Phuket People & Culture

Phuket, city in the South of Thailand, has great beaches (paradaisical) and is a great tourist attraction. Although some years ago was destroyed by the tsunami, it is now rapidly re-constructing and the tourist are coming more than ever. Lot of germans, austriacs and swiss people come to Phuket. Great night-life and great and relaxing beaches.

Tiger bar!!! located on bangala road- 10 min of the beach (walking)- the coolest bar in patong. great beer ,great people, dancing- and a cool disco upstairs. enjoy!

Karon Beach is a little bit quiter than Patong Beach..so for people who like to stay right at the beach but still looking for some good restaurants the right place..isn't far away from the party place Patong beach..around 10 mins by taxi..

I had a pretty fair idea of what I wanted to do in Phuket before I even left England, thanks mainly to the amount of people who suddenly turned out to have been here and wanted to tell me all about it. So, when my tour rep turned up in the lobby this morning with his clipboard, hard-sell face and book entitled "1001 ways to get people to do what you want them to do", he was rather surprised to find that it took him all of fifteen seconds to sell me on the idea of doing exactly what I came here to do in the first place. He probably got promoted. So, clutching my tickets for a trip to Phi-Phi Island and to the beautiful bays around the coast over the next two days, I set out to see Patong by day. As with all places, the town is considerably different without the beating music and bright lights of night time. In fact, it was quiet and relaxed this morning, full of couples walking along the beach arm in arm. At the first travel shop I came to, I booked myself onto an "Introduction to Phuket" tour which was leaving within the next few minutes and which confidently promised to show me some of the sights of the island in 4 hours. This tour set me back the princely sum of 300 Baht - about a fiver - so I didn't really expect much more than a basic drive to a couple of temples. On the whole, though, I think it was money well spent: The "English Speaking" guide was obviously from the Chinese school of English, and spoke so fast that it was hard to believe he was speaking English at all, but for 300 Baht I wasn't about to complain. Christ, for that sort of money I think I would've been quite happy with the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show! I did start to get a bit annoyed with the way the guide kept saying "Yes?" at the end of every sentence, though, as though he was trying to convince himself that he was telling us the facts. And I did start to become a bit sceptical when he informed us matter-of-factly as though talking to a group of 5 year olds that they have to train monkeys to pick coconuts for them as they have discovered that only monkeys can avoid the poisoned fruit on their trees. It apparently takes 6 months to train a monkey to do this, and there is a University for monkeys in Bangkok for this purpose, we were informed. I have just one problem with this. If it takes 6 months to train a monkey to not eat poisoned fruit, what do they do with all the dead monkeys? Our first stop on the tour was at a lookout point at the very top of the island, where we all scurried off to take our first photos of the breathtaking scenery. This is one thing that Phuket has in abundance. According to the guide, who I was starting to think was making it all up as he went along, parts of Jurassic Park were shot on the island - although people disagree as to exactly where and when and nobody seems to actually be able to remember any camera crews or anything. Looking at the views of the forests and beaches stretching away to the horizon, it certainly isn't difficult to imagine a few Raptors down there though. The highlight of the day for me was our afternoon visit to Wat Chalong, a supremely beautiful Buddhist temple built on a traditionally grand scale and somehow exactly the opposite of what I was expecting from Phuket after the obvious excesses of Patong Beach. In fact, the place is such a culture shock after arrival in Patong that it takes quite a while walking around the extensive gardens and market stalls before you even feel worthy to set foot inside. Wat Chalong is the pride of the island, a fact that was obvious just to hear our guide talk about it's history and the miracles said to have been performed there as though he considered it his honour to pass on every drop of knowledge he had ever learned about the place.
The temple had a major part to play in the war between Chinese secret societies in the 19th century. At this time the island was something of a power in Tin Mining, and Chinese workers came looking for work and started to create societies. Unfortunately, the workers started to get a bit upset when the owners of the land and tin mines decided they weren't about to allow them to partake of opium as they were used to, and they took it upon themselves to begin a murderous rampage. Locals fled to the temple where the Abbot did all that Buddhism would allow which was help rally the people to fight back against the attackers. Despite quite rigorous fighting from the Chinese side, the opium finally got the better of them and they were overwhelmed by the locals. When this all got back to the king the Abbot was called before him for a well earned promotion, and Wat Chalong became a royal temple. The temple is filled with statues, and every single inch of it is covered in gold as I should have come to expect by now. The walls are covered in paintings depicting the Buddha's life, and statues of previous abbots adorn the corridors. The grounds are amazing, gardens stretch out in all directions and are a pleasure to walk around, and today there were market stalls set up on the boundaries through which I spent a good half hour of browsing: just sitting in the grounds in silence for a few minutes is almost enough to make you want to take the vow. One room of the Wat was full of locals praying and we tiptoed respectfully through watching them meditate or sit in silent prayer, although none of them seemed to be remotely bothered or worried by our presence. Buddhists are, of course, nothing if not understanding and tolerant - something which is refreshing to say the least after spending a lifetime in the West where everything is stress and rush. Some would argue, for this reason, that Buddhism is in fact not so much a religion as a philosophy. It is, if you are interested in a slight digression at this point, a set of teachings based entirely on, not the belief in any particular divine entity, but the words of a man called Siddhartha who achieved enlightenment around 2500 years ago at the age of 35 while sitting under a pipal fig tree. These, naturally, were gentler times when a name like Sid Arthur meant you were a respected prince rather than a wheeler/dealer type from the east end of London. Anyway, Siddhartha Guatama was born and raised in ancient India in the region now known as Nepal, and had spent his early life as a prince, being given whatever he desired before being married off at the age of 16 to his cousin. He seems to have led something of a sheltered life because only as he approached his 30th birthday did he decide to actually leave the house and survey his kingdom. It must have come as something of a shock to come across the sick, the old and the dying for the first time because Siddhartha promptly announced that he needed to find the path of enlightenment, packed his bags and headed off to devote the rest of his life to abstinence from all worldly pleasures in an attempt to prevent such unpleasant things as death and old age from happening to him. Over the next few years Siddhartha became a beggar, studied under several hermit teachers, brought meditation down to a fine art and just about managed to starve himself to death by taking abstinence to the ultimate extreme and restricting himself to a leaf a day. To paraphrase the teachings of Buddha slightly here, this is the point at which Siddhartha decided he needed a new plan.
So Siddhartha created the "Middle way", which has a slightly different meaning depending on which branch of Buddhism you listen to but which is essentially a transcendental path away from self satisfaction and worldly pleasures and towards the pursuit of wisdom and enlightenment. Settling down to meditate under the Pipal tree, he told his companions that he wasn't going to get up again until he had understood the truth about everything - this he duly did after several weeks, but not before all his friends had, unsurprisingly, gone home. Siddhartha Guatama had finally achieved enlightenment and become the Buddha, or "Awakened one".
Enlightenment brought with it an understanding of the four noble truths of Buddhism, which would appear to be a series of statements which connect together logically - we crave our desires (some wish to attain pleasure, some wish to attain happiness, some wish to kill and some wish to love, etc); these cravings lead to suffering; to relieve suffering one must eliminate craving; to eliminate craving, one must follow the Eightfold path: correct outlook, correct intentions, correct speech, correct actions, correct work, correct amount of effort, correct mindfulness, correct amount of concentration. Following the Eightfold path will ultimately lead anyone to the state of Nirvana which, as a child, I firmly believed was the next state over from California! Of course, the western way of thinking tells us that happiness is whatever we want it to be. If you find true happiness in meditation and giving up all earthly vices, then that's fine - but if your idea of supreme bliss is going out on a Saturday night, getting totally rat-arsed and waking up in somebody else's bed, then that's fine too. I came across the following story while updating this entry, which I thought I would share with you for it's humour value. It would appear that one of the ex-abbots of Wat Chalong, Luang Poh Cham, was promised by a local girl that she would cover his genitals in golf leaf if he cured her with his magical walking stick. However, after being cured she subsequently forgot about her promise and fell ill again because the Thai's believe that breaking a promise will result in evil falling upon them. The girl's parents returned her to the Abbot for an explanation, whereupon he saved the day by sitting on his walking stick in such a way that it stuck out from the front of his robes and the girl was able to coat it in golf leaf, become cured again, and remain none the wiser...

