Phuket!

Phuket
** Pictures come after. Be sure to read the pre-phuket portion in previous entry beforehand!

Are We There Yet?

We arrived in Phuket mid afternoon, expecting to make it to the beach before sundown, since apparently, the beach was across the street from the hotel. Instead, we realized that we should have learned from experience: In Thailand, distances are never what they seem. Little pictures in maps do not indicate a short walk but a long one and five minutes is more likely to be twenty. But Im getting ahead of myself.

When we got to the airport, the first thing we did was pick up a bunch of maps at the airport before heading into town using the airport transfer that we had pre-arranged. The drive was rather idyllic at first, we were comparing the scenery to the ride up kennon road except that this was going to Baguio just to get to the beach. It seemed to take a just as long, too. After a while we began to wonder. We had decided to stay at Karon Beach, the middle of three beaches, (Patong & Kata being the other two) because it was more private and quiet. We figured we could just take a cab or something to Patong, where all the nightlife was if we needed. What we didn’t count on was that what looked like a tiny squiggly distance on the map was actually, well, miles away.

Almost two hours later we got to our hotel and checked in. Looking outside the window, the tiny squiggly map that said cross two small roads before we got to the beach turned into one main road and a bridge over a lagoon. The pool, down below, however, was magnificent, so after a short nap, we all went off to test the waters, so to speak.

Donna showed up at our door in a neon green bikini that only she could look great in, Jason & I, being brattito and brattita respectively, had taken the beds for ourselves and left John with the middle hospital type bed. In fairness, I did ask if he needed to switch. He said no. I was determined to share with them because as far as I knew, Donna snored and they didn’t. (In the end of course, Oliv got more sleep then I did – but that’s a different story for another time.) Our room contained the person who got up first (John) and the person who got up last (Jason). Both boys liked to sleep in. A lot. Although John never managed to do it and Jason always could. I was always the in between one who got up, went to the bathroom and woke up Jason. We always took naps in the afternoon. Unlike my previous trip where we had only a few hours rest – the boys seemed to not want to get up from those naps, although we all did eventually.

Anyway, by the time Donna knocked on our door, Jason and I had alternately slammed down the phone and the door in people’s faces. Donna was no exception. Cheerful even after Jason slammed the door into her face, she went down for a swim and we knocked out for a bit. Eventually, we made it down for a dip in the pool, discovering the jacuzzi, the ping pong table and the joys of people watching. Unfortunately all the foreign dudes came with significant others – much to Donna’s dismay – except for one blonde German dude who came with a friend who appeared to have dwarfism, who we mistook for a young adult with curly hair (who smoked) at first. There was also a spanish couple where the girl looked fantastic no matter what time of day (nice titties too).

We had dinner at the hotel, since we discovered it would be futile to walk anywhere given the distances, and Jason & Oliv had this wonderful lobster thermidor whilst I stuck it out with Good Old Spaghetti Bolognaise, for a change. We ended the day watching tv and knocking out, like good boys and girls, all ready for the day ahead.



Channeling my Inner Beyonce

Donna and John, of course, were the first ones up. By the time Jason & I had reached minimal coherency Donna had eaten breakfast and possibly rung us twice. Except that I think we were too knocked out to notice. Oliv sent Donna to knock on our door and John, realizing that neither of us would get up when he was already dressed, screamed “wait lang!” while he plodded to the door hurridly. By the time he got there, Donna was scurrying away in fear and Jason and I woke up to John muttering, “Crap. Now I have to apologize!”, slamming the door and scurrying after Donna. It was the first of many episodes, and a hilarious way to start the morning.

Before I continue I should explain a bit about John & Donna. John is a naturally quiet boy, and he is equally sarcastic and full of dry humor. Sometimes his comments are mistaken for something else and because he’s so quiet, people arent used to the way he speaks. He also has a tendency to clam up instead of expressing discomfort and he has trouble sleeping in foreign countries, leading to occasional crankiness and the tendency to be called “sungs”. Since both he and Donna were always up early, they inevitably ended up spending the most time together. Which left Donna to bear the brunt of most of his sungs-y moments and at first, to equally retailiate, in the form of JResque battles, mostly involving bringing up his bumbayness. (Donna’s original nemesis is JR, another team mate) In the end they learnt to co-exist peacefully (read: ignore each other).

