Big Buddha, Temples, Numb bums and Finding Nemo

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We arrived in Phuket after a 23 hour journey which went without any hiccups but it was just soooo long, so this as well as travelling through 3 time zones had us ready to collapse into bed! We had a taxi booked to pick us up and sure enough it was a relief to see our guy stood waiting for us with our name on a board. Whatever we may have thought it was going to be like was diminished within two minutes of getting out of the airport, it was mayhem! The police looked fierce and their whistle blowing at the motorists and pedestrians was ear piercing and frantic as everybody is cutting in. The roads are quite good but there are thousands of scooters, cars, busses and all manor of anything else that has wheels all competing for space. A big thing for us is that there does not appear to be any health and safety in anything, no crash helmets are worn and if you go to hire a scooter there is no insurance for them, it's kind of anything goes! The apartments where we are staying are being painted and the decorators are just dangling five floors up by a single rope and having looked at one of the ropes up close they are quite worn! I keep waiting for an aaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh and a body flying through the air!

Anyway we are now a few days in and we have been out for meals and sampled a few of the restaurants and bars. We have found a couple that are good and when in Thailand eat Thai food, we have had some really good curries and noodle dishes. I ordered a spicy chicken salad yesterday and it was not what I expected at all, it was a quarter of a cabbage, a pile of uncooked green beans, a couple of lettuce leaves and a piece of cucumber and the chicken was minced with coriander. I won't be ordering a salad again! Last night I was craving a cheeseburger and generally I don't even like burgers!

Hired a car today, it was a Susuki Jimmy. What a heap! There was no suspension and boy there are some very big potholes here, every bump was felt and the noise, even ear defenders would not have obliterated the noise and rattles that this thing had and going up hill was a first gear crawl so much so that we were overtaken by everything else on the road. What can I say it was cheap and now we know why, for the first minute it was funny after that it was just down right annoying!!!! Anyway first stop was The Big Buddha and yes it is big. It stands on the top of the Nakkred Hills and can be seen from half of the Island so the views from up there are quite something. The whole thing has been built and maintained through public donations so as you can imagine they are after your money but not in your face with it which on the whole is what we have found all around here. You can be blessed by the monk who sits cross legged in front of a shrine after putting an offering of money in his basket or you can learn to meditate, we purchased a gold bell which is supposed to bring peace and happiness and as it was our wedding anniversary we wrote our message on it and hung it up by the Buddha in the hope that it will bring us a happy and fulfilled life. We left it tinkling in the breeze amongst hundreds of others feeling quite good about ourselves. Just a bit of culture for you, Buddha is known as the enlightened one and he knows the ultimate truth of the earth, the teachings of Buddha are, refrain from all kinds of sin, do good deeds and purify your mind. A lot of the teachings are about being respectful and putting Buddha in an inappropriate place or looking down on an image or statue of Buddha or using his name in the wrong way is all seen as being very disrespectful. "simple respect will bring good vibration and a harmonious heart for us all". Now you are all enlightened its back in the bone shaker (clap trap car) and off to Wat Chalong Temple. These are Phukets largest temples and quite something, very ornate and full of gold statues but at the same time very peaceful. There are flowers and joss sticks available for you if you want to make an offering to Buddha and providing you take your shoes off and have your shoulders covered you can wander around the various temples and contemplate life. Good trip and well worth going. Next place on the list is Leam Phromthep which is at the southerly tip of Phuket, it has great views and most people go at night to watch the sunset over the ocean. We were there at lunch time so it was good to sit under an umbrella and catch some shade for a while as well as a couple of beers to quench our raging thirst! We had a wander round the lighthouse which was very ornate and then we visited the Elephant shrine which is a surrounded by hundreds of small elephant statues which apparently represent wisdom and strength in the Buddist teaching. I have very mixed feelings about this as on one hand they pray to the elephant shrine and all that it stands for but then on our travels here we have seen numerous elephants that actually look very stressed and miserable to me. There are elephant trekking centres all over and they look like an elephant taxi rank! They are all just stood waiting by a very large platform for tourists to jump on them, this is bad enough but then they have baby elephants shackled for the same tourists to clamber all over having their photos taken, it's actually quite upsetting and makes me want to be the Jane Goodall of elephants.

