Phuket, Thailand - page two of four

14 to 30 January 2014

Tracey and I had a winter holiday on the island of Phuket, Thailand, the first visit for both of us to the country. The pictures are a mix from both of us.

This is the second page of pictures

Monday 20th January 2014

After a lightish breakfast, Tracey and I walked as far north along Kamala beach as we could get and were rewarded by reaching Skyla’s Beach Bar, a fairly rickety building on stilts. You have to climb up rocks and steps to get to it.

There was a swing outside.

We also noticed on the beach one area had four-poster sunbeds.

A quick trip to sort out laundry followed:

After lunch, we watched the film The Beach, part of which was filmed on Phi Phi Island, to which we went later in the week.

Monday evening, Tracey and I went on a trip (a short one, it is very close to our hotel) to Phuket FantaSea, a sort of theme park looking at the island’s history and heritage, though, apart from a few fairground type stalls and elephant riding, the bulk of it was taken up by souvenir shops and restaurants.

The highlight, however, was the hour-long show in the Palace of the Elephants Theatre, which is big, seating between 3000 and 4000. The show itself was very colourful, with a mixture of dances, mock battles, magic tricks and trapeze artists. It was noisy and bright. Animals were involved, with elephants doing the sort of tricks they used to do in UK circuses before they were banned. They also had chickens running across stage, and how they trained those is anyone’s guess. Overall, it was impressive, though you weren't allowed to take pictures.

Tuesday 21st January 2014

Tracey and I spent this morning on the beach, which split mostly into Tracey in the sea (though I did join her briefly) and me lying on the sunbed in the shade reading my book. I was near the end of “Stonemouth” by Iain Banks and really enjoying it. In the afternoon, I went on a Thai cooking course organised by the hotel. This involved watching the chef cook a dish, then having a go ourselves and then eating side-by-side the chef’s dish and the one we cooked. There were only four people on the course, so we all got a lot of time directly with the chef.

We started with som tam (green papaya salad), which thankfully can also be made with apple or cucumber instead of papaya. Next up was tom yum gung. Now, this is spicy shrimp soup, but I have an allergy that prevents me eating shrimp so the chef showed me how to do it with chicken instead – much the same but the chicken has to go in earlier as it takes slightly longer to cook. The main course was gai pad med ma-muang, or stir-fired chicken with cashew nuts. This was my favourite of the dishes and I’m looking forward to making this at home. Tracey, who had been back to the beach while this was on, joined us for the pudding – klouy buaod chee (bananas in coconut milk) – in what was excellent timing as she loves bananas and I was feeling quite full. At the end, we were all presented with a certificate to say we’d done the course. And we got to keep our chef’s hats and aprons.

Tracey and I went to Patong for the evening, starting with a revisit to the Full Moon Brewwork brewpub in Jungceylon shopping centre, which had its fountains working.

As before, there was a man keeping people entertained on his guitar. This time I started with the Phuket Lager, which uses a mix of German pilsner malt and Gaba rice from the HM King’s Royal Project. This was a cloudy blond beer that looks and tastes like a wheat beer but isn’t. A definite tangy bitterness, but not citrusy, is the most distinctive flavour. To compare, I also had a glass of the Oriental Wheat. Now this is a wheat beer, made with tangerine peels (which you could taste) and Chiangmai coriander seeds. This was lighter in colour than the lager and, of course, cloudy. The flavour was much sharper and refreshing. I did ask if they had any bottled versions of their beers to take away but was told that a local law prevents them doing that; I don’t know the details. As an aside, the bar also does a range of cocktails and spirits as well as cooked meals and snacks, though we have only ever tried the chips.

While walking around, Tracey spotted Rock Steady Bar (on Post Office Street), and this was a really chilled reggae bar down a little shopping alley. Effectively forming the front of a tattoo parlour (run by the bar owner’s brother), the bar has seating ranging from barstools to a bed. Yes, a bed, complete with pillows and cushions.

Wednesday 22nd January 2014

Tracey and I headed for Phuket old town, and spent an hour wandering round the streets looking at the wares on offer...

...until the heat got too much for us and we took a tuk-tuk taxi to Central Festival, a large western style shopping mall with air conditioning. This is the bus that took us to and from the hotel and the view out the back:

We had a quiet evening – meal, a couple of drinks at the hotel bar, where we were entertained by a duet ...

...– before an early night as we had an early start planned for the next day with a trip to Phi-Phi Island.

