next weekend to try again. Back to the hotel at 6pm. In the pool for a quick dip and a couple of cocktails at the swim up bar before changing for dinner. We made an executive decision to have dinner at the hotel tonight as a full Lobster Thermidor for $20 was not to be missed! Dinner was great, couple more cocktails then a walk down the street to a fish spa. For those who have no idea what a fish spa is you stick your feet in a fish tank and the fish nibble at your dead skin. Not for the faint hearted! I had a number of people laughing at me as I yelped and carried on (might have had something to do with the cocktails); I can now say I've done it but I'm not sure if I'll do it again.



We than had another hour long foot, arm and neck massage before venturing back to the hotel and bed.


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