Well we have had a couple of days pootling around the resorts of Surin Beach and Bang Thao Beach and we have very mixed feelings. Where the beach clubs and holiday resorts are the beaches are really clean and raked over but the rest of it which is actually most of it is littered with plastic bottles and rubbish. There can be a really nice restaurant and then next door to it is a wasteland with rubbish, dirty smelly water and dogs! Who wants to eat amongst this. The roadways around the little beach resorts are sandy dirty tracks and you come back dusty and in need of a shower. This is and has been for a number of years a holiday destination and whilst some of the Island has breathtaking scenery a lot of it is just a dump. It's a shame because with a little effort it could be cleaned up and made attractive. I have to say the biggest eye opener is the amount of middle aged/older men with very young Thai girls, in fact it's gross! They ride around on scooters with a young girl on the back and yes I know some of them are looking for some company and over here it is very easy to find but at the same time it just looks sleazy and skin crawly, yuk!!! On a plus note the Thai people are really nice and very polite and friendly, Baz and I have been doing so much "Wai" which is the greeting made by a slight bow and the hands held together in a prayer like fashion that Baz can nearly touch his toes!!! See there is a plus side to all this gesticulating!! Oh another plus is the sunsets are beautiful, the whole sky turns into an exotic array of purples, pinks and blues, sitting in a beach bar with cocktails watching the sun go down has just got to be the best way to end the day. Magical.

Well today we hired a scooter (sorry Dad) as it seems to be the most widely used mode of transport and Baz had an itch that needed scratching. Having not driven a scooter for a very long time he pootled off by himself for a practice and then feeling confident he came back and picked me up. We did wear helmets which is unusual here but I have to say being very hot and sticky with a helmet on does not make for a good look when you pull up to go in a nice restaurant for lunch! I must have looked like an overripe tomato having a bad hair day, gorgeous!!! Anyway off we went to Phuket city to investigate, we saw the shrine of the serene light then we ambled down a street that used to be home to brothels, gamblers and opium dens but now all the buildings have been restored and painted in all different pastel colours. We then drove out to the harbour, now that really was a dirty slummy area, people living in absolute poverty, kids scrambling over rubbish dumps, clothes being washed in the filthy rivers and rubbish piled high. The smell was not great! We then got lost several times as we normally do as neither of us has any great sense of direction and we thought well it's only a small Island how lost can one get. Fortunately when we pulled up to check the map on several occasions people pulled over on their scooters to ask us if we were ok and pointed us in the right direction. The Thai people are so lovely and wanted to help us despite the language barrier. Onto the Royal Phuket Marina and this was a completely different world entirely. Large villas around a marina with lots of very very nice yatch's and speedboats in, millionaires playground. We found a lovely bar overlooking the boats and enjoyed a well needed drink and some late lunch. Back on the scooter and by now I was beginning to think that I was going to be walking like John Wayne for a couple of days, my inner thighs were complaining and I was wishing that I had been and used the gym this week. So having been in the saddle for 7hours and sporting a bottom that no longer had any feeling we made our way home for a chill. Who knows it may be a shower and then cocktails on the beach again. A good day and Baz was brilliant, he negotiated the traffic around the city really well and we arrived back safe and sound with no broken limbs, thinking about applying to join the Hells Angels now!!!

Our last full day in Phuket and we took to the high seas and went to Phi Phi Islands where they filmed The Beach with Leonardo Di Caprio. We opted to go with a firm who were one of the most expensive but it was clear from start to finish why they were. They were a very professional, happy helpful crew and made our day fantastic. We went directly to The Beach and had a walk around, took photos and had a swim, the only thing is it is definitely on the tourist map big time as there must have been at least 20 boats all mored up. It was a bit like 3 in 3 out. Then it was all aboard and onto a lagoon where the lime stone cliffs rose up out of the sea and created a very dramatic vista, with the greens of the cliffs, the blue sky and turquoise sea it was very beautiful. This time the lagoon was very deep so Baz and I very bravely jumped off the front of the boat together thus creating what I can only describe as a mini tsunami. Quick pull in at monkey beach to see the Macaw moneys, and as if on queue they started coming down from the trees onto the beach as one of the guys threw them some fruit. Next stop and this time it was on the coral for some snorkelling, trying to fit your mask, not poke your eye out with the snorkel and put on fins then waddle your way to the back of the boat like a penguin can be a little daunting especially when there are quite a lot of parts of you wobbling at the same time, Oh to be thin!! Anyway the snorkelling was good and we saw loads of fish, especially when the guy off the boat launched his banana at you and the fish all dived for it, he just wanted us to have an up close experience! Next onto a beachside restaurant for lunch which was good, a hot buffet, something for all. Off again and more snorkelling in deeper water this time. Very peculiar, I didn't once hear the jaws music in my head. Don't know whether it was because I checked on the internet for shark tales before going or whether once you have snorkelled in Australia where there are really big ones you become a little nonchalant about it. Truly good day, spectacular scenery and a perfect way to end our visit to Phuket.

Tomorrow it's off to the airport and onto Vietnam and Cambodia, back soon........................

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