Out of the Normal

     The roads here are 90% motor bikes and mopeds and 10% cars. So naturally, we had to rent some bikes. It took some convincing, as my dad was quite nervous. Driving on the left side of the road, in a foriegn country with insane traffic, might be a little confusing. After I finally convinced him that everything would be ok, we planned a trip half way across Phuket to Old Phuket Town to check out the Sunday Market (about a 25km trip one way). Check out my sweet ride:

125cc Honda Street Bike

     After about a 30 minute talk with the hotel staff mapping out our route to Old Phuket town, we were finally on our way. There were no posted speed limits but we were going at an average speed of about 60km/hr. We only had to stop for directions once (and we were about 3 mins from where we were going). Trying to explain where you're going to someone who speaks no more than 5 words of English is very tough. Understanding the directions they give you is almost impossible. But I knew we could handle it, and we got there with no issues.

     We first stopped right in Old Phuket Town and stumbled upon this awesome market place with people playing live music, tons of food,  and shops and stands selling everything you could need. What seemed to be the main downtown street is where it was taking place. It was packed with people and shops and everything. It was hard just to make your way through it all, let alone actually have enough space to see everything. We tried some food as we were walking through. The sun was setting around this time as well.

     

A lot of  people...

     While walking through the market here, we came upon some really sweet old Volkswagens. My dad is a huge fan of the old vans and bugs and it made his night. They were really cool to see and totally random! Very clean, nice looking cars too.

     

     After around 40 minutes spent at this market we decided to head out to the main event of the night, The Sunday Market. About 10 minutes from Old Phuket Town there is a world famous market that is huge. When I say huge, I mean like bigger than the Quinte mall (no exaggeration). Its so big that I literally couldn't capture it in a photo.. But the food was amazing, the shops were amazing and the heat was amazing. It felt like it was 50 degrees in the main tent. We thought we were gonna melt.

     All in all, the both markets were an amazing experience. Packed with people, authentic food, and tons of little shops within. The whole adventure of renting the bikes, and then traveling all the way there through crazy Thailand traffic was just awesome. I was definitely up for it the entire time but my dad really broke out of his comfort zone for this, and it was more than worth it. We felt like we were on top of the world when we finally got back to our hotel at around 10 pm. It was like we conqured Thailand. Shout out to dad for being super awesome with everything today.

We had to celebrate with a beer!

I'll be posting ASAP about our tour of the Phi Phi Islnads! Amazing beaches and snorkling.

As always, you can click to see the full size image or check out my Flickr to see full resolution copy's.