Go fish

Late the previous evening, after a full day of doing absolutely nothing and after debating the relative merits of doing a days snorkelling versus spending a day doing a Thai Cooking course, we eventually opted for the latter and booked in for a criminally holiday-early 7:30 pick up with Tropical Andaman.


I’ve now had the experience (I wouldn’t say “fortune”) of travelling with quite a few minibus drivers in Phuket but our driver this time was something special again – after weaving cautiously from resort to resort (and finally catching the bottom edge of his gleaming new minibus on a steep driveway leading out of Dewa Resort, he proceeded to put on a virtuoso exhibition of stunt driving that would have left Remy Juilenne’s driving team speechless with admiration. One lane became two, an invisible middle lane, and we weaved, darted, swerved around dogs with apparent suicide wishes snoozing in the middle of the road, and finally, to the accompany of a few Hail Mary’s, slid to a halt in a cloud of rubber smoke at the waterfront, ready to board our boat for a trip to the East coast islands.


We were greeted at the door by our tour guide for the day, Josef, originally from Switzerland but who has been living in Thailand for about a decade after marrying a local girl. Josef is a top guy, and is most definitely unforgettable – imagine Werner Herzog trapped inside Mickey Rourke in his “Wild Orchid” phase, and literally covered from head to toe in tattoos: arabesque patterns over his arms and legs, a Buddha on his throat, flowers on his neck. He’d make an excellent drug lord in a Hollywood movie except that he’s so damn affable.


We set off from the harbour at a gentle clip and the moment we passed traffic the driver hit the throttle on our double outboard engined speedboat and we launched ourselves into the Straits of Malacca (titter knowingly if you’re Greek), slaloming around marker posts in the channel, then roared out into a millpond smooth sea heading for our first destination, Bamboo Island, about one hour’s travel away.


I have to admit when we first arrived my heart sank a little – Bamboo Island is a beautiful spot, but the sheer volume of boats was absolutely astonishing. We backed into the beach parallel with probably 12 others, jumped off the back into arctic white, and waded up onto a beach packed with holiday makers all keen to grab their own piece of paradise. 


Thankfully any misgivings about the destination faded as soon as we started snorkelling – the coral reef is only metres off the beach, and tropical fish are already swimming up to you in waist deep water. We snorkelled for an hour over a somewhat unusual coral landscape, to my eye dead compared with the riotous neon luminosity of the Great Barrier Reef, but nonetheless absolutely jam-packed with ocean life – clown fish, parrot fish, angel fish and, motionless on the ocean floor, pasty white and brown blotched sea cucumbers half a metre long. We spent nearly the full hour snorkelling, forgoing the opportunity to sit on a few square metres of sand amid a cast of thousands, then clambered gracelessly back onto the boat to resume our trip, heading to Phi Phi Don island, a brief snorkel from the back of the boat, then heading into shore for a buffet lunch – copious, as usual it seems on Thai trips, but although very good not quite up to the exceptional level of the food on the Twilight Hong trip a couple of days ago. Naturally, of course, I still gorged myself, returning for seconds before walking along the beach past bikini’d and topless sunbathers running the full gamut of tones from pale, to incinerated, to pleasingly bronzed, through to ‘skin like an elephant in 10 years time’. We swam a little, I took a few shots of the long-tail boats floating on a sea so green if you saw it in a picture you’d swear it had been Photoshopped within an inch of its life, then we headed back once more for the third and last island, the largely uninhabited Phi Phi Lei, maybe 15 minutes from the much larger and more heavily populated Phi Phi Don.


