Turns out that a lot of what we read online and we’re told when researching how to extend our Thailand visas in Phuket wasn’t fully up to date – so we thought we’d run through how it worked for us.
Firstly, the administrative office in Patong only deals with certain enquiries and isn’t open very often. All applications for visa extensions must be processed at the passport office in Phuket Town.
We arrived in Thailand ready for a health kick and were pretty disappointed to discover there was no easy way for us to find the best healthy restaurants in Phuket. Many listed as healthy on TripAdvisor just served standard Thai food and while that’s always delicious it’s not always the healthiest choice.
It turned out that Songkran (Thai new year) fell in the first week of our month long stay in Phuket so we thought we’d better get geared up and see what it was all about. As the country is officially in mourning many said that the celebrations wouldn’t be as raucous as previous years and would be confined to the first day of the festival – April 13th. Based on our experience though, celebrating Songkran in Phuket was still pretty crazy!
There’s something about Thailand that makes me feel weirdly at home. I definitely wasn’t planning to be such a backpacker cliche but it seems to be going pretty well so there you go. Last time we were here was January where we stayed in Chiang Mai and I wrote all about our healthy week there which was more a travel diary than our usual blog posts, and here I go again.
We’ve just arrived on the beautiful island of Phuket where we’ll be staying in a small but perfectly formed apartment for a month to have a bit of a break.
Thai food is forever my favourite. While I love Cambodian cuisine and in the end Burmese flavours won me over, if I had to choose I’d always fall back on Thai flavours. From spicy green curry to creamy Massaman, and from Khao Soi noodles to Pad Thai I love every single dish I’ve ever tried during my 3 trips to Thailand! Perhaps I’ve been lucky but (touch wood) I’ve never been ill the way I have in other Asian countries and I can’t get enough of those Thai flavours. I think my one true love might be mango sticky rice… but anyway, you catch my drift.
Turns out that despite reading many many horror stories about the slow boat from Thailand to Laos (and the reverse journey) it was actually not that bad at all. In fact I’d go so far as to say it’s been one of my favourite long distance journeys on this trip.
After a few busy months of travel we were looking forward to a week in Chiang Mai to relax. The plan was to treat ourselves to a nice hotel, get some work done so we could top up the bank account and eat loads of good food and just generally look after ourselves a bit better for a few days. This became all the more important after having spent a fortnight in Myanmar where I’d been ill pretty much constantly and where we’d had little or no wifi to allow us to work.
You don’t tend to hear a lot of positive reports about Bangkok in our experience. Renowned for everything from temples and palaces to seedy go go bars and night markets, it’s well known globally for its reputation as a party city for backpackers and for some of the more outrageous elements of its nightlife.