Phuket- Let's go to Thailand!

We got up, The Girl and I, at 5 AM on Sunday and ambled around trying to make sure we had everything we were going to want or need before the plane took off. Satisfied that we'd packed all that we needed to enjoy our time on Thailand's Phuket island, we headed out the door toward HK International airport.

We got there with just enough time left to stroll casually to the gate, hop on the plane, grab some newspapers and magazines to read from the stewardess and then we were off. Three and a half hours later, our plane touched down at the small airport in Phuket (poo-get) and we were off and running.

The resort we're staying at had a car and driver waiting to pick us up and, once safely delivered to the lobby, we found out that they'd upgraded our room. Quite nice of them I feel. And it is quite a nice room.

As soon as we'd moved into our room and put all of our stuff where it needed to go, it was off to explore the resort, check out the resident baby elephants and then hit the beach. We spent about 27 bucks on three beers before realizing that the beach vendors weren't affiliated with the hotel and that our hotel would have charged us $9.

Lesson learned, we sat back, enjoyed few more beverages and watched the world go by for a few hours. Ahhhhh....

Dinner was a weekly Sunday evening buffet consisting of only Thai specialties and what the ocean's salt water lacked in cleaning out my sinuses, the Thai chili peppers made up for. I was particularly fond of a soup I'd never seen before. It was chicken soup mixed with coconut milk and some kind of chili sauce. Not too hot, just really, really tasty. Can't remember the name though. And, as an aside, who knew that the world had limes that were red inside? Go figure.

Our all-you-can-eat dinner finished, we waddled back to our room where we laid down at about 7:30 PM and proceeded to sleep for 12 hours. Must have been the long travel day or something, but we slept well and soundly.

The next morning we got up at 5 and went to watch the sunset. Then we hired a driver to take us wherever we wanted to go for 5 hours. First up- Khao Phra Thaeo National Park. Touted by all the tourist maps (and our hotel concierge) as teeming with wildlife, lakes and waterfalls, the last of Phuket's virgin rainforests was, um, a disappointment. Particularly to The Girl.

When we got there we paid $400 Baht each (about US $11.60) each to wander around. Our conversation went something like this:

Her: Jackass
Me: What?!?
Her: You call this a lake?
Me: Well, that's probably not the one they were talking about.
Her: Then what's this sign that says "home to many species of indigenous fish, the BIG lake...."
Me: So?
Her: It's a muddy hole in the ground!
Me: What, I control the freakin' water table now?
Her: Jackass

Next it was off to the "waterfall". I'm sure it's quite spectacular after a monsoon, but at the moment it's more of a waterdrip, really.

Her: Perfect. This is perfect! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Me: Shut up
Her: And did you read the map you just bought? It says "the large numbers of various wildlife tend to stay out of sight...."
Me: Well, they'd do that wouldn't they?
Her: Let's just go somewhere else before we find the trees are plastic.

Ah, but redemption was soon to be mine as the next choice of destination was hers and she chose the famous reclining Buddha on Si-Re island. The driver, clearly unfamiliar with this storied place, drove us to a hilltop monastery guarded by flea-ridden, malnourished dogs who seemed intent that we move on rather quickly. Okay, so it wasn't actually anything she screwed up, but one must gloat any way one can.

Also taking up alot of print in our tour material was the "Heroines National Monument". It's a statue of two sisters who are said to have saved Thailand from invasion by Burma (now Myanmar) in 1785. Sounds inspirational, yeah?

It's a small statue in a traffic circle at a busy intersection in Phuket City.

Yeah, there's not much to see in Phuket outside of the beach areas. Not much to see that's interesting anyway. Unless you like squalor and poverty, that is. If so, this is the place to be.

Out of options, we went to the Phuket Zoo. Billed as the place to go in Phuket for "Crocodile, Monkey and Elephant shows", this place has to be right up there with Auschwitz and Anne Frank's attic for places that will suck the joy out of one's day in sixty seconds or less.

Animal Rights orgs would, and probably do, call for this place to be shutdown. None of the animals seem happy, or even content, and they are all malnourished. Fish floated dead in their tanks. Elephants are effectively immobilized by virtue of being tethered to very short chains attached to massive steaks in the ground. The place is dirty, the staff look like convicts and / or junkies, and it stinks as though it has never been cleaned. Oh- and the "Butterfly Zoo" exhibit? Yeah, it doesn't have any butterflies. They're all dead. That crunching sound you hear when you walk in? Yeah.

Deciding to pull the plug on our tour before we ended up utterly suicidal, we went to a grocery store on the way back to our hotel. I figured it would be better to buy a 12 pack of beer locally and then just put it on ice in the bathroom sink.

Once there, I engaged in something I always do when in a new country- I wander through the aisles, checking out the kinds of foods that are on the shelves. I like to take note of the differences of what people eat as compared to what I might find in a Jewel Foods Store in Chicago. I also like to see which American foods have made the cut and are being imported to various places around the world. Weird, I know, but it fascinates me. I will usually pick up a sauce or condiment that seems popular, this time it was a chili sauce made with honey that can be spread on bread like jam.

While I was doing this, one thing that immediately caught my eye was all of the old white guys walking around with their shopping carts and their hot, young Thai girlfriends or wives. Unseemly, that. I'm sorry, but it's just too weird. Here they are, these old guys with white hair, creaky legs and pot-bellies, walking hand in hand with some 18 year old Thai beauty queen. I mean, it's obviously a love born of financial need, and I guess it's none of my business, but it's just bizarre.

Once back at the hotel, it was time for an hour on the treadmill followed by a long swim in the pool, interrupted frequently by trips to the swim-up bar. The guy made this frozen strawberry-Mango-rum thing that was just wickedly good.

And that, folks, is our first full day in Thailand. I don't believe we're going to be so ambitious for the rest of the week. Frankly, I think I'll stick to the resort area. It's much less depressing.