Relax

For some of us of a certain age, when I hear the word relax, it takes me back to college and the band, Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Now it will have an additional meaning for me as we just spent the last couple of days at the Phi Phi Relax Beach Resort.

Since my last posting, we spent Thursday at the Varana Hotel and on the Klong Muang Beach. The Varana Hotel has an Olympic size swimming pool, at 50 meters, it is huge.

Thursday evening we went to the Ao Nang Night Market. We watched the sunset at Ao Nang Beach and got a burrito and quesadilla at Tiki Taco; it might have been the best burrito I’ve ever had.

The Night Market had a lot to offer including music, dancing, Thai kick-boxing, and ice cream.

After breakfast Friday morning, we checked out of the Varana Hotel, took a taxi to the Klong Jilad Pier and caught the high speed ferry to Tonsai Pier in Phi Phi. From the Tonsai Pier we took a long tail boat to Phi Phi Relax Beach Resort. A boat is the only way to access the resort. After checking in and finding our bungalow, we spent some time on the beach.

The highlight of our stay on Phi Phi was boating and snorkeling on Saturday. We snorkeled at Front Pileh Lagoon and Front Viking Cave. The beach and water at Maya Bay is breathtaking. The color of the water, a light teal is just amazing. After our second snorkel, we saw hundreds of large jellyfish; we were happy to discover the jellyfish after we were back in the boat.

The Relax Resort was a bit rustic – the wifi was spotty and the water pressure for the shower was weak. I had two delicious dinners; the first night I had mackerel and next night Jane and I both had red snapper. The bar had 86 different cocktails on the menu – the funny thing is that the bartenders had to look up the drink ingredients to make many of them.

This morning we switched our schedule. We left the resort on an earlier boat back to Tonsai Pier and then we were able to get on the 10:40 am speed boat to Phuket Rassada Pier. Since we originally planned to only stay in Phuket just to fly out of, we booked a hotel near the airport. To our surprise, there is a national park with a beautiful beach a few minutes from our hotel- the Phuket Airport Hotel (much nicer than you would expect from the name) has free bikes and we rode them to Sirinat National Park. I wonder if there is a nicer national park next to an international airport anywhere in the world.

Tonight we had dinner at Sea-U Kitchen. Tomorrow we head north to Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city.