Nicole schreibt...

Phuket 2018

I tend to escape to sunny warm places at least 10-12 days every winter to soak up sunshine and warmth, but with all the little city trips that had come up, there was no chance of a bigger getaway. However, I had long been tickled by the fact that Lufthansa's own low-cost airline Eurowings was offering long-distance flights to sunny destinations from my own airport in Cologne, saving the hassle of going through Frankfurt and among them was Thailand's most popular holiday island Phuket. Figuring it would take me to my beloved South East Asia at least but without the pressure to get alot of sightseeing done or needing to spend a longer time there, I decided it would make the perfect destination for a quick one-week getaway and so I was off at the end of February, just as Europe fell prey to a "Siberian blast" with record-low temperatures. Lucky me, as +30C awaited me on Phuket.

The flight on Eurowings was rather a disappointment though, as their prices for "SMART" class (that includes one suitcase and food) are hardly lower than that of regular carriers such as Thai Airways, Emirates or indeed Lufthansa itself, but you don't get pillow or blanket, are expected to fork out extra for the entertainment and the food was a joke for a flight taking 11/12 hours. Arriving in the early morning, I took a taxi to my hotel, the lovely Chivatara Resort on endless golden Bangtao Beach. Which proved to be a very good choice indeed: Small and authentic enough to feel like proper Thailand and not a huge tourist trap like trashy Patong Beach further south, yet big enough to offer a choice of nice restaurants, shops and other touristy things. I couldn't check into my room yet, so I spent a few hours by the pool, then after claiming my room, went for a first wander around the little village and to take a look at the beach. Since I had come to Thailand mostly to relax and recover from a rather stressful winter, the beach was also where I spent the first full day, doing nothing much at all but chill, sunbathe, swim and enjoy great Thai food.

Of course it would have been daft to not do any sightseeing at all, so I booked two excursions. The first one took me out to Phang Nga Bay, the stretch of sea between Phuket and the mainland, with a first stop at Wat Suwan Kuha, better known as Monkey Cave. It's a Buddhist temple inside a large natural cave, with one room given to Buddha statues and areas for prayer, while the inner majestic cave is given over to monkeys that roam around in there. Between the bad light and the agile monkeys never sitting still, I couldn't manage a single photo of them in the cave, but it was still all fairly impressive. Here's a photo of the temple cave itself and of the monkeys outside :

From there we moved on to the main event, the boat tour through Phang Nga National Park in one of the classic Thai longtail boats. Of course what nobody tells you in advance is that these boats are very fast and built very low, so there's one heck of a bow wave that soaks everyone in the boat and makes taking photos nearly impossible (or even enjoy the scenery drifting by). You can just hide under the protective tarpaulin running along the sides of the boat, try to avoid the worst splashes and catch the occasional glimpse of the rocks jutting out of the beautiful turquoise sea. It all reminded me a bit of Halong Bay in Vietnam - or how that should have been if it hadn't been so misty the day I was there.

With Phang Nga Bay being basically in the middle of Thailand's most touristy area including Phuket and the mainland beach areas of Krabi and Khao Lak, it's not surprisingly very busy with day trippers. Our first stop was the "swimming village" of Panyee, which might have been a proper fishing village at some point but is now basically a long row of restaurants on stilts feeding (a very yummy) lunch to tourists. Nearby are some caves that are best explored by canoe and since they don't trust dumb tourists on their own, two tourists get to sit in one canoe being paddled around by a local. It's all pretty much a tourist circus with way too many canoes, but of course it feels stupid to complain, since, as a tourist/daytripper myself I was very much part of the problem. And that said, it was still pretty nice and impressive and I was glad to be paddled around instead of having to do the paddling myself (and probably ending up going in circles).

Last stop was the famous "James Bond Rock", officially Khao Ta-Pu, which featured in the 1974's movie "The Man with the Golden Gun" and has been touristically exploited ever since. The boats stop at neighbouring Khap Phing Kan, another tourist trap that's basically just a cluster of souvenir shops and a view point towards the rock. Witnessing the mayhem really makes me understand how much damage all this uncontrolled tourism is doing to the marine life all over South East Asia and I hope that the Thai government will continue to impose more drastic measures like their recent decision to close off Ko Phi Phi (the famous shooting location for Leonardo DiCaprio's movie "The Beach") for several months each year, giving the fragile (and mostly destroyed) coral reefs there a chance to recover. As lovely as Phang Nga National Park is, I'd rather forego seeing these places than being part of the problem. Although I think a lot would already be won if the boats would just drive past the rock for a photo op instead of stopping there to let people disembark and embark with the boats causing so much damage, noise and pollution and people leaving litter.

