Family fun @ Phuket

It was dad's (Y's) 70th birthday and he is someone who loves swimming and laid back holidays. Phuket seemed the ideal location as there were direct flights for them from Mumbai and for us from SG. The Thai govt has extended the Visa charges waiver yet again.. this time until Songkran 2020. This has definitely seen an increase in foreign tourists. From what I gathered while in Phuket, the island has seen a marked decrease in the number of tourists every year since 2015.

We visited in the latter half of November 2019 and it was a good time of the year to visit. The monsoons had receded and it is supposed to be cooler than half the other months of the year and probably wasn't as crowded as during the year end holidays.

I must say some of the beaches are beautiful, the colour of the water is so soothing and it seemed like a lively place. Yet I don't think Phuket would be on my must-visit list. The island, as expected, is overrun by tourism and not much seems authentic enough. The food in many places geared towards tourists does not taste like the real Thai food, people couldn't care less, and one does not really felt welcome. As this was a family trip, we mostly stuck to our villa with a few local sightseeing trips and market visits. I'm not sure I would've wanted to explore more anyway!

Day 0: Arrive

N, Y&I took an evening flight from SG. We stopped at a mart on our way to the villa to stock some food supplies for the next few days. I must mention here that I found Phuket airport to be well-manned and very efficient. We were out of the airport in half an hour. :)

We got to the room and crashed soon enough.


Day 1: East of Phuket

SIL, BIL, dad and li'l champ reached home by 10.45am. They had to face a long queue at VoA as they were on a flight from India and that Indians require a visa.
After breakfast and a few hours of rest, we headed to The Chalong Bay Rum Distillery for lunch and distillery tour afterward.

A good lunch and two sleepy kids in tow, we had to give the tour a miss. We chose to do the Chalong temple on another day too. Instead, we drove a little longer to ensure the kids get some sleep in the car. We visited Baan Teelanka, the upside down house which was a rip off with not much to explore. We did get a couple of nice pictures though!

We sat at their cafe later and got N's nebulization done so that was something good.

We headed to Chillva Market and did a little shopping. We got our dinner takeaway. Some fruits, satay, fried fish, basil chicken, stir fried kailan and some veg Pad Thai for me. In all honesty, I was pained by the plastic we unneccessarily accumulated and decided not to do this again.

After a stroll through the market, we returned to the room. We spent some time in the pool until it started raining.

Day 2: Phang nga bay - Island hopping boat tour

The tour began with a pick-up from the villa at 7.15am. An hour drive to the Au Por pier, we were rushed to have breakfast at the tour office before heading to the Big boat. This was a wonderful experience that all of us enjoyed thoroughly. A note about Mark and Phuket Sail tours. As an amputee and user of a prosthetic that shouldn't get wet, I had several questions on how I would manage to move on two levels of the boat and in and out of the canoe from the boat. Mark provided me with pictures of each part of the boat/stairs/landing and assured me his staff would help me through the trip.

Our first stop was sea caves and hidden lagoons at Ao Phang Nga National Park. We were asked to lie flat on the canoe as the caves were pretty low. This made the kids a little worried at first but later they seemed to enjoy it. After 5 minutes of canoeing through the caves, we entered a beautiful hidden lagoon.

We stopped at Hong island which is well known for canoeing trips so was relatively crowded. (Most other islands and caves we visited had no one else). But was beautiful.

Next we headed to Phanak island.

With beautiful lagoons in turquoise green surrounded by towering limestone cliffs and no crowds, it was a perfect day out on the bay. We visited the ice cream caves and bat caves and saw rocks in the shape of elephants and scooby doo.

Can you spot Scooby Doo's face? N did.. and I didn't even know she knew Scooby Doo!!!

We then canoed through pretty mangroves near Khlong Thom. This is where N learnt more about the roots of trees and started picking out leaves of different colours. Both kids started playing in the water as they got way too comfortable in their canoes.

