Day 19 - July 15

In the morning there was a lush tropical scenery outside the window, looking really beautiful. No information was given about which station we were arriving at, so we were a little bit worried about getting of at the wrong place, but in the end it was no problem as everybody else also seemed to disembark at Surat Thani.

There were lots of people standing outside and telling people where to go. On showing our bus tickets to one of the guys, we were directed towards an empty old bus. After having waited there for a while, without anybody else appearing we were starting to worry that this was the wrong bus. Surely we couldn't be the only people going to Phuket, could we? We got out and started asking around again. Another guy then told us to get on another bus, which we did, although it seemed to be in even worse condition and was almost empty as well.

Eventually, the driver told us that the bus to Phuket had already left since the train was late, so we would be taken to the bus station where we could wait for the next bus. The bus station, perhaps not surprisingly, was in no man's land, at least a fourty minutes drive from Surat Thani. At least there was a "restaurant" there, but hanging around there for another four hours, was really boring.

Eventually, two buses pulled up at the station, one new and modern air-conditioned bus, and one old bus that looked like it could fall apart at any moment. We were hoping our bus would be the new one, but unfortunately it was going to Krabi, just like most of the other passengers. Still, the other bus got us to Phuket in the end, after a four hour drive. For the last part of the journey, the scenery was very nice with the famous picturesque limestone cliffs appearing quite often.

The bus dropped us off on the outskirts of Phuket Town around 1600. We were immediately surrounded by tuk-tuk drivers who wanted to transport us at especially discounted foreigner prices, i.e. about ten times the local rate. However, we teamed up with an Irish woman, and were not easily persuaded. Eventually we negotiated a price of 60 Bath to Patong Beach, which was probably still much too high, but we just couldn't be bothered to stand around arguing all day.

I had always imagined Phuket to be completely flat, but nothing could have been further from the truth. In fact, on our way to Patong, we went up and down some of the steepest hills we had seen in Thailand. Lots of the cars seemed to have problems climbing up these hills.

Panorama Beach Club initially looked quite okay, and as Mr. Prakit had promised, it was close to the beach. The woman in the reception didn't seem particularly friendly, but the room was of reasonable standard and had a refrigerator, but no TV. After travelling for the last 24 hours, we were feeling quite tired, but still didn't relax for too long since we wanted to explore the area a little bit before it got dark.

Walking along the beach, our first impression was not good! What a polluted beach! We had never seen anything like that. Especially in the area near our hotel, the sand was hardly visible because of all kinds of rubbish that was lying around. As we walked further, things looked a little bit better, though, but we weren't really impressed.

In the center of Patong Beach, the area was really geared towards tourists. There were lots of bars, souvenir shops, tailors and similar. Many shops had signs written in German or Swedish and the place definitely didn't have much of a genuine Thai feeling to it. We were now starting to remember why we initially hadn't made plans to come here.

Since we had a refrigerator in our room, we decided to buy some bread, cheese and strawberry jam for breakfast. Then it was time to have dinner, and since I still didn't feel like eating Thai food, we stopped at a combined Thai/Italian restaurant. May Tina had some noodles, while I had a nice Spaghetti Bolognese.

Then we completed a full circle around the area and returned to our hotel again. It was great to take a shower and go to bed early at 2100.

Day 20 - July 16

We woke up around 0900, but stayed in bed a little while instead of getting up immediately. After making our own breakfast, we walked down to the beach to have a look. Today was hot and cloudy. There hardly seemed to be any people around in the part of the beach near our hotel, so we decided to go back, get changed and spend some time in the sun.

On returning, and walking along the beach, several Thais tried us to convince us to come and sit in their beachchairs. Eventually we found a spot that didn't look too polluted, and decided to sit down. We agreed a price of 70B for using two beachchairs for a couple of hours. The guy offered to put up a beach umbrella to give us some shade, but we rather wanted to get some sun tan. Strangely, none of us had gotten any tan at all so far.

We relaxed for two hours in the sun, reading and watching the waves break. It was not equally nice to watch was all the rubbish that continously came floating ashore, though. In fact, the guy with the chairs were walking around in front of us picking up rubbish all the time! He had to do this to avoid all the pollution scaring away his potensial customers. However, it looked like a somewhat meaningless job, because as soon as some rubbish had been removed, some new rubbish appeared, everything from plastic cans to old shoes.

After going home to relax for a while, we ventured out to look for an Internet cafe. Having used a sunblock factor 30 during our time in the sun, we didn't expect to get sunburnt, especially since it had been clouded while we were sitting at the beach. It was now becoming clear that we had severely underestimated the power of the sun, though, as both of us were slowly turning more and more red.

The Internet cafes on Phuket seemed to charge either 2 Bath or 3 Bath per minute, but all the 2 Bath cafes seemed to be offline today, so we had to settle for one of the expensive ones. We wrote some travel reports and then I had to reply to a very interesting work-related e-mail that I had received.

