Jack Sparrow... Crazy Man

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When heading to Phuket i understood that it was far more developed than any of the other islands we had visited previously but when we arrived i couldn't believe how big it was or how busy. It took us nearly 2 hours to drive to Bang Tao the area we had decided to stay passing through heavy traffic and towns, such as Patong. We had chose a great place to stay, Bang Tao is a much quieter area of Phuket and has several very expensive resorts set up behind the beach. Unfortunately we were not staying in one of these but at Bangtao Lagoon Bungalows that has a mix of fan and aircon bungalows. We had booked into the fan bungalows at 630 baht a night which we thought a right bargain as they were nice, clean and they had great sun loungers on the beach.

The beach was clean and at our end of the beach quite quiet with no screaming children and hundreds of people such as up the other end near the expensive resorts.

We arrived in the evening as the sun was setting and after travelling all day we were tired and ravenous so went down to the beach and sat down at the first restaurant we came to which suprisingly enough happened to be thai. It was much more expensive for fresh fish than on previous islands so i ordered a thai green curry which i unfortunately didn't get and ended up with the infamous sweet and sour chicken, oh well, to compensate the manager gave us a plate of pineapple for desert which was yum. Pineapple is so nice out here, my mouth is watering thinking about it now.

After dinner we walked along the beach to see what else was around and we came accross a Reggae Bar, not just any Reggae bar but a Reggae bar that was either run by or had a guy that worked there who went by the name of Jack Sparrow, a completely crazy Rasta!

There were hardly any customers in this bar but lots of friendly staff dancing to the legendary and i almost feel Thai favourite, Bob Marley! They did not just like Bob Marley but they treated him like a god and as Jack Sparrow came to the bar he prayed to Bob to bring luck to the bar. It was crazy but we ordered a bottle of lethal Sangsom and got right into it. We set off a huge paper latern into the sky and watched a poor elephant be led along the beach to take tourists to and from their hotels. The rastas all took to Gaz and gave him a Jamaican Rasta hat to wear in the bar and a Jamaican anklet to keep. Its needless to say we got very drunk and walked back along the beach in the dark to our bungalow.

We liked Bang Tao and had been looking for somewhere to stay for 5 or 6 days that was reasonably priced and nice so we booked in for some extra nights and some rest from the constant moving about.

We didn't do too much in our time in Bangtao, lots of days at the beach and resting up really. There were some good restaurants around and away from the beach a bit towards Surin we found a great place owned by a Thai lady and her Canadian Husband. We ate there a couple of nights and one night they had on a great buffet for 250 bart. It was really good with great steak, fish, chicken, prawns, need i go on!

One afternoon we took a cab to a neighbouring beach at Surin a little further south than Bang Tao. I felt like i wasn't seeing much as i had spent so much time lying in the sun on the same beach. After much unsucessful bartering for a taxi we went to Surin, took 1 look at the beach and decided that we had definately chosen a great area to stay as Surin beach looked like a sunbed factory. It was chocker block and looked like we had just stepped onto a beach in Europe, so we turned back round and took a taxi straight back to Bangtao.

We spent 6 nights in Bangtao and booked a ferry ticket to take us next to Phi Phi an island in the Krabi province south of Phuket.

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Photos

Hey man, no problem
Dont worry, be happy

On the sunbed
Lots of this has been going on