En route we stopped fleeting at a sea cave where local residents live year-round, collecting the highly esteemed, perilously inaccessible, and ridiculously expensive swallow nests for birds nest soup then headed around the corner for a dip in a lagoon that, apparently Leo DiCaprio’s stunt double leapt into for the movie “The Beach”. The water was salty, warm, surprisingly fish free, but perfect for a brief swim and Leo-inspired leap from the boat, then headed on to a near perfect beach as featured in the same movie. If Bamboo Island was packed, this beach managed to redefine ‘packed-ness’ – between the speedboats and long-tails there was literally almost no room to directly access the sea, yet similar to other places I’ve been fortunate enough to visit, it’s sheer beauty is still powerful enough to overcome the over-population. Damned if I know how they managed to make it look deserted when the movie was shot there, but I can only assume before the movie it was simply yet another beautiful beach, but has now become a focal point of a day trip to the islands. For all my faux-worldly traveller carping however, it was undeniably beautiful, with rainforest coming to within metres of the sea, and separated from the ocean by a wide belt of gracefully curving beach front, the whole lot almost entirely enclosed from the ocean except for a small channel.


Our remaining hour passed quickly, once more everyone was herded onto Boat 9, and we returned on seas almost as calm as the outgoing trip back to Phuket. I’m convinced that although Thai’s clearly know they’re living in paradise, and that the rest of the world similarly is overawed by the beauty they’ve got on their doorstep, they don’t quite appreciate just how special it is, and how fragile it can be. There’s been an increase in eco-tourism over the past few years which is hopefully the start of a genuine change in the industry toward sustainable development, rather than just a bit of tourist bait to snare suckers like me, but at least there’s hope. I can only imagine that if the environment gets too damaged, and the hoards of boats and tourists too great, that tourists will be put off and go to some other tropical oasis, leaving the Thai’s with a mess largely not of their own making. It’d be a tragic outcome for the land of smiles, and for the genuinely most friendly, gracious people I’ve ever had the fortune of meeting.

And on the 6th day…

...they rested.

Hong and Krathong

Our original intent of having a week of floating around doing not a whole bunch had taken a bit of a battering since we’d arrived; a trend that was to continue today with some planned sea-canoeing. Thankfully it was an activity not scheduled to commence until midday, thereby giving us a chance to float around the pool and do the planned very little… at least for an hour or two.

Before long it was time to get ready, slathered in suncream and mozzie repellent until we glistened like olives, then squeezed (or is that ‘slid’) onto a minibus which took us to our setting off point for a ‘Twilight Hong’ sea-canoeing trip with John Gray.

John is, to put it mildly, an interesting guy. In his younger years he was apparently a somewhat fearless sea-canoeist, travelling around much of Hawaii by canoe looking for sea-caves (and picking up the moniker “The Caveman” in the process). Some time in the late 80s however he decided to pack his inflatable canoe and head for Thailand for more of the same, discovered – or more accurately, rediscovered and realised the potential of – sea-caves in Thailand, and set up “John Gray Sea-Canoe”. He ended up pioneering an industry which now has many, many adherents, like minded followers, or plagiarists depending on how you choose to look at things. In a way, it was always inevitable – Thailand provides the spectacular scenery for free, and all you need to start a business of your own is a boat to get punters to and from the islands, and a bunch of inflatable canoes. A very low cost of entry, as those who like to do SWOT analyses on businesses might say.

We boarded our boat after posing briefly on the dock for the requisite tourist shot from an enterprising Thai third party, and commenced our 90 minute trip out to the first of the islands to do sea-canoeing around, through, and into. And at this point a bit of explanation of what, exactly, a Hong is might help.

Many Thai islands are made of limestone, the same material found in caves and which shares the same fundamental property – it’s highly porous. As a result of years of activity from both the sea, and from water percolating down through the tops of the islands, occasionally a sinkhole forms: if you imagine flying over the island and looking down, you’d see a donut. Joining the lagoon which forms inside, with the sea on the outside, is a sea-cave or Hong, and if you’re at the entrance of the sea cave at the right time you can paddle through the Hong into the lagoon. You’ve got to be quick, though – if you went in as the tide was rising you’d be stuck there until the tide falls, and if you’re there at low tide you’d have to drag your canoe over sand and jagged limestone rocks to get in or out. To further add to the thrill factor for first time explorers, there’s no guarantee a Hong leads to a lagoon – it could just be leading into caves which, as the waters rose, could turn into death traps. In short, John Gray must have some serious cojones.

