Our (rainy) beach weekend

This Memorial Day was the first weekend that we actually went out of town.   It has been difficult to get out as it’s just confortable to stay home where we get so many amenities included in our cost of living.  Leaving means that not only we’ll be paying for a nice hotel in Bangkok where we leave our stuff, but also we need to pay for another hotel wherever we happened to be going.  Sucks but what else can you do?

In a previous visit to Thailand we had focused on the culture and nature of the north of the country.  Rather than spending any time in Bangkok or the South we headed straight up to Chiang Mai.  So this time we started by going to the beach for the weekend.  Us and ½ million other expats from Bangkok. 

It was a long weekend here as well, on Friday the country celebrates a big religious holiday commemorating the birth of the Buddha.    Since Thailand is mostly Buddhist, it goes without saying that this was a very important holiday. 

Another reason that I wanted to head South this time was that we are waiting for the rainy season to begin relatively soon so I wanted to beat the rains before they start happening on a daily basis.

I may have missed the memo on that but it seems like the Phuket area is already in their rainy season as our flight was diverted from landing in Phuket because of rain and the rain was always a cloud away during the first two days we were there.   Since we don’t have the time to be returning to the same locations, we figured that we should see what we could out of the area and deal with the rain as best we could.  So, under the rain pretty much we walked to a tour/travel sales office and negotiated on the best possible 1 day tour of the bay islands for Sunday.    There are many, many options to go but we felt safest in a bigger boat with roof and A/C so that at least we would stay dry during the trip.

Sunday arrived and we were picked up early from our hotel in Karon Beach.  The rain had subsided but the clouds were building up behind the hills.  They drove us to the port in Phuket Town and there we boarded the big boat.  Just as we were leaving the port, the rain started coming down.  We thought for sure, glad we chose this boat over the other choices.  However, we may have thought too soon as the day started to clear up quickly and it turned out to be a cloudy but dry day pretty much until the end of the cruise around 5pm.

Probably because of the change in the weather, the sea was not smooth as silk as they show it in the brochures, but it was fairly smooth sailing throughout.   

Thinking about it, how many times we make decisions based on the information we have at the time, we feel safe that we made the correct decision under the circumstances.   That’s normally how I handle decisions.  But then you get situations like this one, we made a decision based on this being probably the only opportunity we had and we were going to do the best of it regardless.  It could have gone either way, but lucky for us this time, we took the risk and were rewarded with a nice day.  Wish it was always that way but I know better.