On the morning of our departure, the entire family managed to sleep through the 6.15am alarm after our late night, so we awoke at 7am and leapt out of bed in a panic, frantically throwing remaining items into backpacks, getting dressed and brushing teeth. Unbelievably, we were ready by 7.30am, said our goodbyes to Nick, Sez and the kids and thanked our lovely hosts at Tommy Resort who had kindly packed a breakfast box for each of us to eat on the ferry.

Journey to Phuket

The first stage of our journey was a taxi ride to the pier, where we collected our tickets for the slow Seatran ferry. While this looked a little more tired than the Lomprayah fast ferry in terms of decor, it had an air-conditioned interior, comfy seats and it was half empty, resulting in a very easy journey with no seat snatching occurring to spoil the mood.

Stage two of the journey involved catching a bus for an hour to Surat Thani from Don Sak pier, where we transferred to a mini van for stage three of the journey: four hours of driving to Phuket.

Upon getting in the van, the driver rattled off the conditions of the journey, with the final destination being the central bus terminal, making it all sound rather inflexible. However, I politely asked him if he would be able to drop us off at the HomePro store in Thalang on the way into Phuket, where my friend Clare said she could collect us from, since they live at the northern end of the island in Laguna, and we were staying nearby. When I showed him on the map, he seemed agreeable. Having witnessed so many of these van/bus journeys where locals are picked up and dropped off along the way, we figured it would be ok.

The journey passed by pretty quickly, with a late lunch stop for some pork noodle soup (one of our favourite, healthy Thai street foods) before arriving in Phuket around 5pm.

When Clare leapt out of her car in the HomePro carpark, and wrapped me up in a huge welcoming hug, I felt like I was back with family. We’ve been friends forever, as we lived around the corner from each other growing up and spent many school holidays and weekends together throughout our teenage years. Clare’s warm welcome extended to the kids and Shaun as well, and she announced that she had prepared dinner for us to take back to our apartment at Cassia, the accommodation that Michel, Clare’s husband, had booked us into for mates rates.

We stopped into Clare and Michel’s place to pick up the dinner, and ended up staying for a couple of glasses of bubbles with Clare and her mum, Barb, who was also visiting from NZ, and meeting the now very grown up Emmy and Tim, Clare and Michel’s gorgeous kids who I hadn’t seen for a few years. When Michel arrived home from work, he invited Shaun along to join his regular pub quiz team for the evening, so after Michel dropped off me and the kids, Shaun went out for the evening. Clare had not only prepared our dinner but also packed a grocery bag full of treats and snacks for all of us – we felt so loved and cared for. We all enjoyed Clare’s home cooking before collapsing into bed after our long journey.

Cassia Phuket

The accommodation booked by Michel at Cassia was incredible. It is part of the hotel group that he works for and we had a two bedroom serviced apartment, including an enormous buffet breakfast selection every morning, with access to the pool and the free hotel transfer and transport services across the lake and between the different hotels at Laguna. Michel had selected our room, and we had a beautiful view of the enormous swimming pool, lake, and the sea beyond.

We all enjoyed a sleep-in the next day, and were amazed by the breakfast selection on offer…it was an international buffet, with everything from noodle soup to bacon and eggs, to fruit and yogurt – there were even iced donuts! A breakfast staple, according to Leo and Anna. We had to make a rule that donuts were only allowed every second day for breakfast to ensure a balanced diet was maintained. I can’t believe we didn’t get a photo of the famous Cassia donut display to share how beautiful it looked. Clearly, we were all far too focused on navigating the enormous buffet every day. You can just make out a half eaten donut in the corner of the photo below.

We spent a lot of this first day enjoying the hotel pool and sunshine after our full day of travelling the day before.

In the early evening, we headed out to the Laguna Night Market with Clare and Michel, who had booked a table at a fabulous wine bar called Drinks & Co. We both enjoyed our first proper wine in months since decent wine is so hard to come by in Southeast Asia. The kids were happy as Shaun and I took turns walking around the night market with them, buying snacks, yummy street food, trinkets, and amazing rolled ice cream.

