The Beautiful Islands

3 June 2013

Recipe: Pad Thai

Recipe: Green Curry

Phuket is nothing like I expected it to be.  It is a small beach town on the largest island in Thailand.  It feels somewhere between Indian and Singapore with lots of tourists!  It is great to be here during June because the swarm of tourists is a little less and the weather is less sweltering.  The only bummer part is that it tends to rain whenever and wherever it wishes here.  We arrived into Phuket late last night and shared a taxi with two Indian boys that we had met on the plane ride here.  They were nice enough to offer to share a taxi to the middle of town so that our costs would be cut nearly in half.  Most people would say that this was not a smart thing to do, but since it was a reliable taxi service and we were going to the same hostel anyways—we went with it.  I have found that it is pretty simple to feel when something is wrong or right…and it felt right to go through with this one.

Street to Beach View…

We arrived at our hostel on Bangla street late in the evening (around 1am) and were shocked to see that despite the curfew, the entire street was full of people and everywhere you turned there were lights and music, very similar to Las Vegas.

Rachel and I perfect to travel together because we both love to wake up early.  Today we were up and out before 8, searching for breakfast and the best place to snorkel.  We discovered very quickly that Phuket is a city that does not wake up until later (around 10am) and our only options for breakfast were McDonalds, KFC, or fruit smoothies on a little beach shack.  We opted for the fruit smoothies, and they were delicious.  It hasn’t taken me long to fall in love with the fruit here.  Thailand is one of the best places that you can go to eat fruit.  My favorites, pineapple and mangos are everywhere and I plan on eating them everywhere I go.

Just like India, the breakfast foods here are the same as their lunch and dinner foods.  At the breakfast stalls that appear on the streets around 10am, they sell friend rice and noodles.  The food stalls consist of a little food truck with 1 or 2 women in it dishing out the rice and noodles in plastic bags to those whom are hungry for breakfast.  It is interesting that they do serve pancakes, eggs, and fruity dishes that would typically be eaten for breakfast in America, yet they only open up in the evening….

We spent the morning exploring Patong beach and visiting an island known as Raya island just south the Phuket.  Raya Island is the island known for snorkeling and incredibly clear seas.  It did not fail to live up to the hype.  I have never seen such beautiful aquamarine clear water in my entire life.  The coral reefs can be seen from inside the boat and fish from all colors of the rainbow swarm every nook and cranny of the reef.  It is a fish paradise.  We were lucky to have incredible weather because we just happened to arrive at the same time a giant storm was expected to arrive on the Andaman Coast of Phuket.

If I were Hindu I would be reincarnated as a fish, I am almost sure of it.  I love to swim.  Today was one of the most blissful days of my life as I hovered the surface of the water peering into the beautiful coral reefs just below me.  I spent hours doing this, and my back and shoulders are proof of it from all the blisters and redness they received from the sun.  I didn’t want to leave as the day came to a close.  I have never felt so free and stunned in my life.  It was an adventure diving down into the coral to see the sea anemones and clown fish up close (just like Finding Nemo!)  There wer sea eels, puffer fish, star fish, and so many fish that I have only seen in the movies before.  I was captivated and I fell in love the water once again (after missing it for the past 6 months I have been away from Portugal).