Sunday AM

Wow...snowstorm in North Carolina.  Yuck!  It's 90 degrees here. 

We have been too busy to post to the blog yesterday and today.  We'll catch up this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

Stay warm.....we are! 

Singapore

Arrived safely into Singapore.  It's Saturday am here already.   Busy day scheduled...so more blogging this pm or tomorrow.

On to Singapore

We've been in Thailand and Cambodia.  Our final stop will be Singapore.

Layover in Bangkok (Friday)

We weren’t able to move to an earlier flight to Singapore, and as a result we’ve got a 6 hour layover in Bangkok. Lots of time to sit in an airport, but not enough time to go do anything else. Plus, it’s not worth the hassle of going through security again to leave and come back.

Incidentally, we’re thankful for CVMC's Travel Clinic which had the foresight to send a prescription of Cipro with us. This is the antibiotic cure for Traveler’s Tummy, and it worked after just the first tablet.

Of course, it’s not 100%, so Larry’s afraid to sneeze, and is carrying clean "panties" and a plastic bag with him for the first time since he was 7.

Traveling is such an adventure!

Incidently, EB's back strain has improved by about 20-30% over yesterday. 

Traditional Cambodian Dance

For our last evening in Siem Reap we again went to dinner with Rat, who’s fast becoming a great friend that we’re going to miss when we leave.

We went to a dinner theater.

Well, not exactly. It wasn’t quite the Dixie Stampede at Myrtle Beach, and it was obviously set up for the entertainment of tourists, but it was still pretty cool.

Incidentally, we had cut the day a little short and were back at the hotel by about 2:00 in the afternoon, having had all the walking and climbing that Eddie could stand for the day. Even getting in and out of the car was painful and took all of us to maneuver.

Back at the hotel, he opted for a spa treatment (stone massage), where the lady gave it her level best to get him back in alignment. He was some better, and a long, hot bath helped even more.

He was feeling well enough to go to dinner when Rath (as I learned his name is spelled, not Rat as I'd done earlier) arrived to pick us up at 7:00, and we went just a couple of blocks up the road to one of the hotels.

Siem Reap is a small town, especially in the tourist industry. It was obvious that lots of people in the different places we knew were familiar with Rath and greeted him like a friend. As a result, we got great seats.

The restaurant was a huge buffet, again the best opportunity to sample the local cuisine. It was open air, although it was “indoors”; it would continue operating in the rainy season without any problem.

This was a pretty high end, large buffet --  Cambodian style, but without chicken fingers or french fries anywhere on the menu.  Cambodian food seems very similar to what we think of in the US as "Chinese" food -- which, of course, isn't very Chinese in reality.  There's not the spice that Thai food has got, lots of stir fried things, good use of veggies in with the meat, primarily fish, chicken or pork.

Desert was interesting, and pretty good once it was explained to us how you did it. The base was a kind of thin yogurt with black beans in it.

Yeah, the same ones we think about with Mexican food.

You put some of that in your bowl, then you went down the row putting “add ins” with it – most of which we didn’t recognize, but which were all pretty good. You could adjust the individual sweetness to your liking, and you included ice cubes as well. In the end, it tasted a lot like snow cream, but with more lumps in it.

Rath is a great guide. Maybe it’s the age difference and the respect for elders thing, but we have asked him about the most mundane aspects of his life and he’s quick to give us the full inside scoop. Arranged marriages (his was), toilet facilities, internet access, bribery by lawyers and judges, inadequate healthcare, as well as historical things that we don’t understand all were topics of dinner conversation.

The other thing that we couldn’t help but notice – despite his diminutive size – about 5’5 and maybe 125 pounds by our guess, NOBODY attacks a buffet like he does. In fact, only a person who has truly known hunger in his life could put that much food in that small of a body. It was great to watch, though, and we loved sharing our meals with him through the trip.

The show was traditional Cambodian dance. The performers acted out the stories that Rath had told us earlier in the day in part of them, and then they performed social dances for the rest. If you didn’t know the stories, you could kind of tell by the costumes and it helped put more of it in perspective for us.

We learned that all of the performers come from a local orphanage, and that a part of what we paid for dinner went to support their efforts. I can’t say that the stories stuck with us, other than the most rudimentary aspects of them, but the explanations were great.

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is the most famous of the temples in the complex. It was built between 1113 and 1150 and primarily dedicated to three Hindu Gods – Rama, Vishnu and Shiva. Think of them as the “Creator”, the “Protector” and the “Destroyer”, respectively.

It was here that we saw the most definitive indication of the impact of the Khmer Rouge, or the Pol Pot regime who ruled Cambodia between 1974 and 1979. Under this regime, the restoration efforts were halted and the place was abandoned. Soldiers frequently took rifle practice out on the location, leaving bulletholes throughout.

Let’s also not forget that at the beginning of that dictatorship Cambodia had a population of over 7 million people. 2 million were killed. 1 million escaped to other countries. Another million just disappeared. The country was left with a population of less than 3 million people.

Think what it’d be like if half the people you know suddenly disappeared. Your doctor is truly no longer available. The newspaper editor has vanished. The guy who changes the oil in your car quits showing up for work.

What kind of impact must that have on the psyche of an entire nation?

This temple is still popular among newlyweds (who come here to pray for a pregnancy) and students (who are after good grades). If you get what you’re after, you come back and make an offering.

There are decorations around temples called "Absonald," which are essentially representations of a goddess. She tends to be relatively well endowed and dancing. There are about 2,000 of them on this temple, more than any other in the world – and only one shows her givin’ us a big toothy grin – in all the others, her lips are closed!

As you go up the bridge to the main temple, there are two libraries, one on either side of the paved walkway. Although the “books”, which were on either animal hides or leaves, are gone, the inscriptions on the buildings remain. They tend to be instructions on how to pray in this particular temple.

The three towers of Angkor Wat that are visible when you approach the temple are on the Cambodian National Flag. It’s the only national flag to have a building on it.

Angkor Wat, like much of Thailand, is not handicapped accessible. In the interest of good tourism, though, they’ve installed stairways (albeit very steep ones) over the original temple stairs, having recognized that splattering tourists on the ground may make a readily available supply of sacrifices, but it plays hell with your revenue stream.

Inside the temples, they have the same threshold situation that Thailand had, except these are out of stone and you have to step up further to go from one room to the other. Given his back issues today, EB opted to avoid the upper tiers.

Words can’t describe this site. It feels remarkably calm to walk on the grounds, even if you don’t understand the stories that are portrayed on the walls.

EB chilling at the base of one of the buildings.....resting his back strain.

Banyon Temple

Banyon Temple is the largest in the complex of Angkor Thom. This is the Sistine Chapel to their Vatican. Built in the late 12th century, it has 54 towers, which represent the 54 provinces of the Khmer Empire in ancient times.

There’s a lot of numerology involved that we really didn’t get a grasp of, other than to understand that 9 is a sacred number to the Cambodians. You can go through a lot of mathematic gyrations with the 4 and 54, and it reduces to 9.

Temples in Cambodia tend to be either Hindu or Buddhist, depending on who was king at the time and their particular religious proclivities. The two seem to have a lot of overlap, though.

In Angkor Thom, there are amazing relief carvings on the wall. If you know the stories, you can see details about different battles and wars over time, who won, who got killed, etc. Rat was great about telling us the high points of these.

There are also depictions of everyday life and important events in the city. There were 102 hospitals built throughout the provinces, and one picture showed a maternity ward and woman in childbirth. Apparently “suck it up” was used in place of an epidural.

Animal fighting was a significant sport, including turtle fighting. You put them in a narrow ditch, facing each other, and poke them from the backside with a stick. First one to make his opponent turn upside down wins. There were also dogfights, cockfights, wrestling matches and a variety of other sporting events, along with observation facilities from which to watch them.

