· Thai food, sun and snorkellingKata Beach, Thailand · 15th Dec 2007 · Posted by Chris
If you ever come to Phuket, Kata Beach is a must-see. I know it's a bit touristy but it's really very very nice. We caught a bus from Phuket Town and it only cost 25 baht each - about $1 each. The trip takes about 30 minutes through Thailand's mess of scooters, tuk tuks and general traffic mayhem.
Once we arrived we wandered around, complete with backpacks, trying to find a place to stay. Sounds like an easy task eh? Not really, considering the variety of places and that they range from approx 300 THB to well over 6000 THB per night. After asking at a whole load of places we decided to head down to a place we'd asked about the previous day - Da Bungalows. Gotta love the seemingly fresh name. ;)
Da Bungalows is probably, in our limited experience, the best find anywhere at Kata Beach. The bungalow we ended up with costs 1000 THB per night (about NZD$38) - sounds cheap but wait until you hear about it. We weren't sure what to expect until we were shown into a place with an amazing ocean view, our own bathroom, kitchen, TV, leather armchairs, fridge/freezer and a king-size bed! Imagine what that sort of setup would cost pretty much anywhere else. All this about 4 minutes walk from the beach! Now THIS is living ... and soooo cheap! The guy that runs it, whose name I wish I knew, is really friendly and sociable and we've spent a couple of occasions chatting to him about all sorts of random stuff.
Yesterday we decided to become beach bums for the day. Swim gear on and towels in hand we headed along the short walk to the beach and setup camp in front of the rows of burnt british tourists. The sand is really nice but the water is even better. It's like walking into a warm bath when you hit the sea. Not a whole lot to talk about re lazing around on the beach so we did just that - lazed around! :)
Thai food is obviously 100% authentic and we had a really nice dinner by the beach while the sun set. I'll upload a couple of photos in a minute.
Today we decided to do the super-tourist thing and take a cruise out to some of the Thai islands. We found a great tour that took us out to Koh Khai and a couple of the neighbouring islands. Pippin this post is for you. :P We saw most of the cast of "Finding Nemo" swimming about trying to avoid our attempts to capture them on our memory cards but managed to get a few good snaps. The fish are the most amazing array of colours and it's really hard to do them justice in text or photo - you gotta come here and see them for yourself! The next stop was 100x better for snorkelling - a coral reef in about 3m of water with more fish than I've ever seen in one place at one time. We had stuff to feed to the fish - as soon as some food touched the surface of the water about a million wee fish instantly arrived to try and get a piece! The only negative point, even though it's pretty funny, is that when there's no food in the water they nibble on the people feeding them! I've got a couple of tiny nip marks on my fingers ... cheeky things they are. Here they are, in all their glory.
The final stop was another island where we decided not to snorkel anymore so we just wandered about, had a swim and generally soaked up the Thai sun (some more than others ... gotta remember that sunscreen!).
So here we are now relating the last couple of days to our loyal readers after being repeatedly being involved in conversations that go something like this ...
"Hello big boss!"
"Hi."
"Dang, those nice shoes! How you?"
"Good, how are you?"
"Ahhh man, I'm always good! Are you Australian?"
"No."
"You need new shirt? New watch? New suit? Buy one suit, get one free!"
It's awesome. :)
That's about enough for this mammoth post. Tomorrow we have tickets to take the 1.5 hour boat ride over to Koh Phi Phi where we're going to try and stay for a night or 2.
Chau!
Once we arrived we wandered around, complete with backpacks, trying to find a place to stay. Sounds like an easy task eh? Not really, considering the variety of places and that they range from approx 300 THB to well over 6000 THB per night. After asking at a whole load of places we decided to head down to a place we'd asked about the previous day - Da Bungalows. Gotta love the seemingly fresh name. ;)
Da Bungalows is probably, in our limited experience, the best find anywhere at Kata Beach. The bungalow we ended up with costs 1000 THB per night (about NZD$38) - sounds cheap but wait until you hear about it. We weren't sure what to expect until we were shown into a place with an amazing ocean view, our own bathroom, kitchen, TV, leather armchairs, fridge/freezer and a king-size bed! Imagine what that sort of setup would cost pretty much anywhere else. All this about 4 minutes walk from the beach! Now THIS is living ... and soooo cheap! The guy that runs it, whose name I wish I knew, is really friendly and sociable and we've spent a couple of occasions chatting to him about all sorts of random stuff.
Yesterday we decided to become beach bums for the day. Swim gear on and towels in hand we headed along the short walk to the beach and setup camp in front of the rows of burnt british tourists. The sand is really nice but the water is even better. It's like walking into a warm bath when you hit the sea. Not a whole lot to talk about re lazing around on the beach so we did just that - lazed around! :)
Thai food is obviously 100% authentic and we had a really nice dinner by the beach while the sun set. I'll upload a couple of photos in a minute.
Today we decided to do the super-tourist thing and take a cruise out to some of the Thai islands. We found a great tour that took us out to Koh Khai and a couple of the neighbouring islands. Pippin this post is for you. :P We saw most of the cast of "Finding Nemo" swimming about trying to avoid our attempts to capture them on our memory cards but managed to get a few good snaps. The fish are the most amazing array of colours and it's really hard to do them justice in text or photo - you gotta come here and see them for yourself! The next stop was 100x better for snorkelling - a coral reef in about 3m of water with more fish than I've ever seen in one place at one time. We had stuff to feed to the fish - as soon as some food touched the surface of the water about a million wee fish instantly arrived to try and get a piece! The only negative point, even though it's pretty funny, is that when there's no food in the water they nibble on the people feeding them! I've got a couple of tiny nip marks on my fingers ... cheeky things they are. Here they are, in all their glory.
The final stop was another island where we decided not to snorkel anymore so we just wandered about, had a swim and generally soaked up the Thai sun (some more than others ... gotta remember that sunscreen!).
So here we are now relating the last couple of days to our loyal readers after being repeatedly being involved in conversations that go something like this ...
"Hello big boss!"
"Hi."
"Dang, those nice shoes! How you?"
"Good, how are you?"
"Ahhh man, I'm always good! Are you Australian?"
"No."
"You need new shirt? New watch? New suit? Buy one suit, get one free!"
It's awesome. :)
That's about enough for this mammoth post. Tomorrow we have tickets to take the 1.5 hour boat ride over to Koh Phi Phi where we're going to try and stay for a night or 2.
Chau!
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