The tour company decided to phone at the crack of dawn to suggest I get up for their tour, which I had fully intended to do at a slightly more sensible time. Not being able to get back to sleep again, I found myself spending three quarters of an hour at 5 o'clock this morning with my remarkably unhelpful English-Thai phrasebook trying to explain patiently to the night duty receptionist that I would like an early morning call tomorrow for my trip to Phi Phi together with a simple breakfast of Pancakes, Tea and Croissants. God only knows what I'll get - possibly a saucepan with a cake in it. If I had wanted to ask her the way to the nearest police station or inform her that I've just seen a monkey on a chair, I would've been as happy as Larry - whoever he is - but ordering breakfast? Nobody would ever want to do that, surely. Phang Nga Bay is one of those places that you must see before you die. You can find photographs of it's imposing islands of Limestone (Calcium Carbonate) everywhere you look, adorning the covers of countless travel magazines and brochures, but like the Grand Canyon there is simply no way to appreciate the scale or beauty of the bay from just words or pictures alone. However, there's nothing like a challenge so I think I shall have a bloody good try anyway...
First of all, there is no shortage of things to do at Phang Nga. Whether you're into relaxing on the back of a boat and soaking up the sun, Kayaking around the islands of the Andaman Sea and through the countless hidden cave systems, or even having lunch on the strangely alluring Sea Gypsy Island, Phang Nga has something to tempt everyone. About 1 and a half hours drive from Patong, Phang Nga isn't actually part of Phuket province at all but rather a province in it's own right, although you won't find many locals keen to admit that. It covers a massive one hundred and fifty-five square miles of ocean, around which sheer limestone stacks rise at regular intervals up to 350 meters into the air as though just thrown up from the water at random. The blacks and greys of the rock are punctuated with streaks of red from iron deposits, and covered with the greens of trees, making them a colourful thing to behold. There are more than 40 such stacks, once part of a prehistoric seabed on which the accumulated skeletal remains of marine creatures were crushed under their own weight to form a limestone crust. Immense geological forces then fractured the limestone beds and pushed them skyward where they were worn away over millions of years by rising and falling sea levels to form fascinating islands of dense forest at angles far too steep for any human to climb. The stacks are pitted with caves (or Hongs) and tunnels, the tides carving out great chambers which just wait to be explored. Some of the caves, reachable only by Kayak, contain ancient paintings which only the most adventurous will ever see. Other cave systems have only recently been discovered as they have no entrance from the sea and can only be reached by scaling the sides of the imposing monoliths, others still await discovery. Many of the limestone islands have small beaches at their base or running between them, and there are plenty of places to anchor a boat and head off to explore. Even better, most of the beaches are too small for the big tourist launches to get to, so if you can hire a private boat there is a very real possibility that you could end up with your own personal paradise for the day. Protected from both the Northeast and Southwest monsoons, the bay is never less than tranquil; you'll hardly ever find the waters choppy in Phang Nga, ideal for Kayaking. In fact, the water is so still that I was able to climb up onto the roof of the boat and walk up and down taking photos and it felt for all the world as though I was on solid land even though we must've been going along at a fair speed. Our stop for lunch was at the wonderfully named Sea Gypsy Island. Slap in the middle of the bay is an entire community of fishermen, living in a village built entirely on stilts and attached to the face of a giant limestone monolith rising from the waters. At lunchtime, hundreds of tourists converge on the village to shop at it's craft stalls and partake of the amazing variety of food laid out in it's restaurant, and then when they've all cleared off the whole place shuts up shop and settles down to become a quiet little fishing village once more. The real name of the Island is Koh Pannyi, although Sea Gypsy really does sum up the place beautifully. Of course, the highlight of the bay for many people - and indeed the single most popular reason that people keep coming - is the island of Koh Khao Phing Gan, or, as it is more usually known, James Bond Island. It is here that Roger Moore was taken to Scaramanga's hideout, and the impossible nail-shaped Koh Tapu (Nail Island) sticking out of the bay nearby was the hiding place of the secret weapon with which he intended to take over the world in 1974's The Man with the Golden Gun. The beach at James Bond Island is packed with salesmen selling the usual paraphernalia, and the place has become something of a tourist trap. For once, though, it is actually possible to ignore the fact that you are just one of several thousand people who seem to have all chosen exactly the same moment to arrive on the island, because as soon as you get one look at Koh Tapu you're just glad you got to see it. The best way to see the monolith, however, is not to gawk at it from the beach as many do but to follow the narrow pathway which winds around the side of one of the cliff faces - this takes you to a lookout point in the trees from where you can get a much more impressive view and for one moment imagine that you're actually looking at Scaramanga's secret weapon. It's very easy to use up several rolls of film in Phang Nga bay, and boy do they know it. On James Bond Island, there is a whole row of covered stalls dedicated to seemingly nothing more than selling film, postcards and tacky souvenirs. They can just about ask any price for film because the Bay is so spectacular in almost every way that anybody going home without a suitcase full of photographs obviously just hasn't made the effort. I was slightly more cautious in that I had stocked up before leaving the mainland, but I still ran out of film and had to pay inflated prices for extra before we moved on. I have to wonder how things have moved on now that the age of digital photography is upon us. The day also included a trip to Wat Tham, essentially a temple in a cave. At the entrance, monkeys scampered around taking food from tourists - not necessarily with their consent - and Thai salesmen sell monkey food for this purpose. The macaques are everywhere, as you would expect given all the tourists saying "Ahhh, isn't he cute?" to their children and handing out free food right and left. Everywhere you look, from the cave entrance to the rock face surrounding it, there are monkeys. It's hard to get your coach into the car park without running a few hundred of them over, in fact.
Inside the cave, you pay the paltry 10 baht entrance fee and make your way through a wholly ineffective turnstile into the large main cave. Dominating the chamber is one of the biggest reclining Buddha statues I have ever seen, and many other beautiful Buddha images and statues surround this main attraction. Locals can pay more money to a Buddhist monk who sits cross-legged in the middle of the cave and will bless them and wait patiently while they sprawl themselves at his feet. I think I'd let people sprawl themselves at my feet, too, if they were paying me for the privilege! Up a flight of steps from the back of the main temple is the Light Cave, where you have to put your imagination into overdrive and decide whether or not the stalactites and stalagmites have been formed over millions of years as the locals insist into figures of Elephants, Tigers and other exotic beasts. You then make your way through into the imaginatively named Dark Cave, and as soon as you step through the doorway you can see why. Or, to be more precise, you can't see anything at all because it would certainly be difficult to find somewhere more aptly named. Torch, anyone? Something like 4 or 5 steps after entering the cave, you trip over and fall head over heels on the body of a dead tourist who was trying to find his way out and plummet into a bottomless pit. Or, at least, that's what I imagined would happen if I hadn't taken 2 steps, felt entirely unsteady on my feet, and turned back. I wonder if anyone visits that last cave, and how many live to tell the tale...You can read my full travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer
In 2004, the area of Thailand surrounding Phang Nga was one of the regions hit hardest by the Asian Tsunami. However, reports indicate that Phang Nga Bay itself was affected little by the Tsunami and that most of the islands, being protected from the west by the bay itself, escaped unharmed. Witnesses report jetties being washed away and raised tide levels on the beaches, but beyond that Phang Nga Bay seems to have experienced something of a miraculous near miss.

