The journey to Phuket was a bit of a nightmare. We'd had a massive storm the night before and the mototaxi mans bike wouldnt work so dela to the rescue, got her car out... then we found out she couldnt actually drive!
Then the car got stuck in the sand and we had to push it out after a lot of digging with sticks. Finally we got it out and supercoop drove us to the dock with just a small panic when we found the handbrake didnt work and we nearly rolled straight into the sea!

Back on dry land we got the bus to Phuket town which was pretty cool, all little boutiques and stuff but the hostals were mega expensive so we carried on straight to Patong. BIG MISTAKE! This has got to be one of the crappiest places in thailand, think blackpool but with more lights and more chavs.
The only saving grace was the fact that we found a hotel with a pool and a tv, which we hadnt seen for a long time. So we avoided the outside world as much as possible, the kids (claire and coop) played in the pool with the inflatables with mum (kat) keeping a close eye on them as they kept fighting over which toys they wanted. (i kid you not!)

The following day after another dip in the pool and a crappy film the night before we headed to Karen Beach a bit further down, much nicer then Patang but still quite touristy.
After hunting for some amazing hostal in the lonely planet we found out it had been shut for 2 years and finally found a room behind what can only be described as a brothal. Kat and claire debated making some extra money, but they wouldnt have us.

We found a bar just down the road run by a kiwi guy called jerry who was cool and had been here for a couple years.
The next few days were pretty much spent drinking in jerrys bar and on the beach, which had cotton wool sand which squeaked when you walked on it, very odd!

We had possibly the best wake up call known to man one morning when a western bloke in the next room started singing 'i like to move it move it' at the top of his lungs at 6am.
Needless to say claire wasnt happy and he got the full claire wrath which made him shut up pretty quickly!

The only actual cultural thing we did here was to go and see the big buddha on the hill which had a really cool view over the town and out to sea.
They were still in the process of building it so we got to see how it was all done, who'd have thought buddha was actually made of concrete!