Angkor Thom

Angkor Thom is the biggest complex within the historic site. The name means “Grand City”, and it was built in the late 12th Century.

There’s a lot of symbolism in all of this construction, tied either to Buddhist or Hindu beliefs, depending on when the construction happened. For example, there are five gates into Angkor Thom – one on the East representing Birth, and two on the west representing Death (don’t use those!). Didn’t catch what the other two represented, though.

There is a manmade mote around the 506 hectacre site, which was originally filled with crocodiles.

That’ll keep the neighbor kids in their own damned yard!

As you cross the bridge going into the site, all the statues on the left are Gods and all those on the right are demons. Sadly, lots of these things have been looted by taking their heads off over the centuries. The head, in Cambodian lore, is the most important part and was also the easiest to steal.

 

 

Angkor Thom had a population of 1 million people. Again, to put things in perspective, NYC didn’t even exist then. London had a population of 80,000. The Khmer Empire had a capital city this huge.

This was a sophisticated society.

Unfortunately, it was kind of short lived due to mismanagement by subsequent kings. The irrigation system, which was essential to the countryside’s rice production, not to mention keeping the mote up and flowing, fell into disrepair. Eventually, invading warriors from neighboring Thailand overtook them.

At Angkor Thom, there are four faces on the various towers. Each of them represents, from Buddhist lore, one of the states of mind – Compassion, Charity, Sympathy or Equality.

Think on that one. These were the concepts being espoused by this religious ideology when Christians were undertaking the Spanish Inquisition.

There’s something we can all learn here.

To get into the City, you had to have 10 fingers. Why? Because if you got caught stealing, they lopped off a pinky. Second offense was the same penalty, and they worked their way progressively through the digits. The theory was, “Once a thief, always a thief. We don’t need you in our town.”

The other thing we discovered was that a very large truck, if it moves very, very slowly, can make it through the City’s gate. While we were standing there waiting for this to happen, a guy pulled up next to us on a motorcycle.

Carrying a chicken.

The opportunity didn’t present itself to really ask the details, maybe he was just taking his pet out for a ride. Maybe it was dinner on the hoof. We don’t know. But he was coordinated enough to hang onto the chicken and ride a motorcycle at the same time.

Angkor Archeological Site

Cambodia got it goin’ on with tickets to historical sites. If you’re a resident, you get in free. Just flash your ID and you’re good to go.

If you’re a tourist, passes come in a variety of lengths, but on average are $20 a day.

Think you’re going to be a skinflint and give your buddy the other half of your pass tomorrow? Nope – these people learned from Disney – your picture is put on your ticket when it’s handed to you, and they check it periodically when you’re trying to get into “E” ticket exhibits throughout the day. No pass can net you a $100 fine.

Angkor (which means “City”, incidentally) Archeology Park was established in 1994. The place has been an archeological site since the French re-discovered it in 1850. They tried to help with some of the restoration, but were interrupted by that little “conflict” in which the US participated in the 1960’s and 70’s. Unfortunately, they were ran out when they were only partially done with some of the restoration work, meaning that delicate locations were left exposed to weather when the workers fled.

Those bullet holes didn’t help things any, either.

This significant location is now a World Heritage Site. Like Providence, MA, and the beach restoration, they’ve prohibited people from building or living within the park, but if you were lucky enough to have a house that predates 1994, you can continue to live there until it falls down.

There is a thriving tourist business in the park, though, although we were encouraged not to purchase things from any of the kids there since it tends to give them a reason not to pursue education.

Incidentally, primary school kids (grades 1 through 6) don’t go to school on Thursday, but they do on Saturday. We were at the site on a Thursday.

There will be pictures to add later, but we're in the airport now (on Friday morning) and can't upload.

The Urgent Care Clinic

The clinic looked much like every one of these clinics in the US. The magazines, although written in Cambodian, are months out of date, but they offer the same quality entertainment as in any US doctor’s office. There are a dozen chairs to sit in, all designed for a maximum of discomfort.

Eddie went back to see the physician – there was a menu out front to chose from, although we never really figured out which one he got. Notably, probably not the “Surgeon” or “Gynecologist”. Everything else was up for grabs, though.

In the waiting room, equipment seemed to be limited somewhat – there was a stethoscope and a thermometer was shoved under his arm by the first person he met. The thermometer stayed in place until he gave it to the physician at the end of the visit.

Being a nurse has it’s advantages in a doctor’s office – you can cut to the chase, tell them what you want and usually have your way. EB suggested that he’d strained his back and needed a prescription for a muscle relaxant.

We did not anticipate the variety of treatment available in a Cambodian clinic.


First, he was offered a back brace. Mind you, the physician only came up about chest high on Eddie. Either one of us coulda accidentally snapped him like a twig, since he was the size of your standard 9 year old in the US. Come to think of it, most everyone in the clinic simply looked up at him and let their mouths fall open when he walked in.

The back brace wouldn’t begin to fit. These people, on average, have a 29 inch waist as best we can tell. They don’t offer extensions like the seat belt extenders for airplanes.  That back brace fit quite nicely around our forearms though.

From their handy-dandy pharmacy, they offered Panadol.

Yup, the same stuff in the US that they give women for menstrual cramps. No narcotics. Nothing substantial, even – just plain old PMS meds.

With this healthcare under our belts, we paid our bill ($46.00, includes the meds, no creditcards accepted) and went off to see the sights......limping.

Slight Mishap

Ever do something, and as you’re doing it you think, “Wish I hadn’t done that,” and then immediately after it, you KNOW you wish you hadn’t.

Such is the case, when, early in the morning as you’re leaving to catch a flight, you decide that it’s just as easy to carry your 20 Kg. (roughly 50 lb) suitcase down 2 flights of stairs as it is to put the bell hop to the trouble.

So did the taller of our duo, who realized as he picked up the aforementioned suitcase that his back was no longer in the alignment that the Creator intended.

It wasn’t so bad during the flights, but after a rough night in the hotel things were so bad that Mr. B couldn’t get out of bed on his own. This led to the questions about what to do.

Do we try to find a chiropractor or acupuncturist here? After all, Asia is home base to what many of us in the west consider “alternative medicine.” Do we try to find a doctor? What do we do about today’s events – the opportunity to see historically significant locations that we may never again have in our life? Places that, unfortunately, are not handicapped accessible and aren’t even especially pedestrian friendly in many cases.

Ultimately, we decided to rely on the advice of Rat for medical intervention. He took us to the equivalent of an UrgentCare clinic, where we were lucky – no wait and Eddie was seen immediately.

What more could we ask? An up-close look at Cambodian healthcare, right?

School

One of the things that Rat told us about, after he opened up a bit, was his cousin, who is 8. Seems that mom abandoned him and Dad is always off working. As a result, he lives with the Grandmother (who’s got to be well over 80).

OK, sad story, right?

Here’s the second chapter – Schooling in Cambodia is free through the first six years. The extras, however, are not – uniforms, books, lunches, etc. – those things we pretty well taken for granted in the US.

They cost about $350.00 per year, and this child cannot go to school because there’s no money for those things.

That’s less than most families spend on the extra-curricular stuff for just one child.

We’ll be passin’ the hat at the end of the service. Go ahead and get your wallets out now, and don’t be messin’ around with none of that “jinglin’ money”. We’ll be needin’ the foldin’ kind.

Cambodian Factoids

We knew nothing about Cambodia when we came here. We almost didn’t come, because the little bit we did know wasn’t especially good, leftover from dim memories of newscasts over the Vietnam War.

