Thailand Day 7: Tropical Paradise and Bangkok by Night

I saved my number one Phuket activity for our last day: boat taxi to an uninhabited island.
Phuket is surrounded by little islands.  To get to those islands you simply find your way to the beach and waltz up to a taxi stand.  The taxi stands are for boats!  Each taxi guy has a list of locations and prices.  We pointed and he hooked us up with one of his boat kids whose boat was about two blocks away.  We followed in our car but Mimi, being the Mimi that she is, begged to ride on the back of the boat kid's scooter.  Just this once, kid.  Don't get used to it.

 We waded through the water and hopped in the longtail boat then off we went.  The sky was blue, the water aquamarine, the kids dragged their hands in the water, and we jetted away to a tropical white sand island.
We had the place nearly to ourselves, but for the little shack food stand off in the trees.
We lay on the beach, we played in the sand, we collected seashells, we floated in the water, we explored the rocks.  It was magical.  After a few hours the boat kid drove us back to the main island.
You wanna know what it looked like?  It looked like paradise.

Our next stop was the Phuket airport and then back to Bangkok.  Our Bangkok flight arrived at about 8pm but our flight to the US (via Hong Kong) wasn't until 4am.

Sooooooo ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK AND THE WORLD'S YOUR OYSTER!  THE BARS ARE TEMPLES BUT THE PEARLS AINT FREE.  ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK MAKES A HARD MAN HUMBLE! NOT MUCH BETWEEN DESPAIR AND ECSTACY! I CAN FEEL THE DEVIL WALKING NEXT TO ME!!
But really, we grabbed a nice taxi guy outside the airport, loaded his trunk with our suitcases and shoved all six of us in there and took off for a Bangkok midnight spree.
Side note: here's three pictures of fun stuff in Phuket:

Cake varieties

Some kinda weird rainbow lobster

Check out that baby seat.  Totally safe.

First stop was trying to find Wat Arun which is on the far side of the Chao Praya River.  It's the one you see in lots of photos, all lit up and ancient looking next to the water.  Unfortunately, our driver had no idea where it was and it seemed to be under construction and most definitely closed when we got there, after like an hour of asking strangers for directions.  Luckily, right nearby was a restaurant our taxi driver had heard about and knew was very popular, though he'd never been there.  Turns out, it's the most famous Pad Thai restaurant in all of Thailand.  Quite literally, the homeplace and best pad thai in the whole world: Pad Thai Thip Samai.  The walls were covered in all the article and awards written about the place.  There was a line, but we had time and our driver parked and ate with us.  He spoke pretty good English and we loved getting to know a local.  It was indeed the best Pad Thai I've ever eaten.  Of all the best dishes we had in Thailand, this was the best of all the very bests and such a fun experience.

Our bottoms were still sandy and it was far past midnight so we decided to head to the airport (two different airports in Bangkok, the one that serves Phuket doesn't serve our international flights).  I checked all the kids in and they led me to the gate while the hippie went in search of the phone Blake had misplaced when we first arrived.  They navigated us through the long security lines, through customs, and walked miles to our gate.  Finally, we found our gate and all four of those cute little children fell fast asleep until we boarded.  The hippie spent the majority of the time spending all the Baht we had left at the duty free stores.

From Bangkok to Hong Kong, 5 hours or so arriving at the crack of dawn.  I did not have a good experience in Hong Kong.  The kids and the Hippie were practically comatose and I had to talk to a Trump supporter while we waited in line to check in for our next flight.  Then we tried to have breakfast but it ended up costing $80 for no reason.  Stupid overpriced Hong Kong.  Also, there were none of those silky kimonos available to buy and I wanted one.  Also I was very tired.

At last we boarded our flight to SFO and our Asian tour came to a ten hour end.  The adventure from Phuket to SFO all in one day ended up being an adventure in time warping.  Grandpa Jim picked us up in SF and carted us home to sleep the entire day away in Danville.  Blake and the Hippie flew back to Utah for a family trip to Bear Lake.  The kids and I slept, ate with the fam and then drove home in the middle of the night because we were all wide awake and couldn't wait to get our babies back.  We got into SLC at about 8am and drove straight to pick up our sweet babies and our family was whole again.
It was a magical trip and, though we've been to six countries this year (Netherlands, Belgium, France, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong) it has only whet my appetite for more family travel, next time with the babies too!
Thanks for coming on the journey with us.  If you and your family or friends have caught the travel bug I urge you to visit www.getglobetrotting.com to have your whole trip planned for you.  My sister Camille, fellow travel addict, opened a budget travel business and is now having me help plan some of the trips.  There is adventure out there and it is more affordable now than it has ever been in my entire life time.  I hope you go, and if you do, that you tell me so I can follow along vicariously on your adventures.