For my program we are allowed one week of travel, a group of 7 of us decided to travel to Phuket. Overwhelmed with joy we hopped in our red car and traveled to the airport. Our first stop was Phuket, we ended up staying in Patong Beach after we heard it was near a lot of night life and travel. It is fairly difficult for me to sum up the words to describe my experience in Phuket. From pictures and such on Phuket I formed an opinion that my experience would be scenery and a lot of beaches however later learning that Patong Beach was not the area to do that. Our first night out on the strip of Patong was not what I was expecting I became overwhelmed with street sellers and everyone trying to sell you the next ticket to their happy hour there were times when I felt very anxious at the amount of people around, missing Chiang Mai terribly. This what not all. The amount of sex tourism and prostitution was abundant I saw so many women degrading themselves and I had to keep reminding myself that this is not the Thailand I experienced coming here and I would not allow my seeings to change my perspective. However after deciding as a group that we would not go back down that strip of Patong Beach we began to look for tours. This WAS THE FUN PART. We went on a snorkeling tour with Rak Talay travel to the Phi Phi Islands, and I was quickly reminded once again why I came to Thailand the beaches were magnificent and we even stopped at Monkey Beach to take pictures of and with the monkeys I even saw a monkey drinking coke out of a cup (exciting). Snorkeling was everything I could have imagined I saw so many fish and coral careful to stay away from the not so nice sea creatures.
The next day we went to Promthep Cape in hope to be able to see the sunset however due to mother nature it was fairly cloudly so we hiked to the bottom of the cape which was an experience, it was like rock climbing but without the resources or holes at that to grab onto. I was happy this day that I wore sneakers instead of my other classmates who wore flipflops :P When we got to the bottom of the cape it was utterly amazing and and I was taken back by the amazing rocks and blue sea. As I sat and looked out into the see I was once again reminded of how beautiful Thailand is and my judgement of what I saw in Patong Beach quickly went away. Thailand is the land of smiles the land of nothing but the essence of beauty. Being back in Chiang Mai I can say that I am happy that I went back to Phuket!