[hawthorn22]

gday
i'm 20 y.o Australian and will be going to phuket for the first time early december for 2 weeks staying at le meridien

first of all just having a browse around this site has been really helpful and have found out most of the stuff i was interested in knowing. so thanks to all the board members for posting valuable information. i can also see juust from browsing there are some great characters on the board. its far from boring!

i have a few questions which i have tried to search for answers and havent been able to find anything.

firstly i'm pretty big on surfing and was wondering whether there will be much reasonable surf around phuket at this time (anywhere within reasonable taxi distance), and whether it will be worth bringing a board over from Aus. i read kata beach has some surf, but its probably more suited to mini-mals? but most of the surfing talk seems to focus on othertimes of the year i think.

secondly, staying at le meridien, i plan to go out into patong at night to the bars/clubs etc and wondering whether its safe (as i'll probably be heading in by myself) to get taxi back at 3am+ back to le meridien?
got a budget of about 8k bht a day so looking at getting some surfing, nice food, massage and several beers + club entry a night including taxi'ss and don't really want to be living on a real tight budget watching every cent, from what i've read this should be alright?

also finally will there be australian cricket on in the bars in december?

cant wait to get to phuket
appreciate any replies
thanks