Don't take the Phuket airport minibus!

View of Phangnga? from the airplane. This area in South Thailand has really dramatic scenery.
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It's not worth it!  We picked up our baggage at 3:15 and didn't get to our hotel until close to 6 pm.  It was cheaper than the other options, but we paid for our trip with a rather long stop at a travel agency.  And we had to wander through a lot of narrow crazy streets to drop everyone else off.  And the minivan doesn't leave until it's full, so depending how many people there are, it could take a really long time to even get going.  We did get a pretty good tour of the Patong area, enough to know that it's pretty nasty.  We were talking on the minibus that it would have been nice to have this information ahead of time.  So I'm putting this information out there and hopefully it will keep people from falling into the same trap.

Last photo that will have any Brians or Jennis.
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Okay, it's been a while since I've updated this.  That means that we've been busy!  We went scuba diving in Phuket!  With Sea-bees diving.  Wow, they had a pretty amazing setup.  This was the easiest diving experience that I've ever had. I've only gone diving in Monterey, CA before, and we have to wear blubbery-thick wetsuits and a ton of weight so that we don't float, and we've had to do beach/surf entries and then swim out to the dive site... powered by our own legs.  And we had to do all the lifting of tanks and equipment, and get ourselves in and out of the water by ourselves.  Not so with Sea-bees.  They had a ton of people on the boat and they were so aware of our needs.  As I was about to put my tank on, there would be someone to help me lift it and help me get my arms in the right place.  When you got out of the water, they actually lifted your vest and tank, actually and you too, out of the water.  There was also pretty delicious food available, buffet-style, all day on the boat.

we looked up and you could see the glow of the moon coming through the water

Bright blue blob.
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So for the actual diving, we did 4.  3 of them were so so, and 1 was pretty good.  I've never been diving in tropical waters, but I was expecting a lot more life.  There were a lot of spots that looked pretty dead.  Very sad.  The one dive that was good was full of life and activity - Koh Bita something.  We saw a sea turtle!  And a cute yellow box pufferfish.  Mark took photos, but I haven't seen them yet. Maybe I'll upload some of those later for you guys to see.  We did a night dive... nowhere near as cool as the Monterey night dive that I did.  My favorite thing during the night dives is that when you move through the water there are these phosphorescent things that glow.  Monterey had more glowing things.  In Monterey, things are really bustling at night.  Here, things seemed less lively at night.  The coolest thing about the dive was that we had a nearly full moon.  So when we were around 5 meters underwater, at our safety stop, we looked up and you could see the glow of the moon coming through the water.  Amazing.  Light and water are amazing.  I actually would have been fine hanging out 5 meters under the water, staring at the glow of the moon.

I'm having fun on this dive. The photos were all taken on the best dive of the day.
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Phuket was where we parted ways with Jenni and Brian.  :(  Although, Jenni's version of a sad face at our parting involved smiling eyes.  She said that was so that we wouldn't feel too sad, but I'm not sure!

I'm uploading the underwater photos now!  I hope you guys realize that there are often more photos than what's displayed with the text.  Just click on the "view more photos" link.