Each pair of visitors is buddied up with a guide – ours was Farouk, a lovely man with a lively sense of humour, who genuinely seems to adore his job, and who clearly takes his role as a steward of the Thai environment very seriously. Thailand is blessed with magnificent scenery, but unfortunately there are many tour operators who see fit to exploit it in non-sustainable ways, allowing tourists to climb over mangrove trees, feed wild monkeys, and generally cause environmental carnage. The Thai National Parks service appears to be either under-resourced to adequately police their environment, has a strict hands-off approach to tourist development, has bigger fish to fry, or is actively bought off to look the other way, depending on your point of view. In short, there was no independent body present to ensure our group, or any other group, didn’t cause untold damage. It’s truly heartbreaking to think the highly fragile and environmentally sensitive landscapes we get to share now could be irrevocably destroyed in a few years because of short sighted economics. Of course by then the fly-by-nighters will have moved to different islands, or to different businesses entirely, leaving the damage behind.

Farouk paddled us around the island, pointing out egrets, crabs and shellfish on the rocks before steering us toward a seemingly impossibly small cave opening, asking us to lie down, and handing me a waterproof torch to light the way. We headed into the Hong single file, jagged rocks just centimetres above our faces. Claustrophobes need not apply. Still, according to the ever-smiling Farouk, he just tells them to close their eyes, relax, think of Britain (I guess) and then taps them on the shoulder when they’re through and into the lagoon.

Arriving in the lagoon is straight from an Indiana Jones movie – the cave suddenly opens out and you’re in a cathedral scaled lagoon, trees clinging to the cliffs, mangroves reaching for the sky, and water so shallow and so influenced by the rapidly moving tides you can almost watch it drain away before your eyes. We did a slow circuit of the lagoon, watched appalled as other tour operators allowed people to clamber over the mangrove tree roots (which dismayed us almost as much as it did Farouk), watched impotent and incredulous at the sheer short-sighted stupidity of their actions, then paddled back out slowly into the ocean, around a small headland, then into another Hong even tighter than the first but which, upon opening into the first lagoon, then opened into another, then another, until finally the gaps were too narrow to navigate by inflatable. It’s a ridiculously beautiful environment, impossible to put into words without selling the experience short.

After paddling back out and back to the boat we headed for yet another island, travelled around another sea stack and through still more Hongs, then returned to the boat, went for a brief solo paddle (and weren’t quite as wretchedly awful at it as I thought we’d be), then swam in the bath-water warmth of the bay, feeling the surprisingly strong ocean currents drag us away from the boat faster than we’d expect. After a bit of enthusiastic but ill-coordinated splashing we made it back to the boat and sat down to unarguably one of the best Thai dinners I’ve ever had and certainly far better than you’d expect on a tour boat – barbecued seafood, chicken, vegetables and curries. Only when we headed downstairs and saw a team of women cooking like there was no tomorrow did I realise how seriously the tour takes its food and how seriously, for that matter, do Thai people themselves.

After gorging (I’d like to put that classier but why lie?) each pair of people found their guide, who helped them build their own krathong – an impossibly beautiful miniature ocean going vessel made of banana tree, banana leaves, flowers, candles and sticks of incense – then we returned in the gathering inky blackness of a moonless, starless night to paddle out once more to the cliffs, light the krathongs, and – with our guide saying a prayer for us, we released them adrift into an ocean dimly sparkling with bioluminescence, then returned to the boat and headed for port.

As we made the krathongs – a Buddhist offering - it occurred to me that Farouk wasn’t a particularly Buddhist name. He confirmed that he was a Thai Muslim, representing only roughly 5% of the entire Thai population.