What we learned is that there are dozens and dozens of brand new, western style hotels here. About 10 years ago, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt made the movie Tomb Raider at Angkor Wat and adopted a child from here, which suddenly put Cambodia on the map as a tourist hotspot. As a result, their tourism has increased from 1.7 million visitors in 2000 to over 2.32 million visitors in 2009. There are signs of construction everywhere, and we learned that over 62% of the visitors to Cambodia come to Siam Reap.

Their alphabet is similar to the Thai alphabet except some of the letters are upside down from each other. We couldn’t tell which was which. In the pronounciation of the words, Thai language uses intonation up or down at the end, whereas Cambodian tends to be flat.

Again, you couldn’t really prove it by us.

Cambodians eat lots of freshwater fish, because there’s a large lake here. During the rainy season, the fish get out of the lake and migrate across the rice paddies to other fields and ponds, so they are the primary source of protein since it’s readily available. The lake here is the 5th largest and the 4th most biodiverse in the world.

Rice production is still the number one industry here. Tourism is next.

Their big holiday is New Years, which happens April 14--15–16. It apparently means lots of drinking and eating, followed by lots more of it.

A typical evening, or weekend evening, anyhow, is spent “cruising” on one’s motorbike. You make the circuit, run through the Sonic, stop at Wal Mart and then start it all over again.

Well, not exactly, but you get the idea. Again, some things are universal.

A Cambodian Feast

Cambodian food is blissfully less spicy than Thai food. It’s almost bland by comparison, if all you look at is the heat from the chili. It was really flavorful, though. We had two of the local beers – Angkor Beer – which taste a lot like the Thai beer – and three dishes.

The first was called Amok Chicken, which had basil and coconut milk in it. Next was a pork with lemon grass, which was layered over tomatoes on the plate, and the final one was stuffed tomato cups, which had some type of sausage in them.

The feel of the food was very different than in Thailand. Your lips didn’t go numb. You didn’t have to pick out the little red things, or down your drink after you unexpectedly found something.

It was different enough from the norm to feel exotic, but not so different as to be off-putting. Instead, it was something that we both thought, “I could eat this more often.”

The restaurant was outdoor seating – both of us had bugs crawling down our backs, despite the use of industrial strength DEET before we went out because we’d been warned – with white tablecloths and good dishes. There were even stainless steel chopsticks!

The price for this feast for the three of us? $27.07 plus tip.

We learned you don’t put the tip on the check here or the waiter doesn’t get it – the owner keeps it!

Rat

Our tour guide this time is Rat, who said his real name is relatively unpronounceable by the western tongue. He’s bubbly and outgoing and was right there waiting to meet us as we got out of the airport.

We made arrangements about what we needed to do next (shower and unpack being at the top of that list for us), talked about going to dinner at 7 and left each other.

Only miscommunication – we dressed in long pants and button down shirts for dinner – he showed up in cargo shorts and a hoodie. Oh, well, turns out the place we going easily accommodated all of them.

Rat had arranged transportation – the Cambodian equivalent of a Tuk Tuk, which here is called a Romok. In this case, it’s a motorcycle with a surry on the back. It’s easier to get into than the long tail boats, but still takes some maneuvering if you’re not as small as the natives. Cost of transport - $4.00, round trip. He came back to pick us up after dinner and waited until we were done.

The first dinner is when we get to grill the tour guides. They don’t know us well enough to not be startled by the questions we ask, so we usually get real answers. In fairness, we offer them the opportunity to ask about anything they want to ask.

One thing we’ve noticed – and resolved to fix next time around – is the appalling lack of geographic information that we provide. People here (and we noticed the same thing in Australia last year) know New York and Los Angeles, but when you say “North Carolina”, you tend to get puzzled looks. Larry sometimes gets a better response to “Oklahoma – with Cowboys and Indians”, but of course we all know that’s not exactly accurate, either. We need a postcard showing a US map to stick in the luggage, or maybe a DVD to explain about where we live and what we’re about – after all, not everyone needs to base their opinion of the US on www.peopleofwalmart.com.

Rat is 27 and just graduated from University with a Bachelor’s degree in Tourism about 5 months ago. He’s not originally from Siam Reap, but is from the surrounding countryside. He is the 4th of 7 children. We learned from the internet that Siam Reap is only 150,000 people, so it’s a fairly small city, anyhow.

He lives in a one bedroom apartment that’s 5 meters by 7 meters – that’s _____ square feet, for those of us who are conversion-challenged – and includes a small kitchenette, toilet, and a separate little bedroom for his younger sister. Who lives there with him, his younger brother and a cousin – and Rat’s wife when she’s in town. She tends to spend most of her time at her family’s farm, though, working on a rice commodity business that they’ve started. Rent on their apartment is $120.00 per month, plus utilities.

Rat’s very entrepreneurial, as are many educated people here (about 30% of the population get university degrees). In addition to being a guide for one travel company, he’s is a guide for another, has the rice business with his wife and has a little coffee shop on the side.

This is a busy young man!

Minimum wage, if you’re working a “regular” job, is $350 per month, and is supposed to go to about $450 once you finish your probationary period. There’s really no retirement, unless you have a government job. His dad is a teacher and is set to retire next year at 60 (he said he was “very old,” but we let that pass), and he’ll get about 30% of his former salary as a pension.

The FCC Angkor

Ever eat at a restaurant, and the food was fine, but not spectacular? Then you walk up the street, or maybe eat at another place the next night and think, “WOW! Wish I’d known about this before I wasted that meal there!”

So it is with our hotel in Siam Reap, Cambodia – the FCC Angkor, which stands for the “Foreign Correspondent’s Club”.

Our room is a garden suite on the first floor – no number, it’s named the Beitlenut Room. (Not Beetlejuice, like that silly movie from a few years back – Beitlenut). No clue what it is.

It’s just around the corner from a pool that’s very interesting, and there’s supposed to be a really, really good restaurant here as well.

The bathroom is extremely luxurious, which is good for the aforementioned reasons, although finding the Cipro and starting on that seems to be helping. Nothing like a little antibiotic to tame a tough tummy!

Now, we wish we’d left Phuket early and come here instead. This looks to be truly an undiscovered gem in the tourism world.

Cambodia Arrival

If Phuket International Airport reminds one of Key West, then Siam Reap’s is more like Lawton, Oklahoma, or maybe Kinston, NC.

Those are the only tiny ones that leap to mind that actually have commercial service.

Our plane, which was about 2/3 full, left us with a row to ourselves. This always makes the ride better. Even though the trip from Bangkok to Siam Reap is just a little over an hour, they served us lunch again.

Not just a sandwich, but a sandwich, and an egg roll, and water and orange juice and a something we didn’t recognize for desert and a fruit cup.

Larry didn’t eat his, for reasons that you might suspect. One doesn’t tempt fate with mystery meat on an airplane, especially when you’ve got the window seat.

When you land, there are no gangways to swing out to meet you. Everything is done by stairs that roll up to the exits on the plane. Then you walk about half a block into the terminal (which looks very Asian, with an orange-red tile roof) give your myriad of declaration forms to the customs people and get your luggage.

At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Seems the internet didn’t tell us about one form, and we got sent back to fill it out. Then Eddie didn’t fill his out right and ran into a customs official that obviously had taken lessons from Homeland Security – he simply kept barking the same thing over and over to him (in Cambodian, as if volume would suddenly make one learn!) until he finally figured out what the problem was.

By that time, Larry had collected the luggage and found a money-changing place to get Cambodian Real (Reals? – not sure of the plural here) for the Thai money we’d been unable to get changed earlier.

The exchange rate is even more incomprehensible than it was in Thailand. Best we can tell, $1.00 US is 4,132 R. Try figuring that out at an open market.

