Slightly delayed by lack of photo editing, but some click here to see some edited pictures from our trip to Thailand over Xmas and NY.We started off by arriving in Patong in Phuket province. Patong is really the Costa del Thailand, it's brash and touristy and the primary business is prostitution and vacationing, often combined. The girls are centred on 'beer bars' often little more that a set of stools round a bar, often 30 or 40 crammed into a tiny side street, though some are monolithic themed affairs with many phallic statues adorning their facades and interior.
However much you try not to let it, you can't help but shudder at the, and let's be quite frank here, guys who even their mother might have trouble loving for their appearance pawing at the Thai girls who are quite content to put up with it in the name of revenue.
The main reason for going to Thailand was to catch some diving at the Similan Islands and avoid Xmas. We'd scoured the Internet to find a boat departing on the 24th December, with West Coast Divers. We transferred up to the boat the next day with tour leader Milton (about the most laid back person you might ever meet) and the majority of the rest of the group. The boat isn't the most luxurious that I'd ever been on, but as we were the last to book, we got the worst cabins, below deck, by the engine room, and so small that you actually had no floor space, just 2 single bunks, slightly staggered. Beatrice threw an epic strop, but there was no way of changing them and we had to deal with it. Liveaboards in the area are generally quite small, but the team on board were pretty clued up and the cooks managed to produce an amazing variety and quantity of food from the tiny kitchen, including a full roast turkey and works on Xmas day itself. For my part, I'd smuggled a small Xmas tree from Singapore in my rucksack, which we zip tied to one of the tables on the main deck. You can see Mod, our dive guide looking at it in awe and wonder on the pics.
The diving ranged from downright excellent (Richeliu Rock) to a bit average in places. Certainly overall I'd expected a lot more from the Similans based on their reputation. We also had to endure some supposedly qualified (50+ dives) divers highly overweighted and kicking the crap out of the reef. To be fair the dive guides did their best to keep them away from the reef after dive 1, and they always ended up finishing 15 minutes before the rest of our group due to air consumption. We saw a lot of boats at any one site, so you can imagine the impact this has to be having on the reef. Sigh.
Anyway, lots of marine life, we had one dive spending a lot of time with a huge Manta ray, sadly my camera had fogged and all the video looks like London on a foggy February day. Ditto the pics. We also got to see a few seahorses, which Bea was very excited about and my favourites, octopus and cuttlefish kept popping up from time to time. If you really like fish pics (and I guess there are a few divers reading), there is a second album on Fotki.
The pic of the turtle and the Angel fish represented an amazing standoff between the two, as the Angel fish pestered the turtle as it broke up the coral in order to get some food of its own.
The second half of our stay was at Kata Beach. Lonely Planet had sent us there as it was full of 'bohemian, young travellers'. Whoever researched the guide wants to do more checking, as it seemed to be exclusively full of Scandanavian families, who all went to bed at about 10pm. We casted around the resort trying to find somewhere with a bit of atmosphere but with limited luck. Initially we walked around, but soon decided to hire a scooter to get around. There is a nice picture of me on the scooter with my 'purple helmet'. Just gay enough Mr Brown...
If you ever go to Kata, I can thorougly recommend a trip to the Dino Park Mini golf. It's both educational AND fun. It's like info-tainment. I also got to ride on a Ankylosaurus and you can't say that about every holiday. Bea also won the round by 2 strokes, but then she did used to play golf seriously. Or so I tell myself. Hole 17 was fiendishly hard.
Did a spot more diving, this time with Sea Bees. The guide they gave us was certafiably useless and pretty much wrecked the dives we did. He couldn't tell one end of a wreck from the other (literally) and basically disregared all agreed plans when in the water. Beatrice was super unhappy again, but she has always belived that the guide knows everything. We've made up a new sign for underwater that represents 'this guy is an idiot, let's do our own thing'.
We'd found the one decent bar in the area, called Nakonnai, an odd place with an art gallery as part of the bar and a house band who just loved playing music. We were tempted to go there for NYE but we'd been diving and someone had told us about a decent club in Patong that wasn't totally rammed with hookers and played decent music so we decided to give that a go. Owing to a miscommunication between myself and Beatrice we ended up with about 1000 BHT left to last us the whole night and get us back to Kata. We bought some cheap beers from the 7-11 and walked around the town which as it was NY had attracted a lot of people out and it diluted the bawdy atmosphere somewhat making it quite enjoyable. For me the highlight was going to the beach where people were selling fire ballons and setting them all adrift until there were hundreds of them. Firecrackers were being set off and rockets, and vendors were selling silly string so you could spray the surrounding area with CFCs and toxic chemicals. Of course we couldn't afford any of this, and we had to leave the beach before mid-night to get into the club which would have cost us 500 BHT each otherwise afterwards... Even so, we still had to share beers, though we did come out with enough to buy our own fire balloon and get a taxi home and the net result was not having a hangover the next day.
The rest of the trip we spent having massages and spa treatments, going to the beach outside all the nice hotels and sneaking in to use their pools and sunloungers until sadly it was time to take the scooter back and go to the airport. Luckliy we'd bought Borat on pirate DVD for £1.05 to watch on the plane, so it wasn't all so bad. Jagsamesh!
You can see a movie from the beach here. It's magical. Better than attack ships on fire off the shores of Orion.
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