May 23, 2005
Waves are friendly in Phuket
Aaaaahhhh.. That was quite a trip... We came back from Phuket yesterday and I'm already checking for the flights back..
During our previous trips to Thailand we tried to avoid Phuket, because it was supposed to be too popular, overdeveloped, overpriced tourist ghetto. So we never really checked it out until now. And look what we found - AMAZING white sand beach with GREAT waves good enough for surfing!!! Because of the tsunami scare the business is still slow and many resorts try to sell out and put the prices significantly down. Plus, the hordes of tourists are not back yet, so most of the places are very empty and quiet.
I don't think we could have afforded (or wanted) to stay in the Andaman White Beach Resort if not for the slow business. Cheap skates as we are, we were horrified with the prices of water bottles in the minibar (140 baht! In town they would have costed 10-15 baht!!) and the price of the meals in the restaurants. Cleverly enough, this kind of resorts are usually built in secluded beaches, where its difficult to go "shopping" for better options. So at the end of the day, your bill is also "5 star" high.. Bah..
Anyway, you can't stay angry about outrageous pricing for long - the beach and the waves are sooo great!! (Plus you can rent a motorbike and go to the 7/11 in the village. And this is what we did one night.)
The same night we also went to Kamala and Patong beaches that are (were) famous tourist destinations. The Kamala beach is still devastated, quite unbelievable to see that kind of destruction.. Visiting that place somehow put things in perspective - it must have been a damn huge wave if you can see ruins of houses some 300m away from the beach. The plants and palm trees by the beach are dying, apparently poisoned by salty water.. So sad.. It won't be easy for business to pick up - we also didn't stay in Kamala beach for dinner.. Quite painful and sad to look at all that...
As Kaj's idea was that we need to explore things, we made a one day (expensive!) detour to Koh Yao island. Don't want to spoil the business for people there (if somebody planning to go there is reading the blog:), but it was not worth going there at all!!! The views are nice, the cottages quite beautiful, but the beach is very very shallow.. Basically not possible to swim at all (only to have a dip during the high tide). The Koh Yao Island resort is working hard to make the stay tolerable.. It is peaceful and quiet, but so damn boring that you wouldn't believe. 
The Koh Yao Island resort is also outrageously overpriced.. The best thing about the place were actually these playful and friendly cats that kept us company. At some point we had some 5 cats following us and messing around in our cottage. Beautiful creatures!
We were happy to be back to Phuket and to the beach that you can actually use, not just look and no touch.. :)
At night, when we were swimming in the beautiful waves and the moonlight and stars were shining upon us, Kaj noticed tens of floating fire dots in the sky. They seemed to be appearing from behind the hills and slowly continuing up in the sky. Our theories ranged from UFOs, military planes, burning air baloons as a homage to the tsunami victims or Vesak - Budha's birthday, enlightment and nirvana festival. It was so unreal and beautiful, as if taken straight from Myazaki animations.. However, the explanation appeared to be much less poetic - one of the resorts was having a company party, putting white garbage bags on fire and releasing them into the sky. I can tell you, the view for us was something out of this world... Very beautiful end of the weekend..
Today we're back to Leijonakaupunki and its a day off, because of Vesak holiday. One of the traditions on Vesak day is to release animals otherwise kept in captivity to the wilderness. Leijonakaupunki had a campaign against that this year. There were stories of hundreds of dead birds, frogs and turtles found in the reservoirs last year, because people bought and released animals that were born in captivity. These animals never had skills to survive in the nature, so they were dead very soon. Interesting how such a graceful traditional and symbolic gesture may turn into unwitting mass killing given different circumstances..
The school and new semester will start tomorrow. We are all freaking out, preparing for the classes, the students were back already last week when they had their orientation week. Poor kids were sleeeping in school and doing "team-building" for one week already! I'm sure they'll start the semester appropriately exhausted.. :) Wish me luck with my 18 hours teaching week!
Posted by gkligyte at May 23, 2005 11:38 AM