NOSTALGIC PHUKET

Today was supposed to be my nostalgic Tuesday posting...until we were blacked out. We now find ourselves in Phuket, Thailand. Incredibly enough, I was here in 2020...at the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic. When we began that trip, Thailand was #2 in Covid cases to China at #1. However, by 17 February 2020 Thailand had dropped to #7. Today, it is #31.

Why would we take such a chance? Well, I was just accompanying my travel partner, who was joining eleven of her high school classmates on this Thai adventure. The problem is that only one other person actually showed up, and we saw him for maybe an hour for a drink. But we were there, so made the best of it.

I'll share some highlights of our couple days in Phuket, beginning with 17 February 2020.

We stayed at the Le Meridian Phuket, a Marriott property. However, turns out that Marriott resorts do not have any executive club, so that was a downer as a beginning. Our stay was also desultory, for we did not do much.

The 18 February 2020 blog covered our tours of Phuket, which, if you did not know, is pronounced Poo-Ket. To quote:

Phuket is the largest island of Thailand, but also a province and city, including 32 more tiny islands. The area is slightly less than Molokai, which is slightly smaller than Singapore. The ocean it faces is the Andaman Sea. The population is approaching 400,000, although there are an additional 200,000 unregistered migrants, ex-pats and others. The city is 536 miles south of Bangkok.

Amazingly enough, this outpost of a place draws around 10 million visitors/year, about the same as Hawaii.
The highlight was, of all the things, a 3D museum.
The Explorer docked just south of Phuket city in the Port of Phuket

The flight from Phuket to Chiang Mai was, it turned out, our closest encounter with Covid:

Then it got worse, for the person who sat between us had a mask on and was coughing. I tried to do as little talking to him as possible anyway, but we then found out he was visiting Phuket from CHINA! How did he get into Thailand, we asked, for people from there are not allowed in. He said something about the laxness of flying in from a small airport in his country into Phuket. While most in the plane wore masks, except me, every few seconds someone in plane coughed. Hope these were the ones wearing a mask. Nevertheless, I had a beer with macadamia nuts while everyone was coughing around me. Seemed like I was the only one eating.

As perilous as that might have been, I was actually closer to death in Chiang Mai.

Well, we don't this time have Chiang Mai on our schedule. I no doubt tomorrow will show a few photos of our stay in Phuket, but our next stop will be Penang, Malaysia.

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