Thursday 23rd January 2014

Tracey and I were up for an early (and light) breakfast this morning so we were ready for the minibus to pick us up and take us to the pier and the boat to Phi Phi Island where they shot the film The Beach. Our pictures from that are on the third page of this set.

Tracey and I spent Thursday evening eating in the hotel restaurant while we watched a ladyboy cabaret act, which was entertaining.

Later, after Tracey had gone to bed, I nipped down to Moon Bar in Kamala Village for a late night drink and a few games of pool.

Friday 24th January 2014

Tracey and I took a taxi north to try out Bang Thao beach. After grabbing a bite to eat at a beachside café, we considered exploring the area a bit but decided it was just too hot. Instead, we rented two sunbeds and spent a few hours lounging around with the odd dip in the sea to cool down. This gave me chance to finish reading “Stonemouth” by Iain Banks – an excellent book. The beach was less crowded than the Kamala one near where we are staying.

We returned to our hotel late afternoon...

...and went for a walk round the weekly mobile market, where we bought a few souvenirs.

After dinner...

...Tracey and I took a leisurely stroll down to the Aussie Pub. We sat upstairs on the balcony and spent a couple of drinks people watching from above. We then improved our geography of the area by testing out if a road from the main road through Kamala really did lead to Kamala village, and my suspicions were proved correct as it did, so we had a quick drink in Moon Bar to celebrate. We also played Connect Four, which is very popular in the bars here, and Tracey thrashed me this time. She is getting too good at this.

Saturday 25th January 2014

Today was a bit of an odd day as I had some work to do, so after having breakfast together, Tracey went to the beach and I to my room to write an article. I joined Tracey during the odd break and for lunch. The work was finished mid-afternoon, so I then went to the beach with Tracey till teatime. I’ve now started my second holiday book – “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, an SF novel set in a post-apocalyptic USA. Not read anything by him before and his rather unusual writing style takes a bit of getting used to. For example, he uses a lot of sentences that are just not sentences. His use of apostrophes is erratic – he puts apostrophes in some contractions, such as “He’d” and “We’re” but not in others such as “can’t” and “don’t”. And he just ignores speech marks. Despite these flaws, the story is actually quite good. After dinner, Tracey and I had a little walk round Kamala village and a drink in the hotel bar. She then retired early to bed and I headed back to the village to discover all the good bars were shut; something to do with election day. I knew the Aussie Pub would be open, but was too tired to walk there so took that as an omen and went back in the hotel to catch up on a few things online before having an early night myself.

Sunday 26th January 2014

I had a bit of sunburn on my shoulders and Tracey had a heat rash, so today became a stay-out-of-the-sun day, which meant lounging on the shaded couches near the bar before an evening trip to Patong to wander round the shops. This, of course, involved a visit to our two main Patong haunts of Full Moon Brewwork and U2 bar.

And we spotted this sign on a beauty salon:

Monday 27th January 2014

After yesterday’s quiet day, Tracey and I decided to have another adventure day, so we went on our second island hopping tour, this time to James Bond Island, so called because it was used in the film The Man With the Golden Gun. The pictures from this are on the fourth page.

Tuesday 28th January 2014

Today was our final full day in Phuket (sniff!). Both of us had a latish breakfast and then headed for Patong, where we spotted the Thailand version of the Tardis:

Then to the beach for acouple of hours spent lounging, reading and swimming.

Later, we wandered down to the Jung Ceylon shopping centre for some air-conditioned browsing in the basement market, where we bought some more souvenirs.

Chips and beer then followed at the Full Moon Brewwork, and I got to chat with the brewer.

Then back on the bus...

...to the hotel for our evening meal. After eating, Tracey and I went down to the beach to let off a couple of Chinese lanterns, each with our name on it.

Tracey then had an early night and I had three German HB Dunkel beers down the Aussie Pub.

Wednesday 29th January 2014

And so the end arrives. Tracey and I got up reasonably early and had a final walk up and down Kamala beach and took a picture of the travel agent from whom we bought our island trips...

..,before back to the hotel to shower, pack and check out. We still then had four hours to kill before our shuttle to the airport, so we had lunch, played cards and had a drink in a beach bar. Then off to Phuket Airport for our flight. We changed at Abu Dhabi and arrived at Manchester very early Thursday morning.

Here is the first page of pictures from Phuket.

Here are pictures from the The Beach island tour.

Here are pictures from the James Bond island tour.

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