Poo Ket

Some paralinguistic history first. Thai has two different "p", "b" "d" "t" and "k" sounds. English and European languages only have one of each, which corresponds to the "hard" version of the sound. In the language of languages, this is called "aspirated" because what makes the sound a hard sound is blowing air out with the consonant. As if there's an "h" after it.

So the soft sounds are transliterated as p, b, d and k while the hard sounds are transcribed as ph, bh, dh, kh and th.

Which makes for some nasty mispronunciations.

The island I am on at the moment is called ภูเก็ต. It is pronounced poo-ket.  the accent is on the final syllable. Since the p is a hard p, it is transliterated as Phuket. And Thai is another example. The first letter is a hard T, and the word is pronounced Tie.

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Thursday morning I took an expensive hotel taxi to the airport, and a Thai Airways flight to ภูเก็ต. It was a full flight, but a very large plane and not a lot of people with big carry-ons, so there was plenty of rooom for mine. I had abandoned my oversized wheeled carry-on bag at the hotel, and fit all my drugs into a medium sized knapsack. All my clothes were in a checked suitcase.

The flight was uneventful until about 15 minutes from the island, when the seat belt sign went on, and we had some seriously aerobatic moments of turbulance, which the dozens of kids on board reacted to as if it was a Disneyland ride. Much much better than crying and screaming. Fun, actually. The whole flight was overcast, which is sad because I had a window seat and it traversed the sourthern half of the country. My camera GPS did not work while the plane was in flight, but it was fine inside the plane on the ground. We did get some views of the islands by Pangnga, but it was cloudy and dark. We landed about 1:30 pm.

I found a taxi to the hotel, again for too much Baht, and the guy had no idea where the hotel was. I thought I did, but when we finally found it, it was not where the Agoda.com ad said it was. It does not have a view of the ocean, and while it is "meters from the beach" those are about 300 meters down an alley, past three hotels, two massage spas and two restaurants.

The Grand Sunset Hotel is ultra-modern, the room is small, the flat screen TV only gets Thai, Japanese and French channels, and it took 10 minutes to figure out the silver-fixtured shower.  The bathroom door is frosted glass.

The air conditioner does not quite hack it, and there is no direct light for the desk, which is survivable because my laptop has a lighted keyboard. The bell boy, who is also a manager, showed me that the key needs to be inserted into a slot in the wall for the electricity to be on. Which meant that when I left to grab a bite and explore, the air conditioner was off, as well as the camera and laptop battery chargers. It was 95 degrees outside. There is a tiny balcony with two chairs and a table. I stole one chair for the desk, since it didn't have one. I needed two throw pillows to get me to desk level. The fridge is stocked with beer and Coke. I pushed that aside to make way for insulin and (free) water.

I took a tour of the beach, was surprised to see several svelte blond women in thongs on the lounge chairs, walking on the sidewalk (usually with a male person) and wading. Swimming is not happening, because it's rainy season, the winds are high, so are the waves,  and the rip tides are almost palpable from the shore. Kind of pretty, though.

Back to the hotel, took a nap, processed some photos (free wi-fi in the room here), naped some more, and took a songteaw to Patong, the next beach over, which has a street of a thousand girlie bars. Much to my surprise, two of those bars feature Russian women. I only saw one ladyboy bar, down from about a dozen in 2008. I had a soda at several bars, practiced my Thai, and when the noise from Thai rap music, which mostly features American swear words, got too much I sought the solace of the indoor mecca of Starbucks.

Found a big pharmacy, showed my hand, and the guy behind the counter actually seemed to know what it was, and what it needed, which was an anti-bacterial cream.

Back to the hotel, peeled off my wet T-shirt, applied the cream, and had a good night's sleep.

Phuket Day 2

I didn't take any photos today, except with the cell phone. It was a day of errands.

Took  my laundry downstairs, the laundry form said it would be done by that night, but apparently that was before they stopped having a laundry service at the hotel. They really expected me to drop it off at a laundry place down the block. With them dropping it off it would take till tomorrow. Had their free breakfast, which was not much of one. Nice omelet, some kind of stir-fried squid, sweet roll, watermelon, stale croissant.

Back upstairs, dropped off the kindle, took most of my clothes (including some laundry) on a taxi ride to the post office which is a couple of miles away, mailed it surface, started waiting for a taxi back but needed a restroom, and the nice lady at the massage place next door let me use theirs. And she pointed me to a doctor's office in walking distance, so I went and had my alleged spider bites looked at. Three places on my left had have an ugly cluster of rashes and are swollen. The cream I go from the pharmacy last night had not helped at all.

