Adios Bangkok, Hello Phuket

1 - Our totally chic and GENUINE Ray-Bans
2 - Thai toilet... I'm not sure I used it the right way
3 - View from resort in Phuket
4 - Jason at the tailor shop

We have officially survived a whirlwind tour of Bangkok and are now
nicely settled into a plush beach resort on Phuket Island. We're at
Karon Beach, which was not hit quite as hard by the tsunami as the
beach just north of us, Patong Beach. We are trying to finagle a suite
out of them but for now we at least have access to the executive
lounge with free internet and a yummy breakfast. Jason is definitely
milking this "business travel" thing.

Yesterday morning we headed out early to JJ Market and a quick stop by
the fancy shopping mall. I think I already wrote about JJ Market in
the previous post, but it has 8,000 stalls and around 200,000 visitors
each day. We did a good job of keeping our bearings, picked up a few
unique Thai items we were looking for, and bolted out of there. A
really awesome discovery were these weaved bags made out of lots of
colorful plastic pieces. There's a picture of the one we bought on the
Picasa album for July 12.

After a few bouts of some really disgusting stomach issues for both of
us, we're going to play it safe with the food in Phuket. It's probably
a good thing we both got immunizations, let's just say that. The hotel
has several restaurants that are reasonably priced and there is a
strip of shops/stuff just outside the hotel property. We explored the
grounds of the hotel last night and found a tailor shop just across
the street - we go back today for our fitting of 5 shirts and 1 suit
each. The tailors here are cheaper than in Hong Kong and this was a
small shop without a lot of chaos going on. We went into a tailor in
Bangkok and they attack you and try and confuse you and don't let you
leave so you'll just agree to their prices to get them to stop bugging
you.

Today we're planning on not doing much at all, finally. The hotel
seems to have multiple pools (they might all be connected, it's hard
to tell) and the beach is just across the street. Perhaps a Thai
massage on the beach is in order.