Phuket

2 May 2006

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Heading from Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) about 1,000 miles south to the island of Phuket (pronounced poo-kett), Thailand today. We enjoy a great breakfast at our hotel in Chiang Mai--which includes an awesome cheese omelet they make with some type of cheese I've never tasted before--it's exceptionally creamy & salty. Bacon, brioche, plain yogurt, watermelon, papaya, apples, mandarin oranges, waffles with syrup, Earl Grey tea (lots of English folks stay here I guess), passion fruit juice and unsweetened cacao (like we used to get in Europe at the 'Zimmer frei' guesthouses--yum!). Delicious! I always like to describe the food that we experience in the various regions to see how it compares to other parts of the country.

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We hop on our 2 hour flight to Phuket during which we could see much of Thailand's coast. Phuket is one of the main reasons why we're even visiting Thailand. I'd wanted to go to Thailand for over a dozen years and my last 'attempt' was nixed because I'd found out I was pregnant with now 7+year old rnrB--didn't want to potentially threaten a pregnancy by drinking odd water & ingesting travel-food in some far-flung region. Then, when the tsunami devastated the region on 26 Dec 04--I just knew that Thailand was where we needed to head for our next vacation--to help out the area if only through our meager 'tourist' spending. We figure every little bit helps.

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We learned a valuable lesson on our trip to Phuket. Having watched the news and read numerous articles about the tsunami devastation as it was broadcast in North America we were left with the impression that the island of Phuket had been totally devastated by the 10 m tidal surge. When we arrived at the island we could barely see any devastation at all. We know they've put in 16 long hard months of recovery and rebuilding efforts and it's very obvious that it's paying off. It's hard to imagine what havoc a 10 m wave could wreak on any little village around the world! 10 m is really high--just climb to the top of any 10m high dive platform and you'll gain a true appreciation for how high that really is! As a child I lived on Galveston Island in Texas for 4 years--an island that lost 6,000 residents when a hurricane passed over it in the early 1900s. The whole time we lived on Galveston I imagined increduously how the waters could rise like that and in an instant destroy so many lives. So, we tiptoe around Phuket constantly wondering what the tsumani was like and how it affected the various regions that we explore the 4 days we're on the island.

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Once in Phuket we're welcomed with mangosteen cocktails as we dropped off our gear at the hotel (Allamanda in the Laguna Phuket Resort complex--we're sort of in the 'cheap man's hotel' in the luxury resort--we're only staying in the nice resort because we've received a major discount on the facility thanks to a 'Thailand Vacation Family Special' we noticed at a travel agency in Seoul where kids fly free & kids are half price for everything else in Thailand--otherwise we'd be staying in the youth hostel in town).

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The massive resort complex includes 6 or 7 large luxury resorts that have been built out of an old tin mining quarry. Up until about 12 years ago the land was deemed as uninhabitable as it needed to undergo a major environmental cleanup project. Some land tycoons decided to go in together on a project to revive the land by hauling in thousands of tons of 'healthy' soil, removing the toxic chemicals from the existing soil that remained from the tin mines and creating an enormous set of lagoons out of the old quarries. The various resorts are scattered about the lagoons and have cooperated with one another to allow guests to use the services of all the neighboring resorts--which are linked together by an elaborate small ferry system. Our hotel is on the inland side of the lagoon as we must hop on a ferry or navigate around some odd trails to reach the beach (which is also where the 'local' inexpensive restaurants are located) .

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The resort complex is amazing! The lagoon has encouraged native flora & fauna species to return to the region and they're thriving again. We notice some very unique birds flying around the area every day.

rnrB & trkr enjoying the white sand beaches at Bang Tao Beach on the western shore of Phuket--along the Andaman Sea.

Bang Tao beach is about 8km long with a gradual slope up to a lip of sandy beach where it then descends again into Laguna Phuket--the remnants of the tin mine that have been converted into a lush lagoon. On its northern & southern tips it's flanked by beautiful green peaks.

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We immediately head out geocaching. Who knew that one of the four Phuket geocaches would be less than a mile from our hotel room??? We quickly blaze a path to it and secure the cache with the gigantic Yellow Sub Travel Bug--a TB with the mission of visiting locales where the Beatles visited. Then we hop a ferry to the beach where we enjoy the spectacular sugar sand beach. We dip our feet in the water and it's as warm as a bathtub! How bizarre! Andaman Sea is very clear, warm water with nice gentle waves. We play in the surf, search for shells and enjoy the spectacular views. Our time in Phuket will serve as our 'vedge out/laze on the beach' time. We enjoy a great meal on the beach at Tum's Restaurant. Our table is set formally with cloth napkins but it's leg are in the sand! The tiny sliver of a moon shines brightly--illuminating the crests of the waves in the distance. There are fireworks bursting over the southern peak (Patong village perhaps?). We order Pad Thai, sweet & sour pork, fried rice with crab. I get a mixed fruit shake, ginger beer, the kids order Sprites (we're on vacation after all), Trekkie orders a Chang beer--we follow everything with a double order of banana fritters and a beautiful array of watermelon & pineapple starts with an orchid mounted on the slivered pineapple crown--all for 440 Baht (about $14). We meet a German couple who are also enjoying their meal at the restaurant. Turns out they're both from Desau (a small village in the former East Germany) which isn't terribly far from where I lived for 4 years as a teenager. What's even more interesting is that he just returned from a tour with the German Army in Afghanistan. Boy, did our conversation get interesting as many friends and a relative of mine have also served there! Anyways, we ate like royalty and the food was delectable. This experience--moonlit night on the beach with a restaurant table about 5m from the surf can't be beat! I could get used to this! We cap off the evening with a walk along the beach before we head off to bed.

