Another week has drifted by. No exciting weather this week, just sun. A couple of slightly hazy mornings, but the whole week has been perfect weather. Just as it should be. Is this the best time of year to visit Phuket? Well, I think if you want sun, sea and sand, then come NOW! It's hot, but not too hot, there's hardly a chance of rain, winds are much lighter than a couple of weeks ago. From now until April it gets hotter in Phuket and over much of Thailand. The northeast winds ease off and we all slowly cook until we are praying for rain.

Now is a great time to be in Phuket, I never tire of blue skies.

Weather blog updates are a little slow in the high season, sorry - busy at work and I would hate to repeat "sunny, 32 degrees C" every day. It might just drive you mad if you were in England "rainy, 8 degrees C". Or as an old friend who lives in the NW Territories of Canada said... "it's only cold when the temperature begins with -40 something"... it was minus 30 something when she said that... er, I think I will stay in Phuket.





I just had to stop at Kata Beach this evening before going home. Always a good sunset there. Always a nice photo opportunity! See you in Phuket soon! :)

Just this afternoon, about 5pm we actually had some rain for about 15 minutes. I don't think there was any rain this week until this brief burst. Saves me watering the garden. Things start to look a bit less green at this time of year. The trees start to look thirsty with a slightly yellow sickly look. The contrast if you come in the low season is obvious. Although we get plenty of good weather in the low season, there is certainly more rain than now, and so the months from June - October get the nickname "Green Season".

Read more here : Low Season Weather in Phuket

The week has been sunny, not as cool as the previous week, less wind too - all dive trips reached their intended destinations such as the isolated pinnacles of Hin Daeng and Richelieu Rock. A very good week to be on the water one way or the other - enough wind for sailing, not enough to make the sea too rough. Once again, it's just about perfect :)

Maybe the famous "Thai Smile" is due to the sun. Yes, the smile does actually exist, you see it all over. Cynics might say it was TAT marketing, but if you step away from the tourist areas, where hotel employees HAVE to smile, you see that smile on every corner, every restaurant, you catch it out of the corner of your eye as you drive along the street. Smiles are great.

Meanwhile, back in England, weather can be very grey. In the winter it gets dark early. Not enough sun. I recall working a day shift in the winter. Go to work in the dark, go home in the dark. No sun. This can lead to SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) also known as the Winter Blues. My mum feels a bit SAD sometimes. She's going to try "light therapy" - you can buy special lamps that "replicate sunlight".

Well, no need for that here in Phuket! I sent my mum a photo of yesterdays sky...






Today - more of the same except I had a day off to enjoy the sun. We took lunch at Rimtang restaurant in Phuket Town - recommended by my wife's sister who works at a bank in town and knows all the best lunch spots! Rimtang will be revisited soon, as I want to try some of the local specialties...





Then we headed further north.. around the Cherngtalay area of Phuket, near the Laguna resorts is a locally run pool with waterslides. It is not very well advertised, there are no signs, you just have to know it's there! It was all but deserted when we arrived, though maybe 20 kids and their parents arrived during the afternoon. I asked some kids where they went to school, all were from the local area.



Forecast: more of the same. Why are you not here? :)

I am looking forward to a visit to Phuket 91.5 FM Radio tomorrow morning. I am meeting one of the owners for a look around the studio and will be writing something on Jamie's Phuket about the radio station - for now, you can listen online anytime at their website : Phuket 91.5FM Radio.

On a cool evening after a sunny day this week, my daughter read to me "The sun did not shine, it was too wet to play, so we sat in the house all that cold, cold wet day". From The Cat In The Hat... No chance of that weather here in Phuket!

No rain that I recall this week, only sun, blue skies and WIND, lots of wind, which has cooled off the days and given us some (relatively) cool nights when we could sleep without a fan. Exactly how cold I am not sure.. I think I need to buy myself a thermometer to hang in the garden.. But certainly low 20's Celcius, which is very chilly in these parts! Up in Chiang Mai it has been close to freezing at night this last week!

The strong wind helped to cool things off. Tonight (Sunday) the wind seems to have stopped. Good news for divers who have had a bouncy week on the seas. Today was much better out at sea, according to customers and instructors coming back to our shop this afternoon.

On Saturday we took lunch at the Uptown restaurant in Phuket town, opposite the Thavorn Grand Plaza hotel, near the bus station - a very popular local lunch spot. Phuket town has a lot of good eating and we do need to explore a bit more! After this we took a drive around... to Wat Vichit Sangkaram, a temple in the NE of town, and then up Monkey Hill.. saw some monkeys and a nice view from a half built restaurant.





(above) Wat Vichit Sangkaram in Phuket Town



(above) View from Khao To Sae (also known as Monkey Hill)

Forecast - yes, more sun and I hope less wind. See you in Phuket soon!

It seems a week has gone by without a Phuket Weather blog update - sorry about that! Mind you, I have to say there has been little change in the weather. The last 7 days have been sunny with almost perfect blue skies, no rain that I recall. The only meteorological phenomenon of note has been the wind. It has been quite breezy, and indeed today some of our dive customers had to turn back on the way to Phi Phi due to the wind and waves rocking their speedboat too much. The wind was howling around my house yesterday evening, and when we had our party on Saturday a few guests were wishing they had warmer clothes!

