The Fryhole

Updated! Pictures added.
Sorry at the lack of updates. We’ve been crazy busy. Since the last post, we’ve been through (as long as I haven’t forgotten anything):

1. Nara, Japan Done: Nara, on November 9
2. Osaka, Japan Done: Osaka Universal City, on November 10 Osaka Castle, on November 11
   
3. Himeji, Japan Done: Himeji, on November 12
   
4. Hiroshima, Japan Done: Hiroshima, on November 12
5. Fukuoka, Japan Done: Fukuoka, on November 13/14/15
   
6. Flew from Fukuoka, Japan through Tokyo, Japan (said goodbye to Andrew ); through Bangkok, Thailand, and ended up in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
7. Siem Reap/Angkor Wat, Cambodia.
8. Flew from Siem Reap, Cambodia through Bangkok, Thailand, and ended in Phuket, Thailand; where we promptly checked into the JW Marriot Phuket Beach (possibly insert other modifiers here) Club for our 1-week stay at the resort.

I know, we have a lot of updates to do. We basically didn’t have time as we tried to squeeze all the time we could into our last days in Japan and our short stay in Cambodia. Even now (during the 1-week stay at the resort); I won’t be filling in all the blanks. As to why, I have a simple answer for you: swim-up bar with waterfall. What I will try to do is post about today (our first full day at the resort), and will try to stay on top of posting about Phuket, so that it doesn’t build up any more than it already has!

So, today was our first day at the resort. A quick walk along the (magnificent) beach in the morning apprised me of two facts:

1. There is a significant undertow; though it is manageable (this would be what their little yellow flag that is tagged as “Experienced Swimmers Only” refers to, I would bet).
2. The ocean in Phuket is warmer than our hotel pool was in Siem Reap, Cambodia (I think the pool was cooled purposefully though, so take that with a grain of salt).

Angela went further down the beach than I did (I stayed closer to the resort), and ended up finding a lot of sand crabs a ways away from the resort. I’m looking forward to going down myself tomorrow or the next day and checking them out.

After a light breakfast I decided it was time to check out this swim-up bar that I had noticed in the resort map; so Angela and I set off. When it came into sight, I said “Wow! Nice Bar!” and Angela said “Sweet! Nice Waterfall!” She sorta missed the fact that behind the waterfall was a bar. We drank there for a few hours (UHmm… it was time to drink in Canada, I am sure! *cough*), from about 10:00 to Noon. After enough drinks we decided it was time to swim (well, really we were swimming during/between the drinking; but I mean in the ocean), so we all set off for the beach (by this time Mom and Dad had joined us as well) and Mom stayed ashore as the rest of us dove into the waves.

It was a very pleasant swim, very warm water and all that; but I wanted to try the sailboats that the resort provides for the use of their patrons; so we weren’t out very long before returning to shore to the sailboat sign-out place. Shockingly, it turns out that they won’t just hand a sailboat out to just anyone. We had to undergo training first! So we scheduled our training for later in the afternoon and had lunch while we were waiting.

When the time came we were all ready, and after a short (read: 2-minute) lecture about how a sailboat works in general - Hint: travel perpendicular to the wind for best results - we were off! Angela opted to not go first, so it was the trainer and I in the small one-person sailboat, heading out from the beach. He showed me how the ropes and whatnot worked, how to turn, and then nonchallantly told me to take the helm. Was kind of nervous; but I did OK… though I was never able to turn into the wind properly. Turning into the wind is safer (less chance of a capsize) than turning away from the wind, but harder to do, too. Turning away from the wind I can do, but into the wind will take more practice.

Anyway, we played around for a little bit and then headed back into the beach, intending to switch me for Angela. However just at that time the resorts bigger sailboat was beaching to discharge it’s passengers, so the trainer just turned it around and boarded all of us (Angela, Dad, and I) and headed out to the open sea. The bigger sailboat was lots of fun to ride (I never drove it; but it was fun to ride) — it has a larger sail area than the small one-man boats (obviously), and thus goes faster (…and almost capsizes when some crazy sister catches too much wind and even the weight of the passengers can barely keep it more-or-less upright. Not listing any names…). Apparently it’s also more stable (owing to the twinned hulls) than the one-person sailboat; but you’d never know it with the people that were driving it this time.

That drew to a close our sailboat training; but it was just as well as it was clouding up a bit and the wind was really starting to come up, so we headed to the beach and dinner. I had originally planned to go into town to a club that I saw a flyer for; but tonight is apparently the once-weekly all-you-can-eat steak-and-seafood grill-fest, so I cancelled that (will have to do later) in favour of staying at the resort. The dinner was superlative, what more can I say? They had a beautiful ice sculpture by the desserts table…

A little about the resort: it is on the west coast of Phuket, quite a ways from Phuket City. In fact, it is far away from everything — the City is about 40-50 minutes away, driving. This has it’s negatives (difficult shopping, have to put up with resort prices, etc.) but also it’s really big positives (absolutely huge expanse of very nice beach with no-one on it, basically no-one around, no traffic, etc.). The resort itself has been great — service is exquisite, and they’re nice enough to add a 10% service charge to everything so you don’t have to worry about who you need to tip (and by how much). That sounds a little sarcastic; but it isn’t meant to be — in this case, a built-in service charge is much better than having to worry about tipping. For example, all you need to know is your room number; and then charge-back everything to the room and sign for it. If you had to worry about tipping; you might have to carry cash to tip the people that weren’t directly involved in you signing a receipt. There’s a lot of water around — said cash might get wet — say when a big wave hits your sailboat, for example.

The weather in Phuket is pretty nice — about 30-35 degree days, it seems like, (and I already mentioned a very warm ocean)… so no complaints on that account! I want to post pictures of the resort and whatnot (and I wish I had some of us sailboating), but unfortunately can’t right now… tomorrow is diving… and I have a feeling there is a drink out there somewhere with my name on it for tonight.

Some general photos of the resort (some in the day, some at night with the torches on):

nn

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 19th, 2006 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Reality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.