Turns out, it doesn’t matter. They use Dollars. Plain old George Washingtons that we’re used to, and don’t especially want the Cambodian money, although we’ve now got 619,800 R worth of it to deal with.

It was still an easy transition and our guide (Suddorath, who goes by Rhat) was waiting out front for us. 15 minutes later (of driving a very, very careful 25 kph, for some reason) we were delivered to our hotel.

We are near Battambang Cambodia on this map

Arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia

First impression is superb.  More later once we get settled. 

We left Phuket hotel at 8:00 am today....arrived here at 5:00 pm.

Travel to Cambodia

Today we leave Phuket to go to Siam Reap, Cambodia. To say that we have no idea what we’re going to find there is an understatement. It was essentially an afterthought, and we’ve done little in the way of research to know what we’ll find upon arrival. If our knowledge of Thailand was limited, our knowledge of Cambodia is nonexistent.

That having been said, we’re ready to leave Phuket. For some reason, there was a LOT of street noise last night, and neither of us slept well.

Add to that the fact that Larry’s picked up a minor case of “Tourist Tummy”, something which will focus your attention with no small amount of anxiety when you know that there are not one but two airplane rides on the agenda for the following day.

Absolutely NOTHING will focus your attention like realizing that you have to circumnavigate two airports, with a 3 hour layover in between, with an unpredictable stomach.

It improves your vision and memory, both. You learn that you can spot those blue “Toilet” signs with eyes that might have missed them before, and your ability to memorize where they are in every corridor of every airport becomes amazing.

It’s not life threatening, and hasn’t meant that he’s missed anything, but it’s a real attention getter, especially when tomorrow we go to Angkor Wat, to see the temple ruins there.

Oh, and western style toilets, outside of hotels and restaurants used by tourists, are purportedly sometimes scarce.

Let’s not even talk about what a “squat” toilet is.

In Transit

We're back in the Bangkok airport yet again.  Waiting on our connecting flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia.  We're there for only 1 day (Thursday) to tour Angkor Wat -- a major temple from the Khmer Dynasty.   After we complete today's flight to Siem Reap, we will have taken 8 flights since leaving home.

More later.

Last Day in Phuket

Today was our last day in Phuket. Can’t say that we’re all that sorry about it, though – it’s been fun, but not all that different from other places at the beach.

Part of our experience here, though, has been colored by the Tsunami that happened on December 26, 2004. To look around, you can’t see any remaining traces of it, other than the evacuation signs that we suspect didn’t exist before.

Our hotel wasn’t what we’d hoped. Rather than a small guesthouse with a private pool, hot tub, sauna – the whole spa package – we instead came into a construction site. High rise buildings are going up on either side, and the pounding starts on our wall at about 8:00 in the morning.

The grounds around the pool – which ranges from murky green to pristine blue – look more like a parking lot than anything landscaped, and the hot tub is drained and dry; it sat on it’s side in one corner of the yard until our last night, when it got turned upright again for some reason.

The area out front, which is a sidewalk café and pub, isn’t conducive to sitting because of the construction dirt and noise. Overall, we were somewhat disappointed and we started to leave.

It turned out, though, that it was going to be a hassle to leave, not to mention somewhat expensive. Anyone who’s tried to book a room at the last minute during high season knows it’s simply not done without a big pain in the wallet.

Online, we found the history of our hotel, though.

Originally, it was located on Patong Beach. The pics are beautiful. It was a very popular boutique hotel that was much in demand.

Until December 26, 2004, when the tsunami hit.

The manager on duty and a neighbor thought the ocean looked unusual. They stepped out on the sidewalk and looked at it receding unusually far into the bay.

Then they realized that it was coming back in, a wall of water moving much faster and much higher than they’d ever seen. They turned to run, but couldn’t outpace the ocean.

The woman hit a piling and managed to hold on. The manager ran upstairs to the second floor to warn the guests and staff.

He was never seen alive again. In the time it took to go up a flight of stairs, he was overwhelmed by the water. His body was identified several days later among the thousands recovered only because he’d lost a finger in a motorcycle accident. His face, swollen in the tropical heat, was unidentifiable.

Rather than close down, the owners moved the hotel 2 blocks away from the beach to its current location. They have plans for what it will be again, and are working hard to make that happen.

If we get to come back, we’ll stay here again despite the inconveniences and disappointments. The things that count the most – clean rooms, friendly staff, a solid internet connection – these things are here. After the construction next door is finished, it’s once again going to be a very nice little boutique hotel.

But one with a history, and a memory.

Our Last Beach Day -- Tomorrow on to Cambodia -- Siem Reap

Relaxing Without the Beach

Monday was about as low-key as you can get. We slept in, went down to breakfast and then went back up to the room. You could tell it was going to be really, really hot today.

We’d had about enough sun for a few days, having neglected to remember that the malaria pills we’re taking make us more sensitive to sunburn. Larry, especially, is glowing a bit. As a result, we opted away from the beach and stayed in the cool to read a bit and just kind of kick back.

At about 11:00, we decided that we’d go see Avatar, the movie everyone is talking about.

We learned that Thai people like their movies, and the previews before them, MUCH, MUCH LOUDER THAN WE’RE USED TO.

Previews play the entire time between movies, not just the 15 or 20 minutes we expect in the US.

The movie was the English version, but it has Thai subtitles. The tickets (140 Baht each, about $4.25) are also for an assigned seat rather than just general admission. We had to pick our seats out when the tickets were purchased.

As it turned out, it was somewhat irrelevant since there were a total of five people in a theater that easily seats 400. Apparently noon on a Monday isn’t a prime movie time.

Before the movie starts, and after all the previews and turn off your cell phone commercials and things like that, a message asks you to stand up and honor the King while they play a video showing clips from his life. Don’t know if the song they play is the national anthem or what, but we’d both seen the video and heard the song before.

The movie was interesting. Haven’t quite decided what we think of it yet, as the underlying themes of corporate greed and treatment of the indigenous population for the benefit of a conquering corporation sometimes hit a bit close to home in the US, but it was definitely a well done movie.

IF LOUD.

A Minor Inconvenience

We have hit a minor inconvenience. Not anything that could ruin a trip, but one of those little “rock in your shoe” annoyances that you wish you could deal with.

Our beard trimmer has stopped working. Given that we each need to use it about every 3 or 4 days, that’s a bit of a nuisance.

It actually hasn’t quit working, it’s just that the battery has run down.

Combine that with the fact that we learned (a) not all outlets in the bathroom are 110, even if they’re marked 110. They are sometimes 220; and (b) the charger for this particular appliance isn’t – or rather wasn’t – a dual voltage one like some are.

Thus, the “pop” heard when it was plugged in was in fact it’s death gasp.

And now the beard trimmer doesn’t work and we don’t want to buy a new one because, of course, they’re all 220 here – not to mention the fact that it’s one of the few things that isn’t dirt cheap here – the ones we saw in the mall are easily twice what we’d pay at Walgreens.

For an appliance to use 2 weeks.

Maybe the next round of pictures we post will be "smooth-shaven."

Tsunami

Patong Beach in Phuket is one of the places that was devastated by the tsunami on December 26, 2004. Everyone has seen the pics on television and the internet, so we won’t go into a lot of detail there, other than to say that the bulk of the damage happened within 500 meters (half a mile or so) of the shore.

There’s no doubt that it was devastating, and there are little reminders of the potential around. Tsunami Evacuation Route signs are up like Hurricane Evacuation Route signs along the US coastlines. In this one, also note the electrical / utility wires that are present. Apparently, underground utilities aren’t the norm here. These are also much lower than in the US; many look low enough to be reached by an extension ladder.