Anyway, back to breakfast. We had the first of our many breakfast buffets with the usual bacon, pancakes, omelette, pad thai, thai rice, sausage, ham, bread, jam, etc. before trekking off to the beach, We discovered that to get there, we had to turn right, go around the lagoon for a bit, hit the canal and then cross a bridge to get there. It was all worth it though, the view was spectacular and we ended up renting four chairs for us to lounge in at the beach. I opted to use my sarong and lie down in full sight of the sun with my hard-to-find tanning lotion (everyone in the Philippines wants to be white!) with the goal of attaining that “Beyonce Glow”.

While we took dips in the ocean, Donna began what would turn out to be a routine walk down the beach to people watch (read: check out them farang dudes). Given the distance, it turned out to be very very far and it often took her at least 20-30 minutes to get there and back again. In the meantime we discovered that the waves were perfect for bodyboarding and that goggles were useless in the murky water. We got sloshed and sloshed by waves and I must have swallowed a gallon of water at one point. Refusing to reinact my moment of glory in Balai, Batangas – where I tumbled and semi- flashed the entire resort’s populace (which then consisted of 2 people: Jason and a sleeping JP) - I was very careful to leap or duck when the next big wave came along.

At some point, John – who can’t swim either – called out, “There’s another wave, we better hurry” and I stopped, mid sentence and began dog paddling somewhat frantically to closer waters. Oliv swears there was a look of panic in my eyes and I probably will never live down the “lars hysterical panicked dog paddling moment” for as long as I live. In my defense, all I can say is, I trust my friends and if they say hurry, then well, I hurry. Unfortunately I should have considered the fact that the person who mentioned it couldn’t swim either. Never mind if we never went deep enough for his head to go underwater, him being six feet tall and all.

Donna headed back early to get a massage while the rest of us hung out some more, got darker (Oliv tried to hide from the sun, but to no avail), and had lunch at Tony’s café where they had the most amazing Beef Fried Rice and Grilled Garlic Shrimp. Yum yum. Most of our trip, as you may have guessed by now, is about food. (So much so that when I got back people started saying I gained weight. For the record, I haven’t. I am the same size as when I left. I just used to be better at hiding it… plus I’ve got that Beyonce glow now, y’know.) We took a lot of pictures of our food. We ate three full meals a day. We had fun eating. What can I say, we all like food…

We headed over to the pool after to crash and ended up exploring the “waterfront rooms” these are rooms that have little balconies where you step out and straight into the pool! They were great. We took pictures – again – and then headed up for a nap. We ended up watching Mary Kate & Ashley – our hotel had on ly 6 channels, with three of them in English – on HBO and suddenly, Jason & I found ourselves in desperate need of food. We ordered cheeseburgers which did not taste like them at all. They tasted like beef with spices and we kind of ditched them after awhile.

Them Chickens Rule.

That night, we went to Phuket Fantasea, which is technically a kitschy tourist place where the culmination of the evening is a Thai cultural performance complete with 28 elephants on stage. The evening begins with you being ushered through the amusement park that looks like the elephant version of enchanted kingdom with no rides, just games and souvenier shops. Then you go to the buffet hall, which comes with dinner, which was very, very good – you had a choiCe of thai, japanese, italian and chinese food. Jason and I, however, were too full of hamburger to make more than a halfhearted effort of an otherwise sumptous meal.

After chowing down on dessert –never say no to that!- Oliv and I hurried to get a ride on one of the elephants, which was one of our goals for the trip. We had missed riding elephants the first time and definitely refused to leave without riding one this time around. We got on our nice, friendly elephant and went on rounds, with John our official photographer, attempting to take our picture in various locations. After that lovely ride, we bought a bucket of elephant food and we all took turns feeding and taking pictures with the elephant. I thought the elephants were all cute and huggable and nice but I kind of felt sorry for them because they had to work in the show and give people rides but then again, in the wild it would probably be the same because elephants are used for logging and stuff so I guess they’re better taken care of there then they would be in some other places.

After some more time with the elephants and some souvenier shopping we headed into the “Palace of the Elephants” for the actual show. Before we got into the actual room, however, there were more tourist trappy picture taking opportunities. Donna and I had our picture taken with cute baby tigers, which was great but felt more like an assembly line. You sat down with the tiger while holding a bottle to feed it, they snapped a picture, you got up they gave the tiger to the next person. Kind of felt sorry for the tigers but I guess they were just happy to be fed.

