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April 2005

Phuket

Jeremy Koh
2005-11-05 11:45:47

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visit any. At night, Soi Bangla transforms into the entertainment hub of Patong. This is also where you'll see old Caucasian men holding on to young Thai girls as they stroll down the streets, transvestites dancing on bar tops, men shoving pictures of scantily clad girls into your face and, well, you get the picture.

However, Phuket is not all booze and sleaze at night. There're scores of places where you can shop for cheap imitation goods too. I must add however, that the goods look the same as they did 3 years ago when I visited Bangkok. Isn't it time to update your inventory folks? Besides shopping, there're also a couple of internet cafes where you can surf the internet for as cheap as 1 baht per minute.

On day two, we got up early in the morning to prepare for our trip to Phang Nga Bay which was in Phang Nga province. We had booked the tour for 900 baht per person the day before. From our guesthouse, we were transported by minibus to Phang Nga Bay in a journey which took more than an hour. Along the way, we passed by the temporary mortuary for the tsunami victims. Also, as we headed north, we could see more signs of the destruction that the tsunami wreaked along the coast. In certain areas, we could see that trees had been uprooted and according to John, our tour guide for the day, Khao Lak which is further up north, is badly devastated and would take years to recover.

Anyway, as we reached Phang Nga Bay, we could see why it attracts so many tourists. It was simply beautiful. The entire area was dotted with limestone islands which soar perpendicularly from the water. To get closer to the limestone islands, it was necessary to go by boat. The package we had included traveling by a longtail boat around the bay. Our first destination within the bay was a place where we could go sea-canoeing. As we boarded a boat docked beside the area where we were supposed to canoe into, we had ...