Here’s a challenge for SAA. The flight on Thai Air from Bangkok to Phuket is 1 hour long. They served food and drink to 389 passengers on the Boeing 747-400 during this time. Pretty impressive if you consider that they effectively only have 40 minutes to achieve this. (Which means they have no time to do what airline comedian Pam Ann calls “touch trolley, touch galley, without serving any passenger at all”)?
Where Bangkok is all about shopping, Phuket is about all things holidaying, swimming, tanning, and drinking. Somehow the hordes of Euro Trash thought it to be an achievement to walk around on the pavements, inebriated with bottle in hand. Don’t know about you, but I always put on shoes even when I go to the café for milk.
There are a few breath-taking and some famous islands around Phuket. We did a day tour bopping about the islands off Phuket’s coast line. During India 2009 my self-esteem got a knock at Ramthanbore Tiger Park. We were sharing an open top jeep with 2 guests from the Oberoi Hotel. We had cheap-n-nasty blankets we took from our rooms, they had fancy blankets with the Oberoi name embroidered on it. Great was my excitement when our hotel (Burasari Resort) in Phuket issued us with a beach bag (with their name embroidered on) and 2 beach towels for the day. Self-esteem restored. Finally.
As South Africans typically do not visit Thailand this time of the year, I got spoiled for having the luxury of speaking Afrikaans and no one can understand me. So we boarded the speedboat for the day tour and cross opposite us, sits this box with some oversized cheap looking white earphones, presumably listening to his music. Well, it didn’t take me long to verbalise what I thought of this bafoon and his ridiculous headgear choice for a day like today. I should have known better. The overly brand named clothing and flashy camera should have tipped me off. Two waves later one of this group leaned forward to ask if we were from South Africa. They turned out to be Jo’burg Indians. I just smiled, as if for a Colgate advertisement, and said, “dan better ek oplet wat ek sê”. [English: then better I watch what I say] They knowingly nodded. But I am sorry, he still looked silly. Also turned out, they stayed at the same hotel – except their rooms didn’t have direct private pool access. (Nhhnnnnn!)
Snorkelling. Yet another I need to add to my list of things I am not good at. PF, however, managed the art of floating on the water and breathing through a gigantic straw better. It’s like floating head down in clear bathwater. With colourful fish. Turns out I am more a shower type of guy.
We visited Maya Bay where parts of DiCaprio’s ‘The Beach’ were filmed in 2000. We skipped the piece of rock sticking out of the water where in 1974 ‘James Bond: The man with the golden gun’ was filmed. (Trivia: it was the 9th Bond movie, and the 2nd one with Roger Moore in the title role)
Continue reading Thailand – part 7 (of 9).