I felt better (and less guilty) about the second excursion to see the highlights of Phuket Island itself. After being picked up at my resort we drove along the coastal resorts first, which gave me a good view of neighbouring places and indeed the awful tourist trap that's Patong Beach with its many questionable nightclubs and bars. The west coast of Phuket, facing the open Andaman Sea, had been badly hit by the "Boxing Day Tsunami" in 2004 with several hundred people killed on Phuket alone (including many tourists). While the damage has long been repaired, you can't fail to notice all the tsunami warning signs and "evacuation routes" all along the coast now, which served as a chilling reminder. Yet it all looked so peaceful from the southern view point at Kata, our first stop, before moving on further to "Windmill View Point" at the very southern tip of Phuket, which somehow looked more Mediterranean to me than tropical.

Another sad result of the tourist boom in Thailand is the way animals are exploited for dumb tourists' pleasure with crap like a Snake Show, Tiger Kingdom, Monkey Show and Elephant Trekking. I had consciously chosen the tour with the least "animal involvement" to avoid financing that kind of thing, but there was still a very sad short "play with baby elephant" stop where a few of the group got out to "play" with a poor chained-up little elephant and took photos. I was glad when when we moved on to Phuket's (literally) biggest sight, the "Big Buddha" perched on a mountain overlooking Phuket Town and the western coast. The Buddha itself is 45 metres tall and made of gleaming white marble - a truly impressive sight that manages the balance between being a tourist attraction and a dignified religious site (although the temple at the base is still a construction side).

Next stop was Wat Chalong, the biggest Buddhist temple on Phuket (above right and below) which is dedicated to two local monks who helped the locals to subdue a rebellion by Chinese coolies in 19th century and treated the wounded. I love the gilded splendour of South East Asian temples and nobody does them better than the Thais, so Chalong definitely didn't disappoint.

This was followed by the inevitable tourist tour stops - first a cashew nut factory where we got a very quick demonstration of how cashews are harvested and it still IS impressive that one "fruit" off the tree yields exactly one nut only!) before being ushered into the souvenir shop. Another stop was a jewelry factory, which did have gorgeous displays and wonderful jewelry on offer but was of course way out of my price range. At least we got a free cup of coffee there before moving on to the last stop, the heart of Phuket Town with its ancient Sino-Portuguese architecture. A few streets have been refurbished in recent years, so we were let lose to wander around there for a bit before being redistributed with me getting my own car/driver to take me back to Bangtao.

And there my sightseeing ended with the following days just spent on the beaches. On Monday I walked about 20 minutes to check out lovely Surin Beach nearby, which was much shorter than Bangtao Beach but somehow prettier and also fairly upmarket (case in point: The 1-hr-Thai Massage was 400 Baht here compared to 300 over on Bangtao). The last full day in the area was then spent back on Bangtao Beach before moving on to the posh Marriott Hotel on Nai Yang Beach close to the airport for the last night as I had to catch an early flight. And while I wouldn't have wanted to stay at the fairly isolated resort for the full trip (nor could I have afforded it), it was nice to enjoy one night of luxury in a fabulous room. Not to mention that the long unspoilt beach of Nai Yang with only a little touristy area at the far end (where I could get a nice cheap lunch away from the resort) was a truly lovely sight to behold.

And so my outing to Phuket ended very early next morning to be taken to the airport where another godawful flight on Eurowings awaited me. But my disappointment with Eurowings aside and despite the many negative aspects of the overly touristy circus on Phuket (which I had feared), it was still a wonderful trip and exactly the kind of laid-back "time out" I really badly needed at this stage. Not sure when I'll be back in Thailand, but I know it won't be too long until I return to South East Asia which has definitely proved itself as my favorite region to travel in again.