I had a pretty fair idea of what I wanted to do in Phuket before I even left England, thanks mainly to the amount of people who suddenly turned out to have been here and wanted to tell me all about it. So, when my tour rep turned up in the lobby this morning with his clipboard, hard-sell face and book entitled "1001 ways to get people to do what you want them to do", he was rather surprised to find that it took him all of fifteen seconds to sell me on the idea of doing exactly what I came here to do in the first place. He probably got promoted. So, clutching my tickets for a trip to Phi-Phi Island and to the beautiful bays around the coast over the next two days, I set out to see Patong by day. As with all places, the town is considerably different without the beating music and bright lights of night time. In fact, it was quiet and relaxed this morning, full of couples walking along the beach arm in arm. At the first travel shop I came to, I booked myself onto an "Introduction to Phuket" tour which was leaving within the next few minutes and which confidently promised to show me some of the sights of the island in 4 hours. This tour set me back the princely sum of 300 Baht - about a fiver - so I didn't really expect much more than a basic drive to a couple of temples. On the whole, though, I think it was money well spent: The "English Speaking" guide was obviously from the Chinese school of English, and spoke so fast that it was hard to believe he was speaking English at all, but for 300 Baht I wasn't about to complain. Christ, for that sort of money I think I would've been quite happy with the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show! I did start to get a bit annoyed with the way the guide kept saying "Yes?" at the end of every sentence, though, as though he was trying to convince himself that he was telling us the facts. And I did start to become a bit sceptical when he informed us matter-of-factly as though talking to a group of 5 year olds that they have to train monkeys to pick coconuts for them as they have discovered that only monkeys can avoid the poisoned fruit on their trees. It apparently takes 6 months to train a monkey to do this, and there is a University for monkeys in Bangkok for this purpose, we were informed. I have just one problem with this. If it takes 6 months to train a monkey to not eat poisoned fruit, what do they do with all the dead monkeys? Our first stop on the tour was at a lookout point at the very top of the island, where we all scurried off to take our first photos of the breathtaking scenery. This is one thing that Phuket has in abundance. According to the guide, who I was starting to think was making it all up as he went along, parts of Jurassic Park were shot on the island - although people disagree as to exactly where and when and nobody seems to actually be able to remember any camera crews or anything. Looking at the views of the forests and beaches stretching away to the horizon, it certainly isn't difficult to imagine a few Raptors down there though. The highlight of the day for me was our afternoon visit to Wat Chalong, a supremely beautiful Buddhist temple built on a traditionally grand scale and somehow exactly the opposite of what I was expecting from Phuket after the obvious excesses of Patong Beach. In fact, the place is such a culture shock after arrival in Patong that it takes quite a while walking around the extensive gardens and market stalls before you even feel worthy to set foot inside. Wat Chalong is the pride of the island, a fact that was obvious just to hear our guide talk about it's history and the miracles said to have been performed there as though he considered it his honour to pass on every drop of knowledge he had ever learned about the place.
The temple had a major part to play in the war between Chinese secret societies in the 19th century. At this time the island was something of a power in Tin Mining, and Chinese workers came looking for work and started to create societies. Unfortunately, the workers started to get a bit upset when the owners of the land and tin mines decided they weren't about to allow them to partake of opium as they were used to, and they took it upon themselves to begin a murderous rampage. Locals fled to the temple where the Abbot did all that Buddhism would allow which was help rally the people to fight back against the attackers. Despite quite rigorous fighting from the Chinese side, the opium finally got the better of them and they were overwhelmed by the locals. When this all got back to the king the Abbot was called before him for a well earned promotion, and Wat Chalong became a royal temple. The temple is filled with statues, and every single inch of it is covered in gold as I should have come to expect by now. The walls are covered in paintings depicting the Buddha's life, and statues of previous abbots adorn the corridors. The grounds are amazing, gardens stretch out in all directions and are a pleasure to walk around, and today there were market stalls set up on the boundaries through which I spent a good half hour of browsing: just sitting in the grounds in silence for a few minutes is almost enough to make you want to take the vow. One room of the Wat was full of locals praying and we tiptoed respectfully through watching them meditate or sit in silent prayer, although none of them seemed to be remotely bothered or worried by our presence. Buddhists are, of course, nothing if not understanding and tolerant - something which is refreshing to say the least after spending a lifetime in the West where everything is stress and rush. Some would argue, for this reason, that Buddhism is in fact not so much a religion as a philosophy. It is, if you are interested in a slight digression at this point, a set of teachings based entirely on, not the belief in any particular divine entity, but the words of a man called Siddhartha who achieved enlightenment around 2500 years ago at the age of 35 while sitting under a pipal fig tree. These, naturally, were gentler times when a name like Sid Arthur meant you were a respected prince rather than a wheeler/dealer type from the east end of London. Anyway, Siddhartha Guatama was born and raised in ancient India in the region now known as Nepal, and had spent his early life as a prince, being given whatever he desired before being married off at the age of 16 to his cousin. He seems to have led something of a sheltered life because only as he approached his 30th birthday did he decide to actually leave the house and survey his kingdom. It must have come as something of a shock to come across the sick, the old and the dying for the first time because Siddhartha promptly announced that he needed to find the path of enlightenment, packed his bags and headed off to devote the rest of his life to abstinence from all worldly pleasures in an attempt to prevent such unpleasant things as death and old age from happening to him. Over the next few years Siddhartha became a beggar, studied under several hermit teachers, brought meditation down to a fine art and just about managed to starve himself to death by taking abstinence to the ultimate extreme and restricting himself to a leaf a day. To paraphrase the teachings of Buddha slightly here, this is the point at which Siddhartha decided he needed a new plan.
So Siddhartha created the "Middle way", which has a slightly different meaning depending on which branch of Buddhism you listen to but which is essentially a transcendental path away from self satisfaction and worldly pleasures and towards the pursuit of wisdom and enlightenment. Settling down to meditate under the Pipal tree, he told his companions that he wasn't going to get up again until he had understood the truth about everything - this he duly did after several weeks, but not before all his friends had, unsurprisingly, gone home. Siddhartha Guatama had finally achieved enlightenment and become the Buddha, or "Awakened one".
Enlightenment brought with it an understanding of the four noble truths of Buddhism, which would appear to be a series of statements which connect together logically - we crave our desires (some wish to attain pleasure, some wish to attain happiness, some wish to kill and some wish to love, etc); these cravings lead to suffering; to relieve suffering one must eliminate craving; to eliminate craving, one must follow the Eightfold path: correct outlook, correct intentions, correct speech, correct actions, correct work, correct amount of effort, correct mindfulness, correct amount of concentration. Following the Eightfold path will ultimately lead anyone to the state of Nirvana which, as a child, I firmly believed was the next state over from California! Of course, the western way of thinking tells us that happiness is whatever we want it to be. If you find true happiness in meditation and giving up all earthly vices, then that's fine - but if your idea of supreme bliss is going out on a Saturday night, getting totally rat-arsed and waking up in somebody else's bed, then that's fine too. I came across the following story while updating this entry, which I thought I would share with you for it's humour value. It would appear that one of the ex-abbots of Wat Chalong, Luang Poh Cham, was promised by a local girl that she would cover his genitals in golf leaf if he cured her with his magical walking stick. However, after being cured she subsequently forgot about her promise and fell ill again because the Thai's believe that breaking a promise will result in evil falling upon them. The girl's parents returned her to the Abbot for an explanation, whereupon he saved the day by sitting on his walking stick in such a way that it stuck out from the front of his robes and the girl was able to coat it in golf leaf, become cured again, and remain none the wiser...

