Phuket Sun

We really needed a holiday already, and the Chief actually had one planned out thanks to the Matta Fair much earlier on. And so it was that just last weekend we were at Phuket!

Now what we wanted out of the trip was pretty simple. We're going to a beach, so all we wanted was to laze about in the sun and do absolutely nothing more. Well, we'll probably walk about the beachside, do a little local shopping, see what's there in Phuket, but really what we had in mind was that our Phuket trip was going to be somewhat akin to our Desaru/Redang trip in our uni days where it was all staying in chalets and playing at the beach.

Well if we did do four days of nothing but bumming at the beach we're sure the Chief would have been horrified at such a waste of a vacation (not to mention how burnt we may have gotten).

Anyways, given how we usually gripe about hot weather and sweating, this trip was different as we were prepared for hot weather - see, in all other cases (be it a Sporeland trip for a musical or normal days here in Bolehland) we're not dressed to sweat buckets. It's not pleasant to be sweaty in a work shirt. It's ok when we're in a Dri-Fit tee in Jam or Combat. And definitely ok when one wants to work on getting a bit of a tan on the beach.

And there's always ways to cool down if it gets too hot even when we're prepared to sweat.

Ok this photo was overexposed. The weather wasn't that intense. Rather, the weather was absolutely marvelous during our 4 days in Phuket - and when we say marvelous here we mean the sun was out shining the same way one would say the weather's a murderous heatwave in KL.

So the first day in Phuket was spent wandering about the 2 main streets, the beach and at Jungceylon Shopping Centre. On the second day we spent the entire morning till 2pm basking and taking in the sun. Day three was more sun, but this time at the hotel pool.

Of course, we were prepared with a bottle of SPF20 suntan lotion and aloe vera gel, but the Chief and us thought that it was best if we got a bottle of suntan lotion specifically for the face. A quick stop at Boots (this is somewhat customary now that whenever we're overseas, we check out the pharmacies for stuff we can't get back in Bolehland) and we got ourselves a bottle of SPF50 suntan lotion for application on the face.

Upon application of the sunblocks, it's interesting to find that the SPF50 sunblock made our faces look as if we were wearing bedak sejuk. Our faces weren't white enough to look like mimes, but it was getting there.

So after 4 days of getting burnt in Phuket, we must say that we are noticably darker! Well...tan lines can be seen from the waist up, although not at the legs.

Interestingly, although we'd been careful to reapply sunblock every now and then (especially after going for a splash!), by next day after sunning at the beach our shoulders had that slight sting that might mean sunburn if we weren't careful. It worsen to being itchy and prickly later on, but thankfully it subsided after generous amounts of aloe vera gel and antihistamines.

Result? No sunburn! Noticiable tan! Yay!

Only...now that we're back in Bolehland, we can be certain that the tan will fade away in no time (sad!).