Party Down in Phuket

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If you’re a European - particularly a slightly overweight Russian, ornately decked out in gold chains that are tangled in overgrown chest hair - looking to get wasted and to contract a venereal disease or two, then Phuket is certainly the place for you. Otherwise, I can’t really say whether you would personally like it or not, unless you’re also the type to enjoy a “good” ping-pong show.



Phuket is Thailand’s party island; it is Spain’s Ibiza, with all the drinking and puffy, red-faced tourists, sprinkled with an obvious red light district. Klaudia and I spent a couple days too many there, specifically when we mysteriously developed a rash on our hands the day we were leaving – I don’t remember us touching anything we weren’t supposed to legally or morally touch, but, after taking some allergy medicine, we conked out on the bed and slept through half a day. However, I was fine with that because, in the evening, we were able to visit our favorite street side fish joint, which we’d visited every night, and had a fried red snapper in garlic and lemon grass sauce…but enough with food for a moment… it’s been so good in Southeast Asia, I just cannot get off the topic.



We’d arrived in Phuket a few days earlier from Penang, Malaysia. Our initial impressions of Thailand were not the best: all we’d ever heard from absolutely anyone when discussing Thailand was how nice the people were; yet, we were finding that to be a spurious assertion as we dealt with an inane and callously rude Thai tourist van driver, who had taken over the van once we’d crossed the border from Malaysia. I’m well aware of my personality trait to not back down from a confrontation at times, especially when confronting someone rude whose presence I don’t particularly enjoy, but I’m also aware of the fact that at times I take it a bit too far, right to the point at which it could escalate out of control. But I believe that I’m fairly adept at feeling out that point and can avoid most discomfited situations with a few words (I haven’t been in a fight since acquiring a bank account with some money in it) - I may have slightly overstepped those bounds with this driver.



In the end, nothing occurred except for an awkward 5-hour drive to Phuket and then us getting thrown out of the van, but we were already near our destination. It started when the driver uncouthly pointed to where he had assigned us our seats, way at the end of the van, boorishly blurting out “You there! You there!” several times. Klaudia, who can at times suffer from motion sickness, does much better on roads when she can see the road in the front to middle of the van. Rather than explain that to our driver – since I was annoyed with his impolite tone – I took Klaudia by the hand and sat down in the front row of the bus. The driver looked at me dismayed and pointed at the other seats again, coarsely mumbling something.



“No,” I responded; he looked again dismayed and the pointing became more energetic. I again said, “No”, and began to analyze his build: he was small in stature, but did have a tough face; I would need to watch out for his right hand, which was adorned with big skull rings on every finger; he was beginning to fume as we both began raising our voices. But, it was a losing battle for me – which I was partially aware of at the outset - as he wasn’t going to drive anywhere with us sitting in those seats, so we finally had to either wait for another van or concede the seat. We stayed in the van and received a spirited drive to Phuket, barely avoiding trucks and motorbikes on the narrow two-lane highway. Every now and then, we would shriek, “Are you crazy?! Do you know how to drive?!” as he swerved in and out of his lane, passing trucks uphill. It was the worst driving we’d seen from a specific individual thus far in Asia, and we’d been on the difficult roads of Nepal. Finally, having reached the limits of his patience, the driver abruptly stopped the van, briskly exited, walked to the back mumbling to himself, tossed our backpacks out of the van, and us with them. He pointed at our bags and said, “You there.” I couldn’t help myself and showed him the finger as he departed at top speed. Thankfully, we had already reached the island of Phuket, though it was on the outskirts of any town or beach. We were forced to take a long taxi ride to Patong Beach, the center of Phuket’s nightlife.



If we have behaved like real tourists at any time during our travels, it was here in Phuket. Our first day there, we were accosted by two Europeans selling something akin to time shares in a vacation package. We went along for the ride for the free gift, which was one of three possibilities: $8000 in cash, and iPad, or a one-week’s free stay at one of their hotels. I have no idea why we went along, but I suppose it was mostly due to curiosity of how this works in Asia; and, of course, we won the hotel stay (which we will probably never cash in), but only after we’d invested about four hours of our lives in this absurdity, when we were promised it would only take ninety minutes. The whole experience also left me with profound feelings of remorse when I’d allowed the incompetent salesman to test my emotions as he began using various sales tactics with which I simply cannot cope, such as building a sense of urgency and the North African trademark of acting angry. After I told him we were no longer interested, he violently stormed away, which is behavior I’d expect from a Thai villager selling trinkets or fish, but not someone feigning the role of a professional salesman selling $30,000 vacation packages. I became irate and began accusing him of wasting my most valuable of commodities – time. It was silly, but, before we departed, I did inform the salesman’s manager about what I thought about his employee’s behavior and suggested ways in which the childish employee, who had also successfully educed the child in me, could improve his sales techniques. We spent the rest of the day and evening pampering ourselves with cheap manicures and pedicures, including a fish spa natural foot skin therapy, wherein you stick your feet into a tank full of tiny voracious fish prepared to eat all the dead skin off your feet - it was tremendously tickling.



The following day, we took a tour package to Kho Tapu, or the coined “James Bond Island”, which was featured in the Bond film “The Man with the Golden Gun” with Roger Moore. We learned that it is now a major tourist attraction with boats coming onto the beach nonstop, emitting both pollution and tourists dressed like they were ready for the discoteque. On the way there, we also stopped at a couple islands for some cave kayaking, but I was disappointed when I saw locals in blow up, plastic kayaks doing all the paddling. While keeping the touristy nature of the trip in perspective, the scenery throughout our boat ride was both beautiful and fascinating with the Karst formations indiscriminately jutting from the water, imbuing the scenery with a jaggedly primordial appearance; we gazed at these rock formations in enchantment…that is, until our wonder was interrupted with a break dance show put on by the boat’s crew. I walked over to the bar and bought a bunch of beer.



That evening, we attended the Phuket FantaSea show, an extravaganza full of singing, dancing, circus acrobatics, explosions and the exploitation of elephants, one of which is the main attraction of the show. The package we purchased included a Thai buffet dinner, which was pretty tasty, served in a pretentiously lavish, silver-adorned dining hall, but my enjoyment of the event ended there. The whole place had a theme park atmosphere, with different forms of entertainment occurring before the main show, which consists of the maltreatment of animals in order to bring you the wondrous story of the Prince of the Land of Kamala and his faithful – and magical - elephant companion, Iyara. Together, they travel the land exploring its charming bounty of rice, pixies and women, fighting evil along the way, with Iyara constantly bailing out the Prince. They are met with their biggest challenge when some heinous demons kidnap the Prince’s first love, with a bloody, acrobatic battle ensuing. Iyara, of course, saves the Prince’s ass and the land of Kamala. In the words of the show: “Kamala, a land of peace and plenty… Kamala, a people of joy and harmony… Kamala, a story of myth, mystery and magic…” I would just like to add the following: “Kamala, where we had to beat Iyara God knows how many times to make him do that trick…”



In the evening, we took a peaceful walk along the beach and then a not-so-peaceful one in the red light district. Then I had a bad burrito, while Klaudia had some tacos. I cannot explain why we continue to order Mexican in Asia.

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Photos

pineapple fried rice
this became Klaudia's favorite dish