Day 22 Around Phuket Island
Day 22, Thursday December 27th.
I awoke early this morning and got some great work hours in. The internet connection is so spotty and acts very strange. I was able to finally get blogs posted by saving them in word 2003 format, copying them to a flash drive, taking them downstairs and posting them using the hotels computers.
We ate breakfast and the girls did some school work while I continued working.
The car was delivered; we inspected it – it seemed fine – but had no gas. The lady that delivered the car took it and brought it back shortly with ¼ tank of gas.
The girls loaded up a day bag – I was immersed in work and the next thing I knew they were waiting for me downstairs. I hurriedly gathered my stuff and off we went.
We negotiated the car for 4 days 3200 baht – wow just a single taxi ride last night had cost 600 and when we were trying to get to Patong beach the other night one way was 400 baht.
The car was a Suzuki samurai – probably 10 years old – 1,000,000 miles? I don't know the odometer was not working. The speedometer was not trustworthy – it floated and bounced probably within 5-15 km's per hour of the actual speed. It was a 5 speed and when I turned on the air conditioner I could hear the power steering assist squeaking – so no air. The poor thing could barely scale the hills – I did a lot of shifting – most hills required 2nd gear. I am very glad I learned how to drive a stick – I think the first car for the girls will be a stick. So…… driving in Thailand – what an adventure – sharing the road with thousands of scooters – lane markings that are mere suggestions – road rules that are confusing but basically first one to a spot has right of way. What an adventure.
We travelled south to the southernmost point and then back up the east coast. I noticed the gas was getting low – so we started looking for a station. Funny how when you really need it you can never find one. There were actually stands with liter bottles of gasoline – I think they had oil added to them for the scooters so we wandered around until we found a self-service pump – literally – a gasoline vending machine – out in front of a beauty parlor.
I originally put in 150 baht – lol – eventually added another 1000! I did not care – I was just relieved that we were not stranded on the side of the road trying to find fuel.
As usual Pam was navigating – and having some difficulty. I was stressed trying to master the art of driving in Thailand while not killing my family or anyone else, as a result we do not have many photos from the day – and most were from the car windows.
We drove south and then headed up the east coast. We stopped at one of the surfing beaches – Karam – there was no surfing that we could see – although the beaches here do tend to be a few kilometers in length so we there might have been a point break at the north or south side of the bay. We rented a couple lounges and umbrellas – 100 baht each. Swam and had a very American snack – Hawaiian pizza, a cheeseburger and fries.
[[Damn – word just crashed when I hit save – at least there was an auto saved version with only a few paragraphs lost – still very frustrating]]
Throughout the day we saw thousands of Europeans – some very tanned and some very red. Quite a few topless sun-bathers – this really seemed to offend Aria and Allysha – funny – America is producing a very prudish populous.
The majority of woman were in fantastic shape – the men on the other hand were either very fit or very fat.
We eventually headed up to Patong – a very busy place – disk was fast approaching and I was exhausted so we opted not to stop – I did not want to have to finish the drive in the dark. We made it back to Surin – only a few extra kilometers of circles.
I was exhausted and was planning on heading to the room, but we ended up having to park by the beach – we actually left the car there overnight – I hope it is still there in the morning, and we ended up bodysurfing on a nearly deserted beach watching a beautiful sunset.
I saw the news of Benazir Bhutto's assassination in the evening. How very sad.
The news here is very focused on the world – it reminds me how isolated America really is – being outside of America the world seems a much smaller more tight knit community than it felt like when we were in the states. A very strange phenomenon.
I ended up working while the girls went to eat – they brought me back some lasagna – I am a little tired of Thai food.
Aria was downstairs on the computer- supposedly blogging for 1.5 hours. Eventually Pam had to go get her. We asked her to check-in more frequently in the future. We considered hitting the rooftop bar but we were so tired we did not act on thos thoughts.
Again I fell asleep quickly.
