Happy Monday! Up today is part two of our Thailand trip! After three days in Bangkok, we hopped a Nok Air flight down to the islands. Phuket was absolutely lovely and we spent a week there exploring the island + the surrounding islands! After a bit of a fiasco with our airbnb house, we ended up staying at a beautiful villa right on the water (thank you, super-cheap Thailand prices!). This is the view of our beach + pool – although it wasn’t a swimming beach, it was so pretty to wake up to. As soon as we smelled the salt water, we all were craving Mexican food, and found an amazing little place that we hopped on mopeds and zipped over to! We spent the next day finding our favorite beaches – Kata Beach was the winner! We loved the vibe and went back multiple times. Tim and Shane found some locals willing to rent them their surfboards out of the back of their pickup truck, and we had a super nice evening relaxing on the beach while the guys surfed. Along the road to Kata Beach, there’s a gorgeous lookout point with a few cliffside restaurants that we hit after surfing! This was actually my favorite meal + restaurant of the entire trip – highly recommend the $4 pineapple fried rice 🙂The next morning, we fueled up with a big breakfast + delicious macchiatos before meeting up with our boat captain for the day for an all day trip to Koh Pi Pi, Maya Bay + Monkey Bay. As soon as we left the bay, there were massive 8-10 foot waves cresting over us and tossing the boat around. It was pretty much 2.5 of pure seasickness, but we survived and made it eventually to the STUNNING (although crowded) Maya Bay.
You can see how many people were on the beach in Maya Bay in the above photo! We had our boat captain take us over to a little abandoned beach nearby for some snorkeling / relaxing time and we LOVED this little spot. I was actually just so happy to be on solid ground that I think I kissed the beach, haha. I’m glad the guys brought the gopro so we could document this little spot, below! Thankfully the waters calmed down for the remainder of the afternoon! MONKEY BEACH! These guys were CRAZY. Also, they’re addicted to Coke and chug it like nobody’s business. The next day was our animal day! We researched pretty thoroughly and wanted to make sure the places we went treated the animals well and had good living arrangements, and we were super happy with our choices. On Phuket, the Kok Chang Safari was awesome! We weren’t sure if if would feel touristy (ok, a little) but it was actually SO FUN. The elephants were treated so well by their handlers + we loved sitting on the their heads to ride through the jungle! Such long, tickly hairs + funny ears! And then we headed to Tiger Kingdom Phuket for a dream come true afternooon….cuddling with baby tigers!! They were super active + playful + sassy! Shane’s tiger gave a few warning snarls…That night, we headed down to Sunset Point to try to catch another pink sunset, and it didn’t disappoint! This spot is crazy crowded with tourists, but still beautiful + worth seeing. We had so much fun scootering around Phuket and finding little lunch spots to return to every day (the white pizza cafe pictured below was our favorite beachside spot at Kata Beach!)Ok, so this is the most fun picture ever! We actually overlapped our trip with the awesome Julia + Dan, whose wedding we photographed last winter! We were so excited when we realized we would both be in Phuket for one night and had to meet up for dinner + drinks on a rooftop restaurant on Kata Noi beach! It was one of those fun moments where you look around and think whoa, wedding photography is pretty cool – that we’re sitting together around a table with two LFP couples-turned-friends who we never would have met if they hadn’t chosen us to photograph their wedding! We loved getting to catch up with Julia + Dan and were also joined by another couple from PA – talk about a small world! Early the next morning, we headed to the ferry to catch a boat to Railay, our last stop of the trip + probably the most spectacular scenery of all! Part 3 coming soon!