Monday the 19th through Wednesday the 21st.....

One thing has become clear to me in the short time I have been in Thailand....it is very difficult to train and sightsee at the same time! I have managed to do a decent job of it, but there is still so much to see and do it's ridiculous. And clearly the Vietnam side trip will not be happening because we only have 9 more days. So it has become apparent that I will need to come back soon. So in between Muay Thai training, on Monday we visited Old Town Phuket in Phuket Town. (pic) This is a very cool area and the architecture and buildings are amazing. It screams of French Colonialism, and you almost feel like you are in New Orleans in some sections. We ate lunch at a somewhat sketchy restaurant but lived to tell about it. Then we walked around and took pictures literally for the rest of the afternoon. Ann got a foot massage at an interesting little shop and I watched on in horror as this lady manhandled her feet. I would've died as I can't stand people touching my feet! Pedicures are the most I can handle. We ran across a very cool Buddhist Temple (pic) and encountered some very nice Buddhist monks. I took pictures, but with the fancy camera, and those will be uploaded when we get back to the States. We were pretty exhausted by evening and thought of eating in Old Town Phuket but figured we would just go back to Cocoville for a nice meal. We collapsed and went to bed :)

Tuesday brought more sightseeing, as we went to Patong, which is considered a pretty touristy, and in our minds, seedy, area. (pic) It is a bad mixture of Vegas and Cabo. But it houses a very popular Muay Thai stadium (Bangla) and we thought we should visit at least once since we are in Thailand! We had lunch and did some damage at a cool bookstore. I visited a popular Muay Thai store and did more damage, and may actually go back next week to do still even more damage. The views from Patong were amazing since it sits pretty high up on a mountain/hillside. Pretty amazing. We got back to Cocoville fairly early and did some more souvenir shopping, and met a friend for dinner at a nice restaurant down the road called Floraville. There was a CRAZY thunderstorm Tuesday night and we got ZERO sleep because of this. In fact, we don't know why, but this whole week has really sucked for sleep. It just isn't happening!

Wednesday was sort of a catch up day...catch up on sleep, catch up on shopping.....we were bound and determined to finish our shopping for peeps back home so we went back to Central Festival to pick up a few things. We had amazing Korean barbecue for dinner (pic), and Ann tried eating corn with chopsticks...it didn't turn out well...