First days in Phuket

Regardless of the home crisis, I am very happy to be in Phuket. The charm of the island erased all memories of the far-East farmlands. Since I arrived two weeks before I start my new job, I have had lots of free time. I have not been able to go to the beach every day because it is still rainy season and it has been storming daily.

The last Tuesday was sunny and I took a bus to Patong, which is the most famous beach in Phuket. Because of its fame it is dirty, cheap-looking, and crowded with tourists. Much nicer is Naihan beach, which is at the Southern tip of the island. I went to Naihan on Friday and enjoyed the beach for about an hour before it started raining hard. It did not matter to me because I was so excited about driving myself there! On Thursday I dared to rent a motorbike and started driving in a busy city of unknown roads, where people drive on the left (although I had already gotten used to the latter riding my bicycle in Khun Han). The store owner thought it appropriate to rent me a small and pink motorcycle, with matching helmet, which I will change for a more serious looking one the next month.

Naihan Beach

The last weekend I met lots of English teachers. Brian and Sam took me with them to a party on Friday at a very cool club of many bars in Chalong, an area towards the Southern part of the island. The next day we went to the “white party” at a fancy bar in front of Surin beach, on the West coast. Everyone had to wear white, which made it fun and also very hard to find your friends if you got lost. Since I had drunk the previous night, I decided to go with water only. When we just got to the party I feared being very bored, since everyone else was already drunk before getting there. However, I met two Thai girls with whom I had a wonderful time dancing and talking. When they left I ended up dancing with a group of teachers and enjoyed it very much. So much that we missed the bus we had hired to take us back to the downtown area and nine of us had to travel crumped up in a tuk tuk.

On Sunday I had my ill-fated move to the noisy house in the suburbs and on Monday I was happy to receive the visit of a couch surfer (www.coursurfing.com) from Chile. Miné is such a beautiful and happy woman. It is amazing how inspiring have my CS friends been. Receiving them is a most enriching experience.

Today I got together with TJ, a Thai guy that I met in Patong beach. TJ works renting jetskies to tourists, is covered in tattoos, has huge earlobe rings, and wears a locker which contains a bone of his dead mother. He took me to Wat Chalong, a very famous temple in Thailand, and to the Big Buddha, viewpoint from which you can see the whole Southern tip of the island.

The Big Buddha

Time to take some melatonin and praying to sleep through the night…