Phuket, Thailand

Last week my Dad and sister came to see me in Singapore, so I gave myself an excuse to ditch classes and work and show them around town as best I could. Natalee, my sister, was sick for two days so unfortunately she didn't see as much, but at least Dad got to do what he likes best about traveling: eating the local food. That and the Botanical Gardens, the Night Zoo, Chinatown, and more sightseeing, all of which I've already done but don't mind seeing again. Dad was also actually very well equipped to know Cantonese, as a surprisingly large number of hawkers and storekeepers spoke it, much more than I thought. So with Dad ordering we certainly didn't get anything that was bad, and never went hungry. You can never understate my Dad's way with Chinese food; going to Chinatown with him is like going from bottom-of-the-barrel, tourist-class goods & services to 1st-class, ultra-attentive pampering with the finest and freshest ingredients. It's as if there's some unspoken rule that if any of the waiters or chefs dares to disappoint Dad, they'll be gunned down in the night on their way home by a secret, Cantonese food-critic mafia. Reminds me that I really need to one time just follow my Dad into the kitchen for a month straight to learn his cooking skills; then I'll at least be making progress on my own.

OK, and so now we're in Thailand. Again, with Dad, we arrived in style. Somewhat by accident this time, though. We are staying in a beach resort on Phuket Island, and after being driven from the airport in a private Mercedes with comfortable amenities, we were informed at reception that the two hotel rooms we had originally reserved for ourselves and Auntie Sandra, who was coming in later from Shanghai, were unfortunately unavailable, so they were going to upgrade us to our own beachside villa with a private pool for no extra cost. Holy... cow... Talk about ultimate luxury, this place is swank. It's three stories, with very nice bedrooms in the basement floor where it's cooler, a spacious living room and kitchen with big screen LCD TV on the first floor, and a private outdoor pool and patio on the top floor. There's a total of like 5 balconies, with nice views of the lagoon. I'll put up pictures later, not taking photos on my own this trip, letting Natalee do all the work since she has to do it anyway for her Digital Photo class back at school. My advice to people who want to visit resorts anywhere in the world, bring a lot of people with you. More likely than not, the resort will make some little mistake in the reservation, and either give you the whole package for free or upgrade you to something really awesome. This also happened to me just this past Thanksgiving actually, when I went with 7 other family members to a resort on the Rio Grande, and they gave us the whole stay for free because they forgot to make all of our rooms connecting.

Now about Thailand. Phuket (pronouced "poo-ket", not "F**K-it!") itself is definitely a tourist-claimed area, with hordes of sunburned, usually older Caucasians roaming around. It's like Cancun or some Mexican/Caribbean resort place except the food and culture is Thai. And good Thai food, not the American crap back home. Thai food is actually my least favorite food back in the US, and here it's one of my favorites so far on this entire Southeast Asia trip. The food is actually spicy, but the spiciness is not the main attraction, it still tastes good. Thai restaurants in the US I think usually forget that last requirement. The beaches here are also very nice, and every so often you'll see a baby elephant just walking down the beach with it's owner, cute. We went elephant riding of course, snorkeling, and other sightseeing outings. There was a monkey that we saw that was trained to pick coconuts from the trees; I need a monkey like that. My newfound beverage obsession if I've not mentioned this earlier is coconut. A chilled, young coconut is perhaps the most refreshing drink in the world.

I've not had much chance to become familiar with local Thai culture on this trip, since we are in tourist town basically. All I know is that they greet each other with the "wai" gesture, and their language, like Japanese, has different spoken forms for men and women. They also have pictures of their King everywhere, although I hear the government is not very stable. The national sport is also Thai boxing, all the locals usually have their TVs tuned to a channel showing one of these matches. The locals are also living a very different lifestyle of course compared to the tourists. When you leave the well-guarded resort for excursions into town, you see lots of trash and thatched huts, little children running on the streets and water buffalo everywhere. One of those classic images of poverty that I remember in particular from this trip is a little boy running up a dirt hill with a piece of plastic trash in his hand tied to a string that he flew like a kite. Although it's not about Thailand, if you don't know much about poverty in Asia I highly recommend "Slumdog Millionaire", in fact I think I overheard it just won the Oscar for Best Picture. It was a a great story.

Overall this has just been a very relaxing trip for me, so much so that I've not even begun studying for my midterms which come this following week... such a bad idea to have this recess break BEFORE the tests, but that's just one stroke of bad luck for me. The rest is life on a beach...