Since I still wanted to avoid Thai food, we went to the same restaurant as yesterday for dinner, and I even had exactly the same meal. Now both of us had turned so red, that it was almost painful to be in the sun. On our way back to the hotel, we therefore tried to keep in the shade as much as possible.

Lots of companies had billboards offering various tours, and on the way back we dropped by the office of Queen ABC to book places on a tour to Ko Phang Nga, also known as James Bond Island, for tomorrow. The staff there was quite nice and not as "pushy" as most of the other Thais who were trying to sell something.

We relaxed at the hotel until the sun came down and it was safe for us to walk outside again. Then we went for a long evening walk along the beach, stopping only to have an ice cream at McDonald's. As mentioned, the central area of Patong Beach was full of bars and generally was of little interest. On walking along the streets, people would be even more pushy and annoying than in Bangkok in their effort to sell you something. One of the tailors had a sign written in Swedish which we found quite amusing, though. It said something like this (translated into English):

We couldn't quite figure out why it was so important to emphasize that she lived in Stockholm. Maybe the potensial customers were supposed to think something along these lines: "Oh, she lives far away in Stockholm. Well, then the suits obviously must be of much better quality than if she had lived in Phuket and maintained personal control of the production."

Back at the hotel, we realized that it would be several days before we could even think about spending time on the beach again. Our skin had turned very red and sensitive, making sure we didn't sleep very well throughout the night.

Day 21 - July 17

We woke up at 0900 and had our own bread with strawberry jam for breakfast. There was a nice pool at the hotel, so we had a bath there while the sun was still not very strong. Then we put on long pants to protect our sensitive skin from the sun, and went for a walk along the beach.

After having some more bread for lunch, we walked up to the Queen office where the tour should pick us up. A guy from Denmark was waiting for the same tour as us, so we chatted with him for a while. He was actually planning on buying a house in Phuket and moving here permanently! It seems like an interesting idea to move to a developing country, as the low prices makes you very rich, but I don't think Thailand would be my first choice :-)

We were picked up at 1235 by what was obviously a popular tour because they had two large tour buses. While we were driving away from Phuket, our female guide spent at least fourty minutes giving us all kinds of conceivable information. "Be careful with monkey, okay! No thai boxing with monkey, okay! We want all to be friends, okay!......" It's nice to get good information about what is going to happen, but within limits! We were quite relieved when she finally finished and put on the video with "The man with the golden gun", the James Bond movie which took place on Ko Phang Nga, which we were headed for.

However, our first stop was at a Monkey Cave. This was a cave with lots of Buddha stuff inside and with lots of monkeys running around all over the place. It was a nice cave, and the monkeys were cute, one of them carrying a small monkey baby around.

After ten minutes more on the bus, we reached a jetty and switched to longboat, a much more convenient form of transportation on water :-) Although the boat engine made quite a lot of noise, it was a wonderful boat ride in incredibly beautiful surroundings. There were limestone cliffs rising out of the water and lots of secret lagoons, beaches and caves all over the place. It would have been great to rent a boat and explore this area by ourselves.

Eventually we arrived at a Mosleem fishing village. It was a fascinating place, built on stilts, only accessible by boat and even having their own small mosque. On the other hand, the village had clearly been severely affected by tourism (probably several different tours came here every day), and a lot of the villagers seemed to make their living by selling souvenirs.

We spent fourty minutes in the village, and then there was another boat ride to Ko Phang Nga, also known as James Bond Island. Not much to say about the island itself, except that it was incredibly beautiful!

Our final boat ride took us all the way back to where we came from. I really enjoyed this boat ride, it was so refreshing to sit and relax while moving around in this beautiful area. We arrived at our hotel around 1930, just managing to see the final scenes of the James Bond movie.

We had dinner at the same restaurant again (!) and made some new plans over dinner. To be honest, Phuket itself (or at least Patong Beach) had been somewhat disappointing. That it was not exactly the showcase of Thai culture had not come as a surprise, but we had not expected the beach to be so polluted. Now that we were too sunburnt to lie on the beach, anyway, there was not much worth hanging around here for.

We really wanted to experience a "paradise beach" while in Asia, but Phuket did not seem to be the place. We had heard that there were nice beaches close to Krabi, which was within easy reach, but still it would take several days before we could start walking in shorts again, so there was no point in going to Krabi now. We did not want to stay in Phuket and wait until our skin was back to normal, and we did not want to go down to Malaysia and then backtrack to Krabi. We therefore decided to skip Krabi, and go for the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia as our "paradise beach". Again, there was no point in going there right away, but after consulting with Lonely Planet, Penang on the West coast of Northern Malaysia emerged like a good alternative for spending some time.