So there we were – white Australians making a Buddhist krathong with a Muslim Thai, all of us smiling, laughing, chatting away and generally getting on like a house on fire and I thought to myself: given it’s so easy, why does the rest of the world seem to find it so damn difficult?

100 Baht? You can't go wrong...

For what was meant to be a ‘down’ day – a day spent doing nothing much at all – it ended up being pretty frantic.

Rather than lay around at the resort all day until we got to the point of madness and started to entertain the thought of ritualistically killing one another, we opted to get the hotel shuttle bus to Phuket Town, for a bit of a wander.

Phuket is an odd place in some regards – despite the island, and the town, sharing the same name, and despite it being by far the largest city on the island, it appears almost impossible by design to actually get there. If you want a bus to Patong, Karon beach, Wat Chalang or any other designated touristy type locales it’s a doddle, but to head into the largest city on the island appears to be something not frequently entertained by visitors. Even the shuttle doesn’t quite make it to Phuket Town – it comes agonisingly close, swerving away from the city at the last minute to drop you off at Central Festival (by the looks of things, Phuket’s largest and most western style shopping mall), or onward to the tourist kitsch of Patong.

If I were to try and characterise the majority of the architecture we passed en route to Phuket, it’d be remarkably consistent with much of the other architecture in South East Asia. As a rule, form overrules function, except in the case of temples where everything is form, arguably to the near complete exclusion of function. The buildings follow the same general plan – square columned pillars bookend shops open to the street, a small amount of ornamentation is occasionally lashed out on the balcony above, then one or two floors rise above the ground floor, and appear to be the residences in which the shop owners live. Each shop is concrete, sometimes painted in pastel greens, yellows or blues, but often not – just grey concrete streaked with a dark scraping of mildew down the sides of the outside walls. Each shop is liberally carpet-bombed with advertising hoardings for products I’ve never heard of – one service station apparently has a prawn loyalty program if you spend more than 2,500 baht – and near every shop has a motorbike or two out the front, a dog laying prostate on the forecourt, and a heap of multicoloured stackable chairs off to one side. And you can gauge the distance remaining to Phuket by the number of strands of power cable running along, through, across and up and down the streets. I’ve never – never – seen so much in one place my life, slung so low as to be open to interference, piggybacking for illicit powering of homes or offices, and a cause of possible death by electrocution: strands loop within feet of the ground. Then again, when the majority of motorbike riders opt to not wear a helmet despite the vehicular insanity they encounter every day  – in a country where OH&S are just three letters and a symbol – it’s clearly hardly the greatest of concerns. I don’t mean all of this to come across as though I’m ragging on Asia, or Thailand. I’m not – it’s a spellbinding, intoxicating, vibrant country full of the absolute most accommodating, charming and seemingly content people that I’ve ever met. It’s just that safety isn’t a big priority, or is simply too expensive to concern themselves with. And that concrete is the number one material to work with, and can be used to build absolutely anything.

We arrived at Centra Festival and headed straight for the exit, onto a passing bus for downtown Phuket, full of locals and tourists alike, lined along the edges of timber bench seats, the sides of the bus open to the elements. It was a short ride – 5 minutes at the outside – but to walk it would have taken an hour of criss-crossing from one side of the street to the other looking for scattered fragments of footpath between roads, shopfronts and driveways. As soon as we stopped and got out we were beset by an impossibly cheery Tuk-Tuk driver who offered to take us around the sites of Phuket for 100 baht, for the entire day.