The wine bar allowed people to bring in food from the market, so Shaun enjoyed keeping our table supplied with yummy meat skewers, chicken satay, crispy pork, delicious ribs, and he sweetly bought me an amazing chicken wrap to help me soak up some of the wine I wasn’t used to drinking anymore! Somewhat tipsy by the end of the evening, we made our way back to Cassia in a tuktuk.

Upon arriving home, we discovered a treat in the bag of goodies from Clare…delicious hokey pokey lumps all the way from NZ!

A Lazy Saturday

Another lazy day of pool time and looking around the nearby beach followed. The kids couldn’t get enough of the swimming pool, and the nice big umbrellas meant that reading by the pool didn’t mean having to get sunburnt.

Later in the day, we went to Clare and Michel’s for a BBQ, enjoying an incredible dinner Kiwi/Aussie style, complete with Kiwi onion dip! The kids enjoyed more swimming in their pool, while we enjoyed the al fresco cheese platter and charcuterie board.

When dinner was served, there was plenty of delicious food, including perfectly cooked steak, chicken, mussels, grilled veges, prawn couscous salad, fabulous wine, and an amazing pavlova that Clare had made from scratch. She thoughtfully left one part of the pav with no fruit on since Leo isn’t a fan of fruit but absolutely adores pavlova with cream. Yet more kiwi goodness from our beautiful friend.

Shaun and Michel enjoyed a wee dram of this Taiwanese whisky after dinner. By all accounts, it’s amazing, although I was too busy enjoying the wine with Clare.

A quiet, relaxing couple of days followed, eating in at our apartment and enjoying the swimming pool. On Sunday evening, Shaun decided to pop out to the local pub to watch West Ham play football. He got a lift there, no worries, and after discovering that his game was showing that evening, he settled in with some food and a pint. While he got to enjoy the football, he was a bit disappointed to find the company he’d hoped for in an English pub somewhat lacking.

Initially he met a friendly Irish guy at the bar, who was very chatty, but it soon became apparent that he was after more than just a friendly chat, so Shaun excused himself. After attempting to make conversation with the rather grumpy and slightly hostile expat English owner and his mate, he gave up and ended up watching the game alone. At least he had his friends in England for company, who he was able to message throughout the game.

To add to his long night, on his return journey, he took a wrong turn and ended up rather lost. After retracing his steps, he got back to where he started, it was 1.30am, and the bars and restaurants were locking up for the night. Fortunately for him, a kind restaurant employee took pity on him and gave him a ride on the back of her scooter to Cassia. After that adventure, poor old Shaun was ready to hit the hay at 2am. As usual, the silver lining was another good story for the blog….and West Ham won!

While on the topic, there are many fun-loving, sociable expats around, but the “grumpy expat” is definitely a thing in Thailand, as are European visitors who seem to be experts in composing and maintaining a RBF, or Resting Bitch Face. You walk past these people in beautiful, sunny, tropical resorts like Tommy, Sairee Hut, or Cassia, give them a friendly smile or a passing hello, and they give you an icy, withering look as though you’ve just insulted their mother.

Shaun and I turned it into a game, smiling cheerfully (which we do anyway) and saying hello to the most hard-faced characters during our week at Cassia, in an effort to see if we could get them to crack a smile. Towards the end of our stay, I ended up in the elevator with one of the stony-faced crew and her cute son, who was thoroughly enjoying his post-breakfast popcorn. I beamed at him as he joyfully stuffed his face and then smiled at his mum. The corners of her mouth turned up, and a glimmer of a smile appeared as she exited the elevator. Success!

This phenomenon was also noticed by our Kiwi mates in both Koh Tao and Koh Phangan, where some European tourists were clearly projecting a pissed-off vibe to the world. On a kinder note, who knows what might be going on behind the scenes for these people? It just made me really notice that even a sunny holiday in a tropical location isn’t enough to cheer some people up. Or maybe it’s a cultural thing about not smiling at strangers? Yet more ethnographic learning for us all!

Movie Day

The next day, we took a trip into Phuket Central Festival Mall, where we enjoyed browsing the shops and let the kids have some money to spend on games.