Although one would hope it’s not an aluminum ladder!

The Thais seem to have done a better job recovering from their disaster than the US and New Orleans have from Hurricane Katrina. In fact, if you didn’t know it’d happened, you wouldn’t see anything amiss.

Unlike the vacant lots and buildings that remain in disarray around New Orleans, we couldn’t find any visible signs of the Tsunami.

The danger from repeat waves is apparently of some concern here, just as hurricanes are in the Carolinas. They occur when underwater earthquakes cause dramatic shifts in the ocean floor, creating the waves that then come far inland. The entire coastline of this part of the world lies adjacent to an extremely active fault line, and according to one newspaper article, there have in the past been earthquakes that cause miles of the ocean floor to suddenly shift as much as 10 feet.

That’s a lot of water displaced!

There’s two ways to approach this potential as a tourist.

One is to never, ever, ever go anyplace that’s even remotely unsafe. This means that you’ll be spending a lot of time at home, in bed, with the covers pulled over your head. Living entails risk (even if it’s just from drinking the water!), and if you avoid all risk you’ll never do anything.

The other is to figure that when your time is up, it’s up. Doesn’t matter if you’re in bed or on a plane or in a boat or where you are in the world. So go have a good time, create a lot of memories and learn all you can.

Advertising

One of the things that we sometimes get a kick out of is the way words are spelled. Of course, these poor people are trying to understand a myriad of accents, including those from North Carolina and Oklahoma. It’s no wonder they sometimes think that words are different than they really are.

Sometimes, though, even on professionally done signs, you see something that catches your eye. We’re not talking about the cardboard offer of taxi or massage or something like that that’s obviously homemade – these are legitimate signs that are put up on businesses.

One offered Tattoos. Tattoo parlors are almost as prevelant here as places offering fish massage, which is to say they appear a bit more frequently than Starbucks in New York City.

We are not tattoo people. If you know us, that probably goes without saying. But just in case there’s any doubt, we are not likely to voluntarily have a needle plunged into our bodies thousands of times for the purpose of ornamentation.

There will be many people who have that done in their twenties who, in their sixties, will realize that gravity spares no one, and what may have been attractive on that firm, muscled youthful body will prove somewhat embarrassing later in life.

Fortunately, we’re both old enough that we came along before the tattoo craze started.

If we were tempted, though, sanitary conditions would be a primary concern. Thus, we took note of the address of this place advertising, “Sterilizer. Brand New Needyah.”

Just in case we change our minds this afternoon.

The other sign that caught our eye is this one at an “Opticians.” These, too, are very, very common and it took a while to recognize that they’re not opticians as we think of them stateside, but are as much sunglasses store as anything. Several do advertise having an optician to do an eye exam, though.

Remember that the Christmas decorations are still up here. Santa and Frosty and all the gang (or Thailand’s versions of them) make appearances in a number of store windows. They apparently don’t recognize, as we do in stateside malls, that summer begins on January 2 and swimsuits should therefore be on display.

This one opticians sign caught our eye, though – with the purchase of two sunglasses, they would include a free jacket.

You never know when you might need a jacket at the beach.

The Exxon Station - Phuket Style

Gasoline is used here. We point that out because in Bangkok, several vehicles ran on CNG, or Compressed Natural Gas. Not most of them, but some of them. We haven’t seen anything marked that way here and the gasoline powered internal combustion engine appears to be alive and well.

What is interesting is how people get their fuel. There is no RaceTrac to pull into, where you buy $50.00 worth of gasoline (1629 Baht!!), run in grab a jumbo bag of Doritos and a 44 oz Big Gulp before you dash back to your car.

Instead, there seem to be two types of stations in the areas where we’re at, although there must be something closer to what we’re used to seeing, maybe in the more residential areas where privately owned cars are more populous.

One type of station is geared more toward the skooters and motorcycles. It tends to be a display rack that looks remarkably like it actually came from a gas station – kind of a tripod affair, like those “wet floor” signs, only bigger, made of wire and holding bottles. The most predominant type of bottles seem to be those for “100 Piper Scotch”, with the labels still on them for some reason.

Gasoline is a deep red color, probably indicating octane. Each of the bottles is a little better than half full, probably holding a liter and they sell for 30 Baht (91 cents).

Now, for those who are metrically challenged as we are, a liter is .264 gallons, or a gallon is 3.79 Liters. This means that gas is running about $3.45 a gallon.

The other way is to go to a “gas station”. Again, no Slurpees here. 2 pumps (manually operated by pulling a lever to fill the glass bowl), no waiting, open 24 hours according to the sign.

Both the “gas stations” and the bottle service are located in strip malls, open air markets, and right next to other businesses. We didn’t see any tanks, but suspect they’re in the back of the stations, with the gasoline being pumped up to the front when you pull the lever. There isn’t any spatial separation from other businesses or fire suppression equipment that we saw, nor were there the spill catchment systems that are in US service stations to prevent groundwater contamination.

Sunday Dinner on the Beach

Sunday night had us once again craving non-Thai food. Although it’s very good, it is a bit tough on the tummy if you’re not used to eating all those chilis and curry. Rather than making the mistake we did before, though, we opted for seafood.

After all, we are right on the ocean.

Several places were recommended on the net, and we found one of them nearby – Patong Seafood Restaurant. A quick Tuk-Tuk ride and we were there.

Incidentally, Tuk-tuks look differently here than they do in Bangkok or Chiang Mai. Here, think of a shoebox. Actually, think of the vans that first came out in the mid-1960’s. Flat nose, square sides.

Now shrink them by 60%, so you think they might fit in the back of a standard pickup truck, if you really squoze them in there tight.

They’re not all red here, although ours happened to be tonight, and you get in either from the side or the back end. The driver’s up in a cab (it was apparently “Take Your Daughter to Work Day for ours, since his 2 year old was riding shotgun) and you sit on benches in the back.

When we got to the restaurant, we were seated in the open air part. They had these great fans attached to the ceiling – not ceiling fans like we’re accustomed to, but rather like floor fans but they were attached to the ceiling and oscillated every different direction.

The menu, fortunately, had pictures as well as multi-language descriptions. We picked some kind of fried won ton as an appetizer, and then 2 dishes – steamed crabs and prawns fried with limes.

Anyhow, once we selected our dishes, the waiter gave us a little piece of paper with something written on it in Thai and directed us back to the front of the restaurant.

Where the bait tanks were.

We’ve previously written about the fact that we’re more comfortable if our food isn’t looking back at us during dinner.

That feeling is compounded several times when you have to be the one sentencing the critter to the executioner.

The prawns, which are just shrimp on steroids, were already on ice.

The crabs were in a kiddie pool, and we thought they were similarly beyond hope until the lady reached in to get one and it fought back. 2 of them were finally plucked into a little plastic basket, where they were weighed.

Seems fresh seafood and market price are determined by weight. We approved the weight and pretty soon the dishes were brought to our table. They had thankfully broken the crabs apart (at least to some extent).

We agreed, you have to order crabs about once a year to remind yourself why you don’t order crab more often.

It’s a pain. There’s not much there to eat for what you pay for them. They’re messy and you’re likely to get it all over your shirt.

Tomorrow we’ll likely be back to Thai food. It’s pretty good, and it’s dirt cheap for the most part. Dinner was pretty good, but like all beach side restaurants, they take advantage of that ocean view. At 2550 Baht ($78.00), it was one of the more expensive meals we’ve had since we’ve been here.

Stateside, that would have been acceptable, but here you can get so much more for the same money!

Despite the price....we were still smiling because the food was so good.......see......

Our New Australian Friends

Last night we were sitting at a table in front of our hotel when we struck up a conversation with the guys at the next table – who happened to be from Perth, Australia – the place we were at just about a year ago this time.

