St. Patrick's Day in Thailand- Day 3 Phuket-3/17/09

Again another early wake up, action packed day as always trying to get as much in, in as little time as possible.  The day's activities included lots to do on the water.  We started off with an hour boat ride through gorgeous waters passing lots of undisturbed nature and breathtaking views.  Our first stop was James Bond Island which is where one of the movies was filmed in the 1970's.  It was one of your typical tourist traps as there was no difference between this island and any other island, just the fact that the movie was filmed there in about 40 years ago and they are still using that detail to lure tourists there.  We explored the island for a few minutes, there were a few shops but really not that much to see.  There wasn't even any information or pictures from the movie being filmed.  Our next stop was Hong Island which is a "is an open-air, cliff-lined cylindrical tidal lagoon Connected to the outside world
only through stalactite-filled caves."  It amazed everyone how we could fit through these caves as we had to lay down when we went through them as it was high tide.  It reminded me a lot of the Blue Grotto in Capri, Italy which was really similar.  On the way out the tide had risen even more and they had to deflate the boats some in order to squeeze through the hole.  We had a paddler once again who said he was 13 and was working in the summer time to pay for school.  He spoke very limited English and kept imitating things we said as well as a few other phrases he had picked up from other tourists such as "Whatsss upp mannn" and "Hello Moto" and making fun of our accents.  After that we had a buffet lunch on the boat at around 2 pm and we were all really hungry as we hadn't eaten since breakfast at 7 am.  I almost just said the word "starving" but after this trip I have a new appreciation of the true meaning of that word.  No matter how hungry I ever am, I hope that there will never be a point that I am actually "starving" as many of the people I have seen in some of these countries have been.  After lunch we headed to Lawa Island where we had about 45 minutes to paddle around in the canoes or relax on the beach.  We then took a boat ride back to the shore where we took a bus back to the hotel.  In the time between getting back and dinner Phil and I went to go get massages.  We decided to try a new place which was closer and bargained a price for 45 mins at 200 Baht.  They wanted to do my massage on a towel on the floor but I quickly declined.  I said I would wait for a bed to open up.  I started later than Phil and got done earlier, clearly not getting my full time.  Phil handed them the 200 Baht which he owed his person and she said it was 300 and that she didn't agree on 200 claiming the person who quoted us a price didn't work there.  I only had a 1000 Baht bill so I wasn't about to hand over my money until she agreed on 200 which she did not.  So I told Phil lets go and we only gave 200 Baht between the two of us and quickly walked away.  This he/she women decided to chase us down the road saying we were going to be in big trouble and she was following us back to her hotel.  He/she kept grabbing me and it was starting to piss us off, we arrived at the hotel and we knew our hotel had security.  We told the Security not to let the person in and he did not let he/she in so we were off the hook and ended up paying about $2 each for the massage and figuring the person would be waiting for us when we left.  We weren't trying to rip them off, we would have gladly paid the 200 Baht but we weren't about to let them rip us off either.  We figured they were used to older tourist's would not resist and pay them more money.  In the end, we were the ones who got the better deal out of it and hopefully taught them a lesson about trying to rip off Americans.  We headed to dinner with Shera, Danielle, Ashley, Amanda, Laura, Phil and myself (maybe a few others, but they didn't make the picture so I don't remember who they were).  We headed to Patong Road which is this street on the shore in search of a restaurant.  On the way we passed the massage place which had tried to rip us off so we crossed the street in order to avoid them, we were successful.  We ended up at a place called "Coyote" which was a Mexican Restaurant.  We had all the usual Mexican stuff…nachos, quesadillas, fajitas, cervezas and margaritas.  It was really good and a taste of "home."  When we went to pay our bill it got really complicated trying to do separate checks and the waitress did not speak much English so she sent our the chef…turns out his name was Matt and was American and from Chicago.  He moved to Thailand with his wife several years back and stayed every since.  It was really weird seeing an American working there and he was very happy to have conversation with some Americans, as were we.  That night was St. Patty's Day so we headed out to the 2 Irish bar's in Phuket, Molly Malone's and Scruffy's where it seemed like virtually every SAS kid was.  It was a really fun night and we were talking to this guy from France for a while about traveling and his business and got some really funny videos with him.  We went and got some pizza before we headed back for the night.