Anna had been dying to go on one of these mechanical animals that you can ride around the mall ever since she’d first laid eyes on them in Bali. She finally got her wish and was delighted with her five minute ride. They also enjoyed this robot battle game.

After the games, we made our way downstairs to watch the Barbie movie. It was the first time any of us had had to stand up before the film started in order to watch a couple of minutes of footage in honour of His Majesty the King. When the announcement came to “All rise in honour of the King”, we thought it was optional, but when everyone else in the cinema stood up, we thought we’d better get on with it! When it had finished, we all sat down, and the movie commenced. I loved the movie, with all its layers of meaning – so cleverly done!

Shaun and Leo were also keen to see Mission Impossible, so we then went on to the Jungceylon Mall in Patong, where it was showing that evening. Anna and I left them to watch the movie and enjoy the night market there. On our way home, we stopped for pizza at a cute little local place down the road from our hotel. Anna had a bit of a funny tummy that evening, so didn’t eat much, and we ended up taking the rest of our pizza home with us.

After their dinner, the boys got a tuktuk back to Cassia. Anna and I had gotten a Grab, which took about 25 minutes. Shaun said catching the tuktuk over the steep and windy hills was quite an experience!

Paddleboarding on the Lake

Every day, we watched people paddleboarding across the lake at Cassia, and Anna and I were keen to try it. We caught the Cassia boat across to the little beach shack run by some locals and hired a board each. In typical SEA style, we received very little training or instructions, except a pat on the centre of the board to show us where to stand (although we were given decent lifejackets) before setting out.

We really enjoyed the speed with which we travelled across the lake to the far side, helped by the wind blowing in from the sea. Things then came a little unstuck, as we hadn’t needed to paddle very much, and Anna hadn’t had much of a chance to master the paddling technique. She rejected my attempts at coaching, so I decided to just shut up and let her get on with it. It was hard work paddling to keep up with her as she drifted further and further towards the northwest corner of the lake, getting more and more cross, until she finally conceded that she might need some help.

Sitting on her board, she listened to my coaching and let me tow her out, holding onto my board with her paddle. I must admit, I admire her determination and tenacity to really try and get to grips with things independently!

Paddling into the wind wasn’t much fun at all, but we eventually managed to get ourselves out of our pickle and paddled all the way back to the shack. The last part was actually quite enjoyable. I’d always thought paddleboarding looked so effortless and graceful, but it actually takes a lot of strength and balance to remain steady and also to get from A to B.

After showering, we had another lovely evening at Clare and Michel’s place, enjoying a Mexican feast accompanied by great wine and followed up with Clare’s delicious baked cheesecake with a biscoffe base.

Travel Admin

A quiet day followed, catching up with family back home and booking and planning the next stage of our trip in Northern Thailand. Sometimes, I think about what a huge mission it would have been to have meticulously planned every step of our itinerary from NZ, as you tend to do when booking an overseas holiday. Leaving things fluid, and accepting that our choice of accomodation will be a bit more limited with leaving bookings to the last minute, means that we have the freedom to make our plans and change them as we go.

Meeting other travellers often leads to itinerary changes as well, when we hear about things that really shouldn’t be missed. This also means that once in a while, we need to have admin days to plan the next adventure. The kids get involved too, and are very vocal about their ideas and preferences these days, especially when it comes to activities and accommodation. Leo and I have competitions to see who can find the most reasonable yet most comfortable and spacious rooms to suit our budget.

That evening, I enjoyed a dinner out with Clare, and we were able to have a great catch up…we talked non-stop, late into the evening throughout our beautiful Italian dinner at Bocconcino on Boat Avenue.

Anna’s Phuket Highlights

Bluetree Phuket

The following day, Shaun and I decided to take the kids to Bluetree Phuket, which Clare and her kids had recommended. It is a resort, but it has an enormous lagoon pool with waterslides, and a huge range of outdoor activities, both in and out of the pool.

On our arrival, we stopped in at the front office to have our tickets validated and to sign all the waiver forms for taking part in high risk activities. Once we had our wristbands, we were transported into the resort on this cute little tuktuk.

Bluetree Activities Ranked By Leo

Blue tree was really fun, and I’m going to rank every attraction there.

