There's a hole in my Phuket

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Sawasdee!

Greetings from sunny Phuket! Gold Coast of Southern Asia!

The Hotel....

Jon and I are staying at the Merlin Beach Resort, about 5 minutes south of the main beach Patong. Being summer, and the monsoon season, the place is strangely empty. This gorgeous resort has 3 massive pools with surrounding palms, a beach either side to watch for oncoming tsunamis and enough restaurants and bars to keep me fed and jolly for a month! It's amazing how many ways you can use a lychee! We have indulged in room service, yummy curries, afternoon swims and massages on the beach with actual waves crashing instead of a CD playing in the background. Thai massages are a little different from the norm we expect at home - a lot more cracking and pulling of phalanges than I usually feel comfortable hearing, but anyhoo.

After we stuff ourselves with buffet breakfast, we usually head into Patong or to the pool for the day. We're really pushing ourselves here. I love it. The only thing that is slightly odd is the rampant colonial nature of the place. The large open bars made of dark wood and parquetry floors, the overhead ceiling fans pumping as hard as they can to keep the heat from crushing you, the busy hotel staff bringing you cold drinks and icy face towels, all the while they buzz around to keep the place running like a 5star resort. Guests are by-and-large Australian and the oz $ goes a long way here. We tip the staff 20 baht (70 cents) and they are so grateful!I feel like I am short changing them. But then I think of Patong Beach...

Patong Beach...

What a bizarre experience Patong Beach is! We headed down the mountain to check out the main drag on our first day here. My experience of taxi driver 'pro-activeness' in Bangkok was nothing compared to the fervent nature of the sales folk here in Patong. The street is lined with open shops selling extremely fake (very good to very bad) couture clothes, labels , shoes, bags (oh the bags!) CDs, DVDs and anything else that can be cloned at a dirt cheap price. Nothing in these stores has a price tag on it - all prices are made up by the seller as a starting price to be haggled with. Unfortunately enough, or unsurprisingly enough, it is I who first finds something to buy. Jon stands back and watches as I attempt my first purchase.

Me: How much is this shirt?
Shopgirl: 350 baht
Me: That is too much for me. can you go lower?
Shopgirl: You name a price, I think about it.
Me: 200baht?
Shopgirl: Ha Ha. No way. 300 baht.
Me: No, how about 210 baht?
Shopgirl: Miss, you my first customer. You make me go out of business! 280 baht.
Me: It's alright, I'll keep looking. I don't need to buy it now.
Shopgirl: Ok Ok, 240 baht. But don't tell anyone else Ok?
Me: Thankyou so much.

So in the end, after all that, I saved a grand total of $3.60. Woo hoo! It's so easy to get involved in the art of the haggle, you can forget you argue with them over $2-3. But when it's a forgery, how much is it really worth? I guess more to them than me...

Everything is rather cheap, except icecream. We splurged 620 baht ($20) on Haagen Dazs yesterday, but goodness me it was worth it! We're getting 3 suits with extra trousers made for the grand total of $500 and massages are 200 baht for an hour. It really is a place where you can spend like a king. The constant barrage of sales pleas does grow tiresome after a while. A leisurely stroll down the street is not really possible, however we have discovered that even Thai people get knocked out by the heat and that afternoon droll, so around 3pm we do most of our shopping. Less haranging and more discounts and we all go home happy.

Monday we head to Phi Phi for some snorkelling, so will write more then. I'm sure I've left a million details out!

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