After our experiences in Bangkok, we moved on to Phuket island and an area called Karon Beach where we've been finishing off the trip in a typical tourist beach resort.It's a good breather to look back on the trip and look forward to the next phase of going back into “real life”. In the meantime, we sit on the beach or by the pool, eat hot Thai food and marvel at the fact that neither of us have had a bad stomach on the whole trip – until now, as I am writing this after the 4th visit to the toilet before 10am... Still, 5 months of pretty sound stomachs considering all the changes of diet we've had has been pretty good going.
Our beach is jammed with umbrellas and full every day mainly with Russians and Finns, plus Swedes, Brits and Dutch. Beachsellers swarm over the place, but they have really touched us in
the way they work. They are very non-aggressive and will only come to you if they catch your eye – a polite no and they move on (unlike the shopsellers who pounce and hold on to you like rotweilers). They even smile at you as they go on their way.When we bought an ice cream from one, we realised they keep them cold with mounds of heavy ice in the cool box. When we and a couple of others around us paid, he gave us the ice cream and took the wrapper off as he hands it over. Why? Because they know the average tourist can't be bothered to take the rubbish with them, and they will get in trouble, not us. Embarrassing. As he left, he had the courtesy to give us a smiley “goodbye” and went off to try to sell for the rest of the day – in 35 degree heat, probably for commission worth a tiny fraction of what he sold.
It's hard not to think about the gap in life between us lazy tourists – being served on the beach for next to no money – and those doing the selling, weighed down with stuff and trying to earn a few pence. The possibilities of luxury for them are so incredibly tiny. Meanwhile, we go back to societies where possibilities are relatively endless and their idea of luxury is a basic standard for us. Watching the arrogance of one Russian woman wave away the guy who collects the 2 Euros price for the umbrella and beach-chair reminded how little most people care or are aware of their good fortune.Yesterday we went on a “free” trip to the Phi-Phi islands. It was a day of heat, sweat and more heat and sweat! Despite two lovely boat trip for a couple of hours each way, the rest was a combination of sitting in sweltering mini-buses
through the hair-raising streets of Phuket, waiting to get on or off boats in airless, diesel-fumed areas among crowds of 100's, or sitting and melting on the boat waiting for it to get going and bring some breeze. It was a forgettable experience - and I even bought a hat to keep the sun off me, funny though it made me look...Now we have just 5 full days here, then we fly back to Bangkok on Thursday lunchtime and fly back to Heathrow a few hours later, just after midnight on Friday. Tomorrow I'll take my life into my hands and rent a scooter (it's just 4 GBP/5 Euros per day!) and brave the utter madness of the traffic here. The day after – my birthday – we will rent a Jeep and see the island a bit more widely.
