Phuket Time!

After spending 4 days in Bangkok, we headed to Phuket. Melissa took the direct flight from Hong Kong and met us there. We stayed in Phuket's main beach, Patong, where we enjoyed our daily massages, beach time and of course Thai food. We also went on a day tour to Phi Phi Island.










We thought we were going to luck out with the weather but as soon as we arrived at our first snorkeling stop it started sprinkling. However, it wasn't that bad as the water was warm and you can't feel the rain when you're underwater. There were lots of colorful reef fish and some parrot fish swimming amongst the coral.

Our next stop was Monkey Beach. The monkeys got there when the island was connected to the mainland a long long time ago. After being separated from the mainland, these monkeys have learned to adapt to island life - diving for crabs and other shell fish. Some of the crew on the boat had some treats to throw to the monkeys, but the boat didn't get too close as these guys have been known to actually jump into the boats.

For lunch, we stopped at Phi Phi Island. 

After lunch, we stopped at Maya Bay (famous for the "The Beach" movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio) We took full advantage of our brief break from the rain and we all hung out in the water... until it started raining that is, then we made a quick dash back to the boat!  

Our first full day of no rain in Phuket was actually on Greg's birthday. That evening, we got some beers and headed to the beach to watch the sunset. While sitting there we were approached by a little girl selling flower leis. When we told her we weren't interested, she politely sat down right in front of us and asked where we were from and began drawing the American flag in the sand. She followed up with pictures of Australia, England, Vietnam, China and several others. We were pretty impressed and our quest to stump this 9 year old was on. After about 5 minutes of this game we were really impressed.. She knew Brazil but not Colombia so we taught her that one. We gave her a tip for her efforts and she gave us two of the leis. After going back to our conversation we later noticed she had moved on to a group of Aussie guys and she and her sister were playing cards with them. 

After enjoying the sunset, we headed to Hard Rock to celebrate Greg's big birthday. 

The hotel had a cake and candles for Greg's birthday. We sang Happy Birthday to Greg, and then Cynthia sang a solo for the birthday boy in Spanish. Happy Birthday Greg!!