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Published: March 2nd 2010
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Karon Beach
Relaxing at the beach. I slept late after my outing last night. Once I finally got out of bed and cleaned up, I made my way out to get some food and take care of my bus ticket to Bangkok on Tuesday. I found a tour shop that also handled bus tickets and managed to get one that leaves Tuesday morning and allegedly takes 12 hours. Since I needed an ETA so the hostel wouldn’t give away my room, I questioned the girl if this actually takes 12 hours or if it’s much longer like every other Asian transport has been. She said, “Could be 15 hours.” I’d take the over on the latter.
I spent the rest of the day at the beach, mostly reading and napping. The highlight was watching people go parasailing. It wasn’t the people so much as one of the crew that would ride along by running just behind the parasailer and, just after liftoff, jump and catch the ropes. He’d pull himself up over the parasailer and be up there for the entire ride, jumping off just before landing.
The beach itself was a bit of a letdown. Perhaps I missed some of the “good beaches” but
Thunderstorms
Thunderstorms rolled into the area but didn't hit the beach. I’m really not sure why Thailand is known as such a great place to go to the beach. Sure they are nice but since dogs roam free and defecate on the sand, patrons need to take extra precautions like wearing sandals or those goofy crocs to avoid getting parasites. I’ll take sanitary beaches any day.
After the beach, I went back to the guesthouse to get cleaned up. Still a bit concerned (maybe overly so?) about parasites I decided it would be best to wash my towel, swim trunks and t-shirt that I had worn to the beach. I did this in the shower, which actually worked out surprisingly well. The towel I have, a micro fiber one (I also have one as a bath towel), is really amazing. I had it soaking wet, rung it out and it was completely dry in a few hours just by hanging it up indoors.
As I did my wash, I had the TV on in the background; my first time seeing normal TV in a long time. They have a lot of stations from around the world here. I first tuned into
Popeye before switching over to Fox News. I
Parasailing
One of the workers hangs on the lines and climbs above the thrillseeker. finally learned about the massive earthquake that hit Chile and immediately wondered about tsunami effects. The anchor went onto say that there was a warning for the bulk of the Pacific Rim. It had been reduced to just Hawaii and even that had since passed.
I hadn’t heard about any of this in town, though we’re on the western side of Thailand more than 100 miles from the susceptible east coast so more than likely there wasn’t cause for concern. Incidentally, one of the first things I had noticed at the beach earlier were signs showing tsunami evacuation routes.
For dinner I tried a different Thai restaurant called Elephant Restaurant. There I dined on tom yam gung , which was not nearly as spicy as what I’m used to, though it was tasty with an unexpected sweetness, and yellow noodles with seafood. The yellow noodles, once I got done adding my special touch to them, were excellent. I added a lot of spice to them, going overboard with the crushed red pepper flakes and some sort of other pepper spice. I think they might take the traditional Thai dishes and water them down for western palates. Shame on them. Thai food should be drain-your-sinuses spicy at the very least.
After dinner I made my way back to the guesthouse for a relaxing evening. I was still pretty beat after a night out - I can’t hang like I used to. I caught up a bit on my entries with the movie
Analyze That on in the background. I’ll be up early tomorrow morning for my Phang Nga Bay tour.
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