Our second last stop was the elephant cave with beautiful flowstone formations and stalactites and stalagmites. For this trip, we had to get off from the canoe and walk so I took my crutches as I didn't want to miss out on this part. (This was the only part that required us to wear any footwear at all).

Diamond rock..

Once back in the boat, I wore my prosthesis and headed up to the upper deck for lunch- other than the meats, they also catered to my vegetarian diet. The food was good.


We then sailed past the James Bond island though we didn't get off. It was quite crowded for obvious reasons :P

We stopped at a beach near Hong island for the kids to play for a while. N joined her grandad on his canoe so Y decided to swim from the boat to the beach alongside my canoe.

We spent an hour playing at the beach before it was time to head back to the pier.

It started raining once we were back on the boat. We changed and headed back to the upper deck where a birthday cake awaited dad :)

Dad and the kids were excited to cut the cake that Mark brought us. As we alighted at Au Por 45 minutes later, it started pouring. The staff quickly arranged for me, dad and the kids to be taken to the tour office in the side car of a bike. The rest of them joined us at the office in a while. The long drive back to the villa saw most of us taking a short nap.

Once we reached the villa, all of us (read: the kids) were charged up and spent the rest of the day playing pool and playing in the pool :)


Day 3: South of Phuket

We checked out from Villa #1 and first visited Wat Chalong, one of the more important temples in Phuket where we saw a lot of tourists as well as a lot of locals who came to pray.

Our next stop was the Big Budhha. We saw several elephant jungles/parks on our way where people sat on elephant rides. We specifically avoided these as this is exploitation in the name of tourism. There is are ethical elephant sanctuaries in Phuket and elsewhere in Thailand but we didn't visit any of them either.

The Big Budhha was an okay experience. The view of the city and ocean was beautiful but the place was swarming with people and the temple is undergoing renovation. The 'Big Budha' as such was a pretty sight but didn't WOW despite it's size.

We then headed to the Karon viewpoint that gave us a panoramic view of 3 beaches in the South West of Phuket - Kata noi, Kata and Karon.

After this, we stopped at Mom Tri's - villa Royale, Kata beach for lunch. 

The in-house restaurant with beautiful sea views at a property owned by the Thai Royal family. We spent a warm afternoon taking in the ambience and spectacular views.

Birthday Cake #2

The kids napped in the car as we drove to our next place of stay.. The Bell Pool Villa resort. The kids were excited seeing the amazing pool at the villa and were eager to jump in as soon as we had entered. We spent the rest of the day by the pool.


Day 4: Birthday!!

After breakfast, we took a morning shuttle to Kamala beach to walk along the markets. We headed out to have an Indian lunch at Soul Curry Indian restaurant nearby. While the non-vegetarian food was quite okay, the vegetarian food was a complete let-down. They served bland veg pakoras with ketchup instead of chutney! They couldn't serve masala papad as they didn't have onions. The yellow dal had too much of green chillies/red chilli powder despite informing them that it was for the kids. And they weren't able to serve aloo paratha either. 

We returned to the villa to catch a nap before we headed to the beach to get some pics taken by a photographer followed by pics of the birthday celebration in the villa. The BBQ dinner was good and the sauces served were yumm. It was a fun evening by the pool.

Birthday Cake #3

Dad was very excited to see the made-to-order matching tshirts of an old pic of mom & dad that we wore (and gifted him) for the birthday bash.

Day 5: Sunny morning, rainy afternoon

We spent a lazy morning in the pool where the kids had a blast. 

We called for lunch in the room and rested in the villa. Though the plan was to hit the beach, it was raining so we couldn't visit the beach. Instead we went to Big C, a departmental store nearby to pick up some food items and souvenirs to bring back home. 



Day 6: Return home :(

The return flight to Mumbai was at 8.10am so they left by 5.15am. We finished packing and spent an hour in the pool before heading to the airport for our afternoon flight.


Overall, the trip was a lot of family fun. This trip report unlike most of the others I have written is quite short mostly because we spent more time together relaxing than experiencing a new place. I would spend some more time exploring the markets/local areas next time.