Phuket is boombastic :-) For all the travelers, who want to get very close to the Thai culture: don´t enter the island of Phuket. For all the others: Have Fun there.
Good place for honeymoon lovers: Everson hotel Chalong Beach Best party place on the island is the one and only Patong Beach. Be sure, if you sitting next to a thai GIRL or not :-)

I had a pretty fair idea of what I wanted to do in Phuket before I even left England, thanks mainly to the amount of people who suddenly turned out to have been here and wanted to tell me all about it. So, when my tour rep turned up in the lobby this morning with his clipboard, hard-sell face and book entitled "1001 ways to get people to do what you want them to do", he was rather surprised to find that it took him all of fifteen seconds to sell me on the idea of doing exactly what I came here to do in the first place. He probably got promoted. So, clutching my tickets for a trip to Phi-Phi Island and to the beautiful bays around the coast over the next two days, I set out to see Patong by day. As with all places, the town is considerably different without the beating music and bright lights of night time. In fact, it was quiet and relaxed this morning, full of couples walking along the beach arm in arm. At the first travel shop I came to, I booked myself onto an "Introduction to Phuket" tour which was leaving within the next few minutes and which confidently promised to show me some of the sights of the island in 4 hours. This tour set me back the princely sum of 300 Baht - about a fiver - so I didn't really expect much more than a basic drive to a couple of temples. On the whole, though, I think it was money well spent: The "English Speaking" guide was obviously from the Chinese school of English, and spoke so fast that it was hard to believe he was speaking English at all, but for 300 Baht I wasn't about to complain. Christ, for that sort of money I think I would've been quite happy with the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show! I did start to get a bit annoyed with the way the guide kept saying "Yes?" at the end of every sentence, though, as though he was trying to convince himself that he was telling us the facts. And I did start to become a bit sceptical when he informed us matter-of-factly as though talking to a group of 5 year olds that they have to train monkeys to pick coconuts for them as they have discovered that only monkeys can avoid the poisoned fruit on their trees. It apparently takes 6 months to train a monkey to do this, and there is a University for monkeys in Bangkok for this purpose, we were informed. I have just one problem with this. If it takes 6 months to train a monkey to not eat poisoned fruit, what do they do with all the dead monkeys? Our first stop on the tour was at a lookout point at the very top of the island, where we all scurried off to take our first photos of the breathtaking scenery. This is one thing that Phuket has in abundance. According to the guide, who I was starting to think was making it all up as he went along, parts of Jurassic Park were shot on the island - although people disagree as to exactly where and when and nobody seems to actually be able to remember any camera crews or anything. Looking at the views of the forests and beaches stretching away to the horizon, it certainly isn't difficult to imagine a few Raptors down there though. The highlight of the day for me was our afternoon visit to Wat Chalong, a supremely beautiful Buddhist temple built on a traditionally grand scale and somehow exactly the opposite of what I was expecting from Phuket after the obvious excesses of Patong Beach. In fact, the place is such a culture shock after arrival in Patong that it takes quite a while walking around the extensive gardens and market stalls before you even feel worthy to set foot inside. Wat Chalong is the pride of the island, a fact that was obvious just to hear our guide talk about it's history and the miracles said to have been performed there as though he considered it his honour to pass on every drop of knowledge he had ever learned about the place.
The temple had a major part to play in the war between Chinese secret societies in the 19th century. At this time the island was something of a power in Tin Mining, and Chinese workers came looking for work and started to create societies. Unfortunately, the workers started to get a bit upset when the owners of the land and tin mines decided they weren't about to allow them to partake of opium as they were used to, and they took it upon themselves to begin a murderous rampage. Locals fled to the temple where the Abbot did all that Buddhism would allow which was help rally the people to fight back against the attackers. Despite quite rigorous fighting from the Chinese side, the opium finally got the better of them and they were overwhelmed by the locals. When this all got back to the king the Abbot was called before him for a well earned promotion, and Wat Chalong became a royal temple. The temple is filled with statues, and every single inch of it is covered in gold as I should have come to expect by now. The walls are covered in paintings depicting the Buddha's life, and statues of previous abbots adorn the corridors. The grounds are amazing, gardens stretch out in all directions and are a pleasure to walk around, and today there were market stalls set up on the boundaries through which I spent a good half hour of browsing: just sitting in the grounds in silence for a few minutes is almost enough to make you want to take the vow. One room of the Wat was full of locals praying and we tiptoed respectfully through watching them meditate or sit in silent prayer, although none of them seemed to be remotely bothered or worried by our presence. Buddhists are, of course, nothing if not understanding and tolerant - something which is refreshing to say the least after spending a lifetime in the West where everything is stress and rush. Some would argue, for this reason, that Buddhism is in fact not so much a religion as a philosophy. It is, if you are interested in a slight digression at this point, a set of teachings based entirely on, not the belief in any particular divine entity, but the words of a man called Siddhartha who achieved enlightenment around 2500 years ago at the age of 35 while sitting under a pipal fig tree. These, naturally, were gentler times when a name like Sid Arthur meant you were a respected prince rather than a wheeler/dealer type from the east end of London. Anyway, Siddhartha Guatama was born and raised in ancient India in the region now known as Nepal, and had spent his early life as a prince, being given whatever he desired before being married off at the age of 16 to his cousin. He seems to have led something of a sheltered life because only as he approached his 30th birthday did he decide to actually leave the house and survey his kingdom. It must have come as something of a shock to come across the sick, the old and the dying for the first time because Siddhartha promptly announced that he needed to find the path of enlightenment, packed his bags and headed off to devote the rest of his life to abstinence from all worldly pleasures in an attempt to prevent such unpleasant things as death and old age from happening to him. Over the next few years Siddhartha became a beggar, studied under several hermit teachers, brought meditation down to a fine art and just about managed to starve himself to death by taking abstinence to the ultimate extreme and restricting himself to a leaf a day. To paraphrase the teachings of Buddha slightly here, this is the point at which Siddhartha decided he needed a new plan.
So Siddhartha created the "Middle way", which has a slightly different meaning depending on which branch of Buddhism you listen to but which is essentially a transcendental path away from self satisfaction and worldly pleasures and towards the pursuit of wisdom and enlightenment. Settling down to meditate under the Pipal tree, he told his companions that he wasn't going to get up again until he had understood the truth about everything - this he duly did after several weeks, but not before all his friends had, unsurprisingly, gone home. Siddhartha Guatama had finally achieved enlightenment and become the Buddha, or "Awakened one".
Enlightenment brought with it an understanding of the four noble truths of Buddhism, which would appear to be a series of statements which connect together logically - we crave our desires (some wish to attain pleasure, some wish to attain happiness, some wish to kill and some wish to love, etc); these cravings lead to suffering; to relieve suffering one must eliminate craving; to eliminate craving, one must follow the Eightfold path: correct outlook, correct intentions, correct speech, correct actions, correct work, correct amount of effort, correct mindfulness, correct amount of concentration. Following the Eightfold path will ultimately lead anyone to the state of Nirvana which, as a child, I firmly believed was the next state over from California! Of course, the western way of thinking tells us that happiness is whatever we want it to be. If you find true happiness in meditation and giving up all earthly vices, then that's fine - but if your idea of supreme bliss is going out on a Saturday night, getting totally rat-arsed and waking up in somebody else's bed, then that's fine too. I came across the following story while updating this entry, which I thought I would share with you for it's humour value. It would appear that one of the ex-abbots of Wat Chalong, Luang Poh Cham, was promised by a local girl that she would cover his genitals in golf leaf if he cured her with his magical walking stick. However, after being cured she subsequently forgot about her promise and fell ill again because the Thai's believe that breaking a promise will result in evil falling upon them. The girl's parents returned her to the Abbot for an explanation, whereupon he saved the day by sitting on his walking stick in such a way that it stuck out from the front of his robes and the girl was able to coat it in golf leaf, become cured again, and remain none the wiser...