11 Swirly slide

This slide did not have a name, so I’ll just call it what it is. The swirly slide was boring and so slow that even if I wasn’t wearing a rash shirt, I would have had to push myself for the whole slide except 2 seconds at the beginning and the end.

10 Stand Up Paddle Boarding

I tried the stand-up paddle boarding, but I didn’t have very good balance and I don’t enjoy it that much. It was big though, which made it a lot easier.

9 Kids’ Area

Had a lot of slides like the swirly slide but better because they were shorter, they also had one slide that you didn’t need to push yourself on and fun things like a dump bucket, sprinklers and basically everything was flooding which was fun cause I felt like I was playing around while people were trying to escape a flooding building, no dead bodies though.

8 Velcro

The Velcro was a target made of Velcro when you kicked a football to hit it. Obviously, we weren’t wearing shoes in a waterpark, so we just threw it and most times it fell off because if you do it too soft it rolls off and if you do it too hard it bounces off.

7 Archery

The archery used suction cup arrows that stuck to the target pretty well. It was fun and we got some good photos but every time I was recorded I either missed or got the worst score possible. But I promise I got a bullseye.

6 Twin Racers

At the start you had to push yourself but that wasn’t actually bad because it added to the fun with it being more of a race. The second half was great.

5 Jousting

Jousting was fun and better than at Hard Rock, but one inflatable was a thick, stubby, slippery, heavy thing and the other one was thin in the middle and the side was big. Plus, it was way lighter. The other downside was when you tried to hit their body it would slip off the other person and hit their head.

4 Burger Lunch

3 Cliff Jumping

The cliff jumping was great and really cool. The water just got up my nose and hit my arms. But the photos were great and the videos. My dad said it was the same as the wharf, but it was definitely higher.

2 Underwater Scooters

The underwater scooters were amazing. We got in the water and then accelerated and went underwater. It was exactly like the seaglide from subnautica and would be incredible in diving.

1 Zipline

It was like the zipline I went on at year 6 school camp except I got a great view of the pool, and it was a hold on zipline with a harness for safety instead of just a zipline. I went on it twice and the first time I didn’t lean back at the end and hit my knuckles with my helmet, and it hurt.

Why You Sign A High Risk Waiver…

While the kids absolutely loved our day at Bluetree, the big kid in Shaun also made the most of the opportunity to try some hideously risky slides and the cliff jump. Like Leo, he and I both really enjoyed the zipline.

When Shaun said he was going to do the 10m jump, I felt somewhat nervous, waiting anxiously for him to re-surface. When he did it was a relief, although I have to say I was pretty impressed that he climbed up and then jumped without any hesitation. For someone who isn’t keen on heights, that was quite an impressive feat!

The above action shot was the first of three launches from this slide. It ended in an unceremonious landing, which was hard to watch! The second two attempts were much better. Shaun adopted the head-first technique and subsequently orchestrated better landings. He loved winding back the years and testing himself at this waterpark, but I didn’t love the complaints of aches and pains that followed in the days after!

Last Supper with Friends

On our last evening in Phuket, Shaun went out with Michel to his regular pub trivia night where the team went on to proudly celebrate a win. The team was a mix of English, Swedish, Aussie, American and Kiwi so obviously possesed a wide spread of knowledge.

Meanwhile the kids and I joined Clare, Barb, Emmy, and Tim for dinner at Baan Talay Thai Restaurant, which is part of the Angsana Hotel in Laguna. The Thai buffet was amazing, and the desserts were exquisitely presented with beautiful details, including gold leaf. I made sure I had a taste of the delicious mango sticky rice, one of my favourite desserts in Thailand.

Towards the end of our dinner, we were treated to a traditional Thai dance, which was incredibly elegant and graceful to watch.

Farewell to our lovely friends

Our imminent departure made both Clare and I a little sad, not knowing when we’ll see each other again. We’d had the most wonderful time. Clare and Michel had made us feel incredibly welcome with their warmth, kindness, generosity, and thoughtful hospitality. Hopefully, we can return to visit them in Phuket someday, but we also look forward to repaying their hospitality the next time they’re in NZ.