There’s an old saying that says if something seems to good to be true it usually is, and there was an element of that in the transport we’d selected – the Tuk-Tuk driver took us to recognised tourist destinations (a lookout over Phuket, a butterfly farm, an almost completed Wat), but also places less prominent on most tourist itineraries, including a shopping centre and couple of gem factories he insisted – politely, yet forcefully – on us visiting. No doubt he gets a kickback of some sort, but unfortunately he had in the back of his Tuk-Tuk two of the most tight-arsed tourists on the planet, unable to be swayed by Mr Jack’s desire to sell us a ring nobody really wanted at one factory outlet (“We’ll see you on Tuesday, Mr Jack!”). The smiling owner of Tuk-Tuk A542 did a little better at the second venue, where we picked up some cut semi-precious stones collectively valued at around 2500 baht. It was only when we got back into the Tuk-Tuk to return to Central Festival that I noticed he was wearing a t-shirt with the name of the gem emporium we'd just visited emblazoned across the back…

We paid him 200 baht – 100 for him, 100 for his wife (who had accompanied us for the entire trip, and who gave us a cheery farewell wave as her husband threw his Tuk-Tuk without hesitation into an oncoming swarm of traffic), popped into a Starbucks for two coffees and two muffins that cost more than double his daily (officlal) earnings, then caught the return bus back to Adamas for the requisite dip, a couple of Chang Draughts and dinner, followed by a bit of reading and bed.

Lightning crackled and flashed over the ridge-tops behind the resort, lighting up a dark, clouded sky. My phone reported a forecast of thunder and lightning for Monday.

We could be in for an interesting bit of sea-kayaking tomorrow.

Mahout and about (sorry)

We awoke to yet another outstanding Nai Yang morning, cloudless and yet already with a creeping build-up of humidity, despite this being the dry season. Almost against our better judgement we had breakfast (mainly because it was included) at The Terrace buffet. I’ve got nothing against their buffet at all – it’s very good, with a broad and somewhat bizarre, it has to be said, collection of comely breakfast comestibles, but no matter how broadminded my palate I can’t quite come at fried squid for breakfast. Fried squid? Yes, absolutely. For breakfast? Pass.

We headed upstairs at just past 8:00am and straight into the waiting clutches of a person from Siam Safari who led us to the requisite mini-van for a quick blatt down the back-roads whereupon we met with another group of tourists and headed for our destination – Khao Sok National Park, home of the endangered giant Rafflesia flower, blessed with 90cm wide blooms and the stench of rotting carrion, but also home to Siam Safari’s combination river canoe and elephant safari walk through the still largely virgin jungle.

We paused for coffee fleetingly once passing over the Sarasin bridge connecting Phuket to the rest of Thailand, then proceeded to place our life in the hands of our “fearless” (my appraisal on the feedback form) driver.

Thai traffic, for those who haven’t experienced it, is something else. The majority of roads appear to be either one lane or two lane – it’s not quite clear, but it seems there’s a solid white line separating bikes and motorcycles from four-wheeled traffic, so I guess it’s two lanes each way. To Westerners it would appear there’s no room for interpretation, but to any self-respecting Thai road user, two (?) lanes each way can easily be interpreted as five to six, with one (or two?) invisible lanes available for overtaking, right up the middle of the road. Despite the apparent madness of cars and trucks lurching out on blind corners into the middle of the road, straddling solid yellow lines with carefree abandon, everyone seems completely cool with it – cars drift over into bike lanes when they see a fast approaching car coming up behind them, everyone overtakes in the middle, and all in all it seems every road user is completely fine with this. Somewhat amazingly, there’s less agitated horn use than you’d expect to experience – people seem to simply accept it’s the norm, and see little reason to kick up a fuss.

Against my expectations we made it, alive, to Khao Sok National Park about an hour and a half later, and the scenery is simply spectacular – imagine a landlocked version of Halong Bay in Vietnam, towering minarets of limestone thrust abruptly into the sky, liberally carpeted with trees, vines and grasses somehow managing to find solid footholds amidst the cliff faces. After a brief chat with our completely charming guide Tuk-Tuk (God, I hope that’s correct and that I haven’t just erroneously referred to her as  form of motorised transport) we slathered on thick layers of SPF30 and headed down a short track, listening to the screeching of gibbons, for the river below and a one hour inflatable canoe trip.

