June 18th, 2023
Phuket Island, Thailand
Our last full day in Phuket covered all the different locations around the main Phuket Island. We started our day with breakfast at the hotel (Forgot what we ate). After an unproductive handful of minutes back at the hotel, I finally got myself up and getting ready for another long day. Today, we were finally going to explore the actual Phuket Island itself. The island was dotted with attractions and there were many that we missed, but we did get our fair share of activities in just one day.
Later that morning, a shuttle came in order to pick my family up as well as Adan and the others’ families. As we rode out to our first destination, I took some pictures of the countryside while the other kids hummed the same three songs that played on the radio. Once again, we all refused to wear our seatbelts despite the big sign saying “WEAR YOUR SEATBELT OR WE’LL ROB YOU OF TEN BUCKS!” e entered the building and started to pay for the experience. As the adults did that, I looked at the brochures to see what the experience was all about.
Our first destination that day was a tiger place in which visitors could interact with tigers. Like every travel brochure that wants to make money, they boasted all about how fun their experiences were and encouraged us to buy it. They had just about every size of tigers, from the little baby cub to the big brutes (although the little ones couldn’t hang out with the bigger tigers). And the next thing I knew, we were leaving the tiger place. It was too expensive. An experience in Southeast Asia is too expensive for a bunch of rich Americans? I thought. That’s a first. It later turned out that it wasn’t very expensive at all, our parents simply believed the deal was big enough to the point where it wasn’t worth it and was more of a rip off than a good attraction. We decided to divert to a new destination, called the Big Buddha statue. This statue was situated more inland (Or as inland as you could get on Phuket island) on this huge mountain. It took about a half hour to scale the hills.
The first half of the journey was done by taxi. The shuttles took us as far as they were allowed to get up the mountain until they eventually reached a stopping point and we had to walk the rest of the way. Compared to some of the other hikes during the trip, I’d say this one was fairly light. There was a huge staircase we had to climb up in order to reach the Big Buddha statue, but it was totally worth it.
The top of the mountain offered a luxurious view of the whole island. We could even see the Andaman Sea from up here and we were 10 miles away. I could see all the different towns dotting the island— the clouds suddenly weren’t so high— I saw everything I took in this picture:
And then there was the Buddha statue itself. This thing was huge— I had to stare almost directly up in order to see it, which was like torture on my neck. Surrounding the Buddha statue was a load of smaller statues of what I believe are other notable figures in Buddhist culture. The side statues were made of what looked like gold and also were surrounded by various Buddhist flags.
After a few minutes of admiring the statue, we headed down into a village in the lower part of the mountain to use the restroom before continuing onto our next destination for the day. The next place in our list is the Chalong Temple. I don’t remember too much about this temple– it’s Buddhist just that it was two stories and had some artifacts inside. I do remember seeing a cat there (Pic below) but honestly the Big Buddha statue was more notable.
After visiting those two temples, we worked up an appetite. It was already afternoon and everyone was getting hungry so we decided to have lunch.
The restaurant we went to was near the old center of of the main Phuket town. This restaurant is one of those muilti story restaurants which accommodated us in three large tables in order to fit our party of about twenty people. We ordered our food and I was mostly quiet during this time— I talked to some of the other kids who were also going on the trip about my life and starting high school, which was pretty fun.
After this, it was decided that the kids would head back to their hotel rooms independently to do what they wanted while the adults went and checked out the main Phuket town. We called up another taxi on Grab and once again sat idle in the car, looking out at the Thai countryside. We drove all the way across the island and examined everything while I took a few pictures here and there. The taxi music was Senorita and Flowers played again and again which the younger kids continued to sing along with over and over. (How was I not annoyed) When we got back to the hotel, we mostly ended up relaxing and doing whatever. I just sat down and stared at the computer for hours. Casey did… I don’t even know what Casey did, but as I was sitting in my bed on my computer, I heard him pick up the phone. “What’s up, cuh?” He said to whoever he was calling. “Yeah, can I get a glass of orange juice?”
Yep. He bought a cup of orange juice. No parent permission, just kind of went ahead and did his own thing. Our parents didn’t even find out until Casey revealed it to them two weeks later. Casey enjoyed his orange juice, and I don’t know where the hours went, but after a while our parents were knocking on the door and it was evening. After some talking, it was decided me and Casey would be left on our own again while our parents got massages. We ended up enjoying another 2 wasted hours on our computer that night.
But the next day was going to be far from a wasted day.
We were headed to Bangkok.