After leaving Mae Hong Son in February 2002, Tanya and I headed for the gulf of Thailand. Ultimately, our final destination in the country was a small island resort off the coast of Krabi, a place which Tanya knew little about as I had been keeping it a closely guarded secret. On the way, however, we had a few days to spare and had decided to spend them in Phuket so that I could show her the beauty of Phi Phi and the surrounding scenery that I had loved so much on my previous trip. This time, however, I had booked us into somewhere a little further from the nightlife of Patong. The Central Karon Village is a resort complex on the top of a hill halfway between Patong and the nearby village of Karon and, from the pictures in the brochure, the resort looked to be not only extremely romantic but also positioned just far enough away from Patong to afford us the peace we were looking for while still being within reach of the shops and restaurants (1). Almost as soon as our taxi turned off the road and drew up in front of the lavish looking reception building, I knew the Central Karon was going to be everything I'd hoped it would be. Built on the side of a steep hill overlooking Karon Beach and the bay, a narrow private road zig-zags downward between rows of wooden villas supported on stilts. The road is truly private, only being just wide enough to allow two narrow golf carts to pass each other carrying guests up to reception at the top or down to the swimming pool by the beach at the bottom of the hill. Flights of steps wind between the villas, connecting each flat stretch of road and creating the effect of several levels as you make your way down to the beach. Telephones are positioned at intervals along the side of the road, so that anyone wishing to get anywhere without having to climb the hundreds of steps between the villas can simply ring for a golf cart to come and collect them. It felt a little like being on fantasy island. The room I had booked for Tanya and I was grandly titled a deluxe villa, and we were driven on our golf cart to the nearest telephone point from where the driver helped us carry our luggage up the remaining steps to our accommodation. Entry to the villa was through a small wooden patio which, due to the stilts holding it up against the edge of the hill and the steps leading away in both directions, also doubled as a balcony on which we could sit and watch the sunset or watch the almost non-existent waves on the sea through the trees. Our patio doors led into a small cosy bedroom, most of which was taken up with an eastern style four poster bed over and around which had been draped mosquito netting, and waiting for us on the pillow was a single red flower. Adjoining the bedroom was an en suite bathroom which, bizarrely, contained a large open window over the top of the shower which flooded the room with light during the day and showed us the stars at night. The amount of light in the bathroom also served another purpose because, even more bizarrely, the room also contained a small indoor garden in the form of a selection of plants planted in a bed of soil along the length of one wall. To me, the villa was perfect - and yet it was not the most expensive option. For the mere cost of one arm and two legs, we could've probably just about afforded to stay in a poolside villa or have our own spa in a private outdoor garden, but both of these options seemed to me to be rather missing the point - who wants to stay at home in their villa all day taking baths when you're in a place as beautiful as Thailand? For the same reason, the fact that our room also boasted satellite television, on demand movies and a well stocked mini-bar totally passed by me un-noticed. We were far too interested in having a great time around the resort and planning our visits to nearby islands to take any notice of trivial things like that! There were plenty of choices at the resort when it came to food. At the top of the hill, next to reception, the Cliff Bar and Restaurant allowed us to sit outside sipping cocktails at sunset or have dinner surrounded by panoramic views of the Andaman Sea. On the other hand, if all our energy had been sapped by spending all day taking part in strenuous activities such as laying by the pool or shopping in Patong, we could opt to walk down the hill rather than up it and have dinner at the Bayview Restaurant overlooking the pool. This was generally more of a buffet set-up and we found that we could usually just wander in, mention our villa number and load up our plates. The chef looked to be constantly busy behind the counter, steam and delicious local smells emanating from his general vicinity throughout our meal - every now and again, he would emerge from his hiding place with a giant platter of mouth-watering delicacies and set them down at somebody's table before disappearing back into the makeshift kitchen. The Bayview did exactly what it said on the tin, affording us particularly spectacular views of the Andaman sea and the bay beyond the pool, and was a delightful place to relax at the end of the day. Both restaurants, however, are pretty popular local destinations - so much so that you can even book a table on the internet before you've even booked your room. Getting from the resort to the shops and nightlife could be done in one of two ways. If we were feeling lazy, we could get reception to call us a taxi. These usually turned up pretty quickly, but we wouldn't have really cared even if they'd kept us waiting as it would've just been an excuse to sit at the bar next to reception and gaze out to sea for a while. Alternatively, we could decide to get some exercise and set off on the long downhill walk in either direction - one way would eventually lead us into the town of Karon, the other to Patong. Either way, the downward journey was very easy - it was the return up the hill which taught us a thing or two about fitness. As a general rule, we walked to town and then got a taxi back. Actually, the taxis in Karon and Patong were not at all what we had been expecting as westerners. Rather than being comfortable enclosed vehicles as we are used to back home, a local taxi in Phuket usually consists of a guy driving a fairly old small truck with a cab up front and a rickety carriage on the back with a single long hard wooden seat on each side. The back of the carriage is completely open for climbing in and out, and the two sides consist of two long glassless windows through which you are more than welcome to fall whenever the taxi goes over a bump in the road. If you're lucky, the driver might even notice and come back for you. The small seafront town of Karon is a world away from neighbouring Patong, if you'll excuse my strange bending of the English language for a moment. Rather than being a loud vibrant place, Karon attracts people looking for a simpler holiday and provides only the amenities to get from one day to the next. It is, however, Phuket's second most popular tourist resort for precisely this reason. There are no streets of nightclubs or rows of packed restaurants, a refreshing fact which proves that the popularity of a resort doesn't have to rely solely on how much there is to do - on our first trip into Karon, it took me a while to even find a cash machine - and afterwards I rather wished I hadn't as it told me it was out of cash and then took the money out of my account anyway.There are a couple of low-key restaurants and bars as you enter the town from the direction of Patong, but very