expiration date 

thanks to Kelly, who reminded us about our 10 years anniversary thing, we decided to celebrate by going for a 2 nights vacation trip to Phuket, Thailand.

we’ve never been to Thailand, so we thought Phuket should be one of the easiest destination, since it’s totally catered for international tourists.

our flight to Phuket was at 7PM, which will give us enough time to finish up our work. Koda stays at home, being fed by her little feeding robot. every evening, Bond will come over to let her go to the bathroom, fill up the robot with more food and play with Koda for a bit.

anyways, the plane was rather empty. everyone has a whole row for themselves. the flight was considerably smooth, except for a small delay towards the end, due to the thunderstorm. the plane had to land from the other side of the island to avoid the thunderstorm.

we were picked up by the hotel’s taxi, which is pretty much the husband of the hotel owner as the driver. he drove this little-but-powerful truck, which is pretty cool. it was about an hour drive from the airport to reach our hotel at Karon Beach.

our first impression of Phuket is that it looks kinda like Bali… the airport, the inland area, the little shops on the side of the street, they remind us to Bali. Phuket, however, has much larger roads and intersections. some of them are 4-5 lanes wide…

we got to the hotel around 9:30PM and checked in right away… one thing that surprised us is that we had to pay the hotel upfront in cash. good thing that we got some Baht in our pockets. we just need to get more Baht tomorrow, once the money exchangers are opened.

the lady who owns the place were very nice. she gave us a small tour of our little room, went over the house rules, where things are and how to operate things, like AC and water heater. the hotel, which comprises of 30 little studio bungalows was very peaceful and quite… we’re sooo glad that we got this hotel.

we then went out to get dinner. the hotel lady recommended a small seafood place across from the beach, so we went there. a skinny, pretty girl greeted us and gave us a thick menu book, which was quite overwhelming to read. so we asked for her recommendation instead. she looked at my round belly and said, “ah, baby, ya? how about fish? with lemon?” we agreed and when we asked if we can have some vegetable dishes, she told us to get the morning glory dish, because, “morning glory makes the child’s eyes bigger, wider and shinier”… we agreed again.

how we love recommendation from locals… the place was terrific, the people were friendly and the dishes were awesome! the steamed fish with cilantro and lemon was excellent. we practically cleaned up the dishes down to the bottom. they were very yummy.

before we left, the girl went on how fish will make the baby smarter. she said, she only had fish during her pregnancy, and now, her child is a smart 5 month old baby… the whole time she talked, i kept staring at her body… she has a body of a teenager and i can’t believe that she just gave birth 5 months ago… maybe it’s the fish with lemon.

on the way back to the hotel, we passed a lot of small bars with pool tables and “bar ladies”. even though it feels pretty safe, it does feel quite sleazy. there were so many old male tourists flirting with the bar ladies while playing pool. i wasn’t really interested hanging out at bars, especially since i can’t drink alcohol anyway. so we went back to the hotel and rest until morning. it was a good move, because as soon as we got to the hotel, the rain started to pour, along with tons of thunder and lightning.

by the way, the reason why there is not much pictures on this entry is because my laptop went dead on the second day of the trip. today’s and half of the tomorrow’s pictures are in that laptop. so, i may never recover them, depending on how extensive the damage on the laptop. ah well…

photo album: Phuket 2007 @ Flickr