October 31

Phuket - Going Green

I know I'm not going to get any sympathy for a five day jaunt to Phuket, even if I felt a little down leaving Chiang Mai, which was both real and fun.

Phuket, by contrast, is unreal and fun.  I stayed at a nice hotel near, but not, on Surin Beach, about 12 miles north of Patong, the biggest (and trashiest) town in Phuket Province, located in southern Thailand not too far from the Malaysian border.  Surin is a much quieter little place with a lovely curving white beach.  It's hardly deserted, though, and is crowded with nice beach lounge chairs with umbrellas for hire along its half-mile length.  My hotel had a nice beach club where I repaired to every day, although to my surprise many seemed perfectly happy sitting by the hotel pool all day.  It was a nice pool but one doesn't come all the way to Phuket to pass up the gorgeous beach and warm, calm waters.  At least this one doesn't.

I don't have much to report because, to be candid, I did very little in Phuket other than sleep, read, swim, nap and enjoy some pretty good Thai seafood every day.  One evening at the pool bar I did meet an expat former I-banker who (on the second try) actually met me at dawn on the beach to teach me, at my advanced age, the fundamentals of meditation, which we did for an hour as the moon set, the sun rose and the waves rolled in.  Very New Age, I know, but I'm going to keep giving it a try.  But maybe not at sunrise.

Tuesday, my next to last day, I thought I'd break the routine and go snorkeling, which I have only done a few times but have some fond memories of from the Caribbean many years ago.  I signed up to do a day of snorkeling at a fairly close island and got myself up early for the day.  After making our way to the southern tip of the province to Chalong Bay, 12 of us (mostly Asian tourists) were put onto a fairly small but speedy boat for transfer to Raja Island.  Things were going pretty well for me, considering my notorious predilection for seasickness.  Until we stopped to look at the dolphins that some bastard happened to notice.  The waters were pretty choppy and slowing turning to and fro to see the frisking dolphins started to make things kind of rough for my internal gyroscope.  I hung in there, though (two Asian guys were not so lucky) and we finally arrived at the snorkeling place, where we put down an anchor and put on masks and snorkels.  Unfortunately, after a bus ride on windy roads and a more challenging 45 minute boat ride than anticipated, bobbing in the water ultimately got the better of me and I recycled my breakfast to the great pleasure, apparently, of hundreds of yellow fish, who gathered near me chanting "puke more, puke more!"

Throwing up in snorkeling gear was kind of a bummer and I climbed aboard the boat (still rolling) until, after at least 24 hours, we finally headed off to another beach to debark for lunch.  On to a floating dock, of course.  After knocking a lot of old Chinese ladies out of the way so I did not throw up on their designer flip-flops, I collapsed onto the beach until we were frogmarched to lunch about 15 minutes away.  Fortunately, lunch was so bad that I did not feel bad pushing it around my plate.  Returning to the beach, I eschewed the boat ride to another inlet and stayed put, although I did go in for a few dunks and a little nearby snorkeling while rehydrating with the world's most expensive Gatorade.

Happily, the return ride was smoother and I was fine, keeping my eye on the horizon and the Big Buddha, which locals erected on top of a hill, reminding me (and you regular readers) of the Big Buddha that I visited in Hong Kong.

The ride back took too long, of course, although I did get to see a lot of Patong, which is like a cross between Tijuana, Ocean City, New Jersey and Brighton Beach.  It has lots of bars, cheesy restaurants, naughty massage parlors, overweight, drunk and sun-burned farang and, for reasons I don't understand, Russians.  After Thai and English, in fact, the most common language seen and heard is Russian.

Anyway, I survived the day and enjoyed a fabulous beachside dinner of whole grilled red snapper to regain my strength since the next day I would be traveling to Siem Reap, Cambodia, home to the famed Angkor Wat temple.

I'll leave you with this image from Phuket; it beats one of those yellow fish enjoying my breakfast.