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.