The doctor was all about checking for infection trails, thinking it might be shingles. There is a relatively new shingles vaccine, so anything even remotely resembling shingles becomes suspect. But this is not shingles. It isn't an insect bite, either, he said, but it needs an antibiotic cream stronger than the one I had been using. He prescribed one, they filled it, the whole thing only cost 200 Baht (about $7). He also told me to come back immediately if I saw infection trails up my arm. "Nothing serious" he said, but I think he expects the cream will take longer to work than the 5 days I have left in Thailand.

On my walk I noticed a row of girlie bars, which were not open yet.

Taxi back to the hotel, read some, went up to the 6th floor rooftop swimming pool and paddled around a bit. There was some eye candy, all Russian. Two well-endowed redheads and a slim blond with a cute butt. One redhead was with her husband.

It was very hot up there, no shade, so I went back to the room for some online time. At 5:30 I called my friend David, who was going to take me to dinner (we'd talked in Bangkok, he's another former PCV and I've had dinner with him the last two trips). Traffic was bad, it took an hour to get here, and he came from the opposite direction from where I expected.  Meanwhile I had a nice chat with the gate guard, who was surprised to hear that unemployment in America is about as bad as it is here.

David's wife was with him, the first time we had met. She's Thai, but was a nurse in the US for many years so her English is very good. We all talked mostly in English with some Thai thrown in as needed.

The plan had been to go to a restaurant near the hotel, but David was on autopilot and we landed at a place near his home (clear across the island) we had eaten at in 2005. Excellent meal, but the service sucked. Not just slow, but they brought the wrong wokked veggie dish and did nothing about it when David's wife pointed it out. After dinner we had tea at his house, then they drove me back to the hotel.

I changed from the "polite" clothes into cut-offs and a t-shirt, and found a taxi to take me back to that row of bars near the doctor's. Except I got the name of the road wrong and ended up at a row of bars in the next town over.

The usual loud music, but the girls were just hanging out there, most of them smoking, and once I sat down they went away. I did get a chance to chat at one of the bars way at he end of a street which still showed some tsunami damage. The woman's story was unusual. She was from Chiang Mai in the north, had moved to Bangkok to find work, fond it in Ayudhya instead, got married here, had a boy and a girl, and after 12 years her husband abandoned them. Her mother took the children back to Chiang Mai, and she came to Phuket to work.

Back to the hotel, this time the tuk-tuk driver drove an urban assault vehicle.

Plans for tomorrow:
Find something to do.

Thai-napped Myself Again

Up late, took a nap after brunch, on a whim decided to try to get to Pangnga Bay to take pictures of the pretty limestone formations. Took the big truck downtown, was told the bus to Pangnga is now at the new bus station, 30 minutes way. Took a cab there. Van to Pangnga is actually the van to Krabi, which is twice as far away. Somehow I don't remember these drives being so long last time.

Left Phuket at 2 pm, Pangnga at 3:30. Walked around town for an hour, it was clear there was no way to get the photos I wanted without staying overnight, so I stopped for soda and ice at a coffee shop, then back to the bus station and got a big bus back to Phuket. It was coming from Haad Yai, 5 hours away, and broke down about half an hour from the terminal. The already had a bus from somewhere else to transfer us to. The first bus had the filthy windows, so no photos, but the new bus was clean, and I managed to get a shot of a young rubber plantation with intercropping, right out of my slide show from 1977.

Crops planted between the rows of growing rubber trees = intercropping. Pineapple in this case, I think.



I was dizzy & disoriented after getting off the bus, and instead of getting a cheap ride downtown and the cheap truck to the hotel, I took an expensive cab all the way. That was at 6, at the hotel before 7.

Stopped in at the tour place near the hotel and paid for the Pangnga Bay tour for tomorrow. Bus leaves the hotel at 7 am-ish. It probably doesn't get us onto the boat until 11. Lots of stops, I expect. Maybe I'll sleep.

Ditched  my camera, grabbed the Kindle, walked to the market and bought some longans (lahm-yai) and a hopefully bigger swim suit than the one I bought in BKK. Then dinner at a Danish place called The Butterfly Bistro. Best duck I have had in years - Penang duck. Yum.

Back at the hotel, processing photos. To bed Real Soon Now.