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3 May 06

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We awoke to a nice buffet breakfast--of note was the watermelon juice. Yum! We hitched a ride via taxi to spend the day geocaching & letterbox-planting around the island. First stop was Kathu Waterfall in the center of the island. Along our ride up there we pass by a lake that offers a water ski cable lift--essentially you hop onto a T-bar tow that pulls you around the lake in lieu of the boat. Haven't seen one of those in years. We make it to the waterfall but don't see much water. Instead we find stairs. Lots and lots of stairs. We remember the name of the geocache is Stairway to Heaven. Granted it's about 40*C with 99.9% humidity--so I'd probably rename the GC to Stairway to He... ;) Just kidding.

We quickly find the cache but it's covered in thousands of ants wrapped in plastic shopping bags and covered in even more ants & their future generations. Seems a previous visitor left some lemon-scented handiwipes in the cache and every ant and his brother & future offspring wanted a taste of the delectable things. Just another reminder to avoid anything that's scented when planted letterboxes out in the wild. Trekkie is tasked with the mission of eradicating the ants. His resolves the problem by throwing the GC into the remaining trickle of water in the falls. We eventually repair the geocache--cleaning it completely, replacing the logbook and adding some of our industrial strength zippered plastic bags. Hopefully this 'planted on vacation GC that has already survived some 4 years' will continue on for much longer.

We also use the time we spend here at the waterfall to plant our second letterbox in Thailand. If you continue much further up the trail beyond the waterfall, you'll find several large boulders on the side of the trail. Find the right one & you just might find our Thai-Grrrr Letterbox! ;) Yes, another corny cliched letterbox for future visitors to Thailand. ;)

Oh, beware the 6" long black & orange spiders that spin these massive webs at about human head level. At first you don't see them when you're meandering the trails, then out of nowhere--when they're about 3 inches from your eyes you see them and you let out the typical horror movie scream (& I'm not one who's too terribly afraid of spiders--it's just when they invade your personal space they become an issue!).

From Kathu Waterfall, we continue heading further south along Phuket's western shore to the town of Patong. This is (was?) the party town before the tsunami. You can tell it's where the younger crowd hangs out as it's teeming with that vibe--sort of like a Spring Break beach town--lots of backpackers/world traveler tourists in the area. We head up the mountain due east of Patong to seek out the Happy Phuket Geocache--our taxi driver at this point thinks we're insane because we aren't going where all the tourists usually insist he take them. We find ourselves wandering around rubber trees on a small patch of land that edges a windy mountain road. We secure the GC with no problems but probably enjoy studying the rubber trees more. We're surrounded by these large grey trees that have these 'V's scratched into their bark near their bases. At the bottom tip of the V is mounted a tiny bowl (usually half a coconut shell) to collect the sap. It seems to be stapled to the tree with aluminum tabs. The sap looks like motor oil or extremely dark molasses but doesn't seem to have any noticeable smell--or perhaps the rainwater has helped mask any odd smell?

From there we continue south to the Kata Beach area. This is the area in Thailand about which I heard the most news regarding the tsunami. Kata beach is a tiny moon shaped beach that's about 500-750m long. It's nestled between 2 very tall cliffs/mountains. It received quite a bit of damage from the tsunami and is where most of the casualties on Phuket occurred. We feel like rubberneck gawkers in the area--those folks who always seem to gawk at accidents you pass by on the highway. We don't see much devastation on the beach per se apart from a few boats that have been stranded in some neighboring canals and left to rot. The sidewalks have been cleaned up and any hotels/buildings that were affected have been removed or rebuilt. We're in the area to hunt out a geocache that was hidden in the area 3-4 years ago that about 75% of the visitors report as 'did not finds'. The hunt takes us to an area known as Laem Sai which is due north of Kata Beach on a bluff/cliff that slopes down to large boulders arrayed on a rocky beach. We descend the cliff following our trusty GPSr and quickly find ground zero but are unable to find the GC. We are determined to find it because every so often over the past year somebody has actually found it--so there's hope that it's still there.

