We have a good lie in -- excepting that the cistern doesn't refill, the room is fine. We check out a few minutes late and head into town to search for some toiletries. Funnily, the deoderant is running low...
It's a hot day in Phuket but at least it's quieter than last night, the heavy throb of mixed tourists bobbing between stall/shops and restaurants and avoiding the tuk-tuks has been replaced by rolling folds of unpleasant and topless lard on the beach. So much for respecting taste let alone Muslim culture. Patong beachfront road Patong bay We flop into McDonalds, our agreed rendevous before lunch and slurping enormous tubs of coke (mostly ice) we call Sasson who can only give one minute. Oh, OK. He turns up and after a bit of a chat we head off for lunch not entirely sure what he was on about on the phone -- maybe an Israeli-French-English idiomatic mis-translation. After passing on a couple of hotel restaurants -- the only restaurants once off the main drag -- we settle in and eat a pleasant meal, the man missing his airport pickup in the process. Just how does he do business [the jewelry trade] and still manage six months of the year off? He ambles off to negotiate with a taxi. Taxis are ridiculously pricey, we're paying B550 [each] to go 700km as the crow flies to Bangkok and yet the taxi 15km from Pataya to Phuket Town is B350.
We head off to some of the many dive shops to look for trinkets. Within no time I've bought myself a watch-strap compass and a noise maker and we both buy T-shirts (hardly vital but they'll constitute clean clothes for a day). Then it's just a case of waiting around, Helen noting the large number of European males around and noting there was plenty of local entertainment.
Our taxi driver takes our voucher and in reply to Don't we need that for the bus ticket?
he replies Yes.
OK. In fact he has the bus ticket and we get to loiter in the bus station for a bit. There's a host of Phuket-Bangkok buses, one leaving every half hour all of which appear to be "VIP 32" which are four abread (2+2) coaches not the three (1+2) we were sort of expecting with their bigger seats and more comfort for the overnight 12 hour trip. Oh well.
It's a fairly easy journey, we don't get to see much of southern Thailand as the sun sets about 45 minutes later. We do seem to spend a lot of time on the wrong side of the road as we sway about overtaking things but luckily for most of the journey we appear to be on a dual carriageway so it must be safe. We get to watch Terminator 2 in the original Thai which is OK, then The Prophecy which isn't. Luckily the booming stereo is turned off after that to allow us to snooze fitfully.
The Thais like fluorescent lights, a lot. You buy them by the truckload and then fire them up. When you've lit everything then you put them on a stand at 45 degrees and light everything some more. You make "matchstick" arrows with them to point at the entrances to your place (particularly petrol stations) and you use them to keep your fish in their pens awake at night. Another odd thing was we passed through one town and there were stalls set back from the road with plenty of parking in front of them all seemingly selling the same packets of whatever. But this wasn't a few stalls, it was a solid block where every stall for a good 2km was selling the same.
I'm pretty sure at one point I woke to find a cockroach crawling over my headrest having tickled my arm on the way up the blanket. In the meanwhile we seem to be overtaking and be being overtaken by the other Phuket-Bangkok buses. It looks like we'll all arrive together.
Copyright 2003 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.
