PHUKET, THAILAND--Sunday, April 7, 2013

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PHUKET, THAILAND--Sunday, April 7, 2013



The ship anchored on the eastern side of the island at about 10 this morning. All those who had booked a tour for that day were to assemble in the auditorium at 9:30 to get their tour number in order to stagger the tendering onto the pier so you could walk to where the buses were waiting.

We had booked a general tour around the island and so we gathered for a number, sailed off the ship in a 150 passenger boat, found our large bus, and settled in to begin. Our tender wasn’t like the ones in the picture, it was more like an old ferry boat.

The bus was decorated with Pepto-Bismol pink curtains and ruffles and bows inside—Valerie joked as she came down the narrow, narrow aisle that it looked like a bordello and several others and I agreed. Valerie asks you to be patient with her photos as most of them were taken through the bus windows.

Our guide started the tour explaining how the Thai people greet each other and tried to teach us to say hello with limited success. Looking out the bus window, the environment--flora and fauna, the buildings, homes, etc.--looked much the same as in the tropics anywhere, such as Mexico, Central America, Jamaica, and Indonesia.

Businesses are on the bottom floor and living quarters above--all in concrete. We were amazed at how many wires were strung from each pole and knew Dad would have been shaking his head over the danger such a “system” could be.

When we got into Phuket Town proper, there was a section that was built during the Colonial times when people from Singapore were imported to work in the tin mines. These mines are played out and now closed with the only island income coming from the tourists who flock here from Europe especially in the winter. For example, the island now has a two day a week direct flight to Moscow.

After a bit of a ride we crossed over the middle of the island and then down along the western side that is where all the beaches are and therefore all the tourist hotels, resorts, restaurants, shops, and more shops are located.

Everywhere you looked there were lots of motor scooters and people would buy gas from one-pump stations or from a hawker selling quart liquor bottles of gas that would get poured into the tanks. At the other extreme, there was a fairly new and large TESCO’s shopping market direct from the UK. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to see what they devoted shelf space to.

Quite frankly, Valerie and I saw absolutely nothing that would make us want to come back and stay awhile. The water was muddy colored NOT clear blue, the beaches were dirty NOT bright white sand, and the shops looked tired even though we know that many have been newly built since the tsunami hit in December of 2004. One thing that did surprise me was the hilly terrain, as I had expected the land to be more like the Bahamas than like the mountainous islands of Hispaniola or Puerto Rico.

No matter what tour you signed up for it seems that everyone made three stops. The first stop was to a Buddhist Temple where we lit candles and burned incense for Mom and Dad and our cousin Evelyn whose funeral was that day. They were having a special ceremony here that was the funeral of the head priest, so there were more worshippers than usual. On the hill above this site, one could barely make out a huge white statue of Buddha—The Big Buddha Temple--we think they said about 250 feet tall.

The next stop was at a cashew factory where we watched them crack and pull out a nut by hand and where we tasted a variety of different flavors of cashews. They also had a juice they made out of the cashew “fruit.” Valerie didn’t like it, and I didn’t try it, but one guy told us that since it was cold, he had 5 or 6 shot glasses of it.

The last stop was a jewelry “factory” that was exactly the same type of showroom as one we had visited in Bangkok several years ago. Fortunately, they had very nice restrooms and offered soft drinks and tea at the end of the showroom. This was our last stop for the day.

As we approached the dock, we spotted men walking out in the water about knee deep and some interesting fishing gear (we think that’s what it was). We asked the tour guide what the men were doing and he said they were after mussels for their dinner and that there were no commercial mussels grown near this island. You could also see the old fishing village and boats here.

Between the buses and where we caught the tender were several different tourist products and food stalls. One wonders how the call goes out to tell the people when to expect tourists, especially since this “port” was in no way equipped to very safely handle 1000+ tourists climbing over uneven steps from a rocking boat to a beat-up concrete pier on a regular basis.

Because we had to tender to this side of the island, our tour was nearly two hours late coming back and we were quite hungry, expecting to have been back by lunch time. Fortunately, we could still get lunch. Many people who had taken longer tours and arrived back substantially later complained that they had gone almost 8 hours without anything to eat. The captain even had to delay our departure by a half hour or so waiting for the last people to straggle in.

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