Phuket

Next, we took a short flight south to Thailand's largest island, Phuket. You may have heard of it as one of the resort destinations that was devastated by the tsunami in 2004, but now it's back to being a beautiful island paradise. Most of our time there was very relaxed, but we did experience one of the more interesting things so far on our trip while in Phuket.

Our visit in Thailand happened to coincide with the 3 day Thai New Year's celebration, called Songkran. Traditionally, Songkran is a time for the Thai people to visit relatives, pay respect to elders and...engage in a giant country-wide water fight! We had heard about this celebration a few days before it started, but we didn't really grasp the extent of it until we left our hotel on our first day in Phuket to find somewhere to eat lunch. Within 5 minutes of leaving the safety of our hotel, we were completely and utterly soaked from head to toe with our regular day clothes on. The streets were already lined with people, all armed with water guns, buckets and hoses. Some were even using ice chilled water. We had no weapons ourselves, but that didn't exempt us from the fight. After a brief retreat to the hotel to change into swimsuits and tank tops, we headed out again knowing what to expect. We had a great time, as it turned out to be just one big party! Someone even gave us some free water guns so that we could retaliate. I wish we had some pictures of the whole event, but all that water would have been camera suicide. Needless to say, it was the wackiest New Year's celebration we've ever experienced!

Patong Beach: