Thailand

Thailand.

In October, I was feeling the blahness that can come from the hecticness of life. I not only wanted a vacation, but felt I NEEDED one for my own mental health. So who to call and convince to go with me... (Marc doesn't like to travel). My friend Henna and I chatted on the phone soon after and started planning. We started brainstorming our top 20 countries worldwide. We'd already been to China, so we had a taste of Asia, but once you start turns out you never can quite get enough of it.

In December, we bought tickets.

In January, we started planning the itinerary.

We flew out on the 31st of January. My parents arrived by plane hours after I left to help Marc with the kiddos. They did so much while Marc worked. They took the kids everyday to school and picked them back up. They swept the floors, caught up on a mountain pile of dirty laundry, scraped old paint off the downstairs bathroom floor that had been there since an October bathroom renovation, and even organized the bookshelf in the dining room.

I left St. Louis flew to Houston, met up with my friend and then we boarded the same flight to Tokyo, where we had a 3 hour layover, and then hopped on another flight to Bangkok. However, when we arrived in Bangkok we had to stand in a customs line that was really long....I got a video clip of it, there were like at LEAST 1,500 people in that line. It moved back and forth endlessly, once we got our official stamps in the passport we hung out to catch a flight to Phuket. It was about a 6 hour wait, but really only felt like a 2 or 3 hour layover since we passed the time chatting while standing in the customs line.

We decided to spend 6 days in Phuket, and 1 in Bangkok, SO glad we did!

Phuket is an island in southern Thailand (when looking at a map it's on the long skinny tail that hangs down) and there are TONS of exotic excursions to do all day long. Here is our itinerary, feel free to copy if you're planning a trip.

DAY 1: Nai Harn Beach (very southern tip on Phuket). Visited Thai Izen Kitchen and ate the best yellow curry this planet has to offer. Seriously. The food was worth the visit....best thing was it was $2.84.

DAY 2: PHANG NGA BAY SEA CANOEING & VISIT JAMES BOND ISLAND

This was the best excursion we did during our entire Thailand trip. Worth way more than $119.00. Prices have now gone up to $129.00, but it's worth even $200.00. We went to the famous James Bond island where they filmed the James Bond movie "The Man with the Golden Gun." It was picture perfect, but we also canoed in these sea water caves that were freaking awesome. I felt like a pirate, like these would be the place to stash stuff if it were still the 1700's...mmkay? I'm just saying.

DAY 3: GREEN ELEPHANT SANCTUARY PARK

We paid $71.27 per person. The best deal of the century, no doubt. They picked us up from our hotel (The Westin Siray Bay Resort & Spa). There were five parts to this morning trip:

A: Feeding the elephants

B: Rubbing cool mud on their bellies (it cools them off).

C: Splashed little buckets of water on them to rinse off the mud, all while standing in a thigh high pool of water.

D: Lightly scrubbing them in an outdoor shower for any mud spots not already cleaned off.

and

E: Lunch included after a fun morning.

I definitely thought it was worth it. It was worth it because it is one of those things that cannot be done in the United States unless you work at a zoo and if you are in the elephant department. So I thought, why not do things that can't be replicated back home? We bought directly from the tour website rather than a third party and it worked out perfect.

https://www.green-elephantsanctuarypark.com/

DAY 4: ZIPLINING AND ATV RIDE THROUGH FOREST.

Years ago, I ziplined off the Great Wall in China. I figured why not do another zipline adventure, but in Thailand? It was crazy fun, I never got to the point where I could let both hands go, I only let go of one hand, but it was a blast. No, I didn't pee my pants, but I may have come real close. Hahaha. They had multiple tree houses you zipline to and from, but it all went by incredibly fast. What took most of the time was the ATV ride (four wheeler) and it felt good with the wind rushing past. If you are looking into doing this activity do the ATV with the Zipline or you might be disappointed that the zipline went by too fast. We got amazing footage though so it was worth it. Now I can relive that moment when I feel like it.

