Phuket, Thailand
Phuket. This was another stop where we didn’t quite know what to expect. We ventured here from Phi Phi and randomly chose a hotel near Kata beach.
As it turns out, our budget-savvy travel buddy Tom knew best and had picked out a hostel that was way nicer than our hotel, so after our first night in town we ended up joining him. We gave up a not-so-cheap room that had no lights, a bathroom with a shower that flooded into the bedroom, and concrete-hard beds for what turned out to be our best hostel stay ever. The hostel we moved to had these amazing capsule beds, some twin and some doubles, where you had walls, a curtain, shelf, charging ports, windows, and lockers for all your stuff. It may not sound like much, but it was heavenly. Aside from the fact that sleeping was cheaper and also much nicer, the hostel had really fabulous people staying who were all up for a good time and most of whom ended up being good friends down the road.
With this great accomodation, we ended up staying in Phuket a lot longer than expected. We stayed up late and partied, we laid on the beach, and we also took to a new form of adventure - motorbiking in Asia. Maybe it’s not a big deal, everyone does it, and i’m just too paranoid.
Maybe I shouldn’t have watched that video in the airport about how dangerous motorbiking can be - a five minute video showing every crash captured on camera in the last year. Thailand is rated as the world’s deadliest country for motorcyclists. So you can imagine my joy when we hop on a $7/day motorbike rental with beat up helmets and take off for the first time.
Throwing caution to the wind, I strapped on a helmet, hopped on the back of the bike, closed my eyes and hung on for dear life. Our first ride was from Karon beach up to the Big Buddha statue. I had closed my eyes for most of the horribly wiggly ride, and then opened them as soon as I realized we were headed uphill on a beat up road. I think this is when I started crying. We had new friends that were taking this ride with us, along with Tom who had done this whole Asian motorbiking thing before, and I couldn’t stand to be the wimp of the group. But something took over me, and I couldn’t let go.
There were tears and a plea to let me off the bike. Eventually, we made it up to the top of the sketchy hill. Thank Bhudda, or whatever you might believe in, but we made it alive.
It might have taken me a couple hours to get back on the bike for the ride downhill. Insert here the perfect excuse to carefully examine every statue in the area before heading back to town. I’m generally hard to pull through monuments because I’m sucked into the details, but I think this takes the cake.
Obviously we made it back home safely, and we had delicious food along the way. I’m pretty sure I partied away any anxiety I had left from the bike ride. Then we woke up the next morning and did it all again, just without the tears.
