Phuket: Pad Thai and Elephants

As of late, I’ve had to focus my time and effort into my studies, so my blogging has unfortunately not been as frequent as I like. As a result, I’ve begun to fall behind again.

Now two weekends ago, we managed to make our way over to Phuket, Thailand (ภูเก็ต). The name isn’t pronounced as crudely as it looks. As I was enlightened, the “h” in Phuket (as well as in “Thai”) denotes aspiration, think puff of air, rather than an “f” (or “th”) sound in conjunction with the “p” (or “t”). As such the “Ph” at the beginning as “p” like at the beginning of the word “pin.” Glad we got that one straightened out.

Secondly, Phuket is an island, according to my research. Telling my friends though was an uphill battle, as I had to contend with faulty logic in convincing them—example of which include: “I don’t think it’s an island because I don’t think it’s an island;” “But there’s buses going to Phuket”—ever heard of bridges?; and my favorite, “It doesn’t look like it on the flight map”—well I’m sorry, but small islands aren’t worth drawing as separate from the mainland when covered by a dot and lines—does Singapore look like an island on the flight map? As I would later find out, that friend didn’t know Singapore’s land mass consists of one main island and a number of smaller ones. And Australia is smaller than China, but only by about two million square kilometers. Cool.

Well we landed after four hours of flying from Hong Kong (I remember five hours from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.), and went through immigration. Like in Taiwan, the officers stapled our departure cards to our passports, but we went through without a hitch.

On the other side, I pointed out the stand of tourist maps saying “Welcome to Phuket Island” in English and when we went up to the taxi counter to get transportation to our hotel about an hour away at Patong Beach (หาดป่าตอง), there was a map clear as day showing the island formation. Without rubbing it too much into their faces, I gave them haughty looks for fun as they looked away in shame, realizing that their (faulty) logic had been to no avail.

We ended up in a minibus (smaller than Hong Kong minibuses) to Patong Beach and our lodging, the Patong Swiss Hotel. The whole ride was in the dark, but from what I could see (mostly buildings), it became obvious that we weren’t in China anymore. The funny thing was that this was the first time on the whole trip that we (myself included) had been outside Greater China. As I’ve just recently figured out, this was to be my last trip outside Greater China before going back to California.

The thing is, though, that despite the fact that we were in a foreign foreign country, there was more English on signs and in general than Thai (which by the way is quite aesthetically pleasing). Our minibus stopped midway at a storefront to collect our tickets, and after politely refusing their tours and excursions, I got back onto the bus.

Arriving at the Patong Swiss Hotel, I was exhausted. By this time, it was about 1:00 a.m. Hong Kong Time and about midnight local time. Ready to lie down, we checked in to find that they had given us just two beds for our five-person reservation.  One person got sick though before the trip, so we arrived as four. So the first night we ended up sharing beds, though the next morning we were given two bigger rooms (and me my own bed). Like in Guilin, the showers were without curtains, which only meant to me that the cleaners would have more work (though I tried hard not to get water everywhere).

That first night, I studied for my Fine Arts final, which was to take place the day after we got back to Hong Kong. The rest of them went out exploring Patong Beach nightlife.

The first morning, I woke up in a rut. It was quite hot and humid (though admittedly not as bad as my first weeks in Hong Kong), and we had just come from sub-75 degree temperatures back in the SAR.

After getting ready, we went out the front door, and much to my amazement, the beach lay right across the (two-lane) street from the hotel. I hadn’t noticed it at all the night before! I guess I forgot that my friend booked us a beachfront hotel.

We walked a couple blocks along that street. What was expected were the large volumes of shops selling merchandise, particularly knock-off brands. What wasn’t expected was the large number of expats there—and I say expats rather than tourists because most men were hand in hand with Thai women (though I remain open to the interpretation that many of them could just be escort). It was odd to see such a large expat population, but on the other hand it wasn’t unreasonable since they, along with the large numbers of European and Australian tourists present, were the reason for all the English signage.

Walking by, the hawkers try to grab your attention—and they do it much better than in Mainland China and definitely better than in Hong Kong, where they don’t even attempt. There, they understood the value of the relationship in business. Rather than pulling you in by listing off their merchandise, they’d start by “Hello, where are you from?” or “My you’re handsome,” or something to that effect. I personally got a lot of “你好s.” One of my American friends who speaks Cantonese answered back: “I speak Cantonese” in English, to which I laughed.

We got breakfast at one of the many done-up venues. I got some authentic Pad Thai, which was delicious, and some (real?) Thai Tea, which tasted more like cold milk than anything else.

This is the only trip that I took this term that I didn’t really take to get any historical culture out of—no sightseeing, more fun I suppose (though I enjoy sightseeing).

So that day we actually got to ride (Asian) elephants. It cost ฿500 Thai Baht for a half hour (฿33 Baht = $1 USD), so that was like $15 USD. The experience wasn’t really like I’d imagined. I’ve ridden on horseback on multiple occasions (and my fair share of carnival ponies when I was under three feet tall), but never an elephant.

There was a platform to mount them that was a good ten feet in the air. Getting on was intimidating, as you were to step onto the elephant’s back to get into the seat secured on the elephant. The guide sat right behind its head, on its neck with his feet touching the elephant’s ears. To move left, the guide would shake the elephant’s left ear with his left foot, and to move right, the guide would shake the elephant’s right year with his right foot.

The whole thing made us feel oddly sad for the elephants, and remembering back the horses, I remember having similar sentiments, only to cast them off by saying that we aren’t the first to do this.

We were taking all over a muddy trail. The barefooted guide dismounted the elephant halfway and took pictures of us, this led the elephant back to the base with voice commands. At one point, the elephant began to make a wrong turn, and the guide hit its right leg hard with a sickle-looking rod, making a vicious sound and making us wonder what was going on.

I guess we couldn’t help but to feel sorry for the elephants. I guess you could hope that at least they are well taken care of and fed properly. As we dismounted the elephants, one put its trunk up on the platform. My friends petted it, thanking him (or her) for his (or her) service. I guess I was too busy taking photos, because as I reached my hand out after putting my camera away, it retracted its trunk and went on its way.

The rest of the day we went around the shops and played a modified (and more intense) form of Jenga at a bar. At night, we got Mexican food. Right after, I went back to the hotel to keep studying for my Asian Art History class.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
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