The show was fun, there were chinese acrobats, thai dancers and all these other cultural things. The main story was of this prince, who came to save the land from evil and rescue his princess. My favorite part of the show was when he sang this song – which was kitschy and sounded like kundiman, complete with magtanim ay di biro clothing – and they were supposed to be in a farm so there were animals and these trained chickens came out and ran across the stage! They were really cool chickens and there was even one chicken that pretended to be lost and delayed in the end – unless of course it was really lost… (Them chickens rule.) The elephants also performed and they were cool too, along with the Thai cultural dancing and all the pyrotechnics.

Once we got home, John & Donna crashed right away while Oliv, Jason and I made the trek to 7-11 to get ourselves alcoholic beverages to drink. The only bar nearby looked rather sleazy and was already closed on the way back so we ended up with Bacardi coolers and Cranberry cruisers to take back to the hotel. We hung out in our balcony until around two, just drinking, smoking, talking and eating twisties (my favorite Australian snack, that surprisingly, they had there without my even knowing since everything was in Thai). Eventually we went to bed, ready for the next morning…


More of that Beyonce Glow

The next day Jason & I woke up late per usual – him later then everyone else – and by the time we were all done with breakfast John was already at the beach, lounging in his own little beach chair. We made our way to the beach again, where Donna began her solitary walk, with an extra agenda to find a good (and cheap) place to eat. She went farther this time and was gone almost an hour. Later on we discovered that she’d gone almost all the way to Karon town, which people usually take tuktuks to.

In the meantime, Oliv gave up her anti-sun policy and decided to get a tan since she already had the beginnings of it. John, having been there longer, was already darker then all of us and had spent most of his time bobbing along in the sea, this big stick all by himself in the midst of the ocean. We all spent most of the morning alternately tanning and dipping (like something cooking…) until John, Jason and I decided to take a walk. We made it some way down the beach - probably about half Donna’s walk, which shows how far she went – took pictures in the water, where I endeavored to ensure that I was not rolled about by the waves for what John calls my “Dyesabel” picture. When we got back we decided it was time to eat so we made our way to these carinderia type seats somewhere down the beach, near the road. We ate at Ying’s Café where they had absolutely marvelous rice. I had like some sort of thai rice (like bagoong rice at home) which was excellent. The servings were huge and the food was excellent especially considering it was cheap, too.

When we got back, John & Donna headed back to the hotel. John decided to get a massage. Donna had gotten one the day before and said that it was great, so he went to have his own done. Oliv, Jason & I stayed at the beach where they finally convinced me to have my hair done in cornrows with braids. I had only half my head done because I still wanted some of my hair loose – later on I realized I should have had all of it done, given that it took 40 minutes to shampoo – and it turned out to suit me very well. I liked the way I looked, complete with a complementing tan. It looked so nice I even got Oliv to get one – just one – on one side of her head. The ladies doing the braiding were also very nice and friendly.

After this adventure, we headed back to the hotel and lounged by the pool. We also arranged for us to be picked up and brought to Patong that night. Jason & Oliv had drinks at the pool bar while I lounged around and bobbed up and down with a ball in the water. We saw a cute brother and sister white couple that we thought orignally were going together. Unfortunately they were probably a hell of a lot younger than we were since they came with parents.

That night Jason got the time wrong – having forgotten to set his phone an hour back – and woke us all up too early for the trip to Patong. After an extra hour of rest we all got dressed and made our way there. Patong is the more familiar of the beaches in Phuket and is heavily commercialized with bars and restaurants all over the place. There are no hotels fronting the beach and to get there from a hotel you would have to pass through the commercial areas with main roads in between. It confirmed that we had made the right decision by choosing to stay in Karon instead.

We had dinner at this Italian restaurant where the chef was really Italian and the food was really good. We had ravioli, pasta, killer four cheese pizza and some wine. The dude had been living in Phuket for a while and he had pictures of all these famours people he had met (just like our tour guide at Phuket Fantasea, who incidentally, could sing pinoy songs – he sang us dahil sa iyo on the bus, and he was great at it too!) who we didn’t quite recognize, except for this actress that I remember seeing in the movie Legend of Suriyothai as the bad guy.