A couple of good "wind" links for you:

• Windguru - Phuket Wind and Wave forecasts
• Live Weather and Wind station at Chalong Bay, Phuket

The live weather station is run by Kite Surf Thailand - they must be loving it! I see right now the wind at 10 knots with a 16 knot max for today.

In the last weather report, I had the Sneezles. This is just about done now, I think todays lunch - a very spicy Tom Kha Gai - did the trick and removed the last of the cold from my head. Normally Tom Kha is not spicy, but the restaurant next door does a version with a much spicier soup.

So the week has gone by, indeed the years are falling by rather quickly too. This weekend we had a party for our son's 4th birthday. A lovely, happy day in the sun, a bouncy castle in the garden, lots of friends, perhaps one too many beers? Our son was born 2 weeks after the tsunami. I think about now I have reached a mental turning point with regards to that event. I have written about it here: 4 Years after the Tsunami.



Yesterday I took a walk along Karon Beach and felt a sense of everyone enjoying themselves. Families, couples, sunworshippers, there were smiles and laughter, blue skies and warm seas. A great time of year to be here in Phuket!.. Actually, I say that all the time :) It's always a good time to be here!







Right, back to normal life now. Christmas, New Year, Birthday, crazy peak season all gone now. Might get some more time to blog, to get out and about. Would like to get out for a bit of quiet time with my wife one evening this week, something we hardly seem to have time for. I want to try the new "Phuket Brewery". Also must shake off the laziness and take a trip up to the Big Buddha early one morning.

Forecast: Sun and (now I have shaken off the sneezles) a Happy New Year!

Just one more round of "Happy New Year"! OK, now lets get on with 2009, the best year yet! Unless you are Palestinian. This is a Phuket blog, non political, but can someone please tell me how Israel manages to get away with it? They blockade a country, a few militants fire a few rockets and WHAM! 500 dead and counting.

Here in Phuket, the weather is back to hot and sunny for the last 2 days after that oddly damp New Year. There was a big old fashioned tropical downpour last night where we live, but that came after a blue skied day, and the sky was again clear and blue today. Being a) busy; and b) sick (*more later), I took a walk as far as the little temple in Karon Plaza, just opposite the dive shop.. a 5 meter walk... just to get a couple of blue sky photos to prove that the weather blog does not lie! I also took a couple of pictures in and around "our" little temple.

  

  

I feel like Christopher Robin tonight and will go to bed early again...

Christopher Robin
Had wheezles
And sneezles,
They bundled him
Into
His bed.
They gave him what goes
With a cold in the nose,
And some more for a cold
In the head.

The full poem : Sneezles

The term "cold" when applied to this kind of annoying illness just does not apply here. It is HOT here, how do I have a COLD? A few friends have the same... I think it's due to all these changes in the weather. So let's stick with the sun for a while, eh? See you soon! Hopefully I will be like Christopher Robin in the morning...

Christopher Robin
Got up in the morning,
The sneezles had vanished away.
And the look in his eye
Seemed to say to the sky,
"Now, how to amuse them to-day?"

Welcome to 2009, or 2552 as we say in Thailand. Oh yes, we're way ahead of you over here :). I am sure I would have written something yesterday, but it is the habit of January 1sts to be rather hazy. Not a day for cerebral activity.

So, a late Happy New Year to Phuket Weather Blog readers, if you have not come to Phuket yet... see you soon. I hope to find some interesting things to blog on "the" Phuket Blog this year. I hope to see my friend again and shake his hand, I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

Sorry, excuse the rambling, but if you have the time, do watch The Shawshank Redemption - one of my favourite movies.

New Years Eve - a clear night, quite windy, not really warm on top of Buddha Mountain! Yes, after a couple of hours at a friends place, where some people had started on the Vodka a couple of hours before we arrived... we then headed off to somewhere quieter. The owner of the Nakkerd Seaview restaurant, which is near the top of the hill where you find the Big Buddha, had mentioned to my wife that they'd be open for New Year. So about 11pm we were driving up the mountain in the dark (very dark), found the restaurant all but devoid of people, and ordered a few drinks to wait for midnight.

Around midnight, from the perch above Karon Beach, we got a birds eye view of the fireworks...



Then yesterday, January 1st, the weather in Phuket decided to be wet. Rather breezy too. I'd wanted a nice lunch by the beach, but there were grey skies all around. We headed north, where things looked brighter.. had lunch at the Chumchon floating restaurant at Bang Rong pier in the NE of Phuket. And while we ate, the rain didst hammer down for a while...





When the rain stopped the catch came in... You shall have a fishy on a little dishy...





And today? Back to work. Busy - well, sure, it's peak season! Mostly sunny with some light rain today, rather hot and humid, overall nice weather.

So, it's 2009, please do keep reading the Phuket Weather blog for weather reports, photos and news. Another year. We've passed 4 years since the tsunami.. my son will be 4 years old very soon, I will be 10 times his age not long after that, and by the end of 2009, I will have been 10 years in Phuket. I can't quite grasp that number for now. Need a cold beer. Will sit down and watch The Shawshank Redemption. I hope you have a good year. I hope.