Now, being candid, I’m a bit of a sweater – I don’t stink, thankfully (well, at least I don’t think so), but despite this I have never – NEVER – sweated as much as I did on this trip. My shirt, by the end of it, was literally at the point where you’d be able to wring it out, largely thanks to a trip spent mostly drifting downriver on a still, sunny day, in a yellow inflatable, underneath a lifejacket. Regardless of any discomfort however the trip was outstanding, our river guides routinely performing languid 360 rotations mid-stream to allow us to see the magnificent scenery behind us. To my amazement, not only were these people apparently completely without sweat glands of their own, but they were also possessed of the most amazing eyesight on the planet, apparently picking out snakes, frogs and spiders resting on or dangling under branches from the other side of the river. Assuming, of course, they were real and not just planted for gullible, sweaty Australian tourists.

In time we landed on the riverbank, clambered uphill flapping the sweat from our tops, and poured, relieved, into the air-conditioned sanctuary of the minibus to return back to the start of our ride. Lunch was provided and it was sensational – I’m left in no doubt Thai people take their food very seriously, and given their food is about my favourite, it is a match made in heaven. I returned for seconds, polished off some pineapple and watermelon, then we wandered a short distance in the opposite direction of the river toward an enclosure which looked like it might house King Kong, woven bamboo towering into the sky.

We met Ha-Ha, a 6 week old female elephant who was of course exactly as cute as you’d imagine a six week old elephant named Ha-Ha to be, then continued briefly along the side of the enclosure to our destination, a raised wooden platform with a line of Asian Elephants, each topped with a Mahout, ready to take us ‘trekking’ (for an hour) into the jungle.

The Mahout’s are, at least based on my fleeting association, wonderful people. They come from the border country between Thailand  and Burma, and, as Mahouts (or elephant handlers), work with only one elephant, and work with that elephant alone, for life. Given the elephant can live for up to 70 years, it literally is a life-long relationship, and I can only imagine that Mahouts mourn the death of their elephant as they would a family member. Their bond is clearly a close one, interspersed with constant quiet chatter (well, one way chatter), reassuring ear scratches, tickling under the ears with the toes of the feet, and the occasional prod with a small, spiked (but rounded off) cane used to tell the elephant which direction to go.

We took our shoes off as instructed, and climbed on, and the sensation was magical. Elephants don’t seem to walk so much as do nothing, interspersed with sudden forward thrusts, all experienced from a double chair 10 feet off the ground. The feel of an animal of such immense power beneath your toes is something difficult to describe but almost (and I cringe a little as I write this), spiritual. Their skin is somehow the texture of 800 grit sandpaper, yet soft to the touch, the hairs on their head appear soft yet are bristly – they’re a 5000kg mass of contradictions, and being atop one, for a regrettably short while, is a spell-binding experience. We toured the jungle, our Mahout taking our photographs, pointing out scenery, and generally doing his best to separate us from our group and give us an experience at least slightly different from the majority. It was, as you might have ascertained by now, absolutely wonderful.

The hour elapsed, we returned to the platform, de-elephanted, trotted down the stairs to take some farewell photos then headed back to huts in a small clearing where we had enjoyed our lunch just over an hour ago, greatly appreciated bottles of iced water awaiting our return. Our time with the elephants at an end, we returned once more for the mini-bus, a mad, careening dash back to the Imperial Adamas, a pool, a soak, a cocktail and a night spent dreaming of jungles, gibbons, elephants and the Mahouts of Khao Sok.

Stick a fork in 'em, turn 'em over - they're done

After a slightly restless but somewhat epic 12 hour sleep, interrupted with the occasional well meaning but unappreciated text message from Australia, we got up, lingered a while, flitted out on the balcony, dressed, and headed off through the Adamas in search of breakfast. In fairness, that makes it seem a little like it was a search through undergrowth for the occasional edible tuber, but the reality was far removed – a sensational smorgasbord style brekkie at The Terrace, washed down with fruit juice and coffee.

