Phuket: A Tour Around The Area

 

We took a tour of Phuket to see some of the sights. Lady Hiva had made a list of things to possibly see and in our 5 days we did all of them but two! We do not usually do a tour that is guided, but it was the fastest way to see a lot of the area without having to rent a vehicle and to worry about parking and directions. 

The first stop was Chalong Temple. It was beautiful. There are several buildings to walk around and enjoy the reverence there. It was covered in rich golds, reds, blues and greens. Unlike all of the Wats in Bangkok, this temple was painted colors and you could see it chipping when you got up close. But overall, it was an amazing experience. 

Lotus blossoms to pray and leave in the temple. 

At one point we went to the lookout to see all of the western beaches. The view was amazing. We loved that we could see blue skies and perfect water. 

We went to the "Big Buddha." It is not finished despite the fact that they have been working on it for 15 years. It is made from white marble from Bhurma because they believed that the marble is more pure. Each scale of the dragon banisters are inlaid with small marble pieces. 

We took some rickshaw/tuktuks at night. They were party blinged out--very different from our rickshaws in Mumbai. 

Lady Hiva doing her shopping from the little cart woman on the side of the road! 

We went to Church on Sunday. (Please note that I wanted to go to the islands and see the beauty that God created, but I was lectured by three different people that I live with how we should go to Church...clearly I lost! HAHA). It was really cool to go. The people were so welcoming. There were members from Russia, Thailand, USA, and Australia there. We enjoyed getting to know them and hearing their testimonies. 

After services they fed us some food. It smelled so good! We all ate some, the flavors were delicious. However, I was worried that we would get sick because it was raw pork. Thankfully, none of us did get sick. Maybe we were blessed because we went to Church instead of going to the beach! :)

In the evening one of the days we went to the night market. It is similar to all the markets you see around Asia. We had fun wandering through the aisles and bargaining with the shop owners. We did not buy much except some delicious mango. We always love some good mango to eat! 

The kids were introduced to some bbq squid and octopus. They are willing to try most foods, but drew the line at this offering! 

We had a tour of the honey factory. After living in Turkey we are always looking for good honey. It was fun to see that they harvest several different kinds of honey that are good for different parts of the digestive track based on what flowers the bees used.

Lucky Dragon loves Cashews and we went to the cashew nut factory. It was interesting to see that each fruit only produces one nut and the process for harvesting the nut is labor intensive. Makes you appreciate that handful of cashews you can just casually throw into your mouth! 

Doing quality assurance on the cashews. 

Opening each cashew--one at a time.