Phuket

Upon finding out Tuesday, April 5 was Ching Ming Festival (tomb sweeping festival), I decided it was time to organize a long overdue girls' trip to Phuket, Thailand's largest island off of the southwest coast on the Andaman Sea.

The group of girls attending being inclined to busting out in spontaneous dance parties that really should only occur behind closed doors, we decided that renting a private villa in Bangtao would be the safest option.
Below: Villa sweetness.

Every day in Phuket was filled with incredibly enriching cultural experiences including and mainly limited to lying around by our pool, going to Tesco to get supplies for cheese toast and vodka fanta, eating cheese toast, and drinking vodka fanta.  

Naturally one of the first orders of business upon arrival was to arrange transportation for said trips to Tesco.  We inquired with our villa manageress (yes, that’s what she was called) Donna who helped us to arrange what we thought was a car and driver. Instead, after a very formal procedure in which we gave a name (unverified), phone number (unverified), and cash up front to a guy in exchange for some car keys, we realized that the idea was that we were supposed to drive the car (our driver's license status was also unverified, btw), which wouldn’t do at all.  Donna came through again, though, by suggesting that she call her friend Glenn (who we instantly re-named Pablo for some unknown reason) to be our driver.  On our first afternoon, after a very formal procedure that involved nothing at all, we all piled into our rental car to head to Patong up the coast for dinner.  It became apparent two minutes into the drive that Pablo had approximately three aggregate minutes of driving experience (including the two he spent with us). What he lacked in driving experience he did not make up for in any other way as, being from the Philippines, he spoke no Thai and also didn’t know his way anywhere.  On the harrowing drive back from Patong we all agreed that we would definitely need to talk to Donna and see if we could get someone who actually *knew how to drive and/or wasn’t drunk when he picked us up and/or knew his way around and/or spoke the language* to drive us around. However, as the next day was Sunday (villa manageress’s day off) we just decided to stick with Pablo.  Thankfully, we all made it out safely and lived to eat cheese toast another day.  Viva Thailand!