We returned to the hotel, kitted up, slathered a fair bit of – but, regrettably, not quite enough – SPF30+, and headed for a wander up the length of Naiyang beach, wading waist deep through a small creek and around a headland before stumbling upon a seemingly endless flotilla of multi-coloured umbrellas, stalls and beach-side restaurants. The lot was evidently associated, at least in part, with a much larger resort, and I was instantly thrilled that we hadn’t chosen to stay there – under every umbrella was one or two sun-lounges, and on every sun-lounge was a lump of humanity sprawled across it in budgie-smugglers, or in bikinis pulled up their arse-cracks, ripening to a shimmering red hue under the Andaman sun. Those that were tanned were almost tanned beyond the point of tanning – from a glowing bit of colour on their skin, to a dull, muddy complexion, skin leathered and sagging. I was reminded of Mr Tum, who pointed out that in Thailand a tan is a sign of someone who works (pale skin being someone who is lucky enough to not have to labour under the sun), yet strangely with Europeans the reverse is true. Thai people are amongst the most polite, gracious people I’ve ever had the fortune of meeting, but they must be totally bewildered at rich westerners flying in from all corners of the globe, with the express purpose of turning into something the Thai themselves associate with being a labourer. I’d love to know what they truly think of us – do they like us, is it polite tolerance, would they rather we left them the hell alone and never sullied their incredible beaches again? Then again, maybe it’s best left unsaid, and unknown.

We walked as far as the beach would reasonably allow, past lobster nets and fishing boats, before turning back toward the haze-softened structures of the Adamas in the distance. Although this is nominally the most pleasant time to be in Thailand, it’s still a pretty hot and sticky affair – even the sea is like a lukewarm bath, cooling but not chilling. It’d be pretty damn unpleasant in a couple of months time in the middle of monsoon season, but then presumably the tourists vacate, and Phuket is – I assume – returned to the Thai people at least for a while.

We swam laps of the resort pool, up side alleys of pool toward pool-side suites, stone turtles permanently on guard just beneath the surface, then paddled slowly back past perfectly maintained tropical vegetation to the main pool, surfaced (eventually), and had a couple of cocktails which, despite being advertised as specials, evidently had the bar staff completely stumped. After 15 minutes – hardly a chore, as everyone is just so damn impossibly nice, friendly and ever-smiling – I scored my margarita and Pina Colada and returned pool side, parked under a blue umbrella, to watch Traveller Palms slowly sway back and forth in a gathering breeze.

The day – not much of it, granted – was done, and an early bed beckoned: there was an elephant safari tomorrow…

Disembarkationing

The drudgery of airline travel is never alleviated, at least not in cattle class, no matter who the carrier. Some are better than others, their staff more chipper and apparently eager to travel with a group of belligerent strangers for a few hours in a pressurized canister 40,000 feet up, but the fundamentals remain the same – you’re in cramped seating, and invariably some pillock in front of you decides he needs to put the seat back into a near horizontal position within minutes of being given permission to do so (thereby crushing your patellas into a splintered mess). At the very least, things have improved – where in the past you’d be stuck craning your neck to watch a highly edited movie on a washed out projector at the end of the section you’re consigned to, now you get to enjoy a slightly iffy LCD creen 10cm in front of your face, featuring a selection of movies you never really had your heart set on watching in the first place.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m bitching as it’s far from the truth – Singapore Airlines is still one of the best ways to travel economy class (sadly, I can’t speak on behalf of their business class service, but I’m sure it’s sensational and luxuriously appointed with every detail known to humanity (note to Singapore: I’m free any time – ANY time - to review your business class flights). Instead, rather than fidget and fight against yourself to resist the near overwhelming urge to donkey punch the moron in front of you responsible for lasting knee trauma, it’s best to go with the flow, choose a movie, order a drink, drop a Quaalude and let unconsciousness take over. if only I had a Quaalude.