What started out as just an aside turned into an amazing three hours of discussion as we sat there.

Joe, an architect, and Andy, a music teacher (cello), have been in Thailand for several weeks and, in fact, go back to Perth the same day we leave Phuket.

Our conversation went around many, many things – differences in geography. Driving on the “other” side of the road; the excitement of motorcycle taxis; being far away from your family; creating new families of choice when the biological ones aren’t available.

We went on to talk politics – it’s amazing how much people from other countries know about the US politics. We were at least able to avoid embarrassing ourselves because we knew the name of Australian Prime Minister Rudd (although we did mispronounce it). It was so refreshing to engage in a give and take conversation without being accused of being a traitor because you didn’t support the war in Iraq or weren’t sure which way to go on healthcare. There was a respect for differences of opinion and recognition that none of us knew the answers.

Was this because we were from different countries, and therefore didn’t have to win or lose against the other? Or was it just a simple civilized respect for another point of view?

They didn’t understand the US controversy over healthcare – to be honest, NOBODY that we’ve encountered from another country understands the controversy regarding healthcare coverage for all, and we tend to include ourselves in that same group.

As the hour got late, we separated to go our separate ways, exchanging e-mail addresses and promises to keep in touch, or offers of hospitality should any of us find ourselves on the other side of the world again.

This is what makes traveling abroad worthwhile.

Beach Relating

Here's a philosophical observation we've made about the beach.

Itís a universal leveler, and most everyone gets along.  Looking around from our spot, you could see people in every direction.  We counted at least half a dozen different languages being spoken, and lots of people were talking to individuals next to them through a variety of languages and gestures cobbled together.

And here's the kicker -- everyone was getting along.

Nobody was really concerned about anyone's political party or religion or even where they were from.  Most people smile and nod as you walk by and make eye contact (unless they're napping).

So what causes the ruckus when we get back home?  If individuals can get along, why can't the governments they make up do the same?  Is it because the individuals running those governments are promoting their own self-interests, or those of their friends?  They've decided to put themselves and their party first as opposed to simply doing the right thing?

We're not talking about issues where people legitimately have a difference of opinion on what the right thing is, especially when it's a coin toss as to which truly is correct and most actions have both positive and negative consequences.

It would seem that if governments could behave a bit more as if they were at the beach and don't play your radio too loud, don't get drunk and be obnoxious, control your children, don't shake sand from your towel upwind of your neighbor, etc. --  the world might be a better place.

Tipping and Haggling

Knowing the rules on tipping is always disconcerting when you travel.

It can be annoying at home in the US as well, but that’s another topic.

Last year in Australia, we got the word – don’t screw up the curve by tipping.  It wasn’t expected and just confused things. 

In Italy, you tip if you sit down (a service charge is automatically added), but not if you get a coffee at the counter.  In the hotel here, there’s tip jars, where presumably tips are divided among the staff, but you normally don’t tip for room service or in the restaurant.

For Taxis, you generally just round up a bit, but it’s not a lot of money and you get the impression it’s more to avoid the hassle of change than anything else.

The message boards and guide books were all over the place about tipping tour guides, drivers, etc.

We talked about it, and ultimately decided that it was better to tip than not, and to try to keep with the local custom but, if in doubt, be generous.

We don’t want to be the Ugly Americans who give everyone a bad name.

As a result, we’ve tipped our guides about 500 Baht for every half-day that we’re with them.  That’s about $15.00.  Drivers who are with us for a full day are tipped about half that much, and we slip a little something to staff members that we interact with as we’re leaving an establishment, if we’ve had contact with them several times, or people like the river raft drivers, the Elephant Mahout or the oxcart driver.

Although through a math error, the ox  cart driver was sadly under-tipped, an error which there’s no way to correct.

There are a couple of reasons behind our decision, aside from not wanting to be poor representatives of our country.

We’ve been blessed.  We know this, in that we don’t have to go hungry and are able to meet our financial needs.  Tipping to some of these people may mean the difference between whether they or their children eat tonight or not.  Neither of us wants to deal with that karmic debt, at least not intentionally.

The other thing is, it could very easily be one of our kids or a niece or nephew, or, under the right circumstances, either of us who are working a job that require tips as a substantial portion of our income.  With three approaching college, there are undoubtedly some part time jobs involved and waiting tables or bartending isn’t at all out of the question – we like to think that their future customers will be generous in light of their service, so we’re, “paying it forward,” now.

The other reason has to deal with currency conversion.  At the night market the other evening, Larry wanted a particular hat from a woman.  She said “150 Baht”, to which he promptly countered.  “Too much.  100 Baht.”  Quibbling continued, and ultimately the price was established 10 minutes later at 130 Baht.

They spent 10 minutes quibbling over 61 cents.

The information we have says that haggling over prices is expected, and in fact it’s somewhat rude if you don’t haggle in the markets.  We’re all for not being rude, but c’mon, how much effort is it worth to quibble over 61 cents?

Sorry

to keep revising the format......we are getting "error" messages when we try to post something.  Hope this will fix it.

Sunday afternoon at the beach...

At the beach, our wait-staff (?) was the same as yesterday – a kid of about 14, kinda skinny with a haircut that’s approaching a mullet but is probably more a result of neglect than any particular styling.  He’s wearing long denim jeans and a faded red shirt with a n advertisement of some type on it.

He recognized us from yesterday and was right there to get our umbrella repositioned so that our chairs were in the shade (this is included as part of the service).  He wanted to know what we wanted to drink and was quick to rattle off the list of beer and soft drinks that they had.

2 Singha Beer were 160 Baht ($4.85) the first time, although prices seem to be somewhat in flux.  The kid spoke a little English, and had to stop and count on his figures when tallying up a bill.  Change also seldom matched up correctly, although it wasn’t enough difference to worry about.

We decided it was safe enough to order sandwiches after a while, which were advertised at 100Baht.  $3.30 isn’t bad for the equivalent of a 6 inch Subway sandwich.  After a little debate, ham and cheese seemed to be the safest of the choices (Tuna salad being the one most likely to lead to food poisoning in the heat), and he was right back with them.

Here’s the interesting thing.  We didn’t tip him during the day, and it wasn’t as though he expected it.  He was back smiling and checking on us every half hour or so, and even started to kid with us after a while.

People here seem to like to rub or poke Larry’s belly.  Maybe it’s because he looks like a Chinese Buddha, especially with his shirt off – it’s not derogatory, though, and is always good natured and done with a smile.  They don’t do it to Eddie – maybe because he’s hairier?  It is somewhat reminiscent of what a pregnant woman goes through, though, continually being patted or touched unexpectedly.

Anyhow, the kid came through one time when Larry had dozed off and giggled as he patted his stomach and asked if we wanted anything else.

At the end of the day, when we were packing up at about 4:00, he walked by and we called him over and gave him 200 Baht.  At first, he thought we wanted more drinks, until we finally explained that was a tip, for him.

It was like he was almost going to cry – this tiny bit of kindness, something that was really insignificant to us, caused him to sit down and talk to us.  He said his name was “Boi” (which we’re spelling phoentically – he said it like “Boy”, but with an uptick at the end) and wanted to know our names, which he then worked to pronounce until we were satisfied.  He wanted to know if we were coming back and how long we were staying, and then he shook our hands – several times, in fact.

It was really very touching, and he was quite sweet, although you could tell he wasn’t quite sure about it.

With that, we headed back to cool showers and to get the sand out of places where grit isn’t appreciated.

A Lazy Sunday Morning

Sunday was a day of leisure and rest for us.  We woke up late (well, by our standards, anyhow), about 8:30 and didn’t roll out of bed and down to breakfast until well after 9:00 in the morning.

