Jeff's Log ~ Saturday, 11/17/07

Saturday, 11/17/07

Yesterday, I took my first real day off in a long time. In the morning, I stopped at a waterfront restaurant for breakfast. While eating, some beautiful wild parrots were messing about in the trees, and all of the excursion and fishing boats were loading up on supplies and passengers. Whoever told me I wouldn’t be able to get decent coffee here was mistaken. Every cup that I have had ashore has been delightful. After breakfast, I decided that I have had it with this long hair, so I stopped at this little beauty salon up the street, and asked the woman there if she cut men’s hair. She didn’t speak a lick of English, so we communicated with gestures, and snip snip. No massage chairs for the pedicure, but she really did a fine job cleaning me up. Along with the haircut was a shampoo and head and neck massage. When she was finished with me, the bartender and customers from the little bar directly behind stood up and clapped. I guess the change was pretty dramatic. It sure made me feel like a million, I’ll tell you.

After all of that, it was time to celebrate the day with an ice cold Tiger beer. The bartender at coconuts took my picture in front of the Christmas tree that they had just completed decorating complete with “snow”. She called a friend with a car service for me and I was off on my excursion. The first stop was the Phuket zoo. It’s very small, but I enjoyed a quick walk through. I was there just in time for the gator show, and the guy was putting his head in the gator’s mouth. They had feeding stations all over where you could buy expensive food for the animals and hand feed them. The tiger photo booth was really cool. For 200baht, you can sit next to the tiger and get a Polaroid picture. I snuck around the back and took the tiger’s picture, and he seemed really interested in me as he did not take his eyes off of me while I was there. While the people are sitting with him, he is trained to growl on cue. I thought that was cool.
From there, we went up to the big Buddha that I can see from the boat. As the crow flies, it’s about two miles away. By the road it’s about twelve miles, because of the winding necessary with the elevation change. Buddha is up almost two thousand feet above sea level. The scenery from up there was really something, and the camera sure doesn’t do it justice. There were multiple shrines and a big meeting hall with photo displays. There were some pictures of Bill Clinton taken when he visited, along with various other heads of state.

After all of that Buddha stuff, it was time for some lunch, so Tu took me to a restaurant with a spectacular view of Karon Beach on the west side of the island. Food was really good too. I really like Thai food. The spiciness kind of creeps up on you slowly, and it’s a minute or two before you really taste it. So far, I think I’ll be eating good for the duration of my stay. The next stop was Kata Beach overlook. I don’t know how high this was, but it sure was great scenery. There were some guys with a sea falcon and a sea eagle there and again, for two hundred baht, you could get a Polaroid. I just took a picture of the birds. We stopped at the Phuket yacht club for a look around, but the place was way too stuffed shirt for me, so we didn’t stay.

Then, it was back to coconuts for another Tiger. I picked up the rest of the laundry, got some more time on my phone, and then back to the boat. The bay was quite rough as I was heading back to the boat, so when I got there, I just picked the dink out of the water, and called it a day. I gave Clara a call while I had the generator running to make a little water and charge the batteries, and then hit the sack for a very good night’s sleep.