A week before our departure, Jetstar changed our flight from Adelaide to Sydney from 10am to 6am, which meant we had a five hour layover before our connecting flight to Phuket. However, the e-mail I received listed "HKT" as the final destination. When I read it, my immediate thought was that Jetstar had rerouted our flight to Hong Kong instead of Phuket. So for an entire day, I lambasted myself for choosing a low cost carrier and got myself (and Indhu) into a worried frenzy until I finally got on the phone with a customer representative who calmly assured me that "HKT" was really the Phuket international airport and not Hong Kong.
To ensure that we didn't miss our flight, Indhu and I got to the airport by 4:45am and were sitting at our gate by 4:52am. With nothing to do because I hadn't brought any reading material, I pulled out a box of cherries to snack on, while Indhu, who hadn't packed until a mere two hours earlier and was a little too drunk to recall what she brought, opened her backpack to review its contents. In it was one tennis shoe. She couldn't remember if she had packed the other one.
Off to a great start, we sat in a drunken stupor until we arrived in Sydney. The time spent in the airport was unremarkable as was the flight to Phuket except that it was uncomfortably cold the entire time. When I asked for a blanket I was told that I could purchase a blanket and pillow set for only nine dollars, which I refused to pay on principle. I have no doubt that Jetstar keeps the temperature on their airplanes inhumanely cold on purpose to sell their blankets to poor suckers like me who get cold even at room temperature.
After we arrived in Phuket, we had to find our way to Le Meridien, the five-star resort that my friend Henry booked (yeah, we like to vacation in the lap of luxury). We got into a large taxi van with a group of drunken Aussies who had spent a fortune on alcohol on the same flight over from Sydney. Half way to our hotels, the van abruptly turns off the road and pulls up in front of an open store. As Indhu and I were trying to figure out what was happening, one of the Aussies sitting next to me starts yelling at the driver, "Oh no! I know what you're doing! We don't want any! We just want to get to our hotel!" and then turns to the both of us and says, "They do this all the time. They pull over and try to sell you tours or lady boys."
Perhaps on a different night I would have been more intrigued by "lady boy" action, but having just stepped onto a foreign land after being strapped to an airplane seat for nine hours, I just wanted to get to a hotel and a bed. We all protested loudly and refused to get out of the van until the driver finally heaved a sigh and pulled back onto the road. The rest of the ride was lady boy-free and we checked into Le Meridien without a hitch. We were welcomed with an orchid lei, a hot towel, and fresh lychee juice. Life was suddenly good again.
Le MeridienAll my other friends were on a diving trip and Caryn and Giles hadn't yet arrived in Phuket, so Indhu and I were on our own the next day. We explored Patong which was nothing but endless rows of bars, restaurants, and stalls selling every name brand knock off good imaginable. It was a tourist wasteland and Patong being my first experience in Thailand, I was sorely disappointed by what I saw. The little beach town catered entirely to predominantly European and Australian tourists and was devoid of any culture. During the day, old men in speedos played bocchi on the beach.
Old men playing bocchiWe eventually met up with Ian and then Caryn who flew in from Bangkok. Ian had read in his Lonely Planet guidebook of an "absurdly beautiful" remote beach called Laem Sing in the north so we headed there the following day on Sunday. While the beach was indeed beautiful, I think Lonely Planet likes to exaggerate with bombastic language. We spent a lazy afternoon baking on the beach and both Ian and Indhu drank potent alcoholic drinks out of absurdly large coconut shells.
Ian, your typical beach bunny
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