Tropical paradise
Sawadee-ka from my new favorite place ever: Phuket! Seriously, I don't know what the *#$$! I was doing mucking around up north for so long when there were palm trees and beaches waiting for me here. I had a rough time getting to Mae Hong Son (not pictured in the photograph below: the nightmare bus ride, ants in the hotel room, lack of tours, etc) and was happy to get back to Bangkok (by plane) yesterday and then to Phuket (by plane) today.
When you mention to someone who's been to Thailand that you're thinking about going to Phuket, they generally curl their lip and say something snarky about tourists in speedos or bastardized culture or prostitutes or etc. It went pretty quickly from being an unspoiled island paradise to a capitol of tourism to the nightmare of discotheques and "massage parlors" that it is today. But Phuket's a big island - about the size of Singapore - and there are lots of wonderful places to visit that aren't overtaken with neon. I'm staying at the lovely Karon beach which does have its strip of restaurants and bars, but is mostly just beautiful empty beach and warm salty water.
Phuket was hit by the tsunami last year, though Karon didn't sustain as much damage as other beaches. There is a lot of new construction occurring on the road that parallels the ocean, but whether this is due to damage or just an opportunity to further development I can't say since plenty of older buildings are still standing on that same road. The biggest impact you can see here is the lack of tourists. It's really quite sad; there's just nobody here. It is the low season which plays a part, but everyone I talked to earlier in my trip was planning to head to the islands on the Eastern side of Thailand (Phuket's on the West) which weren't so affected by the tsunami. Here the guesthouses and restaurants have loads of bargains - I'm staying in the nicest hotel so far and it's about $5 a night - and bars are all empty. This is great news for me, but not so much for the economy here. So get thee to Phuket! You won't regret it.
I plan to do a lot of nothing while I'm here and may not be on the blog regularly. If you wonder what I'm doing, just picture a sandy beach, chair massage, ocean, book, fruity drink and you'll probably be right.
And don't worry Dad - they've got a tsunami warning system in place now so I'll have an hour or two to get out of the way.
When you mention to someone who's been to Thailand that you're thinking about going to Phuket, they generally curl their lip and say something snarky about tourists in speedos or bastardized culture or prostitutes or etc. It went pretty quickly from being an unspoiled island paradise to a capitol of tourism to the nightmare of discotheques and "massage parlors" that it is today. But Phuket's a big island - about the size of Singapore - and there are lots of wonderful places to visit that aren't overtaken with neon. I'm staying at the lovely Karon beach which does have its strip of restaurants and bars, but is mostly just beautiful empty beach and warm salty water.
Phuket was hit by the tsunami last year, though Karon didn't sustain as much damage as other beaches. There is a lot of new construction occurring on the road that parallels the ocean, but whether this is due to damage or just an opportunity to further development I can't say since plenty of older buildings are still standing on that same road. The biggest impact you can see here is the lack of tourists. It's really quite sad; there's just nobody here. It is the low season which plays a part, but everyone I talked to earlier in my trip was planning to head to the islands on the Eastern side of Thailand (Phuket's on the West) which weren't so affected by the tsunami. Here the guesthouses and restaurants have loads of bargains - I'm staying in the nicest hotel so far and it's about $5 a night - and bars are all empty. This is great news for me, but not so much for the economy here. So get thee to Phuket! You won't regret it.
I plan to do a lot of nothing while I'm here and may not be on the blog regularly. If you wonder what I'm doing, just picture a sandy beach, chair massage, ocean, book, fruity drink and you'll probably be right.
And don't worry Dad - they've got a tsunami warning system in place now so I'll have an hour or two to get out of the way.
posted by Imle at 3:56 AM
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