Phuket Thailand!!!

We just got back from our vacation to Phuket Thailand. We had a good and interesting trip :) No sightings of famous people or anything like that, but we did meet some interesting people :) One of the days we hiked to this waterfall... they told us to keep hiking up to see the waterfall... we saw the little waterfall in the picture above, but we didn't think that was it because it was so tiny... so we kept on hiking... well, we eventually figured out that that little trickle was the waterfall... the people working at the "waterfall" told us that that was the best time of year to go because in the summer the waterfall is non-existant! hahaha! We had fun though... Adam got to swing on a vine and pretent he was Tarzan... he thought he was cool :)
We rented scooters for most of our time there. It was a lot of fun to explore the island by scooter :) I'm getting to be a professional at driving on the left side of the road :) I looked really cool in my helmet! :)While on our scooters, we got to explore areas that aren't on the normal "tourist path"... it was neat to see all over the island! We saw this neat fishing village (below)... but I think it was at low tide... at least I hope so... that boat isn't going anywhere any time soon :)
The big Tsunami that hit in December 2004 really hit Phuket hard. They had a lot of damage. They really cleaned everything up fast and got all of the tourist areas back up and in ship shape... Tourism is the number one industry (and maybe one of the only industries) in Phuket... it's good that they got it all back up and running. The areas where the tourists don't really go were less of a priority to fix up, so while on our scooters, we could still see some of the damage... it was really interesting.
I'm not exactly sure what this was, but I think it was some sort of temple area.
Since the Tsunami, they have really made some changes in the island. They had these signs (below) a little bit of everywhere to tell people which way to go in case of a Tsunami. They all lead up to higher points on the islands where all of the public transportation vehicles will meet up and carry people to higher ground.
They have these new warning systems too. There are bouys way out in the ocean that send signals to these towers that are on every beach that will send out alert signals if there is a Tsunami coming... giving people ample time to evacuate to higher ground.
We stayed in Phuket Town (which is now offically in "city status" now but it's still called Phuket Town by most) for the first night and then on the beach the next two nights. The place we stayed was right on the beach, BUT up the side of the mountain!! We were WAY up there! We had to walk up a million steep stairs to get to our place! We definitely got a workout doing that! Our view from our room was great though (you can see it in the pic below)!

You can't see it in the picture, but on the left side were tons of rocks that have become like a coral reef! We did some snorkling there and we saw TONS of cool fish! The water was sooo clear - it was really neat! We got to see all of the fish from "Finding Nemo" plus more! It was awesome!

Anyone up for some "Japanese Sumo Food?" They had a really cool sumo guy out front!

We went up on top of one of the mountains to a great viewpoint! In the pic below you can see the three beaches that we were close to... the one closest to me is Kata Noi beach where we stayed. We had a great vacation!! We're in Bangkok right now and head back home tomorrow!