We awoke to another beautiful, hot morning and got moving a
bit earlier as we had a rental car lined up for the day. It seems the price of bus and taxi transport
in this part of Thailand is much, much higher than we are used to paying so
with four people it is going to work out cheaper hiring a car. I picked up the car at 9 am from a place close
to the hotel then picked up the rest of the gang. The area we are staying in is called Bangtao
and is on the central, western side of the island of Phuket. Though it seemed quite straightforward
getting here with the airport taxi, we had a hell of a time finding our way
back to the main highway as there were roads everywhere and few signs,
especially ones in English. Also, our
lame tourist map was at too low a scale to show the smaller roads, so after an
hour of going round in a giant circle we finally found the highway and headed
south towards Phuket town, which is the largest city on the island and located on
the lower east side. As Phuket is so
large (31 miles long by 12 miles wide) is doesn’t really feel like an island,
especially when you are tearing down the highway with no ocean in sight.
We drove around Phuket town and found a nice looking bay on
the ocean so parked the car, got out and were immediately struck by the aroma
of dog droppings. After a short walk we
realized the smell was not isolated to a small area and in fact the whole park
smelled terrible so we jumped back in the car, cranked up the AC and said
goodbye to Dog Shit Bay.
We tried finding a coastal road and couldn’t so just kept
working our way southward until we hit ocean, which happened to be a small town
called Rawai. We went for a walk and
found a small seafood market where we came across a table with live squid and
octopus. The vendor invited the kids and
I to poke away at the creatures, which kept us entertained while Ana browsed
through the shops. We found an open air
restaurant beside the beach, had a cold drink, then got back in the car and
started working our way up the west coast, which is where all the nice beaches and
the vast majority of the tourist population are located. We followed the lovely coastal road through
Kata Beach, Karon beach and through Patong, which has a reputation for being
the sleaze capital of the island, but during the daytime it really did look
quite innocent – just very busy and packed full of restaurants, gift shops and
bars. We continued along the road and
soon found ourselves back at our hotel, though we came in via a completely
different set of small roads and somehow popped out at our hotel. Once there, we went back to the room, had a
backpacker lunch then hit the pool for a couple hours which was a glorious
relief from the heat.
After this break we jumped back in the car, got lost once
again on the way out, did a few loops then eventually found the main road and headed
northeast to a marina we had seen on the map.
We were curious to see what the marinas were like here and what sort of
boats made their way to Thailand. Well,
the answer is BIG BOATS! We were able to
talk the security guard into letting us onto the docks and we walked in
amazement looking at all the massive vessels.
There were dozens of large catamarans, nearly all of which were over
fifty feet long as well as massive monohull sailboats, some of which must have
been close to ninety feet. The marina
was completely dead and we only saw people on a handful of the boats. There were only a few powerboats and those
too were gigantic, including one monster that must have been 150 feet long.
After enjoying an hour or so of boat porn (and missing our
own sailboat dearly) we drove back to the hotel though yet another route,
wandered down to one of the neighbourhood restaurants and had a most
uninspiring, overpriced meal. Yes, a lackluster
end, but to a most interesting day.
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