I arranged for a taxi tour with a driver that was highly recommended on Facebook Thailand groups. I would be joined by eight people from Cruise Critic – a family of four from Australia, and four from the United States. Unfortunately, the woman that I had been communicating with from the US group ended up breaking her foot while in Kuala Lumpur and was unable to join us. The rest of her group carried on without her and turned out to be three siblings from Connecticut. We had a really fun group of people.

I had made arrangements to start the tour at 8 am. Phuket is a tender port – it was supposed to be the only tender port on the cruise, which turned out to be not true. I arranged with the concierge to have the whole group meet and be escorted off the ship, which made things much easier. It turns out that there was an hour’s difference between the ship’s time and local time so we theoretically would be getting off the ship at 7 am local time, not 8 am as I had planned. No worries, however, since we were once again delayed by the mysterious “port authorities” who cleared us an hour later than expected. Our group was the first on the tender and the ride in was pleasant.

Our taxi driver was waiting with a Mr. Heather Phillips sign on the dock. I am getting used to being confused as a Mr. rather than a Mrs.; non-English speaking countries are unfamiliar with my name and assume that I am male since I am the one that sets up the tours. Unfortunately, the driver had set up a second tour group and had his brother, known as Brownie, drive us around. This would’ve been fine except that I had set up the itinerary with the original driver and he spoke good English. Brownie, not so much. He had a laminated page that showed up tourist spots around the island and wanted us to point out which places we wanted to go. I had already communicated to his brother that we would not be going to either an elephant sanctuary or tiger kingdom, though Brownie assumed we would want to. One of the adult children of the couple from Australia said they wanted to see a monkey show, so off the monkey show we went.

We pulled up to a place labeled, “Snake Show.” He reassured us that the monkey show was across the street and that we should wait where we were until the monkey show was ready for us (lots of body language used since he really didn’t speak English). It would be 600 baht per person admission, which is quite a steep price for Thailand. While we waited, one of the workers started pulling snakes out of their cages. They draped one around Ethan’s neck. I stayed far back. Have I mentioned I have a pathological fear of snakes? Not my idea of a good time. The workers apparently thought we wanted to see the snake show. I let them know that we absolutely did NOT want to see snakes, we wanted monkeys! The price was the same, so they took our money, and we headed across the street.

The monkeys were pretty cute. They did exercises (situps, lifting weights, pushups). One rode a bike. They came around and cuddled with each of us. One dove into a tank of water to retrieve an item. Who knew that monkeys could swim? Most amazing was the number trick. There were ten numbered tiles on the floor which were in random order. Each member of the audience would say a number aloud and the monkey would pick the correct tile and bring it to them. Then, they turned the tiles face down and the monkey could still pick the correct tile. They were polite little guys – they even did a wai when they finished their act. And, of course, at the end of the act, one of the monkeys brought around a tip jar, which kind of spoiled it for me. It was a bit overpriced but good fun overall.

After the monkey show, we headed up the hill to see the Big Buddha. I was sad to see so many chained up elephants waiting for people to ride them. It’s so bad for the elephant’s backs. We also passed a few other snake/monkey/dolphin shows. They’re offered all over the island.

There is no entry fee to see the Big Buddha, but I was caught unaware (and should’ve known better) that there is a dress code. In my mind, it is a statue rather than a wat (temple) so assumed I could wear shorts. Not so. There is a Buddha relic on site and so knees and shoulders must be covered. The dress code is not as strict as the Grand Temple in Bangkok but my shorts didn’t cover my knees so I am now the proud honor of yet another sarong (only 150 baht). We passed by some interesting statues on the way up to the Buddha.

It is a beautiful statue and there was quite a bit of information on Buddhism around the back. After viewing Buddha, there is a covered area with monks chanting. You have the opportunity to give alms – lots of alms, if you so desire.

We let Brownie know that it was time for lunch and that we wanted to go to old Phuket Town as our final stop. He misunderstood and took us to a seafood restaurant in the middle of nowhere. I assume a friend owned it. We told him that we wanted to have lunch IN old Phuket town so he drove us there and dropped us off for a bit. I wish we had more time to explore but we had contraced for 5 hours and our time was drawing to a close. The restaurant we ate at was ok, but the food was nowhere near as good as what I am used to in Chiang Mai. I think they cook things more for a western palate in Phuket since there are so many tourists. Or, maybe we just didn’t pick a good restaurant.

Brownie dropped us off at the pier in the center of town and we headed back to the ship on the tender. It was a fun day due to the company of fun people in the group. A good time was had by all.