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Published: March 4th 2013
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Patong
Night life Day 498 Wednesday 20
th February
We landed at Yangon (Rangoon) Myanmar (Burma) at 5.30am local time after flying for 10 hours and we had to hop off the plane for an hour whilst they refuelled and changed crew. Underway again we flew another 2 hours to Phuket where we landed at 9am local time. Got through immigration and customs and outside were met by a scrum of taxi touts, and the first guy gave us a price of 1500 Baht ($50) to get us to Patong Beach. The next guy was 700 Baht ($24) but we ended up getting a minivan seat for 180 Baht ($6) each. We had to wait for 40 minutes before they had a full van and we could leave. About 10 minutes down the road we stopped and everyone had to get off and go into an office and give details of where we were staying, this was basically so the driver could work out where to drop everyone off at. From here it was another 30 minutes before we hit the outskirts of Patong and thankfully for us we were the first to be dropped off.
We are
Patong
Old bikes above Nickys bar staying at Nicky’s Handlebar which is a Harley Davidson workshop, bar and hotel, so it is a fairly unique place. Everything has a motorcycle theme and there are heaps of bikes about including a 1923 Indian Scout. We crashed in our room for a couple of hours to cool down but avoided sleeping as we wanted to keep awake till tonight. Went for a long walk down town and got a stopped at a restaurant where we got the worst Pad Thai we have ever had. Wandered back to our hotel where we sat at the bar and had a few drinks till around 6pm we couldn’t keep our eyes open anymore and we returned to our room and crashed after being awake for about 36 hours.
Day 499 Thursday 21
st February – Day 505 Wednesday 27
th February
Well for the last week of our trip we pretty much bludged and took it easy in Patong Beach Thailand. Days were spent swimming and reading and the nights drinking and partying. First impressions of Patong were not good but we got used to it and in the end enjoyed our stay here. Found
Patong
Patong beach most restaurants were overpriced and of poor quality and it was best to eat in the more open aired restaurants where the flavours were better. The beach here wasn’t that appealing but I guess being Australian we tend to be fussy about those sorts of things. The street hassle here is probably some of the worst you will get anywhere in the world. Generally the Thai people are friendly about getting you into their bar or shops and don’t persist, but some will get physical and will not take no for an answer. We were lucky being a couple so I (Scott) avoided getting hassled by the “massage” girls and lady boys but we saw heaps of single males being hounded continually as they walked the streets. We overheard one German guy who was being pestered by a woman tell her “I am so sorry but I could not possibly do those things as I am going to be the next Pope”, great excuse but it only seemed to confuse the girl who kept trying to drag him in to her shop. We did discover that if the guy was telling the truth we could be potentially getting a more
Patong
I wonder what his specialty is? open Pope, because we are sure he went inside.
Our worst experience of being pestered came from a bunch of English tourists running around on scooters trying to give us something for “free” which ended up being a free drink at a seminar for a time share apartments. Patong and Thailand’s most infamous product for tourist is the ping pong shows, which we had thought that we might go see, but after reading some blogs and other information decided against it. Performers in ping pong shows are often trafficked from Burma and Cambodia, work in the sex trade for little or often enough no money. Several human rights groups are starting to campaign against the shows not only because of the physical and mental harm to the performers but often enough the show owners are linked to child prostitution and human trafficking. We would suggest anyone who wants to go to a show to read up some details on them and you can start by going to Wikipedia and typing in “ping pong show”.
Patong will not win any travel awards for us but it wasn’t a bad place to finish our 505 days of travelling. We could
Patong
The main drag through town chill and relax and prepare ourselves for a return to the real world, an event we never thought would catch up with us, but unfortunately on Wednesday the 27
th February we boarded that jet for home.
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
505
Impressive number...505 days on the road...guess it may be hard getting used to it being over...505...impressive in any language. Well done...must be time to plan the next one!