After our crazy first 24 hours in Bangkok with 2 hours of sleep, we decided to hop on a flight headed to Phuket. We arrived at the airport, hopped in another van, and took an hour long minibus ride down to a place called Patong Beach. This place was a beautiful little city on the western coast of the Island of Phuket.
As we were checking into our guesthouse, I noticed the vast amount of foreigners on mopeds and decided that it was absolutely essential that we get them ASAP. So I stupidly traded in my passport for two mopeds and we began our exploration of Phuket Island.
Initial thoughts…. the driving in Thailand is absolute insanity; however, it’s extremely organized. We weaved our way through traffic, almost causing an accident every time we forgot that we were supposed to drive on the left side and not the right, and eventually made it about 30 kilometers across the island to a small dirt road in the jungle.
Our original intention was to make it up to a spot called Big Buddha Mountain at Nakkerd Hills on the south side of the Island. We got about three-fourths of the way up and then the road disappeared. We were stranded in the jungle, as we did not have dirt bikes for the trek ahead.. only little mopeds that had been rendered inadequate. My friend and I decided to turn around and back track to follow another route. During this entire experience, I had been wondering why I had not seen any people on the trails or on the small roads we had been driving on. As soon as we were about halfway down the mountain, we encountered a group wild dogs that were roaming the area and they were not too fond of the rumbling of the moped engines. They chased us as we sped away and fortunately, we made it down without getting our legs bitten off; however, my buddy Sheldon did crash his bike because he thought it was hilarious that we were being chased, so he was filming it…
We finally found the correct route, which was a paved road with people on it and most importantly, no rabid dogs in sight. On the way up, we met some travelers from Argentina and took some gorgeous photos of the viewpoints overlooking the entire southern bay of the Island.
Two hours and three viewpoints later, we finally reached our destination: the Big Buddha. This was one of the most breathtaking, monumental structures I have ever seen. The buddha looks over the southern coast is surrounded by several gorgeous Buddhist gardens. This spot is visited by travelers, monks, and Buddhists from around the world and I highly recommend it to every single traveler that visits Phuket, Thailand.
My favorite shot of the day is a picture Sheldon snapped as I was reveling when we first set foot on the top of the Big Buddha steps.
This concludes our time on Phuket Island. We slept a few hours and then had to leave the next morning for the Phi Phi Islands. See you there.
Cheers!
