Phuket

After the mayhem that was Monkey hill the day before we took to the mean streets of old Phuket Town. And it surprised us! It was clean, civilised, gentrified and beautiful. Phuket gets a lot of bad press in the news back in the U.K. but it is a massive island and only certain parts contain the contaminated parts of society who think it's a good idea to come to another country an leave their brains in the departure hall at the airport. The hotel was an old converted Portuguese mansion on the back streets off the main tourist zone so we were bang in the middle of the action. It was quiet and we had the place to ourselves for the 5 nights we stayed. All around us the streets had been restored to those Portuguese heritage days painted brightly in pastel colours with their contrasting shutters and 2 fold doors. It was a delight to breeze about checking out the colourful streets. We tried to exchange our old Lonely Planet guide books in a 2nd hand bookshop as the books cost us a fortune and we needed a book on Thailand. It's weird how time changes as when we travelled 12 years ago we made many a shrewd deal buying/selling/swapping guide books as we zig-zagged across Asia but now the world has changed and so has the face of travel in that no one deals in guide books anymore. On the shelves was a motley collection of 10 year old books which were priced not far off the cost of the new editions and the owners did not want to give us any value to our latest editions of our £30 guide books. So the books were dumped at the hotel for other travellers to benefit from and we took technology with gusto and subscribed to Kindle who 'loan' us the guide books (up to 10 at once) for a fee of only £7.99 a month. So no more carrying around heavy books in our luggage anymore and no more overpaying for local guidebooks or trying to re-sell them afterwards. We do prefer to have a book as it is easier to reference and it does not need charging everyday but the convenience outweighed this.

 That evening we jumped on the bad motor scooter and travelled to the weekend market along with the hundreds of other tourists all  thronged in the various tourist trap stalls. The market is massive and it's easy to get lost in it which we did so consoled ourselves by finding a stall selling jacket potatoes which were a god send after eating rice and noodles for the last 6 months.  Also we love the steamed sweetcorn which is basically the whole cob of sweetcorn steamed until soft and it tasted so good it did not need butter or salt. It's now one of our new favourite foods. I have been having a bit of bad luck with my watches on this trip as having 2 expire on us, with the last one only lasting 2 weeks before it got destroyed. We found a stall selling watches and purchased a natty number which stopped after only 2 hours! We took it back the next night and the stall holder fitted a new battery which seemed to fix it but after another 12 hours stopped again so I went to return it but being a Monday the weekend market was gone and I was lumbered with a watch that was stuck in time so that was watch number 3 in the bin.

We passed on this lovely bucket of offal and plumped for the jacket potato instead.

  Next day we ventured out to the Gibbon rehabilitation center, which re-homes Gibbons who have been rescued from locals who keep them as pets which is illegal. They also re-house injured Gibbons who would not survive in the wild. Ultimately the Gibbons are rehabilitated and returned to a protected part of the forest to resume life in the wild. When we arrived at the centre we were asked to pay a 200 baht entrance fee each as the centre was in a national park but we found out later the Gibbon centre would not receive any of the money from this which was going to be our donation money towards the project. The politics of it stank and after our visit we were left with mixed feelings about the center as we are not sure if these places are actually doing any good and it is just a plaster to be stuck over a massive problem where there is no solution. The gibbons were kept in small cages and could be kept in there for years so what is the difference between this and a zoo? We contributed a donation to help with the cause but deep down we know it was never going to save these beautiful monkeys from extinction. As our entrance fee got us into the national park we took a walk into the jungle and ventured upon a waterfall where some Thai's were swimming but it was disappointing so left to go back to the bike where I found out I had lost the bike key!

Tarzan was enjoying a jungle shower at our arrival.

 We stood there in panic wondering what we going to do when a man approached us and told me I had left the key in the bike so he had taken it out for safe keeping. How lucky was that as the bike could easily been stolen. We then explored the other side of the island to an area called Patong which was a lot seedier and too be honest depressing as it was over-run with t-shirtless super fat out of shaped Europeans and Russians trawling the streets looking for booze, sex bars and poor food choices. Not to be too judgemental we endeavoured to join in by stopping at a bar for bikers called Nicky's which was kitted out like some Route 66 wanna be joint and had an afternoon beer. After we witnessed 2 drunk Aussies trying to molest/kiss the barmaid who was clearly not amused by their actions we decided it was not our scene and hit the road again.

This bike was arrested for drink driving and relieved of its engine.

  That night we hit a night market just around the corner from the hotel and had some good street food from the stalls which was excellent and super cheap. They also had the locals out on the street singing their karaoke tunes vastly over-amped and it sounded appalling, especially at that volume. A pack of howling wolves would have been more in tune than them lot.

The food stalls were a good diversion from the terrible Karaoke.

  Next day after a slow start I got cabin fever and went to visit the 'Big Buddha' on the highest point in Phuket. It was a really nice ride up there and the air was a lot cooler in the afternoon heat. At the top I was greeted by a massive white Buddha which was very impressive and the views equally so. I dossed about checking out Buddha's footprint?? and Buddha's seat which is basically a bum print of Buddha where he sat down. Bizarre! Religion is so weird. Next we are off Island hopping so are going to catch a boat in the morning and are off to a little known or visited island called Koh Yai Noi.

Buddha looked down on the fickle tourists with disdain.