little beyond. Karon does have a street which runs along the beach, but it is lined with hotels and spa resorts rather than attractions. The sand is of the pure white variety you would expect to see on the outlying islands rather than the tourist destinations, and according to the website for the Central Karon Village it is known for squeaking loudly when stepped on. Personally, I cannot vouch for this as I have never encountered squeaking sand in my life and would probably run quickly in the opposite direction if I ever did, but I can certainly recommend Karon Beach as an alternative to the junk food wrapper covered seafront that is Patong - especially since the larger fast food chains have begun to descend on the area. This is very much the place to stay if you don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night by a drunken bar crawl staggering past your front door, and Patong is very much the place to stay if you want to be on a drunken bar crawl that gets to stagger past somebody else's front door! In contrast to Karon, Patong has become the favourite destination for young people looking for a wild, drunken orgy of parties and bars. There are even distinct heterosexual and gay areas of the resort. Back in the 80s, Patong was a quiet seaside resort just like its neighbour until westerners suddenly decided that it was surrounded by such beautiful scenery that it really was the place to go to get drunk and not appreciate any of it. This seems to be quite a popular theme with Europeans - find somewhere really stunning and cover it in fast food wrappers as quickly as possible. These days, Patong is very much the hub of activity on Phuket and contains the vast majority of its nightlife and restaurants. To be fair, if you're looking for somewhere to eat or shop on Phuket or you want to go out for the evening to a reasonably sized club, then Patong is the only real choice - but personally I would always stay elsewhere and go in for the evening. There is a large shopping centre in Patong, spread over several floors and selling everything from cheap clothes thru wines and spirits to souvenirs. Due to the large communities of new age holiday travellers and old style hippies heading out to Thailand for the full moon parties and island life,the clothing here tends to frown in the face of traditional style and you'll see many people wearing more gypsy style clothing, and this is openly available in the clothes shops throughout the island - although bargains can be picked up quite easily on clothing in general, especially if you're willing to take the risk that what you're buying might not be exactly one hundred percent authentic. In fact, this is very much something to be aware of when stopping in resorts such as Patong. We're all familiar with the concept of roadside vendors selling fake rolex watches, but in Thailand it is not unknown for an unsuspecting tourist to go into a large reputable looking department store, wander into the music section and pick up an apparent bargain such as a chart album for the equivalent of a few pennies, only to discover upon listening to it that they've actually got a recording of a talented impressionist covering the original songs - not something it will tell you on the CD case. One really obvious thing about the ridiculous exchange rate between the Thai Baht and the UK Pound is that nobody really knows what their money is worth from one day to the next. At the time of writing, one pound would buy me sixty-four Baht. This is never really a problem as you know that everything in Thailand is costing you next to nothing, but the confusion did prove useful to Tanya and I when we arrived in Patong and decided in a moment of madness to head for McDonalds for something to eat. While Tanya found a table among the throngs of tourists stuffing their faces, I went up to the counter and ordered - coming away with a tray laden down with food and drink which had probably cost me not much more than a pound or two. On the way back to the table, a drunken English guy came bursting through the door with his mates and knocked me flying, sending my tray clattering to the ground and spreading my food all over the floor. Stopping in his tracks, he looked momentarily horrified at what he had done before putting his hand on my shoulder, apologising profusely in a drunken slur and handing me a wad of Thai banknotes with which to replace our meals. I worked out later that he had given me enough money to pay for our first couple of days spending in resort, probably enough to have replaced our meals fifty times over - but by that time the group had moved on and we were forced to spend the change on souvenirs instead. It isn't often you arrive in a foreign country on a budget and almost immediately have somebody pay for your stay! Our stay in Phuket coincided with our first Valentines Day together, and we had dinner in one of the nicer restaurants on Patong sea front. I had, of course, tried very hard to arrange the dates of our holiday so that Valentines Day would be during our stay at the Rayavadee, the island resort I had ended up booking for the following week - but as you can imagine, getting such a place for Valentines was a little like trying to book a ticket to Glastonbury music festival the day before it starts. I didn't even like to ask how far in advance we would've had to book a table at the Central Karon Village, but the people were already lining up to get in when we left. Nevertheless, we found a romantic place along the front and were able to forget for a moment that we were in Patong and be surrounded by other couples celebrating the day. As it turned out, our stay at the Rayavadee a few days later was pretty much like an extended Valentines Day anyway. On our return journeys to the Central Karon Village in the back of a taxi, Tanya would try very hard to get me to join in with a romantic rendition of Close to You by The Carpenters. This would usually end in embarrassment, partly because it's not that easy to sing well when you're being tossed around in the back of a truck, but mainly because I've always had an unfortunatetendency to muddle all the words up between the various choruses in such a way that the song changes rather dramatically from one of the most beautiful love songs ever written into a bit of a farce. "Why do birds fall down from the sky, every time you walk by" doesn't have quite the same ring to it, and probably puts across completely the wrong message... (1) Since our stay, the Central Karon Village has been renamed the Centara Villas. Looking through the website, however, it doesn't seem to me that much has changed other than the name. When I looked, there seemed to be a sudden lack of photos of the villa exteriors, however, and they seem to have repainted the interior walls red. Perhaps the management aren't as impressed with their own facilities as we were! However, Considering where we were and how beautiful the resort was, I found the cost of staying at the Central Karon Village entirely reasonable - at the time of writing, the deluxe villa we stayed in is showing on the resort website at an online rate of 88 UK pounds per night. Many basic hotels in London charge more than this, and I don't remember any of them having majestic views of the Andaman sea. For a more detailed description of Phuket and the amazing limestone stacks and islands surrounding it, you may like to read my previous book - still available at http://www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer

Nightlife: SAFARY !! incredible, between Patong Beach and Karoom Beach. For food, drinks and live music the MOLLY MALONE´S, in Patong Beach.

Go and have dinner at Nok and Joe's!! Great food, cheap, life music and great owners.

Careful with the rental bikes don't leave your real passport since they just leave it in the desk not a safe. Give a copy instead and if they refuse ask to give a 2000 bah deposit.

I had a pretty fair idea of what I wanted to do in Phuket before I even left England, thanks mainly to the amount of people who suddenly turned out to have been here and wanted to tell me all about it. So, when my tour rep turned up in the lobby this morning with his clipboard, hard-sell face and book entitled "1001 ways to get people to do what you want them to do", he was rather surprised to find that it took him all of fifteen seconds to sell me on the idea of doing exactly what I came here to do in the first place. He probably got promoted. So, clutching my tickets for a trip to Phi-Phi Island and to the beautiful bays around the coast over the next two days, I set out to see Patong by day. As with all places, the town is considerably different without the beating music and bright lights of night time. In fact, it was quiet and relaxed this morning, full of couples walking along the beach arm in arm. At the first travel shop I came to, I booked myself onto an "Introduction to Phuket" tour which was leaving within the next few minutes and which confidently promised to show me some of the sights of the island in 4 hours. This tour set me back the princely sum of 300 Baht - about a fiver - so I didn't really expect much more than a basic drive to a couple of temples. On the whole, though, I think it was money well spent: The "English Speaking" guide was obviously from the Chinese school of English, and spoke so fast that it was hard to believe he was speaking English at all, but for 300 Baht I wasn't about to complain. Christ, for that sort of money I think I would've been quite happy with the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show! I did start to get a bit annoyed with the way the guide kept saying "Yes?" at the end of every sentence, though, as though he was trying to convince himself that he was telling us the facts. And I did start to become a bit sceptical when he informed us matter-of-factly as though talking to a group of 5 year olds that they have to train monkeys to pick coconuts for them as they have discovered that only monkeys can avoid the poisoned fruit on their trees. It apparently takes 6 months to train a monkey to do this, and there is a University for monkeys in Bangkok for this purpose, we were informed. I have just one problem with this. If it takes 6 months to train a monkey to not eat poisoned fruit, what do they do with all the dead monkeys? Our first stop on the tour was at a lookout point at the very top of the island, where we all scurried off to take our first photos of the breathtaking scenery. This is one thing that Phuket has in abundance. According to the guide, who I was starting to think was making it all up as he went along, parts of Jurassic Park were shot on the island - although people disagree as to exactly where and when and nobody seems to actually be able to remember any camera crews or anything. Looking at the views of the forests and beaches stretching away to the horizon, it certainly isn't difficult to imagine a few Raptors down there though. The highlight of the day for me was our afternoon visit to Wat Chalong, a supremely beautiful Buddhist temple built on a traditionally grand scale and somehow exactly the opposite of what I was expecting from Phuket after the obvious excesses of Patong Beach. In fact, the place is such a culture shock after arrival in Patong that it takes quite a while walking around the extensive gardens and market stalls before you even feel worthy to set foot inside. Wat Chalong is the pride of the island, a fact that was obvious just to hear our guide talk about it's history and the miracles said to have been performed there as though he considered it his honour to pass on every drop of knowledge he had ever learned about the place.
The temple had a major part to play in the war between Chinese secret societies in the 19th century. At this time the island was something of a power in Tin Mining, and Chinese workers came looking for work and started to create societies. Unfortunately, the workers started to get a bit upset when the owners of the land and tin mines decided they weren't about to allow them to partake of opium as they were used to, and they took it upon themselves to begin a murderous rampage. Locals fled to the temple where the Abbot did all that Buddhism would allow which was help rally the people to fight back against the attackers. Despite quite rigorous fighting from the Chinese side, the opium finally got the better of them and they were overwhelmed by the locals. When this all got back to the king the Abbot was called before him for a well earned promotion, and Wat Chalong became a royal temple. The temple is filled with statues, and every single inch of it is covered in gold as I should have come to expect by now. The walls are covered in paintings depicting the Buddha's life, and statues of previous abbots adorn the corridors. The grounds are amazing, gardens stretch out in all directions and are a pleasure to walk around, and today there were market stalls set up on the boundaries through which I spent a good half hour of browsing: just sitting in the grounds in silence for a few minutes is almost enough to make you want to take the vow. One room of the Wat was full of locals praying and we tiptoed respectfully through watching them meditate or sit in silent prayer, although none of them seemed to be remotely bothered or worried by our presence. Buddhists are, of course, nothing if not understanding and tolerant - something which is refreshing to say the least after spending a lifetime in the West where everything is stress and rush. Some would argue, for this reason, that Buddhism is in fact not so much a religion as a philosophy. It is, if you are interested in a slight digression at this point, a set of teachings based entirely on, not the belief in any particular divine entity, but the words of a man called Siddhartha who achieved enlightenment around 2500 years ago at the age of 35 while sitting under a pipal fig tree. These, naturally, were gentler times when a name like Sid Arthur meant you were a respected prince rather than a wheeler/dealer type from the east end of London. Anyway, Siddhartha Guatama was born and raised in ancient India in the region now known as Nepal, and had spent his early life as a prince, being given whatever he desired before being married off at the age of 16 to his cousin. He seems to have led something of a sheltered life because only as he approached his 30th birthday did he decide to actually leave the house and survey his kingdom. It must have come as something of a shock to come across the sick, the old and the dying for the first time because Siddhartha promptly announced that he needed to find the path of enlightenment, packed his bags and headed off to devote the rest of his life to abstinence from all worldly pleasures in an attempt to prevent such unpleasant things as death and old age from happening to him. Over the next few years Siddhartha became a beggar, studied under several hermit teachers, brought meditation down to a fine art and just about managed to starve himself to death by taking abstinence to the ultimate extreme and restricting himself to a leaf a day. To paraphrase the teachings of Buddha slightly here, this is the point at which Siddhartha decided he needed a new plan.
So Siddhartha created the "Middle way", which has a slightly different meaning depending on which branch of Buddhism you listen to but which is essentially a transcendental path away from self satisfaction and worldly pleasures and towards the pursuit of wisdom and enlightenment. Settling down to meditate under the Pipal tree, he told his companions that he wasn't going to get up again until he had understood the truth about everything - this he duly did after several weeks, but not before all his friends had, unsurprisingly, gone home. Siddhartha Guatama had finally achieved enlightenment and become the Buddha, or "Awakened one".
Enlightenment brought with it an understanding of the four noble truths of Buddhism, which would appear to be a series of statements which connect together logically - we crave our desires (some wish to attain pleasure, some wish to attain happiness, some wish to kill and some wish to love, etc); these cravings lead to suffering; to relieve suffering one must eliminate craving; to eliminate craving, one must follow the Eightfold path: correct outlook, correct intentions, correct speech, correct actions, correct work, correct amount of effort, correct mindfulness, correct amount of concentration. Following the Eightfold path will ultimately lead anyone to the state of Nirvana which, as a child, I firmly believed was the next state over from California! Of course, the western way of thinking tells us that happiness is whatever we want it to be. If you find true happiness in meditation and giving up all earthly vices, then that's fine - but if your idea of supreme bliss is going out on a Saturday night, getting totally rat-arsed and waking up in somebody else's bed, then that's fine too. I came across the following story while updating this entry, which I thought I would share with you for it's humour value. It would appear that one of the ex-abbots of Wat Chalong, Luang Poh Cham, was promised by a local girl that she would cover his genitals in golf leaf if he cured her with his magical walking stick. However, after being cured she subsequently forgot about her promise and fell ill again because the Thai's believe that breaking a promise will result in evil falling upon them. The girl's parents returned her to the Abbot for an explanation, whereupon he saved the day by sitting on his walking stick in such a way that it stuck out from the front of his robes and the girl was able to coat it in golf leaf, become cured again, and remain none the wiser...

