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April 2005

Phuket

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

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It appears that four months down the road, Phuket has recovered from the tsunami that struck suddenly on Boxing Day in 2004. Though it's a stretch to say that you'll be hard pressed to find signs of devastation, you certainly won't notice it unless you're intentionally looking out for it. Well, in the Patong area at least.

Patong, 15km west of Phuket Town (which has recently been upgraded to city status), is the most developed and most crowded of the many beaches. The beach itself is an impressive 3km long stretch of clean, white sand lapped by crystal-postcard clear waters and ringed by lush, green hills, though I hear that it's much cleaner now after the tsunami swept through the coast.

While the tsunami has cost thousands of lives and affected the livelihood of locals, enterprising locals have tried to turn it into a money-making tool. Throughout the Patong area, you'll find tsunami souvenirs like VCDs, photos and even t-shirts for sale. One t-shirt in particular struck me. It says on the front: "2001 Bomb Alert, 2002 SARS, 2003 Bird Flu and 2004 tsunami, what's next?" I thought that selling such tsunami souvenirs bordered on bad taste especially when some of the photos were of dead bodies, but well, if there were no demand, there would be no supply. Also, I guess the locals do need to make money now that tourism arrivals are less than half of what it used to be. On Patong beach, you see more deck chairs than tourists and even during the trip to Phang Nga bay, there were only the two of us on the minibus that took us there.

In Patong, we stayed in Marine Inn, a small guesthouse which cost us 400 baht a night. However, it was situated in a quiet part of Patong. From our guesthouse, it was a mere five minutes walk to Patong beach but it took at least ten minutes to reach Soi Bangla which is where most pubs are bars are situated. And in case you're wondering, we didn't ...