After a short visit to an Internet cafe, we went down to Queen again to book bus tickets to Penang for tomorrow morning. Apparently, we had come much too late to make bookings for tomorrow, but the woman there managed it anyway! It cost 600 Bath each and the minibus was going to pick us up tomorrow morning 0700 at the hotel.

Stopping only to buy some drinks, we walked back to Panorama Beach Club. May Tina had not experienced any stomach problems so far, a situation that now unfortunately was about to change. Back at the hotel it was clear that she had diarrheoa, and during the night she became sick and started throwing up as well.

Day 22 - July 18

At 0630 we were supposed to get up and get ready for the bus to Penang. However, it was clear that we would have to postpone departure because May Tina was not feeling well enough to travel. It would be quite inconvenient to have diarrheoa in a minibus without toilet :-)

I still got up to book an extra night at the hotel, and tell the bus driver that we were not going anyway. On booking the room, I was told that it cost only 500 Bath! Hmmmm, what happened to the alleged walk-in price of 800 Bath, Mr. Prakit? Anyway,the bus arrived at 0715 and by using various gestures I eventually managed to explain to the driver, who didn't speak a word of English, that we would not be travelling because one of us was ill.

Back in the room we slept and relaxed until 1100. I had some bread for breakfast and as May Tina was feeling a little bit better, we walked out to the beach, relaxed on a bench while watching the waves break (and rubbish floating ashore :-) ) May Tina had improved enough that she wanted to try eating some breakfast, which she did at the hotel.

We wanted to stay close to a toilet, just in case, so we sat outside for a while writing postcards and reading. Not a very active day :-)

Eventually, we needed to get something more to eat, this time none of us feeling like having anything Asian :-) It turned out that we first went to KFC where I ate, and then to McDonald's where May Tina got some food. She had now eaten twice without experiencing any serious trouble, so we decided to try our luck at going to Penang tomorrow.

At the Queen office we explained what had happened and asked if we could use our bus tickets for tomorrow. In principle our tickets were non-refundable, but the staff at Queens were really sympathetic and after making some phone calls to the bus company, they were able to give us a special price of only 220 Bath each for the bus tomorrow.

Now the sun was about to set, so back at the hotel we took the opportunity to change to bathing outfits and have an evening swim in the pool. The sunset today was particularly nice.

After dark we walked along the beach yet again and sat down on a bench in complete darkness. This would, if nothing went wrong, be our last night in Thailand. It had been an interesting experience, but to be honest, none of us were that sad about moving on.

We shared a meal at KFC and checked out one of the shopping centers before going back to the hotel, packing and going to bed.

Day 23 - July 19

We woke up at 0630 and waited at the reception for the minibus to arrive. It came 0715, eventually filled completely up with people and drove us to Krabi in four hours. At Krabi we were immediately rushed to another minibus that was headed for Hat Yai.

Halfway to Hat Yai we made a toilet stop at a petrol station. This was, in itself, not exceptionally interesting, had it not been for an unbelievably cute black puppy which was also stretching its legs. We called it "puppy of the year", almost beating the "Liverpoodlian" in Bangkok for cuteness :-)

Hat Yai looked like a proper city, as there was more than one long street! Not that we saw much of it, as we had only a few minutes to fill out the immigration papers for Malaysia and transfer to a somewhat larger minibus.

It wasn't very long to the border now, and we crossed without problems at 1700 (or 1800 Malaysian time). This was our first visit to a Mosleem country and we were both very excited about it.

We almost immediately stopped at a shabby looking restaurant not very far from the border. Despite not having eaten anything but biscuits and chocolate all day, none of us were hungry, so we only had an ice cream and exchanged our remaining Baths into Malaysian Ringgit. Eventually we got going, allthough the driver took forever to finish eating and didn't leave until they were closing the place.

The difference in scenery was not dramatic between Thailand and Malaysia, but other differences were really apparent. The road turned into a real motorway where grass had been cut near the roadside, reminding us of the US. In fact, Malaysia would turn out to be quite similar to the US in many respects.

As it soon got dark, we could not see much for the remaining journey, except that the motorway seemed to be of very high standard. Inside the bus they showed an absolutely awful horror/splatter movie, whose name I don't remember, but it must rate at some of the worst crap I've ever seen.

I don't know if the bus was late or whether we had been given the wrong information, but we should have arrived at Penang around 1900, but instead came to Butterworth around 2200. There we had to change to yet another minibus, which only drove us a short distance to the ferry across to Penang. Luckily the ferry ride only lasted for a few minutes, and eventually we were dropped off in Chinatown, in a road called Lebia Chulia.

Time was now 2300 so we needed to find a hotel quite fast. Fortunately, I had been paying attention to the map in Lonely Planet while we were driving, so I knew exactly what our location was. It was only a few minutes walk to the hotel which we had decided to go for. It was called the Cathay hotel and looked very impressive from the outside. Fortunately they had a spare room (costing 69 RM) for us.