THAILAND
To quote the teenage girl in a Cambodian restaurant who didn't want to be bothered with us paying our bill, "Yeah, Yeah. OK. I know." We are aware that we've been back home for two weeks now, but we thought we'd go ahead and finish this up, just for a sense of completion.
We flew into Bangkok and right back out again a couple of hours later, on our way to Phuket - an island on the south coast of Thailand. Phuket is a tourist/resort area, noted for nice beaches and a thriving backpacker/tourist culture. There is little or no political demonstrating occurring there and no reports of any violence in that region. We flew in on Air Asia for a reasonable price and then took a fixed-price cab to the Aqua-Marine resort at Kamala Beach. Kamala Beach is just north of Patong beach - the touristy center of the bar scene, etc. Aqua-Marine was pretty quiet, nice pools, but not really good beachside access.
We spent our first day in Thailand at the local hospital. J had an extremely painful and persistent ear infection that had gotten quite a bit worse since Bali. The morning after flying in, we took a cab to the Patong Hospital and the cab driver, Kim, helped shepherd us through the Thai healthcare system. It took a while, maybe 1.5 hours, but in the end, J saw an otarlaryngologist, who stuffed cotton in her ear, gave her ear drops, pain pills, and an oral antibiotic for her "Swimmer's Ear" and sent us back to the hotel. Grand total, about $35. I'm guessing their doctors don't have a lot of student loans to pay and malpractice insurance is unheard of....
So, there we were on an island, where the main attraction is swimming and snorkeling, and unable to get wet or at least immerse J's ear. In our search for dryland activities, we spent the afternoon at the hotel spa - steambath, bodyscrub, manicure, pedicure, and massage - not a bad way to spend the afternoon. Even D got his nails done! And J hardly made fun of him at all.
The next day we went Elephant "Trekking" - which was cool, the gait was rather rough, perched above the gravel road, up a hill with a pretty nice view. Some good pictures of us on top of "Little Girl" The ride was fairly short, and not really a "trek" into the deep jungle, but this is a way to ride an elephant and hopefully a better life for elephants than the grueling work of logging. The mahout rode on the elephant's head, no seat, no reins, no nothing. We rode on a bench strapped on her back. At the top of the hill, the mahout got down and told J to sit on the elephant's neck, just behind her ears. J rode that way all the way back to the base. It felt very awkward, especially since we were heading down a rather steep hill and there was nothing to hold onto. J has since decided that riding elephants was cool, but she's sticking to horses from now on. Afterward, we took the shuttle to Kamala Beach, and although we couldn't swim, we walked the beach and found a place for lunch just before a drenching rainstorm. We drank dry ginger ale and tried some Thai food. Green papaya salad is a new favorite. Kamala Beach is pretty small and pretty quiet, especially as we approach the off-season.
That evening, we had tickets to go to the Entertainment Extravaganza that is Phuket Fantasea. It was about what we expected, interesting enough to do, the show had it's cool bits, the buffet was "meh", endless shops full of tchotchkeys. Essentially a cross between Disneyland and Las Vegas, with the added benefit of dancing elephants. ( http://www.phuket-fantasea.com/ - terrible flash website )
On the third day, running out of ideas for dry land activities, we went to Phuket Town. Fun things to do there include shopping, telling tuk-tuk drivers we didn't need them, and having lunch at a harbor cafe. We missed out on the weekend evening market. Had we known it was there we would have planned to go later in the day. As it was, we were pretty well shopped out by that time, and headed back to Kamala Beach around the time the evening market was just opening.
Day four was dubbed "head-wetting day". J finally being able to swim, we spent the day at Kamala Beach. The sand there is soft; the water is warm, clean, and crystal clear; and the waves not too rough. We rented beach chairs and an umbrella and spent a few hours alternating between swimming and getting out of the water to re-apply sunscreen. Also saw a man bring his dog to swim in the ocean - the dog would get tired and the man would hold him up and let him rest where the water was about waist deep. Later in the day we went to Wat Chalong, the Big Buddah, and 
Promthep Cape to watch the sunset with about a bazillion of our closest friends... Wat Chalong is a very beautiful and ornate temple, with a room full of gilded Buddhas, arranged in concentric circles facing a larger central one. Not sure why they need so many, I guess less isn't always more. The Big Buddah, what can I say except that it was really, really big. And still under construction. There were Buddah body parts lying around all over the place: giant eyes... giant toes... Weird, but the view from the top of the hill was amazing. We could see Wat Chalong from above, and ocean views on three sides of the cape. Then on to the sunset viewing spot. The guide book said "it's not exactly a secret, so get there early to find a spot", and they weren't kidding! There was a thick crowd already when we arrived, but we found a spot on the sea wall to sit and had a fairly decent view of the sun sinking into the sea. The sailboats were also a nice touch. Then we had dinner at the Green Man, a locally famous English style pub, which (as usual for us) - despite heavy advertising - was completely empty when we arrived. A rather odd band started playing upon our arrival. We can't say for sure, but guess they probably stopped when we left, as still no other customers had yet arrived. The female vocalist sang a number of '70's pop songs, with the help of a guitar player, a keyboard player, and a karaoke machine. SE Asia is inexplicably obsessed with ABBA.