We study the slope quite closely knowing full well that it was greatly affected by the tsunami as it's well below the 10m high mark. We notice an area that appears to have suffered from some sort of landslide--was it from the tsunami or just cyclical rains that caused it? Who knows? We see palm trees, coconut shells and all sorts of detritus and flora debris scattered all about the slope--not sure if it's normal 'sloughing' of the flora in the area or if it was transported up the slope by the wave. It appears to have been in the sun for quite a while as the coconut husks and shells have been bleached quite a bit. Every so often we come across objects that make us wonder--a single flip flop, a beach toy or just a water bottle. Who knows where they came from? It's eerie in a sense.

These are the rocks down at the water's level.

We eventually find the GC--a second or so before we're about to log it as a DNF I notice this dark, non-natural object appearing out of a small nook & cranny in the slope. We'd combed the area for almost 45 minutes already! Where on earth did that come from??? What's amazing is seeing the manner in which this GC was hidden, knowing full well that it survived the tsunami and noticing that there was barely anything holding it in its cubby hole apart from a small rock. Amazing! We pick up our 3rd & 4th Travel Bugs from Phuket geocaches--we're now armed with 8 of them so we decide to drop one off here on Phuket for the next geocacher who hits town. This particular geocache outing has been interesting--it's someplace we'd never have explored if we were just here lazing on the beach. We got to see some really interesting plants--especially these sabre sharp agave type tropical plants--one that gouges me pretty painfully in the calf. Again, our taxi driver insists that we're insane as we just added more proof to his theory.

After our trek at Laem Sai, we continue further south to a viewpoint overlooking Kata Beach. We see some interesting birds at the area--this one's a grey eagle that looked an awfully lot like a Bald Eagle but whose feathers were grey where the Bald Eagle's is brown. We're elated because he's sitting by another bird they refer to as a Seahawk. Now, it just so happens that we're from the Seattle area and our Seahawks made it to the Super Bowl this year (too bad the refs didn't). Everybody kept describing the Seahawk as a fictitious bird--well, we've finally seen one & they really do exist!!!

Here's the view of Kata Beach from the viewpoint. The beach in the lower part is Kata Thani--where several of the hotels on the beach were completely destroyed. Entire bungalows were washed away and many dozens were killed. This is where Supermodel Petra Nemkova was located when the tsunami hit--she was swept up into a palm tree some 5m off the ground, her boyfriend was swept out to sea where he tragically drowned. The second 'peninsula' to the north is where we found the Laem Sai Geocache--about 3m above sea level. To the north of that tip of land is Patong Beach--and then the next large beach to the north is Kang Tao Beach which is where we were staying.

Here's a family photo overlooking Kata Beach. The view to the south included lush green tropical mountain peaks, lined with palm trees, thick canopy and cliffs that dropped straight down to the Andaman Sea.

The sunset we enjoyed from the ferry in Laguna Phuket! Amazing!

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4 May 2006

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Lazy Day at the Beach!

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The next day was our 'laze at the beach day'. rnrB was pampered with Bo Derek "10" braids.

I was tired of messing with her tangle-prone hair this vacation and decided braids would be a great way for ME to have a vacation this trip. ;) So, $26 & 45 minutes later I would have my wish. ;)

rnrB had never been so pampered before in her life (& at $26 a pop it's likely not to happen again unless she wins the lottery or gets a job)! I always wondered how they went about braiding hair like Bo Derek's. So here's how they do it. First you choose the style of braids--straight down all the sounds from around the part on top or you choose to French braid it around the crown and then go with straight lines of braids down the back. That's what we chose. Then you select the color & combination of beads. They divided her hair into sections. Lots of hands everywhere--as you can see! Then, they braid these tiny little sections of it--using gel to keep the braids tight, adding little bits of foil to the tips, threading the beads and then folding over the foil tip of hair and rethreading it into the three beads.

Trekkie & trkr enjoying the surf while she's getting the braids. I exchange places with them in the surf every so often while it's going on. rnrB's relegated to the 'hot seat' the whole time. But once they're through with their magic--this is what it looks like.

Cool beads!

Later, we enjoy another great meal at Tum's Restaurant where we watch a major storm blow through. We're enjoying the food while the windsurfers race out to the surf in hopes of catching some air. What's scary is that there are lightning bolts shooting down to the ground every so often.

We eventually hop on the ferry back to the hotel and the storm clouds make for a great shot of the wedding chapel (the GC near our hotel is just to the right of this chapel). This photo is a color photo--it just looks B&W because of the dramatic storm passing through!

Here we are on the last ferry ride of the day--they cancel it due to the thunderstorm and lightning on the water.

Finally, we cap off our awesome time on Phuket with a picture of rnrB who finally 'figured out' how to swim all by herself in the hotel pool! Awesome! Congratulations rnrB!!!

As we wind up our time in Thailand, we note that we didn't meet a single American on Phuket--although we've met hundreds of people every day. Here we met folks from France (including a family with whom we experienced the elephant trek in Chiang Mai who were also on our flight to Phuket), Australia, England, South Africa, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Serbia, & Pakistan. So, throughout our 8 days in Thailand, we met or saw perhaps 8 other Americans total! That's quite different from our typical travels around the world.

Tomorrow, we're heading to Siem Reap, Cambodia.