Phuket, Thailand

We arrived here on the tropical island of Phuket on our anniversary, January 19th and didn't leave until January 30th. It perhaps was appropriate that we arrived here on our anniversary as this in one of our favorite places in the world!

Phuket is approximately 30 miles long and 12 miles wide. It has the best shape for an island in my opinion, as it is shaped like a sprocket, divided up with multiple crescent shaped beaches. Here's a picture from the plane as we were landing...
and here's a picture from the top of one of the hills/mountains where you can see how the beaches are divided up.
In July 2005, Phuket was voted one of the World’s Top 5 retirement destinations by Fortune Magazine. There are indeed lots of retirees here from all over Europe with their "perma-tan" skin... you can tell they've been on the beach for a long time.

Phuket's natural beauty (along with Phi Phi Island that we'll post about later) rivals any beach destination, including Hawaii...

So enough talking, this place is about the beach! So here's what we have to show from it...

We were a bit worried when Ryann cried and cried about her first experience on the sand...
but she quickly found the joy of playing with, and even eating, sand!
Our daily "commute" to the beach... a casual 5-minute walk from our hotel.
We often were greeted by locals along the way...

Ryann also enjoyed getting wet!

and she enjoyed getting sandy AND wet!

Tally and Adayla loved being Daddy's "little swimmer girls" Tim taught them to say "Water, get out of my way!" as they swam... it worked, they kept on swimming and swimming.Adayla loves getting thown into the water... Tally prefers swimming and jumping into the waves.

The girls spent hours jumping into the waves...

Even when she got knocked down...she got right back up to do it again, and again, and again!

When the waves weren't trying to drown Tally, Mommy was!

It was also nice, too, when there were no waves and the water was perfectly calm.

Then it was time to rest by playing with the sand toys. Hey Ryann, can you save some sand for the beach?

The traditional burying of our kids...

Playing with our hermit crab named "Crabby"

How can you pout in paradise? Tim found a way... here's his pouty-face. Perhaps the fruit tray took five minutes to come out? What else could there be to pout about? Perhaps we should have called him "crabby" here...

Then some well-deserved rest.

A few family pictures...

One of our favorite beach activities was one of us getting on an air-mattress with Adayla and Tally and swimming it out a bit. The waves would gently push us back over about 10 minutes, and then the gentle, relaxing ride became a bit more exciting...

Where did Tally go?

and then quickly retrieve the air-mattress and do it again!

What a life. In some ways, going to Phuket early in our trip was like eating our dessert first. It was wonderful, but we also wished we could have ended our trip here, too. Regardless of when we ate our dessert, it was so good!