Promthep Cape to watch the sunset with about a bazillion of our closest friends... Wat Chalong is a very beautiful and ornate temple, with a room full of gilded Buddhas, arranged in concentric circles facing a larger central one. Not sure why they need so many, I guess less isn't always more. The Big Buddah, what can I say except that it was really, really big. And still under construction. There were Buddah body parts lying around all over the place: giant eyes... giant toes... Weird, but the view from the top of the hill was amazing. We could see Wat Chalong from above, and ocean views on three sides of the cape. Then on to the sunset viewing spot. The guide book said "it's not exactly a secret, so get there early to find a spot", and they weren't kidding! There was a thick crowd already when we arrived, but we found a spot on the sea wall to sit and had a fairly decent view of the sun sinking into the sea. The sailboats were also a nice touch. Then we had dinner at the Green Man, a locally famous English style pub, which (as usual for us) - despite heavy advertising - was completely empty when we arrived. A rather odd band started playing upon our arrival. We can't say for sure, but guess they probably stopped when we left, as still no other customers had yet arrived. The female vocalist sang a number of '70's pop songs, with the help of a guitar player, a keyboard player, and a karaoke machine. SE Asia is inexplicably obsessed with ABBA.
We had heard from other tourists that Phi-Phi Island trip was pretty good, so we looked into it the next day. The Hotel had some tours that were fairly expensive, but we had some other brochures that advertised similar sounding tours at about 1/3 of the price. We enquired at the taxi stand and he knew a guy who knew a guy that he called on a cell phone and set it up . . . . and issued a very official receipt that had no identifying information on it. The next morning, we waited about 45 minutes for our shuttle pickup - we were starting to think we had been scammed. Fortunately, they were just running late, and we were on our way. We were loaded on a big speed-boat and sped out to Maya Beach - where Leonardo Di Caprio had filmed "The Beach" - a movie which we had never seen. It was an impressive beach - beautifully set in a steep-walled cove, clean soft sand, clear green water, but packed with about 30 large speedboats and about 500 tourists milling around - not secluded at all, kind of a circus atmosphere. 
Then on to Monkey Beach, where the local Long-Tailed Macaques eat crab and interact with tourists. Then to Phi-Phi Island for lunch - we had to wade in about 200 yards to shore. Back to Monkey Beach for snorkeling - J has really taken to it - D enjoyed it less, but did see the many fishes. Finally, to Kaya (sp?) beach, which was okay, but the swimming was not as good, nor was the snorkeling. Observation: some Europeans seem not to have heeded the message of the last few decades: smoking cigarettes and cultivating a dark dark tan is not the healthiest lifestyle choice. Altogether, it seemed like we spent most of the day riding around in the speedboat watching the eccentric tour guide playing with small children. For dinner, we went down the road just a little bit to a *very* good Thai restaurant where we had Ginger duck, Pineapple Fried Rice, a beef dish (which was very good, but we can't quite remember what it was) , and green papaya salad -again.
Then on to Monkey Beach, where the local Long-Tailed Macaques eat crab and interact with tourists. Then to Phi-Phi Island for lunch - we had to wade in about 200 yards to shore. Back to Monkey Beach for snorkeling - J has really taken to it - D enjoyed it less, but did see the many fishes. Finally, to Kaya (sp?) beach, which was okay, but the swimming was not as good, nor was the snorkeling. Observation: some Europeans seem not to have heeded the message of the last few decades: smoking cigarettes and cultivating a dark dark tan is not the healthiest lifestyle choice. Altogether, it seemed like we spent most of the day riding around in the speedboat watching the eccentric tour guide playing with small children. For dinner, we went down the road just a little bit to a *very* good Thai restaurant where we had Ginger duck, Pineapple Fried Rice, a beef dish (which was very good, but we can't quite remember what it was) , and green papaya salad -again.
On our last day, we decided to check out Patong Beach - described as " a bit of a s***hole" by an Australian - part of the cultural experience, right ? Dropped off at the giant mall, ate lunch at an Irish Pub, then walked through the endless array of tailor shops, souvenir shops, massage spas, and bars & restaurants. We bought a few souvenirs, refused many tuktuk offers, "where you from, boss ?" queries, "massase?" and other commercial activities and made our way down to the beach. We rented chairs, swam in the ocean, did not get clipped by any jetskis, and saw the usual array of curious continental swimwear. The clouds rolled in about 2 O'clock, so we gathered our belongings and head to a nearby spa as the rain pelted us. A long massage seemed like a good way to wait out the storm. We walked back along the beachfront and decided to take up one of the tuktuk guys - they are not metered or flat rate, so we bargained for a price back to Kamala Beach. Kind of fun riding in the back of the little truck with the benches. Tropical climate makes open air transportation perfectly reasonable. Next morning we were off to the airport again and thence to Singapore where (the other)D picked us up, took us to dinner and then back "home"to JB and Pulai Springs.
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