Thursday, February 15, 2007

Phuket or Leave It

We're on the ground and running here in Phuket. The harrowing ride from the airport allowed us to continue the tradition of playing 'how many locals can we pile on a scooter'. The tally now is three people and a bird. What is it about developing countries that mandates a complete disdain for traffic safety? The tally will no doubt increase as we get further into the trip. Personally, I am hoping for at least a half dozen, throwing on a dog for good mneasure.

The day today has been a languid one. We're killing time until the boat leaves this evening at 5:30pm, just trying to stay awake as not to disprupt the sleep patterns for the next few days. Phuket is hot and sticky, with a faint odor of sewage. Peggy and I both instinctually made the analogy of Tijuana. However, I've heard a jewish friend of mine compare Palestine to Tijuana. Is every city third-world country Tijuana? However, I can't imagine them selling 'FBI - female body inspector' t-shirts in Palestine.

This is no doubt a heavily overrun tourist town. The majority of the Westerners (another nice way of saying white people) are from Germany, Scandinavia and a few Aussies. Outside of the Aussies, who should be staying in their own hemisphere for summer weather, the crowds here seem to be the senior set. We've guessed on the European angle by the amount of lycra jammed up the cracks of the beachgoers. Miles of cabanah beach umbrellas. Speedos as far as the eye can see, many inappropriately worn on all the wrong people. The smell of radiating flesh giving off the faint scent of sausage. The senior set seems to be content on flopping down on their lounge chairs, tanning heavily and getting up only to have one of the locals give them a 3 dollar oil massage. There is little culture or quality art to be found amongs the throngs of tourist shacks piled to the sky. Bootleg DVDs, suits, and massages are what the people are buying, apparently.

Peggy and I went on an elephant ride today, which was fun but somewhat exploitive and inhumane. Mostly fun. We paid a visibly stoned tuk tuk driver 5 dollars to take us out of town 10 minutes to what could be best described as an elephant garage. We had the cabby sit contently wait for us with his smoke in hand while we mounted up on our elephant, whom Peggy immediately named Elton. If this sounds scary, it wasn't really. However, the sketchy part was when Elton had to cross two lanes of maddening, two-lane, Tijuana-eque (there I go again) traffic. Elton was a juvenille, so he hadn't figured out how to use his ears as turn signals yet to let the other drivers know his intention. I don't know who has the right-of-way when a elephant and mini-bus converge, but I'm glad we didn't have to find out. Elton did a good job of getting us up to a vista point, then turning around and having us lumber back to the garage again. The way down was much more bumpy than the way up. We gave Elton a banana as a tip.

Lunch was a serving of Pad See Ew and some spring rolls. We've both thrown back four soft drinks today each in attempts to keep ourselves hydrated in this stifeling heat. I've labelled it the hummingbird metabolism diet. There are any number of things one can buy off the back of a scooter. Eggs, fried fish, noodle soup, coconuts. Other than the coconut, we haven't worked up the courage to sample the meals on wheels. Soon, I'm sure.

Lastly, there is surprisingly little to be found about the Tsunami. Not any obvious sign that it occured. No visible memorial or air horn system in place. There is, however, a tsunami re-enactment at Fanta-sea, the ultimate Thai cutural ethno-spectacular, complete with dancing elephants, transexual cabaret dancers in traditional Thai costume and the Peanut Sauce Hyper Trio (modelled after the Blue Man Group). Word is that the tsunami re-enactment involves laser lights and spraying the crowd down with water. Peggy and I are making a point to miss Fantasea. There is also this t-shirt for sale (email me if you want one) that says, 'Tsunami: One Year Later and still Shopping, Drinking and F-ing'. Glad to see that all that international humanitariain relief aid really helped out.

posted by ncawthon at 7:32 PM

The Land o' Smile

Does the picture of this guy look happy that he just overthrew the government in a bloodless coup, or what? Land o' Smiles feels ,ore like the Land o' Yawn at this point. It is just past five in the morning at Bangkok International airport, yet this place is absolutely packed. The running men's fashion here seems to be a light, zippy looking, polystyrene-based jacked of dark colour and heavy embroidery. Perhaps that means you're a Bangkokker of some status, or perhaps a cab driver. Funny, the things you notice and choose to dwell on when sleep deprived in a foreign land.

We got in at one in the morning and have spent the greater part of the last five hours sprawled out on the linoleum underneath an escalator waiting for the Thai Air domestic check-in booths to open up. I must have dozed off at some point because now there are about two thousand people ahead of us in the terminal. In front of us is a pushy Brit demanding to be checked in, even though he doesn't have the Super Premiere Titanium Privileged status afforded to people like Peggy and whatever sap she's dragging around with her. We're told that 'whatever you do, always keep smiling in any Thai encounter'. This Brit is a long way away from smiling, getting all huffy and turning to a shade of pomegranate. I wonder if you're rude without smiling here, what actually happens to those who don't heed the warning? Spontaneous combustion? Also, is it wrong not to let a monk go in front of you, given that they're doing the lords work? I guess my bald brethren are practicing achieving eternal patience across the course of several reincarnations, so I'm not feeling to bad about keeping them behind me. See you in the next life.

Air Emirates was fan-tastic. All the gentle touches of service and comfort; they even had constellations (Southern and Northern hemispheric variety) on the ceiling when the lights were dimmed. Just like I wanted to have when I was a kid. The entertainment programming was top-notch, but really makes sleep deprivation too easy when you can layout a string of three or four good movies in a row. I liked the days when they just projected a crappy movie that no-one cared about and people just drifted in and out of sleep while pretending to watch. Pirates of the Caribbean, case in point.

We're connecting down to Phuket, where we leave this afternoon on our dive boat North in the Andaman Sea. Four days on the boat exploring the various islands and fishes and then back to this jewel of a city called Bangkok. It has all the initial appearances of being Los Angeles of the Far East. We're only somewhat excited. PS - this keyboard looks like somebody threw up typography all over it.

posted by ncawthon at 10:03 AM

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

The Last Supper

Goodbye southern hemisphere, we leave you tomorrow for the lands full of elephants and spring rolls. One last dip in your warm waters, a few small errands to run and it is off to the north, where 24 hours later we'll be in Thailand. We've been sleeping on an air mattress for the past four day watching the tiny ants and spiders scurry across the bare floor. Had there always been so many bugs in this apartment? Did they just hide in the couch?

We didn't really trumpet our departure that much... no goodbye parties or farewell BBQs, we just kinda left. The few friends we had, we made sure that one last bit of bread was broken amongst the table, with promises to do so again soon.

To do it all again, how would we do Australia differently? I think that seeing six of the states and territories here in the continent qualifies as getting around sufficiently, but we could have done more with the Holden when it was in better health. We learned not to get so worked up about the apartments we didn't get at the beginning of our stay here, because it turned out that we landed a pretty nice one. Bugs included. I think we got a good perspective on Australian culture through the integration that our sports teams provided us. Many 'tourists' never venture that deep into the Western Suburbs to see life outside of the cosmopolitan Sydney.

I'm hoping that we can immerse a bit in S.E. Asia. We're on a pretty aggressive timeline with regards to all that we want to see and do. Cannot forget to actually talk to people and hopefully make some friends along the way.

posted by ncawthon at 11:24 PM