Very busy day today, with a full program of stuff to do. We hired a car and driver for the day ($50) and headed south. Enroute we passed an ATV adventure sports centre and Rory was VERY KEEN to stop for a visit. This ended up being a half hour 4wheel buggy ride through the jungle outskirts with Tony riding and Rory sitting between his legs in the front of the bike. The pace was sedate, and the highlight was passing large groups of elephants wandering about and munching on the plant life. They seemed utterly unconcerned by the two bikes, and we passed many of them within metres.
Interestingly, the ATV centre also hosted a shooting range – with possibly the most lackadaisical management ever seen. Both staff and customers wandering around with loaded weapons and some truly terrible firearm handling practices. The firearms aren’t just little 22’s either; they offer everything from shotguns to fully-automatic machine guns. I wonder how many ‘accidents’ they have here that could have been easily prevented with a little sensible management.
The next stop of the day was the Phuket aquarium with the kids racing around the underwater tunnel and heaps of individual tanks. The quality of the venue is nothing like Perth’s AQUA, but the staff were very friendly and the centre was well run. Phuket Aquarium is perched on the cost near the southern promontory, and the views across the bay show heaps of small islands and secluded bays that must make fantastic sailing.
Our trip back towards Patong offered a detour towards a lookout that showed 270 degree views of the island. Whilst the lookout was actually nondescript, the highlight was the ‘pooperazzi’ who surrounded Indi and Rory for heaps of group photos. Rory stayed shy as usual, but Indi really played to the crowd and was kissed, cuddled and flash-bulbed from all directions.
Leaving the lookout and joining the main road, we stopped briefly at an elephant training centre where Rory finally overcame his fear of these big buggers to actually feed a bunch of bananas to one of the baby elephants. He is still very nervous around them, but getting better by the day.
An afternoon sleep was in order before setting off via transfer bus to Fantasea, one of the islands most famous attractions. This Vegas-style all singing, all dancing show has counted hundreds of the world’s notable people as attendees, many of whom are pictured on the walls in the entry hall. The show features dancing elephants, trapeze acrobatics, traditional Thai music, and lots of glitz and glamour. Indi and Rory offered a running commentary throughout the show to the amusement of all around us, and both were still wide awake at the 10:15 finish time.
Because they were so over tired, the trip back to the hotel was less than pleasant, and culminated in us losing our camera (stolen/dropped/other?) when we arrived back at the hotel. Whilst it was disappointing to lose the day’s photos, we have certainly got some wonderful memories of the kid’s faces.