Whether that was a function of tired or the pills from the pharmacy that Eddie took is unknown – although we did figure out it was probably a generic form of Benadryl.

After breakfast we came back to the room and read for a bit.  Larry had tried to go next door to the 7-Eleven for a Sunday paper.  The report back – they sell lots of things, but no newspapers.  Oh well, the world will have to happen without us this week.

About noonish we decided it was time to vacate the room and head to the beach.  It’d been fairly windy early in the morning, but didn’t seem to be quite as hot as it had been the day before.  We got down to the beach, negotiated our real estate holdings from the landlord (“Not down there, not my chairs,” he said.) and were once again set up with loungers and an umbrella.

We have figured out that the place to do all of one’s Christmas Shopping is from a lounger at Patong Beach in Phuket.  Why, you may ask?  Because if you sit there long enough, eventually the entire J.C. Penney catalog will be paraded past you and offered for sale.

Notice in the pictures, one woman is carrying a bucket with cold drinks (we think).  They also come  by with a variety of food items.  That seems to be one enterprise, though, since many of them are wearing a yellow vest with numbers on them.

The others, like in the second pic holding up the silk robe, appear to be freelance operators, bringing by a variety of different things to sell -- T-shirts, swimsuits, cover ups, sarongs, beach towels, manicure sets (as well as manicure / pedicure services), carved figurines of every conceivable persuasion, brooms, brushes, pots, pans, hats, sunglasses, jewelry – you name it, someone will walk by and offer to sell it to you eventually.

Most are nice enough if you simply shake your head and say, “No Thanks.”  Show the slightest interest, though, and they will show a level of customer service that we could only hope to achieve at Sears!

The Pharmacy

The grocery store was exciting, but we were relatively sure of what we were getting; everything we bought was in a clear package, after all, so we generally knew it was fruit, or cheese, or whatever.

EB has developed a rash on his arms and legs, though, that is a bit of an irritation (pardon the pun). It’s also seems to be creeping ever-further across him, so it needed some attention.

There are little pharmacies everywhere here. Throughout Thailand, in fact.

They are more common than Starbucks in New York City.

They are tiny little things, roughly the same size as an average suburban kitchen.

Banish all thoughts of Walgreens or CVS from your mind. No chips, no T-shirts, no electronics, greeting cards, shampoo, deodorant, etc – just pharmaceuticals.

So we went into one for the first time, in search of something to kill a rash. There was a couch in the back of this one, and inside were two females that we presumed to be the pharmacists – they had on lab coats with their names on them – and a guy who was sitting on the floor playing cards with one of them. The other was lying on the couch, either asleep or watching television.

After explaining the problem, they consulted and one suggested that a cortisone cream wasn’t the answer – he needed a pill. She reached behind the counter, pulled out a little bubble-pack with 6 or 8 pills in it, wrote a “prescription” on it in Thai and noted it in her ledger. 180 Baht later we were out the door with the pills and a cream of some type that would help as well.

What is it?

No idea.

Labeling is all in Thai, although the name appears to be a generic form of Benedryl.

Guess we’ll know if the rash recedes!

Josh Moe

Our hotel has a redeeming quality above all others – an absolutely adorable baby. His dad, and maybe his mom, work here. Dad had him around the restaurant at breakfast, and he’s shown up a couple of other times. His pic is on the wall with the other staff members, and they seem to hand him around like community property.

He is adorable, though, and very sweet natured.

No place with a baby can be all bad!

American Lunch in Phuket

About 2:00 in the afternoon, we decided that we needed food.

Not Thai food, but something recognizable to the American palate, given that we’d had nothing really familiar since leaving home (well, except for scrambled eggs!)

The hotel recommended a couple of places, so we set off to find one of them for some lunch.

What a place! It was in a modern building, with both inside and outside dining. We opted for the air conditioning, which was set just above the sub-arctic temperatures that Americans tend to like.

The staff, all of whom spoke very good English, were dressed in tailored black uniforms and were very attentive to our desires. Drink menus popped up instantly, and food menus weren’t far behind.

There was a DJ playing music over a spectacular sound system – you could see the stage where live music must play in the evenings, and we learned that the DJ and music are so good that it plays over the local radio station as well. Mostly Top 40 numbers, with just enough older stuff mixed in to keep our interest.

The interior had teakwood tables set far enough apart that, had there been a lot of other diners, we wouldn’t have felt cramped, and there were photos of all the famous people who’d eaten there on the walls, most of them autographed.

The staff were obviously enjoying their work, and they were frequently dancing in the aisles to the music that was playing – most were in their early 20’s, so this was the music of their generation.

Our food came hot and looking exactly as expected – no curry or red chilis here!

Hard Rock Café truly is everywhere.

Now, here’s the kicker.

We both came away with incredible indigestion. Portions were wayyy too large, and we don’t need to go into how unhealthy a cheeseburger and fries are.

Yet, we ate it. And were miserable for a while. And now we’ll go back to eating Thai food, in moderation, and in reasonable sized portions.

Oh, and the cost for this gastronomic disaster? 1462 Baht - $44.30 -- about 3 times what we've been paying for lunch for two of us.

The Grocery Store

Another guest at our hotel offered several suggestions over breakfast. In the midst of all that, he told us where to find a large US-style mall. Normally, we wouldn’t care about that at all, except this one has a grocery store in it.

Years ago, there was a story about a family who were part of the boat-lift out of Laos and Vietnam. They made it to the US -- husband, wife and children – and were kind of dumped in a hotel for the first night until the host family could get to them.

They spoke no English, but were famished and the kids needed to be fed, so they ventured out and found a grocery store. Up and down the aisles they walked, where nothing looked familiar, until they found a package with something they recognized on it – fried chicken.

Remember, this is in the mid-1970’s, before microwaves and packaged deli food in grocery stores.

The family made their purchase and went back to the hotel, only to open the container and find – Crisco!

This is what it’s like going through a grocery store where you can’t read many of the labels. Now, fortunately, many things are described in multiple languages, and this store – which rivals any big grocery store in the US, or maybe even a Wal-mart – had a huge selection of fresh fruit already chopped up and packaged, along with a seafood market, cheese counter and lots of other stuff. We got several trays of cut up fruit to put in our fridge for later, figuring we may not want to venture out in the heat for something to eat.

A couple of blocks home and we were ready to stay in the cool for a while.

Incidentally, the blog website is having problems and sometimes the posts are delayed in going up.

Saturday Morning at Patong Beach, Phuket, Thailand

Saturday and the light of day found us in a better frame of mind. Construction noise wasn’t as bad as we’d feared, and we were only 5 minutes walk from the beach – who needs a pool? After breakfast at the hotel, we set off to do a bit of exploration and figure out what was in the neighborhood.

In the daylight the place looked much better than it had the night before. Part of it, of course, is typical beach-town. T-shirts upon T-shirts upon T-shirts, followed by sun glasses, flip flops, and an assortment of other schlock. The interesting twist here is that they offer massages most everywhere as well.

We noticed that the hawkers here are much more aggressive than they are in other places, and people are much less worried about exposure to the sun. Lots are more darkly complected than those in the North, and dress is much more casual. Most places, shorts and a tank top are acceptable.

Given the heat, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. We were glad to break out the shorts and tank tops.

By the light of day, Phuket looked much better. There is a very nice beach – this is one where the tsunami hit several years ago, although you wouldn’t know it to look at it. There are lots of chairs and umbrellas (200 Baht / day for 2 chairs and an umbrella – that’s about $6.50), and although it’s full it’s not overwhelmingly crowded. We’ve heard about other beaches in the area, but haven’t explored any of them yet.

