Kristin Reporting!
The day after we visited Malaysia, we have arrived in Thailand! Land of oh-so delicious food! We are signed up for a tour called ‘Phuket On Your Own’. Basically, a bus would drive us into Phuket and we would have 4 hours to walk around and then return to the ship.
I had told D to research what we were going to do in Phuket because according to me it was “his turn”. I had planned out Japan and also did research on what our options were in Singapore. D acted burnt out and said he wasn’t going to research anything and we were just going to walk around. I said, “Okay!”
Our tour had a pretty late start somewhere around 10:00AM. So we probably reached the drop off point in Phuket town around 11:00AM. The good thing about this is that we got enough sleep last night. The bad thing was that when we were boarding the bus the guide said, “Welcome to the shopping tour!” I thought, “Uh-oh, that doesn’t sound good!”
To get to the bus we first tendered to shore. Then we had to walk to the parking lot where the buses were parked. It was actually quite a long walk and we passed many taxi people on the way. They would have to wait for the non-tour people to get off the ship though before they would get any business!
The bus ride was pretty long, about 30-40 minutes. At one point we passed a broken down bus! The ship passengers were laughing and pretending to try to hitchhike onto our bus as we drove by. D overheard later on that they only had to wait about 20 minutes for a replacement bus to show up.
[Davin Interjection: The ride seemed to be interminable. The road system here sucked, so we spent most of our time just sitting in traffic or stopped at traffic lights. The guide on the bus ride was sort of amusing, and sort of annoying. He made several jokes about how they have a lot of transgender people in Thailand, which is true. In fact, many people come to Thailand to get gender reassignment surgery, since it is cheap there and they have a lot of experience.]
We were dropped off on a nondescript street so I made sure to save the location on Google Maps to make sure we could find it again for the return ride to the ship. We set off walking in the direction they had indicated was a “mall”. We were immediately accosted by a man wanting to give us a taxi ride, but he didn’t continue to bother us after we kept on walking.
We pretty much had no clue what we were doing in Phuket. We had a map from the ship which showed different types of temples (Chinese versus Thai) and their locations. There was no way to know which were good to see.
We stepped inside the “mall” and found that it was basically a single department store, so we quickly exited again. We then pretty much struck out at random.
[Davin Interjection: The “mall” was one of the saddest department stores I’ve ever seen. Visually it was like a department store, but more rundown and just generally crappy. My thought at this point was “WTF are we doing here?”.]
We found a ‘Family Mart’ and went inside. There was an ATM here so we pulled out some local Thai currency. Then, we discovered that the soda was really cheap! Well, pretty much everything in Thailand was cheap. So, we bought ourselves a Coke for the walk, as well as an ice cream bar.
[Davin Interjection: Food prices in Thailand were amazingly cheap. In fact, they were so cheap I could scarcely even believe them! For only about 3 dollars we got two sodas and two ice cream bars– from a convenience store! In a developed country you’d be lucky to get two sodas for that price, and the ice cream bars would each probably cost at least $2! Unfortunately, we think that Kristin left her ATM card behind here, because it was never seen again after Thailand!]
I was amused to see that they were selling dehydrated Durian! The smelly fruit that we learned about yesterday in Malaysia.
We were headed toward a temple on the map and on the way we found a statue of a Golden Dragon. This dragon was in a park that was built in 2004 to commemorate the 72nd birthday of Queen Sirikit. It was a small park and at this time of year it was brown and unattractive. I think it is supposed to have green grass.
[Davin Interjection: The dragon was pretty cool. For whatever reason there also seemed to be a lot of German tourists here. I guess this must be a popular country for them to vacation, probably because it is cheap and (for them) not too far away. Actually, Jona just recently went to Thailand as part of the same trip where he met us in Hong Kong. I suppose he’d probably have a better idea why Thailand seems so popular with Germans.]
We also passed through a little kids area of the park and D thought it would be funny to try to sit on the kids ride, and he almost got stuck! He got in to the seat, but had a hard time getting back out!
When we reached the first “temple” it turned out to be a complex which had a name along the lines of “National Buddhist Temple Society”. So, it was much more than a temple open to the public. The parking lot was open so we entered and took a few external photos. We weren’t sure the public was supposed to be visiting these buildings so we didn’t try to go inside. We were quite satisfied with the outside view anyway.
We picked another temple on the map and headed towards it. When we arrived at this place there was no obvious temple at all. It may have been hidden behind some other nondescript buildings. This place also was way off the beaten path and did not look like a tourist place. However, I did get a nice picture in front of two golden monkeys.
[Davin Interjection: It was around this point that I realized that the “temples” marked on the map were just standard temples used by the locals. So, basically we were just visiting the local “First Methodist Church”. I’m betting the locals were thinking to themselves: “What the hell are these tourists doing here?” Anyway, the map we were given was basically worthless, since it showed every inconsequential temple in the city!]
We decided that it was now time to head back to the bus. On the way back, we saw some interesting local things: 1) a man riding on a cart that was attached to a motorcycle, 2) a man carrying items with a balancing pole, and 3) we got to experience crossing the street with no cross walks. Crossing the streets with lots of traffic was the most exciting part of the day!
[Davin Interjection: I also noticed a man walking with bare feet on the black asphalt, which must have been incredibly hot. It’s hard to believe he could do that without severely burning his feet!]
Oddly we noticed that pancake restaurants seems to be very common in Thailand. They sell some pretty interesting things that we would not find at a diner in the United States!
