THAILAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Day 1

Well, let me start from the beginning. I don't want to spend too much time on here so I'm going to be brief. Also, can't connect my laptop so pictures will have to wait until either Bangkok or Shenzhen, sorry.

We flew from Shenzhen Airport Saturday morning about 12:30am (an hour later than we were supposed to) and arrived in Bangkok about 2:30am (they're an hour behind Shenzhen). We made our way through customs and picked up our checked bag. We immediately went to find some good because we were very hungry. After we ate some Thai food, we walked around trying to find somewhere to sleep for a little bit. We stumbled in to Royal Thai Airways' VIP lounge. It was so late AND so early that nobody was there so we settled down. We were unable to nap because by the time we had settled down, we had just 40 minutes before we could check-in for our flight to Phuket. We checked in for our flight and went to the gate to lay down and wait. It was freezing cold in the terminal and we were unable to sleep.

This flight was on time so we were excited about that. We flew over the ocean and arrived in Phuket a little over an hour later. Beautiful water!!!!!!!!!! That was the first reaction when landing. Again, we gathered our stuff and met up with our driver from the hostel.

The drive to our hostel was nice. We told the driver that if he took us somewhere he enjoys eating for breakfast, we'd pay. We stopped at a little restaurant on the side of the road where some Thai families were enjoying their breakfast. The food was very good. I had some roasted duck with rice. Vi had a bowl of noodles in soup with roasted duck. We split a plate of fried glass noodles with roasted duck. The duck was delicious, can you tell?

On the table were condiments, like anywhere you go. They were just different here. You had the soy sauce with Thai chilis in them. There was the crushed, dried chili flakes. They did have sugar. Lastly, the vinegar with peppers in it. The best were these little green peppers. I had never seen them before and the driver was eating them in his food by the hand full. I decided to give it a try. Luckily, I didn't try to show off and just picked one and ate it with a spoonfullof rice. WOW! That was the hottest pepper I've ever eaten. My mouth and lips were on fire for the entire trip to the hostel.

We left the restaurant and made our way to the hostel, nothing else worth mentioning happened.

At the hostel, we checked in and got our room. It was an excellent surprise. Our room's great and very cheap. It's about $20 a night. It's called Southern Fried Rice. We couldn't go to the beach yet, we were exhausted. We took a short nap and made our way to the ocean.

Frst, we went to Kata Beach which is just a 5 minute walk from our hostel. It was beautiful but there were plenty of people. Not a crazy amount, but not what we really really wanted. We played in the water and took some walks. The water was a beautiful blue-green. We rented two chairs and spent some time being lazy. It was really nice.

We walked up the street to a little restaurant to get some food. I ordered the cheeseburger and Vi ordered the noodles with seafood. To my surprise, they had Connect Four game boards so I was able to teach Vi a game I used to play a lot in the after school program in elementary school.

We left the beach and came back to shower and change for dinner and shopping. We ate dinner at a really small, local place that I thought was going to fall apart at any moment. We walked up the steps and pointed to some stuff in bags then ordered to some Thai Phad noodles with seafood. The noodles were amazing. They were not spicy but had a peanut flavor to them that made them incredible. It is the best non-Italian noodle dish I've ever had. The other stuff we ordered practically killed us. The first was a mixture of chilis and chicken. It looked very flavorful and it was. It slowly destroyed our mouths though. The other dish was green and served with this vegetable so we didn't think it would be too spicy...wrong. That one also torched our mouths. The spicyness is undescribable.

After dinner, we walked around the area and did some shopping. First for ourselves, then for others. Vi picked up a beautiful dress and I got a new t-shirt that I desperately need. We were still quite tired so we only shopped for a short while and headed back to the hostel to sleep.

Tomorrow would be an amazing day and we'd have an amazing adventure.