The tour company decided to phone at the crack of dawn to suggest I get up for their tour, which I had fully intended to do at a slightly more sensible time. Not being able to get back to sleep again, I found myself spending three quarters of an hour at 5 o'clock this morning with my remarkably unhelpful English-Thai phrasebook trying to explain patiently to the night duty receptionist that I would like an early morning call tomorrow for my trip to Phi Phi together with a simple breakfast of Pancakes, Tea and Croissants. God only knows what I'll get - possibly a saucepan with a cake in it. If I had wanted to ask her the way to the nearest police station or inform her that I've just seen a monkey on a chair, I would've been as happy as Larry - whoever he is - but ordering breakfast? Nobody would ever want to do that, surely. Phang Nga Bay is one of those places that you must see before you die. You can find photographs of it's imposing islands of Limestone (Calcium Carbonate) everywhere you look, adorning the covers of countless travel magazines and brochures, but like the Grand Canyon there is simply no way to appreciate the scale or beauty of the bay from just words or pictures alone. However, there's nothing like a challenge so I think I shall have a bloody good try anyway...
First of all, there is no shortage of things to do at Phang Nga. Whether you're into relaxing on the back of a boat and soaking up the sun, Kayaking around the islands of the Andaman Sea and through the countless hidden cave systems, or even having lunch on the strangely alluring Sea Gypsy Island, Phang Nga has something to tempt everyone. About 1 and a half hours drive from Patong, Phang Nga isn't actually part of Phuket province at all but rather a province in it's own right, although you won't find many locals keen to admit that. It covers a massive one hundred and fifty-five square miles of ocean, around which sheer limestone stacks rise at regular intervals up to 350 meters into the air as though just thrown up from the water at random. The blacks and greys of the rock are punctuated with streaks of red from iron deposits, and covered with the greens of trees, making them a colourful thing to behold. There are more than 40 such stacks, once part of a prehistoric seabed on which the accumulated skeletal remains of marine creatures were crushed under their own weight to form a limestone crust. Immense geological forces then fractured the limestone beds and pushed them skyward where they were worn away over millions of years by rising and falling sea levels to form fascinating islands of dense forest at angles far too steep for any human to climb. The stacks are pitted with caves (or Hongs) and tunnels, the tides carving out great chambers which just wait to be explored. Some of the caves, reachable only by Kayak, contain ancient paintings which only the most adventurous will ever see. Other cave systems have only recently been discovered as they have no entrance from the sea and can only be reached by scaling the sides of the imposing monoliths, others still await discovery. Many of the limestone islands have small beaches at their base or running between them, and there are plenty of places to anchor a boat and head off to explore. Even better, most of the beaches are too small for the big tourist launches to get to, so if you can hire a private boat there is a very real possibility that you could end up with your own personal paradise for the day. Protected from both the Northeast and Southwest monsoons, the bay is never less than tranquil; you'll hardly ever find the waters choppy in Phang Nga, ideal for Kayaking. In fact, the water is so still that I was able to climb up onto the roof of the boat and walk up and down taking photos and it felt for all the world as though I was on solid land even though we must've been going along at a fair speed. Our stop for lunch was at the wonderfully named Sea Gypsy Island. Slap in the middle of the bay is an entire community of fishermen, living in a village built entirely on stilts and attached to the face of a giant limestone monolith rising from the waters. At lunchtime, hundreds of tourists converge on the village to shop at it's craft stalls and partake of the amazing variety of food laid out in it's restaurant, and then when they've all cleared off the whole place shuts up shop and settles down to become a quiet little fishing village once more. The real name of the Island is Koh Pannyi, although Sea Gypsy really does sum up the place beautifully. Of course, the highlight of the bay for many people - and indeed the single most popular reason that people keep coming - is the island of Koh Khao Phing Gan, or, as it is more usually known, James Bond Island. It is here that Roger Moore was taken to Scaramanga's hideout, and the impossible nail-shaped Koh Tapu (Nail Island) sticking out of the bay nearby was the hiding place of the secret weapon with which he intended to take over the world in 1974's The Man with the Golden Gun. The beach at James Bond Island is packed with salesmen selling the usual paraphernalia, and the place has become something of a tourist trap. For once, though, it is actually possible to ignore the fact that you are just one of several thousand people who seem to have all chosen exactly the same moment to arrive on the island, because as soon as you get one look at Koh Tapu you're just glad you got to see it. The best way to see the monolith, however, is not to gawk at it from the beach as many do but to follow the narrow pathway which winds around the side of one of the cliff faces - this takes you to a lookout point in the trees from where you can get a much more impressive view and for one moment imagine that you're actually looking at Scaramanga's secret weapon. It's very easy to use up several rolls of film in Phang Nga bay, and boy do they know it. On James Bond Island, there is a whole row of covered stalls dedicated to seemingly nothing more than selling film, postcards and tacky souvenirs. They can just about ask any price for film because the Bay is so spectacular in almost every way that anybody going home without a suitcase full of photographs obviously just hasn't made the effort. I was slightly more cautious in that I had stocked up before leaving the mainland, but I still ran out of film and had to pay inflated prices for extra before we moved on. I have to wonder how things have moved on now that the age of digital photography is upon us. The day also included a trip to Wat Tham, essentially a temple in a cave. At the entrance, monkeys scampered around taking food from tourists - not necessarily with their consent - and Thai salesmen sell monkey food for this purpose. The macaques are everywhere, as you would expect given all the tourists saying "Ahhh, isn't he cute?" to their children and handing out free food right and left. Everywhere you look, from the cave entrance to the rock face surrounding it, there are monkeys. It's hard to get your coach into the car park without running a few hundred of them over, in fact.
Inside the cave, you pay the paltry 10 baht entrance fee and make your way through a wholly ineffective turnstile into the large main cave. Dominating the chamber is one of the biggest reclining Buddha statues I have ever seen, and many other beautiful Buddha images and statues surround this main attraction. Locals can pay more money to a Buddhist monk who sits cross-legged in the middle of the cave and will bless them and wait patiently while they sprawl themselves at his feet. I think I'd let people sprawl themselves at my feet, too, if they were paying me for the privilege! Up a flight of steps from the back of the main temple is the Light Cave, where you have to put your imagination into overdrive and decide whether or not the stalactites and stalagmites have been formed over millions of years as the locals insist into figures of Elephants, Tigers and other exotic beasts. You then make your way through into the imaginatively named Dark Cave, and as soon as you step through the doorway you can see why. Or, to be more precise, you can't see anything at all because it would certainly be difficult to find somewhere more aptly named. Torch, anyone? Something like 4 or 5 steps after entering the cave, you trip over and fall head over heels on the body of a dead tourist who was trying to find his way out and plummet into a bottomless pit. Or, at least, that's what I imagined would happen if I hadn't taken 2 steps, felt entirely unsteady on my feet, and turned back. I wonder if anyone visits that last cave, and how many live to tell the tale...You can read my full travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer
In 2004, the area of Thailand surrounding Phang Nga was one of the regions hit hardest by the Asian Tsunami. However, reports indicate that Phang Nga Bay itself was affected little by the Tsunami and that most of the islands, being protected from the west by the bay itself, escaped unharmed. Witnesses report jetties being washed away and raised tide levels on the beaches, but beyond that Phang Nga Bay seems to have experienced something of a miraculous near miss.

Zalig vakantieoord gewoon... Je hebt er alles! Rust, sport, nightlife, winkels,... alles gewoon. Ik wil direct terug.

The women may be men. If you like strange freaky sex shows, you can find one just about anywhere. If you think Jelly Fish are beautiful, check out the coast during mating season. There are a sea of Jelly Fish in the ocean just like in the movie "Finding Nemo"", it is phenominal.

When you come out of the airport you may need a shuttle but/taxi. Be careful as sometimes the stop at a jewellry store/tour/hotel booking centre….they will try to sell you tours and stuff to make a commission. Simply tell them you want to go straight to the hotel and that all your tours are booked. We had a major hassle, but I remembered to tell them to just take us to the hotel. We stayed in Patong. Please note that this is a party town! There is a strip with all bars and clubs and it gets rowdy everynight. So don’t stay in a place located near the main strips (Bangka Road) if you want peace and quiet. The beach was nice, but the water was very rough (at the beginning of July). Not much swimming- just avoiding waves. Still some beach activities like parasailing and jet skiing.

Go scuba diving at Racha Noi or Racha Yei!

Careful with the rental bikes don't leave your real passport since they just leave it in the desk not a safe. Give a copy instead and if they refuse ask to give a 2000 bah deposit.

Phuket, city in the South of Thailand, has great beaches (paradaisical) and is a great tourist attraction. Although some years ago was destroyed by the tsunami, it is now rapidly re-constructing and the tourist are coming more than ever. Lot of germans, austriacs and swiss people come to Phuket. Great night-life and great and relaxing beaches.

There's a Häagen -Dazs ice cream place and you get pestered to by suits but I still love it!