Thailand is a mixture of beauty and mercenary attitude. Everything is for sale and there is no dignity when cash is on the table, but the landscape and ocean views are as good as you'll find anywhere from what I saw, and I've heard really good things about the more northern part of the country from other travelers. In Thailand was the first time I'd swam in an ocean (I think), and I'd be hard pressed to find a location that would outdo where I was. It also marked the first time I'd been swarmed by prostitutes in an alley at night, and perhaps not the last.
So we left Vietnam at some point (the details are hazy now) and got into Phuket, Thailand at around 6 pm, which I remember because there were some last calls for airport vans going around the island and we had arrived with no plan or idea of what to do. Why Phuket? I knew nothing about it, just that it was a popular place in Thailand for people to go and I was just looking for an easy and relaxing week at the end of our trip to hang out on a beach and maybe see some elephants. I didn't really care what we got up to, so we just figured we'd work out a plan on arrival. It turns out that I maybe should have looked a little more into Phuket. If a tourist destination could be a metaphorical asshole crammed with non-metaphorical sleazy, cheap tourists and frat folk wearing identical "I (heart) Phuket" muscle shirts, as well as a serious case of migrated genital herpes, then Phuket would go a bit beyond that. It's a total tourist trap, and most of the time I was surrounded by so many white people I never would have thought we were in a foreign country. Phuket is pretty stripped of culture at this point and seems to exist solely for the tourist industry. I'd heard a lot of great things about Thailand in general, and I intend on checking out more next year, but Phuket is really more of your things if your idea of travelling to another place means having ethnically different people tell you where Banana Republic and Burger King are.
So we got off the plane and chose a beach town to head to, just so happening to be the biggest on the island I think. I forget what it was called, but it doesn't matter. We get on this bus and headed out, but the trip included a stop at a "tourist hospitality" building, which I put in quotes because I have no idea what the intention of this place was, but I strongly suspect it was to confuse me. Anyways we didn't have reservations so we got hustled. End of story. It was the least professional office I've ever seen and they all made calls on cellphones rather than a land line, so I get the impression they like to keep options for quick, fly-by-night mobility open at all times. We didn't get hustled that badly or anything but we were told the place we were going to stay was pretty nice, hence the price being more than usual (I think it was about 50 bucks for the night). So long story short we get into the town, which was crazy, and find this hole in the wall place where we proceeded to check in. The guy at the desk seemed confused as to where he was or to what extent he was employed. All the pictures we'd been shown had looked really nice, but at the actual place everything seemed a bit.. off. I decided at one point that what they probably did was take pictures off the internet of nice hotels and then mimicked them from the pictures in a way that was cheap, half-assed, and almost certainly done in a state of heavy intoxication. Once I'd gotten over the initial displeasure of the whole thing it was pretty clear that this was going to be an entertaining place to be. Phuket is many things but it does not lack for hilarity and some of the best people watching imaginable.
So you look at this and you might say, "Tom, this doesn't look all that bad. Look, there're no less than three gold-painted wooden sculptures fixed to the wall. That's living". To that I say, everything was sticky with sin.
So house keeping probably never changed the sheets between guests because that's expensive, I guess, and someone had left behind a bit of their blood on it in case the next guest was feeling a little low on iron. Everything had a coating of spilled liquor and cigarette ashes, and a nice touch on the decor was the used condoms in the garbage can. Also a nest of mosquitoes lingered somewhere, which gave me cause to hunt the room for a while with an electric bug swatter I'd taken from the guy at the desk. That was sort of fun. The guy at the desk was even nice enough to offer a soundtrack while I did that, obliging until about 4 am just in case I was in for the long haul.
The next night we found new lodgings, but made the grave error of having not burned this one down to the ground upon leaving. Anyways here's what Phuket looks like. Oh also we arrived on the eve of election day, so no alcohol was allowed to be sold for some reason. I had no escape.
The blur is actually there in real life if you do Phuket properly
Need a souvenir? Give the gift of racism
I don't know if these were fake or were in a state of suspended animation, or perhaps were just puppies needing a place to practice being dead, but they were creepy and anyone who buys them should be arrested at the airport and probed rectally
So the next day we went down to the beaches to check it out, since that was apparently one of the primary draws of Phuket, and I guess it must have been because damn, was it packed. It was also popular with older Europeans who had no idea that tiny bathing suits stop being a good idea after oh, I don't know, let's say 60 just to make them feel like they didn't miss the mark by too much. That was if they graced the world with the decision to wear one. A topless beach should be a place of wonder and joy. Life is cruel though, so what we got was more akin to several pairs of what looked like sun-baked leather tube socks filled with a handful of nickels. That describes a few of the men too.
Anyways, we decided to just kick back and take it all in, rest on the beach for a few days and hit some islands or something. Once we got into this mode of thinking Phuket got a bit better. It's all about enjoying the spectacle that is humanity. Next post I'll talk about tigers and monitor lizards.