After an impossibly long 7 or so hours featuring a slightly wonky loop due to air traffic congestion over Changi Airport we landed, completed our ‘disembarkationing’ (not my word, but the stewardesses) and headed for a much needed ‘comfort stop’ (as the Americans politely choose to refer to ‘taking a piss’). The toilets at Changi, I’m thrilled to report, are awesome. Not only is there a stencilled fly on every urinal for a gent to ‘shoot for’, there’s also a touch screen pad upon exit asking me to appraise their toilet facilities. I punched the impossibly cheery “excellent” smiley, headed out, and took a couple of transit light rail systems which reminded me for all the world of Starship Troopers to Terminal 2 then set out in search of a Duty Free outlet to satisfy my inevitable discount booze shopping craving, before catching the next flight to Phuket with Silk Air – a 90 minute fang up the west coast of Malaysia before descending through cloud and mist for the sparkling lights of Phuket International Airport, scattered like diamonds (or more accurately in my case, like Cubic Zirconia) across a black velvet cloth.

I’m absolutely thrilled to report that, although immigration is the same drag at Phuket that it is everywhere, customs is a complete breeze. There was a sole ‘Anything to Declare’ station manned by a disinterested looking individual and, seeing as he wasn’t in the mood to challenge anyone, we all headed straight past for the exit, and in my case, into the taxi of Mr Tum for a roar through the darkness, past Tuk-Tuks, motorbikes carrying entire families, miscreant drivers and thrill-seeking cyclists for the Imperial Adamas.

It was located up a turn off which Mr Tum reported was only recently paved – he laughed how in the past, when taking the turn off, many people would question where, exactly, the good Mr Tum was taking them and it occurred to me that just because it was now sealed didn’t necessarily mean the circumstances had changed one iota. Regardless – and inevitably – the lobby of the Adamas heaved into view as we completed a perfectly executed four-wheel drift around the corner and handbraked casually to a halt.

The Adamas is, it has to be reported, first rate. Cold (icy, actually) towels and some sort of mysterious, but hugely refreshing rice-infused chilled drink on arrival, a bit of paperwork, then off on the back of a golf cart to be taken to the room before being left, unharried for a tip, in peace. 

The room is decorated in a sort of Japanese-Thai fusion style of furnishing, with teak furniture, polished wooden floors and dark tiled bathrooms, flowing out onto a large balcony with day bed, overlooking a pool and a sea of impossibly verdant, dark, gently waving tropical splendour beyond. Exploration would have to wait for tomorrow but for now an Orgasm (Cointreau and Baileys, perverts!) and an expansive king-sized bed was calling

Lay out what you need, and take half...

...is an excellent bit of travel advice evidently only applicable to others.


For 7 days at a beach resort in Thailand doing little more than floating about in a pool with an umbrella drink, you'd think you could probably get away with very little gear - bathers, of course, plus a couple of t-shirts, a camera, a bit of sunscreen and a hat. Throw in some to buy the aforementioned pool drinks and whatever else you neglected to bring with you in the first place, and you're golden.


So given that's all that's required, it's a complete mystery to me why the hell I see as my minimal holiday requirements three cameras, four lenses, a tripod, a borrowed netbook, two external hard drives, a card reader, a portable battery backup, a mobile phone and a tangled mess of chargers and adapters. 


And that's just the technical fluff that's evidently an absolute requirement to successfully enjoying a relaxing trip away. I'm also taking 4 short sleeved t-shirts, 3 shorts, a pair of pants (for the often talked about but never realised "if we go out somewhere nice for dinner"), shoes (for hikes that won't happen), sandals (for feet that'll rarely be out of the pool) and who knows what else.


Oh yes... and bathers, couple of t-shirts, a bit of sunscreen, a hat, and some cash to buy drinks and whatever else I neglected to bring with me in the first place.