Arrival in Phuket

We arrived in Phuket at about 3:30 on Friday afternoon. It’s a lot like coming into Key West, Florida – the airport is fairly small, and your luggage offloads to “Baggage Claim #1” or “Baggage Claim #2”, which are within fifty feet of each other. It’s undoubtedly larger than that, but that’s all that we saw.

Our ride was waiting outside where we were told he’d be, and soon we were on our way.

Phuket Island is much, much larger than we thought. Again, we were thinking “Key West”, where you can walk about anywhere (well, anywhere that tourists need to go). It took about an hour to drive from the airport all the way down island to Patong Beach, where we are staying.

When we got to the hotel, we had some reservations at first. It seems to be in the center of a construction site. By “in the center”, we mean that there are multi-story high-rise buildings being actively constructed during most daylight hours on both sides.

You know the commercial on Travelocity where the guy is trying to talk to the girl and every time he opens his mouth someone sets off a jackhammer? This was what went through our heads initially. Since we booked initially, the place had also got some less than glowing reviews for these very problems.

The courtyard, where there’s a pool, hot tub and sauna, are kind of a mess since they no longer get any sunlight and the plants are dying. The hot tub is closed because they can’t keep the construction dirt out of it and it keeps killing the filter. Given the heat, that’s probably somewhat irrelevant anyhow! They clean the pool twice a day in an attempt to keep it operable, but honestly, why anyone would want to lie by the pool with all that noise and chaos going on several stories above your head is a bit incomprehensible.

Of course, there are all kinds of promises and architects renderings about their own renovations and what’s going to happen – in the next 2 years. For someone who’s going to be here 5 days, that was of little relevance.

The room was fine. Nothing spectacular, but the bed was comfortable enough, there’s a fridge and a modern bathroom, internet and a television. It’s probably equal to the average beach rental at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and would work – but we were worried about the construction stuff.

It was with this on our minds that we went off to meet our guide at 8:00.