We’re leaving on a jet plane…….

11 February 2007

We arrived in Phuket and got dropped off at the hostel we had specified (at least that was what we thought!) – it turned out to be called a very similar name and was unsurprisingly double the price! So we set off by foot to find the one we wanted. After nearly a mile of walking with our backpacks we found the place and fortunately it was great – we had the biggest bed I have ever seen and our own private bathroom with a proper toilet (not the squatties – a simple hole in the ground- that are common out here yet difficult to negotiate sucessfully!) and to really make our day it came with toilet paper! We were staying on Patpong beach which is one of the top tourist destinations in SE Asia and was another place which was pretty much flattened by the tsunami yet apart from the odd video entitled ‘The Tsunami’ which you can buy there is little by the way of evidence of the mass destruction – this can only be credited to the local people’s resiliance.

As our stay in Phuket was going to be short (partly due to the number of tourists everywhere)we quickly downed tools and headed out to the beach after grabbing a quick bite to eat. The beach itself was pleasing but the water reminded us of the Kava we had drunk when on Fiji – dirty dishwater! After getting my fill of the sun I headed back for a lie down and to get some use of the television set that came with our room with Chris following me back a bit later after a couple of propositions along the way.

Phuket was our first introduction to Thailand’s much publicised sex industry with go-go bars, hostess bars and ladyboys a plenty!

When walking around Patpong you can’t help but notice the number of western men in their late 30s – 60s (and invariably with a big beer belly – OK maybe I am streotyping!) walking around hand in hand with young and attractive Thai women. It is an odd site. I understand (although am not ignorant to assume this is the scenario for every coupling) that the women see a western guy as having money and along with the money comes new opportunties or maybe just an element of security….. and the guys, well they get a young beautiful bird hanging off their arm 😉 I do not really know what I think of it all. If both parties are happy with what they get out the ‘relationship’ then who am I to judge, yet at the same time I can’t help thinking that all things being equal the young women would not go near half the men they are with. But things are not equal so unfortunately this is stark reality in Phuket.

We headed out down the main strip to take in the ‘nightlife’ and headed to one of the hostess bars where the girls working there will keep the men company in a bid to get the men to spend more at the bars. However we were not there for the women – we were there for the football! Much to Chris’ delight we watched Newcastle secure a 2-1 win over Liverpool (Mat – that must have hurt?) and celebrated the night away with a bunch of Aussies we met in the bar.

Having experience all we had planned to in Phuket we headed off the following day on our journey across the mainland to Koh Tao, and island of the east coast of Thailand. The journey began with 5 hours in a hot mini-van which we were expecting to take us to the port in Surat Thani where we planned to have a meal and then use the internet before catching the overnight ferry (on which we had booked beds) to Koh Tao. Well that would have been a big ask apparently seeing as we are now in Thailand’s tourist route where everyone wants your money! Instead we were dropped off in someones restaurant in the middle of nowhere where we had to remain till our connection took us to the port two and half hours later. Hungry as we were we stood firm in our resolve to not order food and watched the disney channel for the duration! The wait did give us opportunity to get speaking with a Danish guy who was taking his Thai ‘girlfriend’ up to Bangkok to try and get her a passport/Visa so he could take her home to Denmark with him. We sat watching them for a while and communication between was limited to the odd English word and sign language.

Eventually our connection to the port arrived by way of a suped up boy racer car with all the trimming including a racing steering wheel, big exhaust, neon lights and the front bodywork caved in! Not having our tickets for the boat (which we had paid for) we asked for them only to be told the driver was buying them for us when we got to the port. Left with little alternative we got in – Chris in the front and me sat with his backpack on my lap as there was no room in the boot because the strereo system took up all the available space! Having given up all means off communication over the blaring euro-pop tracks we found ourselves down a back alley and the driver getting out. What happened next remains a little of a blur but it went something like this.

Man approaches car.
Man shakes hands with driver.
Driver slips man money.
Man slips driver small package which one can only assume to be Class A drugs.
Charlotte: “Was that drugs?”
Chris: “Yep”
Charlotte: “Oh shit!!!”

No further dialogue was need as we both knew what the other was thinking…..here we were in a country where you can be incarcerated for a good 25 years (if you are lucky) for being found with a stash of Class A drugs and our driver had us and our packs in his boy racer in the middle of some dodgy part of town and all we could do was roll with it (by this time I had discounted the option of flinging the door open and running. wailing, from the car to hide up some alternative back alley). So roll with it we did only to find ourselves at the port before the next euro-pop track ended! Big relief.

We unloaded our packs quickly, collected our ticket and turned to the ferry to be faced with a freight ferry onto which 12 rather fat, snorting, pigs were being loaded to provide the Island with its pork, ham and bacon needs for the next year or so! This was not what we expected but once again we rolled with it. We boarded the top deck which was at least under cover but to find our bed we had squat as to not hit our heads on the roof. We found our ‘beds’ which were mattresses lined up on the floor which I reckon had a ratio of two people to a single mattress space. Not only were we uncorfortably close to each other but we were also uncomforatbly close to the travellers next to us….which was only magnified during the night when the girl next to Chris kept trying to put her arms around him and the girl next to me took to kneeing me in the small of my back! The outcome – not much sleep that night!

But we arrived in one piece and if there is any truth in the quote “What you get by reaching your destination isn’t nearly as important as what you become by reaching that destination” then being freaked out, knackered, bruised and irratable is the way forward!

Tags: Koh Tao, Phuket, Pigs, Thailand

This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 6:28 am and is filed under Thailand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.