the final leg of thailand... phuket

this is the final post about my wonderful two week vacation to thailand... phuket! 

so where did we leave off... oh yes getting stuck in the chiang mai airport. how do you ask, did we end up missing our flight from chiang mai to phuket. sheer stupidity. i looked at the paperwork and i pretty much read it completely wrong. instead of reading that our flight left at 1:10 from chiang mai and arrived in phuket at 3:15pm; i read that we were leaving from chiang mai at 3:15. completely and utterly wrong. what. an. idiot. 


we left the airport for a bit after checking in and once we got back we had missed the plane by 5 minutes. once the lady found us and told us we missed it, we instantly started freaking out. i instantly got upset and started crying. they pulled our bags off of the flight, so we were able to get them. we then had to go to the airasia counter and proceed to buy a new ticket. not what we wanted to do, but really the only option. 

by this time it was about 2pm... the next flight wasn't leaving till 10:45pm. that's basically 9 hours of doing nothing but sitting in the chiang mai airport. this is how we spent monday. sitting in the airport. after a couple hours, i wasn't so upset with myself, just really annoyed with the situation as a whole. after reading for a while, we moved and got food at the thai restaurant in the airport. from there we moved to the waiting area and i *thankfully* was able to download some free games for my kindle. after a while, we moved downstairs to hopefully check in. after waiting for an hour, they were starting to check people in. we checked in again and made our way to the departure gate. 

found this in chiang mai. for all my portland loves :)

finally after waiting for 8.5 hours at the airport and the 1.5 hour flight, we finally arrived in phuket around 12:30. after getting our bags finally, we moved outside to find our transportation. thankfully he was standing there with a sign with our name and hotel name on it. after a 45 minute drive, we finally arrived at our hotel. so after a very long day around 2am, we finally were checked into our hotel and situated in phuket. it was time for bed. 

hello bed... goodnight world.

waking up the next morning, the first thing we set out to do was find a place to get my hair cut and a place for stephanie to get a bikini wax. you would think the later would have been easier to find... not the case. we found a place to cut my hair, directly across the street from our hotel. the lady, ray, was soooo nice. she complimented the color of my hair probably about 15 times throughout the cut. she did a pretty good job, managed to cut all the dead split ends away and fixed my terrible bangs. from there we went on a hunt for stephanie to get her bikini wax. finally after walking around for an hour we found a place. 

the area around our hotel

from there we went back to the hotel, packed up the necessary things and headed to the beach. we spent the rest of the sunlight laying on the beach enjoying the weather. which turned out to be a good thing, because the weather didn't quite cooperate with us and wasn't the greatest for most of our trip south. 

we finally made it to the beach

relaxation at it's finest

working on our tans

the south part of our trip was basically for relaxing, which is exactly what we did. we relaxed, slept in, ate so much amazing food, went out dancing/for drinks at night, met some awesome people from germany and iran, a little souvenir shopping, walked along the beach, ate more amazing food, indulged in many massages, a pedicure and manicure, got a little sunburned. oh and did i mention we ate good food. seriously that's how we told time... by the time that went by in between us eating. rather ridiculous, but so so so good. 

a night out in phuket

after one of our many delicious meals

ladyboys EVERYWHERE...

the german couple we met

another night out in phuket

"we're on vacation!"

shafa, our friend from iran

shahriar, our other friend from iran

saturday we checked out of our hotel, left our bags there and headed out to enjoy our last full day. we started with lunch. we were starving. we walked a little ways down and found a restaurant. it turned out to be only okay. this wasn't the greatest pad thai i had on the trip, but it was decent. then we had a 2.5 hour massage that included a foot massage, a thai massage and then a oil massage. it was wonderful. overall out of all the massages we had, i would have to say that one was the best. when she got to my back, we really worked on my shoulders, which was great, because that is where i keep all of my stress at. so my knots were huge. i felt wonderful afterwards. from there we walked around for a good 3-4 hours. we ended up running into our iranian friends for the 3rd time on our trip. after that we came back to the hotel and read on the couches in the lobby for a while. from there we ordered dinner in again. then made our way into town again and got our last thing of mango and sticky rice for dessert. it was wonderful! 

our driver picked us up at 11pm and we made our way to the airport. after getting our bags checked in and making it through customs and security, all we had to do was wait. 2am flights are terrible. terrible terrible terrible. we left on time and again had to fly through shang hai... curse you shang hai and your stupidity. 


after not sleeping at all on the 5 hour flight, we arrived in china. went in through customs only to pick up our bags and then checked our bags again to head to incheon. only to then walk out through customs again. (i will never ever understand why you have to go in through customs only to turn around 20 minutes later and walk out through customs again while you transfer flights. dumbest thing ever.) we grabbed food and then made our way to our gate. we would have left one time, expect them moved another flight to our gate, making our boarding time get pushed back. after finally being able to board and a 2.5 hour flight, we arrived back in incheon around 4pm. we found our bags, exchanged some of our money, and caught the bus home. 


those 16 days of vacation were much needed and were absolutely amazing! so far, best vacation ever! as of right now it's looking like indonesia for winter vacation in january with dani! i'm pretty excited for this. it's going to be amazing. 


first up though is this coming weekend... next monday and tuesday is chuseok, korean thanksgiving, so we have vacation again. my school is awesome and has given me not only monday and tuesday, but the wednesday after AND the friday before. so from friday the 9th until wednesday the 14th i will be on a 6 day vacation. for 4 of those days i will be in Busan! i'm pretty excited.