[Davin Interjection: There were also several massage parlors in town, which at a minimum offered massages, but from what I’ve read may have offered “additional services”, as well. And back on the beach there had been a number of tents large tents set up that offered massages. So, apparently a Thai Massage is one of the primary offerings here in Phuket. I’m sure they are a much better deal than on the ship, too!]
We found another convenience store on the way and were happy to discover that they sold postcards! Yes! So, we obtained our postcard for the day. That meant that this was a successful shopping tour!
We also stumbled on a local Thai Buddhist temple. It was much nicer than either of the places we visited based on the directions of the map. It was a working local temple. We enjoyed the decorations and took some exterior photos.
We took the bus back to the coastal town where the ship was docked. We still had several hours before the all-aboard time. So, we decided that it was time to find some delicious Thai food. We had considered eating lunch in Phuket, but had decided that there wasn’t enough time. It didn’t make sense to eat there anyway when there were several extra hours to spend in the coastal town before returning to the ship.
We found a nice Thai restaurant where the waiters spoke decent English and they had what we wanted. We ordered Pad Thai, Red Curry, and Thai Iced Tea. The Pad Thai was excellent, even better than what we get from our favorite Thai place in San Diego. The Red Curry was not as good as our San Diego version. The Thai Iced Tea was stronger (more bitter) and not as sweet as we would have liked. We added some sugar to it, and the server saw us, and brought syrup to our table. I guess we were supposed to add syrup to sweeten it, not sugar! Interesting! Either way, more sweetness made it more delicious!
We ate all of the food and calculated how much Thai Baht we needed to pay and determined there was enough money left for D to order a banana split ice cream. I was totally stuffed so I didn’t need dessert!
[Davin Interjection: I was very pleased with the meal. Thai food is always good, and I was happy to verify that our local Thai cuisine is authentic! The food is probably one good reason to visit Thailand! I actually wish our local Thai cuisine made Pad Thai more like this restaurant, because then I might actually be interested in eating it.]
When we were done eating, we headed back towards the ship. We actually ended up a bit lost because the streets all looked the same to us, but we used my phone to guide us back to the coast. Once we found the water, it was easy to spot our ship!
We passed by a market selling all kinds of fruit and meats. D actually thought the prices here were not very good. I saw some tanks full of Dr. Fish and a young woman was getting a treatment. She couldn’t stop laughing! The fish must really tickle your feet! I decided that didn’t bode well for me being able to enjoy such a treatment. I am the most ticklish person I know!
We also saw a couple places that rented motorcycles. The funny thing about these places is that they also advertised that they sold ‘gasoline’ and had dozens of glass bottles filled presumably with gasoline. Everything you need to rent a motorcycle and take off for a day of sightseeing!
[Davin Interjection: If you want to raise hell, you can just rent a motorcycle and pick up a couple of extra gas bottles to use as molotov cocktails! Also a big plus in case of a zombie apocalypse!]
We walked on the beach towards the ship. That is when we got to witness Parasailing Thai-Style. It was impressively efficient, and would be completely against the law in the United States. The men who worked as “guides” would hold the sail down, strap in the paying occupant, and then, like monkeys, flip themselves aboard and sail into the sky without a safety strap for themselves. They must feel like gods of air from their perch! They seemed very confident and comfortable despite the long drop that would likely be their death if they made a mistake and tumbled out of the sky. We greatly enjoyed watching them go up and down several times.
[Davin Interjection: These guys were either completely insane or desperate for work (Thailand has no unemployment insurance)! They were all obviously very fit, and had no trouble flipping themselves up into position. But, all the same, one small mistake and that would be the end of them. I also wonder what would happen to the person in the air at that point, since they probably don’t know how to operate the parachute themselves.
In addition, when coming in for a landing, the rope line from the motorboat would sweep across the beach. At one point, some people were walking into the landing area, and the people running the parasail operation had to shout at them to get out of the way. If someone walked in there unawares, they could easily end up getting clotheslined by the rope and badly injured, if not decapitated!
Then on top of it, there were at least three different motorboats driving back and forth out in the water with these parachutes attached. There were so many aspects of the operation that were totally unsafe. If you tried to run something like this in the U.S., not only would you get shut down, I think you might end up in prison! But it was still cool to see.]
We also saw some wildlife on the beach including a drowned rat, a dead fish, suspicious looking clear gelatinous blobs (dead jelly fish?), and hundreds of tiny scurrying crabs. The crabs were very cute.
We boarded the tender, rode back to the ship and bid farewell to Thailand. I would highly recommend visiting Thailand for its beauty, its delicious food, and its cheap prices. I would not recommend visiting Thailand for its weather which was not as bad as Malaysia, but pretty damn horrendously hot and humid!
[Davin Interjection: Overall Phuket struck me as one of the least developed places visited, after only Rabaul. It just didn’t seem like there was much here. And, the description of this tour– “Phuket is a city best explored on foot.”– was complete nonsense. There was very little reason to come into Phuket. We’d have been better off just staying at the beach!
For what it’s worth, I did actually enjoy the opportunity to walk around and get a feel for how things were for people in Phuket. The truth is we’d already seen so many temples that missing out on one or two more wasn’t really important. But I still feel the way this tour was presented was basically nonsense. There wasn’t anything here to really justify busing tourists in from the ship!
Probably one of the stupidest and most pointless tours we took on the entire trip. Fortunately it didn’t cost much of anything. I really wish the ship had offered some sort of snorkeling tour at this port as it seemed like a location where that would have been appropriate.
That being said, I still enjoyed my time in Thailand. It’s a place that I definitely would consider visiting again in the future!]
Next Stop: Chennai, India (April 10, 2016)
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