Technorati Tags: thailand, travel

Now on Phuket Island, at a place called Kata beach, on the south-west side of the island. It's a lovely part of the world, but not quite as pretty as Krabi Province (Ao Nang, Phranang, Rai Leh and the islands around Koh Phi Phi, just 100 or so km's to the south-east of Phuket).... The oceans are rougher and darker and there's not a lot of karst rock around. (Karst being the crazy cool rock formations that you really only see here in the Andaman Coast, and parts of Vietnam and China.) The picture above was taken out near Koh Phi Phi.

On my way here, the minibus went through Patong, the party town of Phuket. It's like Queensland's Surfer's Paradise (in fact, maybe even bigger) only without the really tall high-rises. It was mid afternoon as I passed through, and, true to the cliche, there were many dozens of open bars and clubs open, full of big, middle aged overweight men and their Thai ladies.

The sex industry here is alive and kicking. It's a lot of eye-opening fun to walk along the strips of girlie bars (they are always bunched together and can be found pretty much in every town) and watch the girls (and lady-boys) doing their crazy best to get customers in. The one's I've seen seem to be having a great time, and quite happy to try to wave in the ladies as well as the fella's, dancing sexy, happy little jigs and holding hands with you as they ply you with questions about where you're from in their gorgeous Thaiglish. I love that Thai's are so into hugging and touching, makes a nice change from the Japanese, although I could do without the hard sell. Anyway, I thought the whole big, overweight middle-aged dirty old man in South east Asia syndrome was limited to Australians but it seems I was mistaken... they're from all over. They're often twice as big as the ladies they're with....

The wet season has been erratic and unpredictable, which has made planning and doing day-tours hard. Most of the people I met in Ao Nang moved on to Malaysia or over to the West Coast (where it's just as wet, I hear), so I've lost my playmates and haven't found any new ones yet, and dealing with the wet season rains on my own certainly made me change tack in terms of holiday activities. Doing lot's of sleeping in, read three great books and been enjoying watching the 100 baht (¥300) DVD's of new release movies you can buy on every street here. Done a lot of sitting in bars and restaurants and reading and watching the rain.

Today was beautiful, so I spent most of it down at the beach with my latest book (Blinding Light - Paul Theroux, an interesting adventure about the drug Datura, derived from a flowering tree that is commonly found in Australia - I remember someone I know drank some datura tea and stubbed his cigarettes out in the imaginary ashtray on his stomach, not pretty), on a deck chair under a sun umbrella. Ended up at the gorgeous little “Ska Bar” down at the end of the beach drinking a beer and soaking up the sunset (quite possibly my fave holiday activity). I was quite impressed by the large packs of roaming well-built western men in their teeny-tiny speedo's until I realised that there must be a gay resort somewhere around here.... well, actually, I'm still quite impressed, they are lovely to look at. Very lovely indeed. Why are gay men always so hot? Damn.

I got to pat and play with a baby elephant in the street last night. It had a chain collar but, impressively, no lead and seemed very happy - it was just hanging out with it's handlers in the street, near the entrance to a big restaurant, being as cute as a puppy and happily parting enraptured tourists with their money by gently grabbing 20 baht notes from extended hands, passing them to one of his handlers who exchanged them for a bunch of banana's that were promptly fed to the baby-phant by delighted tourists. And yes folks, I was one of them. In fact, he could smell the money in my wallet before I even got it out, and his trunk was sniffing my pocket and then my wallet and then he grabbed a single note. It was hilarious. He was so playful, he even sat down and rolled over like a dog to scratch his back on the brick stairs to the restaurant! I couldn't believe he was just so cool and so responsive to verbal commends that he was just hanging out on the sidewalk with no leads - his handlers just gave him a few softly spoken instructions when he got too frisky and he immediately backed up. I do believe he was well loved by his affectionate handlers. He's one of the lucky ones. It was soooooo cool. Here are some crappy photo's of the momentous occasion.... click on them for bigger baby-phant love...

On Friday I'll be heading over to Phuket town (17 km's to the north-west, on the other side of the island) to move into the school-provided accommodation, and to meet the crew there, which leaves me one more day of pure holiday time (really hope it doesn't frikken rain). I'm really looking forward to it. I've had been a much needed chill-time, but I'm getting kinda antsy. Too much doing not-much-at-all makes me feel like I'm wasting away. I'm feeling well rested and ready to get into this course.