The ultimate decision – stay here, enjoy what’s offered and see what it’s like.

Nightlife in Phuket

Our guide for this evening is Best, a 25 year old from northern Thailand who migrated toward the sun and sand when he finished his schooling. He met us in the hotel lobby at 8:00 to take us to dinner at a restaurant around the bay.

There are some things about beachside tourist towns that are universal. We were at a restaurant selling – surprise – Thai Seafood. And beer. And other alcoholic refreshments.

It was actually very good, and we got yet another sampling of the diversity of Thai food. This time we had steamed mussels, that came out in a little tray like escargot, only bigger. It was out of red clay like a flower pot, and each little indention had a Tee-pee like roof out of the same unfinished clay on top of it. These were eaten on pieces of garlic toast.

We had a soup, which, if poured over the rice, was tolerable by the Caucasian tastebuds. We’ve decided that white rice is the baking soda of Thai cooking. It’s intended to put out the fire, and you need to use lots of it. The other dish we had was white prawns (shrimp) that seemed to be stir fried in an assortment of vegetables.

Here’s the other thing we’ve noticed. If your food has a lot of kick to it, you don’t eat as much. Maybe it’s the flavor. Maybe it’s the burn. Who knows, but this entire meal was about $24.00, which is hard to beat.

After that, we were still concerned about our accommodations so we asked Best to take us by a couple of other hotels. We’ve packed up and moved before, and certainly won’t hesitate to do it again.

We looked at a couple that were really nice, and very reasonably priced. The problem? It’s the height of high season, and nothing was available for more than a night or two. Moving once is fine. Moving multiple times is a pain!

By then, Best was ready to take us to the “night life”, thinking that we were looking to bar hop and drink until the wee hours of the morning.

Did I mention he’s 25? At almost twice his age, we were ready to go home about the time that he normally would have been getting dressed to go out. The custom here is to sit on the verandas outside the bars / restaurants, have a drink and people watch. That’s certainly about our speed (especially when you can hear the music down the street just fine without having to shout at each other).

After about an hour, though, we were ready to call it a night.

Best is like many of the other guides that we’ve had on this trip in that he cobbles together several different enterprises to make ends meet. In addition for being a tour guide for the agency we booked through, he does his own tour stuff, sells herbal supplements (think AMWAY or Shaklee) and offers limo service, among other things.

Unfortunately we didn’t get a picture of him and this was the only time we were to meet him. No temples or palaces here, to speak of – just the beach (for us, at least).

Walking around Phuket, or specifically Patong Beach, at night felt very, very much like walking around the heart of Myrtle Beach – during spring break. Lots of tourists, lots of loud music, lots of hawkers. There wasn’t much to recommend it for relaxation from that point of view.

The good thing was that our hotel was away from the mix, out toward the edge of the beach, but still within walking distance. That also meant it was a lot quieter than some of the places that were immediately above the bars and tourist areas.

One other interesting thing – parking here is a mess, as you might imagine. If you go into a lot, you lock your car, but leave it in neutral (everything here is a stick; haven’t seen an automatic transmission yet). The parking attendants then push the cars around, like pieces in one of those puzzles where you slide the tiles back and forth, to make things fit. It’s fairly flat, but to keep cars from rolling away they throw blocks under the wheels.

We were home by midnight and did a little internet research to see if there was anyplace else that we’d rather go. Ultimately, we decided we were tired and would sleep on it.

Arrival in Phuket

We arrived in Phuket at about 3:30 on Friday afternoon. It’s a lot like coming into Key West, Florida – the airport is fairly small, and your luggage offloads to “Baggage Claim #1” or “Baggage Claim #2”, which are within fifty feet of each other. It’s undoubtedly larger than that, but that’s all that we saw.

Our ride was waiting outside where we were told he’d be, and soon we were on our way.

Phuket Island is much, much larger than we thought. Again, we were thinking “Key West”, where you can walk about anywhere (well, anywhere that tourists need to go). It took about an hour to drive from the airport all the way down island to Patong Beach, where we are staying.

When we got to the hotel, we had some reservations at first. It seems to be in the center of a construction site. By “in the center”, we mean that there are multi-story high-rise buildings being actively constructed during most daylight hours on both sides.

You know the commercial on Travelocity where the guy is trying to talk to the girl and every time he opens his mouth someone sets off a jackhammer? This was what went through our heads initially. Since we booked initially, the place had also got some less than glowing reviews for these very problems.

The courtyard, where there’s a pool, hot tub and sauna, are kind of a mess since they no longer get any sunlight and the plants are dying. The hot tub is closed because they can’t keep the construction dirt out of it and it keeps killing the filter. Given the heat, that’s probably somewhat irrelevant anyhow! They clean the pool twice a day in an attempt to keep it operable, but honestly, why anyone would want to lie by the pool with all that noise and chaos going on several stories above your head is a bit incomprehensible.

Of course, there are all kinds of promises and architects renderings about their own renovations and what’s going to happen – in the next 2 years. For someone who’s going to be here 5 days, that was of little relevance.

The room was fine. Nothing spectacular, but the bed was comfortable enough, there’s a fridge and a modern bathroom, internet and a television. It’s probably equal to the average beach rental at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and would work – but we were worried about the construction stuff.

It was with this on our minds that we went off to meet our guide at 8:00.

Taxi's -- a late post from Chiang Mai

We were on our own this evening, so we decided to venture out to see what Chiang Mai looked like at night.

There’s a lot going on. It’s not as hectic or as full as hustle and bustle as Bangkok, but there’s a fairly large tourist population around, as well as lots of locals that are more than happy to engage in commerce with you, should you have a need for something.

We were just window shopping, so there was a lot of, “No, thank you,” but they never seemed to take it personally.

In walking around, it gave us a chance to talk about and reflect on some of the things we’d learned, and that Tuu had taught us. As might be imagined, Eddie grilled him about healthcare.

We found out that their school system is much like ours, 6 years of primary school, 6 of secondary and 4 years for a Bachelor’s degree. If you want to be a nurse, it takes 6 years, and if you want to be a doctor it takes 8 years.

Tuu has friends who are nurses (which like in the US is predominantly a female profession), and was of the opinion that it is a very hard job, although it pays very well because of the overtime involved.

Most people work 8 a.m. to 4:00 p.m, six days a week. Government employees are the exception, working 8 to 5, only 5 days a week.

A nurse will make about 15,000 Baht monthly – that’s roughly $450 US – but they get overtime for working private duty afterwards. This lets them jack up their income, although of course, they’re working killer hours to make that money.

After we’d walked around a bit, it was time to head back to our hotel. At first, we looked for a taxi but none were to be found. We were told that traditional taxis like we were used to were sometimes hard to come by in Chiang Mai, and since it was approaching 10:00 at night apparently they’d all gone off duty.

A shopkeeper, sensing our plight said, “You take Redcap. Is OK. No problem.”

A redcap, to be distinguished from a Tuk-Tuk, is essentially a pickup with a camper shell on the back, but is open on the sides. Where you might have had a window, it’s open air and there’s no tailgate. That means you may suck up a bit of diesel fumes, but hey, we’ve all got a few brain cells to spare, right?

The guy helped us flag one down, we showed him on a map where we were going (having figured out that most don’t read English and many can’t read the native language, either) and climbed in the back.

You can’t get a ride like this at Disneyland, especially not for 80 Baht ($2.43). It wasn’t scary at all as long as you held on, and we could follow the map well enough to figure out that we were generally going in the right direction. When you want to get the driver’s attention, you push a button on the ceiling and it rings a bell up front.

Thus we fell into bed with visions of tomorrow’s Elephant Adventure dancing in our heads.