We took a walk later on down the strip trying to find a decent bar but they all had either a) too loud 80s rock music, b) gyrating women that either didn’t look too hot or were really men (you could tell from the adam’s apples), c) middle aged or older white men or d) all of the above. So we ended up in an Irish pub next to Mc Donald’s, after passing several seafood restaurants with lobster and shrip on display, a bar that was featuring the Thai Elvis – who really sounded like him when he sang, a bar featuring the “manila machine”. Apparently Filipinos are very well known in Thailand for their singing, so they are always in hotels and stuff performing. They make good money. It made me wonder if I was the only filipino in the world who couldn’t really sing because if there are a lot of them out there, that means its cultural. Unfortunately it didn’t appear to run in my family.

Oliv, Donna & I had margaritas while the boys had beer, which I treated because my student visa pre-application was approved. After some drinks we headed over to Mc Donald’s to get a picture next to Ronald, who was posed like a Thai with his hands closed together in a sawasdee pose. We ended up in Watson’s, where I got some aftersun lotion and almost bought a david beckham book before we headed home on our last night in Phuket.

Lucky Me

I was the second to the last person at breakfast again. By the time I was done with breakfast and ready for a shower, Jason was making his way down for his daily bacon and pancakes. We packed, checked out and made our way to the airport leisurely. While waiting I found Douglas Coupland’s latest in the airport shop. Thinking I would find it in Bangkok, I didn’t purchase it. I never saw it again and in fact Im not even sure what the title is anymore. Given that he’s one of my favorite authors I should have just bought the damn thing.

Sat with the girls on the plane ride back. When we got to the airport we discovered that the agency had forgotten to send us someone to take care of our airport transfer. So we all took turns calling with our cellphones with Donna as our spokesperson trying to arrange for a pickup that we already paid for. By the third call Donna had become a customer service nightmare, although she was well within her rights. Unfortunately the poor Thai girl probably couldn’t understand her English. She requested for a call back and when the girl said it would be an international call, Donna said, “what do you think I’m doing?!?” and that was the end of that. In the meantime, we had lunch at a cheap chinese restaurant where for 60 baht I had some pork and noodles that tasted exactly like Lucky Me Pancit Canton. When the van finally arrived after about an hour, we made our way back to our hotel, which was called the Mandarin but not to be confused with the Mandarin Oriental was not anything like it. It was all right, as rooms go, but our triple sharing room consisted of us moving some tables around so that john (again) could get the hospital bed that later turned out to creak everytime he rolled over. (Initially since the beds were stuck together we thought that was it, with Jason having to sleep in the bed crack, but fortunately they brought the bed in.) With bed’s creaking and my “rosary bead sounding” hair clicking – my cornrows had beads at the end” – Im not surprised that John didn’t get much sleep that night. Jason, of course, slept like the dead and I honestly thought that I was the only one who could hear the beads… apparently not.


In Search of Great Whites and Real Women

After some rest, we went to Khao San Road for Dinner. We went to an old favorite, Tom Yung Kum, where we had the best Tom Yum Soup ( a Thai favorite!), killer crab rice, and a lot of other things. John & Donna each had a milkshake which looked really good. We also went up and down Khao San, just people watching. We saw all these white people getting fake dreads and Oliv, Jason and I all bought the same shirt in different colors and sizes. We ended up in another Irish pub where they almost wouldn’t let us in! They asked for Jason’s ID first and almost wouldn’t let him go. Given that fake ids are being sold outside, it was understandable. Then again, why would anyone want to fake a Philippine license? Jason had to tell them he was 26, while they spent some time computing. Once they saw my ID, equally the same they must have figured that there couldn’t be two of us faking this, so they let all of us in.
We ended up splitting a bottle of Bailey’s, which was Donna’s first attempt at drinking it. She enjoyed it a whole lot. The music was pretty good, they played things that were modern and that we knew. Even the funny drunk white dude in front of us didn’t deter our evening. While drinking, I watched one of the Premiership games on tv. I have probably not watched as much football as I have except in Irish Pubs in Thailand. There’s an irony in that somewhere.

The whole night we kept seeing really pretty girls that turned out to be men – so much so that the boys stopped looking . The creepiest was this girl who was as tall as John in a really nice white halter with a huge adam’s apple who picked up this guy in a bar right in front of us. So much for hot chicks. We headed home soon after that. After we got there, Donna knocked out immediately – possibly due to the Bailey’s – while we all took showers and I watched a fun German movie about former anarchists who had one of their old bombs explode and the police were all tracking them down now that they had normal lives. There was also mild intermission while I called JP to tell him to fix things at work – mildly screaming the whole time of course – because I was kind of getting bothered by work. After that we all knocked out.