Phuket, Thailand - part 2

First of all, let me say that we got this hotel and flight super cheap since tourism in Thailand isn't so hot right now. Lucky us, bad for Thailand. If we had wanted to drive to Phuket, it would have taken 13 hours each way, but by plane it's a little over an hour. The flight down was not too full and the boys got to have their own 3 seat row - with Cheetah in the middle all buckled up. The girls and I got to sit opposite the boys :)

When we got to the hotel, we were seated near the front desk where iced juice and cold towels were brought out to each of us! Oh La La (as Fancy Nancy likes to say)! The hotel is situated right on Bang Tao Beach in the northern end of Phuket and on the west side on the Andaman Sea. It's sandwiched between the "ocean" and a lagoon - hence the name of the hotel. It is currently the "off-season" time there. I assumed it was off-season because it's so hot in Thailand right now (high season is November-January when it's cool), but apparently it is off-season because you can't really swim in the Andaman right now. It's too rough. During the high season, the Andaman is calm and you can snorkel right in the water by the hotel. Due to monsoon seasons affecting the Andaman, it looks kind of like the Atlantic on a calmer day. Waves, but not too big - but red flags up saying that it was unsafe to swim in. So that was too bad, but the kids had fun walking on the beach, looking for seashells and playing right at the edge of the water/in the waves. So that was a bummer, but the awesome 5 pools at the hotel more than made up for it :)

Our room rocked. It had 2 double beds (one for the big kids) and a "nook" with 2 Thai mats for Kylie to sleep on! It was her own special spot and after the first night, the maids knew that Kylie was sleeping there and made it up as a fun bed for her, complete with sheet, blanket and pillows! The kids did pretty much okay sleeping all together. It was repeated "Moo and Jack, please go to sleep" for about 30 minutes until they finally did fall asleep - and whoever was up first, woke up everyone else, but we did fine (and will have to for the majority of our time in the States this summer, so we better get used to it)! I will say that the kids went to bed between 9 and 9:30pm every night and then still woke up around 6am...so all 5 of us took naps in the afternoon when the sun was at it's highest - good for us and nice to be out of the sun during that time!