Later on we went to a restaurant called "The Green Bar," which we had been suggested to by some international friends we met. It was really inexpensive. $6 US dollars for a tasty fruit non-alcoholic beverage and a good sized plate of fried rice.

DAY 5: Phi Phi Islands + Bamboo Island Day Tour from Phuket.

This trip was our second all-day tour we took while on Phuket. It was amazing to go snorkeling at a couple islands. At one point I saw a baby shark, it freaked me out. I blinked a few times and then immediately turned around calling to a couple nearby that there was a shark sighting and they also turned around too. It was maybe 20 feet away at most.....and although I'm sure it was a friendly one, I wasn't about to test its hospitality.

Bamboo Island was a very low elevation island, and so tiny you could technically walk around a good chunk of it and swim around the rest of it. It was the cutest island I had ever seen!

DAY 6: My friend and I signed up for a Thai cooking class because we figured why not do something that would pay us dividends into the future...feeding our families! The link below is the Facebook page for the company we took the class from, but we technically booked with them through Viator.com.

https://www.facebook.com/ThaicookingclassbyTony/

After the class, we came back and chilled in the 5-star resort pool and talked about how to make this trip an annual trip.

The next morning we took a flight to Bangkok, which meant it was now officially

DAY 7: We checked into the Courtyard by Marriott to set our stuff down and immediately got in a taxi via the app "Grab" and went to Bangkok for the day. Here we ran into an adventure. The previous day we had purchased an English tour of "The Grand Palace," a palace where the kings of old used to live. There were instructions on where to meet up. We got there super early and the Gate 4 that was mentioned didn't exist. Come to find out there is only one official entrance into the Grand Palace. So, the klook.com website we booked through was a fake. But let's pretend we just couldn't find it and it was our bad. When my friend reached out to them on the number provided when we signed up trying to figure out what happened and how we didn't find them, they blocked her number.....A MAJOR RED FLAG.

TAKEAWAY LESSON: Klook.com is a scam, and DO NOT under any circumstances book any tour via their website, no matter how cheap it is.

The website to use for legitimate tours and excursions is viator.com. We booked like 5 through them and all came out as expected.

Anyway, we ended up having to re-purchase the tickets into the palace which was 500 baht which is about $14 US dollars as I write this (March 2024). The great part is, we found out the palace was closing at like 3 pm that day which meant we had an hour to an hour and a half to soak in the entire palace compound. However, surprisingly that was enough time. There is a newer section and an older section. It is the older section that is perfect for photos, since photos is something I'm sure you care about just like I do to a certain degree. It was plenty of time. It was at least 90 degrees. You could see sweat through my shirt, just saying, and this was in February!

P.S. They will not let you in unless your legs are covered. No tank tops, no showing shoulders, no knee length shorts. You must be covered up. They are strict on this policy and monitor everyone that comes in, they even have changing rooms in case you forgot to cover up. I ended up buying a 200 baht wrap around skirt to enter.

This trip was in its entirety fabulous. We had such a great mom's trip and really felt like it was adventurous and relaxing, and great to just take a moment to feel like ourselves again.

Most people take vacations every couple years or few years, right. The last time I left my husband with the kiddos, I was in the hospital having the next kid, so I am not counting that as a vacation because I was working hard..... :)

I'm not counting Hawaii, because we took the entire family, so if you still have to parent....news flash....it isn't a vacation....you're still working. It had, I kid you not, 13 years since I took a vacation with no kids!

I realized on the trip that I had been putting myself on the back burner for so long, that it was a breath of fresh air to be as adventurous as I wanted to be without having to worry about brushing everyone's teeth, and getting a story in, and cleaning the house, and so on.

I will say I would have had fun in any country I traveled to, however, I loved Thailand because of the crazy awesome excursions and the politeness of the everyday people. It was a total blast.....

Time to plan next years trip.

I just need to convince my husband... ;)