Thailand 2012 – Phuket - Day 8

Off to the jungle,  on a tour lead by whip cracking Alex who kept us to schedule like a man possessed. He made me look tardy by comparison.

His welcome speech: "First we go to Monkey caves - your bag should not be coming as they may take from you. Things monkey likes to take from bag is condoms, tissues, gum. Then we go to white water rafting just level 2. The level 6 the tourist sometimes can be dying but they don't mind as they like to be the hero.  Rafting is very beautiful. Very extreme. Very good. You feel very enjoy. We then see elephant. Trunk up very lucky like elephant say thank you and good morning. Elephant better than the monkey as they no hit you. Then you do ATV driving  Iady go first so we look at her driving. If she bad she must go with her husband. Last we go to waterfall. Sometimes if you don't scared you jump from the rock 3 metres. Lunch Pepsi you can drink many bottle and food nobody serve you help self. Then there be fruit. Jurin fruit it stink no so good smell and don't drink with alcohol you could choke and die. When you sleeping at the hotel it make your body hot and you suffer - not you people. Perhaps the others they die.

It took 2 hours to get from Karon beach to where the tour kicked off at Phang Nga. Alex gave us alot to think about as we headed there.

Impressively a call came through to us in the jungle - it was home just checking we were ok as 4 Aussies had died in a fire at Tiger Club. Guess we won't be checking out that club after all!

The monkey caves (Suwan Khuha Temple) were terrific. Lots of little baby monkeys and monkey families scurrying around.

The white water rafting was FANTASTIC. I had to laugh at the pre rafting tutorial which was Alex saying "paddle what your guide says and when you fall off just float like this" and with that he crossed his arms on his chest and shut his eyes.

We saw the elephants, and were told alot of interesting facts. I was listening intently when mid-sentence "and now you look right behind you. There is a green viper snake." The snake was nearly 2m long I was told. I relocated unlike the others who decided to get their cameras out an embrace the snake.

The ATV riding was a little ho hum - we had to go in single file incredibly slowly so it was a bit mundane.

The swimming in the sparking waterfall was stunning. It had rained on and off during the day - which we really welcomed and I think the tour was better for it actually. There's something about rain in the jungle that makes it a bit more of an experience so being in a waterfall in the rain was my idea of wonderful.

My only complaint with this tour is related to photos - obviously you can't take photos while rafting or ATV riding so they could do a better job of providing souvenirs. The bike tour has since sent me a mass load of pics to Dropbox whereas this tour gave 2 pics to choose from for each activity and you had to pay $6 AUS per pic if you wanted it - and they weren't even that good. All up there was only 1 worth buying. But that's a minor flaw. I would definately recommend www.adventuretravelandtour.com

For dinner we went down to Kata to a restaurant called 'Lobster and Prawn. No view but taste" we did the grilled lobster. It was ok. John didn't have the best night as I had drugged him in the tour bus. He was travel sick on the way there so on the way back I took a travel tablet that causes drowsiness and also forced one on John. It was a 2 hour trip - made sense to me and I had a fab trip home but John didn't inherit the joys at that time. Somehow he got zonked over dinner.

The plan again was to send the boys in to a club to see what the girls offered but that didn't eventuate as we needed to get John to bed. We did stop for a street pancake on the way back - ill never forget looking over to see John siting on a street edge transfixed on a Thai man singing Bob Marley. Note to self, drugging husband doesn't work out as planned.