Thailand tracked
It’s now a week since I set off and I feel in a better position to share impressions of Thailand. One must always be mindful that as a tourist you have only a limited perception of a place as you are constrained by the location, people you meet and time you spend. It’s certainly an idyllic place on the coast with its beaches, palm trees and soft waves. Last night we had a dinner overlooking Kata beach and watched the sunrise from the acclaimed Boathouse restaurant. This was memorable. To get there, though, you had to endure London type traffic jams. I joked that this was due to the school run but actually I was not far wrong as we did see schoolchildren being transported.
The interior of Phuket is a monument to bad town planning with shops, in reality stalls, set up alongside the road. The scooter seems to the most popular form of transport, sometimes three on one, and there are plenty of scooter shops, as well as furniture discount stores and the odd cafe. As a poor country it has to maximise what it has so mass tourism is a big industry. Judging by our resort the Chinese and Australians are the dominant national visitors. The Aussies here, whatever their age, tend to wear armless singlets which reveal their tattoos and armpits. I am not a fan of dress codes but I would like to see one operate here for dinner. It’s less than 10 hours from Australia so Thailand must rate highly as a destination for countrymen who have to travel long distances in their own country let alone to visit another.
The accommodation in our resort is spacious and comfortable. Coming from a searing heat of at least 35* to a blast of refrigerated air con is delightful as are the views over the bay and a morning dip as the sun rises. Against this the food served in the restaurant is poor, service slow and being on a small island we have to take the hourly ferry and taxi to reach anywhere. The staff, like almost every Thai I have met, are exceptionally friendly and eager to help but his does not compensate fully for a basic lack of training in client service.
