I left off last on accepting the spectacle that is Phuket, Thailand. All in all it wasn't so bad considering it was a rather entertaining place, but like I've said before I wouldn't recommend it highly to those who want something immersive and unique, unless you're prepared to look for it outside the designated areas that is.
We ended up getting ahold of a couple of friends who also teach in Korea with us and agreed to try to meet in the party town we found ourselves in. Now, to find foreigners in Korea is about as easy as opening your eyes and scanning 360 degrees for a few moments. We stick out. In Phuket however, almost every single person is a foreigner. In general it's just a really busy place spatially and visually, so finding anyone is an extremely difficult thing to do when you don't have phone service to keep each other updated on progress. It's like we'd stepped back in time to the 90's or early 2000's to when most people only had a phone with them if they never left their living room. Times were tough back then. Add that into the fact that you can't really stop to get your bearings without someone trying to hustle you into their club to watch ping pong shows (the clever and skilled use of female genitalia to perform unusual shows involving markers, candles, live turtles, and of course ping pong balls).
After a while we found each other, grabbed some drinks and chatted for a bit on what we'd been doing. We hit up a hookah bar down the street, which we were lead to by a small Syrian or Lebanese person. We made some plans to meet up again the next day at Tiger Kingdom, and that's where I had a really good day. Before that however, we wandered through the town until pretty late looking for food and whatnot and decided to cut through a then poorly lit alley to the street on the other side where everyone and everything was. Now, it wasn't that we were in danger or anything but there comes a point in your life where you've walked too far down a street to turn back without looking like an idiot, and just far enough that you see that the street is lined with prostitutes who're basically on their last hopes for business that night. I won't over-speculate and say that all of them were or used to be men, but as you wade through a crowd of desperate hookers who're trying to get you to purchase their services you tend to become eerily aware that the strength in the grip of a few of them is beyond the norm for most females. Also they have Adam's apples and a 5 o'clock shadow, and also definitely a penis.
Tiger Kingdom is a place where you can pay to hang out, pet, and cuddle with tigers. I'm not sure if they're drugged, well-fed, or extremely well-trained, but they didn't kill me even once. For the most part they're just like regular cats, too lazy to do much even if you bother them. Tigers being my favourite animal, this was of course quite enjoyable. You pay for the size of the tiger, with babies of course being the most expensive and the largest being second most. Babies are cute, but if I'm paying to hang out with tigers I want it to be something that could make its disapproval well known.
He neither approved nor disapproved
I approved
Of course it could kill you any time it wanted, and that's part of the fun. The trainer was close by but there's not a whole lot of good that would do you anyway. I was between this one's tail and back legs and at one point it scared the hell out of me by moving his tail and legs together at the same time all of a sudden. The thing was his feet barely moved, it was mostly the tail, and he shifted me a little with what is most likely the weakest part of his entire body using only the effort that came from yawning. Needless to say, you get a sense of just how completely and royally screwed you'd be if it got annoyed.
This guy was napping pretty much through the whole thing
Cat napping in the sun. At one point she was having a dream about chasing something I think, getting the legs working in a short mock run.
That wasn't a homeless guy or anything, just a guy napping with another tiger cub that you can't see
These ones were awesome, definitely lively as hell. They all play exactly like house cats do, even the big ones. It's also weird to see a trainer dangle a basketball on a stick like an over sized cat toy and the full grown tiger go nuts like it's the greatest thing ever
The washroom at Tiger Kingdom had very specific criteria for who could enter
Some people do speculate that they're drugged to keep the tourist murder down, but I don't actually think that was the case. They slept for the most part, but all cats do that really and I saw one just get up from his nap at one point and move over into the sun as promptly and naturally as you'd expect a sober cat to do.
After Tiger Kingdom we headed into Phuket Town and got a hotel room there for the night before going off and searching down the beaches for a while.
The next day we grabbed a tuk tuk and headed down to the southern point of Phuket to see if we could find a boat to hire to take us to an island for a day or something. We ended up in this really small town, found a surprisingly awesome hotel, and spent the rest of the day on the shore since the tide was too low at the time for boats to safely leave or enter the harbour area.
Also, always be sure to enjoy the local artwork
The next day we hired a guy to take us on his boat to the island across the way for most of the day. With a steady supply of beer and nothing but a beach to enjoy it was a pretty pleasant day all in all.
Chickens love coconuts
We spent most of the time wandering around between two beaches and collecting shells and whatnot. To be honest the pictures don't show the pollution problem that was there, which was pretty awful. Just washed up trash everywhere, sometimes in huge piles. It was pretty sad to see, but they don't really have the resources for waste disposal that we have back in the west so it wasn't exactly surprising. We found a section of beach with warning signs posted, in Thai of course, and a small house boarded up and abandoned. It had a nice tree though so the four of us took a nap on the beach and dozed off pretty well. It was a great nap all in all, nothing but the sound of waves, coconuts falling through the jungle canopies in the forest, and the delightfully hazy wake up call to the words of "..What the fuck is that?!"
What it was was a 5 foot monitor lizard that had been walking along the beach toward us and had stopped in its path. It was probably a good 20 feet away, but between being in a state of confusion and surprise, and trying not to make any sudden moves before I got my camera out, we all moved a bit too much and it ran off into the forest. So the warning signs make sense in retrospect now, I guess.
The next day we played mini-golf and then we all went home. I'm thinking I'll do Cambodia and Laos next year for winter break, so perhaps I'll have some good monkey stories in future.
