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Published: February 28th 2008
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To get to Kata beach we had to get the bus into Phuket town and then another bus from there to Kata. It wasn't a major issue and was a quarter of the price of the taxi's. The buses are pretty old but we have been on far smaller cramped public transport with our back packs. We had not booked any accommodation in kata and were just going to walk round until we found something. There are two beaches very close to each other here. You have Kata and Karon, we chose Kata because it was the smaller of the two. Phuket also has Patong beach which is the main tourist beach. Full of go go bars and very very busy. We had already agreed we would stay there two nights but no more. So we had 5 days planned in Kata.
We passed Karon beach on our way and was astounded at the amount of people on the beach. We were rather smug at this point thinking Kata would be quieter but with enough choice that we didn't have to eat at the same place every night. When we arrived in Kata it was pretty much the same, not
to be deterred we set off back packs on to find somewhere to stay. After around 10 minutes and a few guest houses that were way out of our price range we found a small hotel about 5 minutes walk to the beach. we checked in and dumped all our stuff grabbed our beach bag and went to explore.
Kata beach is a beautiful bay, quite small in terms of the other beaches but still a good size. It was like looking at an english beach on the one sunny day we get where every one is out. Sunbeds stretched on and on down the beach. Groups of lads were playing football, very white skin was burning at a rate of knots and overall it was extremely busy. All we could think was if this was the quieter beach what the hell was Patong like?? We sat down with a drink and had to decide what to do. We didn't want to go back to Nai Yang and we didn't want to go to Patong too early as we knew it would be busier. Karon beach looked as busy and then we realised that we have been very spoilt
on our beach travels so far. Phuket is a main package holiday destination and we had to accept that. Things were no cheaper either the restaurants were bigger and if you were on a two week break you wouldn't think twice about the prices but things are entirely different for us.
The main street is pretty and full of shops etc...we walked round checking where was good value and where was not. The main thing we found here is that everything is new, we derived that this was probably because of the Tsunami. There are no beach shacks as we have experienced in Thailand before just rows and rows of new concrete complexes which have little character. We also had another problem, the hotel we had checked into was good enough but it had not got an outside sitting area and the room was not one you wanted to spend any length of time in accept to sleep. We found some bungalows advertised near the beach which we 100 baht more than we were paying but they were on a hill with a pretty view across the sea. They had availability and were much more in line with what
we like. So we decided to go back to our original hotel and try to check out without paying a full nights payment. Tim spoke to the lady and she was not very impressed she wanted to charge us half the rate. We decided that for 2 hours she was expecting a little much and opted to get our things and give her 200 baht. We hadn't used anything in the room so they did not have to do anything. She was not happy with our 200 baht and the young lady that checked us in must have got a telling off for not getting us to pay up front. We left her with the money and walked to our new hotel, checked in and agreed that although we may have been a little naughty we had been fair. By this time it was pretty late and we were tired so we found a small bar that had a reasonable priced menu and I got the most delicious cottage pie!!!
The next day we headed off for the beach at around 10am. Nothing opens in Phuket before 9.30am which again was pretty strange to us but I suppose normal
tourists enjoy their well deserved lie in. By 10.30-11am there are no sunbeds left on the beach so you have to be pretty smart getting organised. So many people are walking up and down the beach looking for somewhere to deck out for the day. Only to find that the whole beach is full, this must be around 1000 sunbeds.
Once we got into the swing of things it was okay. You have to change the whole way you approach things and constantly remind yourself that this is confined tourism, just like we used to do. Throughout our travels I have been very conscious of local customs. No topless sunbathing, no over the top clothes and in general making sure you do not offend anyone by your actions. Phuket is entirely different, topless bathing is the norm even though it is officially illegal. The people watching was good and we saw some pretty scary sights on the beach!! What surprised us the most was being around western children again. We had not spent a massive amount of time around western kids in the past two months as the places we had been were not really family destinations. Constant
crying, screaming and tantrums throughout the day. Four ice-creams each, sets of bats and balls, constant attention and yet still they were unhappy. This is just so very different to the asian children who make little fuss about anything and have so little in comparison.
We enjoyed Kata especially the rough sea in the afternoon which was great for wave jumping, there were even a few surfers about every so often, not over good though! We bought extra DVD's to keep us going on our travels as once we hit Australia the cheap copies will dry up we expect. We didn't do any tours here as we wanted to save our fun money for other destinations also we have already seen a lot of Thailand already.
We decided to stick to our plan and brace ourselves for two days in Patong. When trying to arrange how we would get there we realised that we could not use the local bus. The taxi services have the monopoly on taking people from bay to bay. They wanted an extortionate amount for saying that Patong was only two bays up the coast. We ended up having to get the local bus
from Kata back to Phuket town and then another bus from there to Patong. A 20 minute journey took us almost 2 hours. Again normal tourists wouldn't think twice about the price but it is an absolute rip off. We certainly saw a different Thailand in Phuket.
So we moved on to Patong beach completely aware that we may actually hate it there..........
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