De Gustibus non est Disputandum

March 10, 2012

Yesterday, during a five-hour trek through big parts of Bangkok, I returned to my HAPPY HOUSE guesthouse almost deaf. Thai noise regulations are clearly different from the Vietnam and Cambodia ones. In Bangkok you are surrounded by an infernal racket. Ratt-tatt-tatt motorcycles, mopeds, scooters, tuck-tucks, assault your eardrums while you're roaming the streets. The same kinds of contraptions in Vietnam and Cambodia zip around almost soundlessly.

During my long distance city exploration, massage was offered only once, but this time with pictures about what to expect; a treatment by not one, but several sparsely clad ladies - simultaneously. Of course, without hesitation - and also being sweaty and dirty - I refused to indulge in such licentiousness.

In my new passport are now two unused visas, one for China and one for India, all that because my Burma border bashing plans went sour. Instead of adventuring in one of the destination countries - freezing my butt off in China, or finding a drink in dry Manipur - had I succeeded with one of the border crossings - it now means making do with places like Saigon, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, and Bangkok. They all offer such easy living options that adventure and surprise are effectively banished; no head hammering to earn browny points for rewards. Whatever you want, whenever you want it, where you want it, how you like it, how much you want to pay for it, all of it is readily available, always, everywhere, your choice. Even with little money you can feel like Croesus.

Just to please Jade, my youngest daughter, I booked and paid for, online, a room in four-and-one-half-star(!) HORIZON BEACH RESORT in Phuket. One time on this journey, the plan is to luxuriate in dolce far niente like many other holiday makers routinely do. I am looking forward to the change of pace. Jade wrote that she, she alone, will be responsible to heed the call, should I request help while in Phuket, that international beach holiday magnet.

Emilie and I were in Phuket almost twenty years ago. We stayed in a comfortable guest house above nearly deserted Patong beach. A few ladies offered massage in the sand, not an ideal place for it, because the grainy friction between the masseuse's hand and your body was not all that pleasurable - especially if you opted for the aromatic-oil-version. Above the beach several cozy seafood restaurants offered fresh fish. A few high end resort hotels lined the sandy bay.

Tomorrow an airplane will deliver me to there.

.... and here I am in the four-and-one-half-star HORIZON BEACH RESORT on Patong Beach on Phuket island.

From the airport a taxi brought me here. This is not the place, I told myself, for that cheap minivan stuff where you need to await departure 'til they have a full load of twelve passengers.

A porter carried my pack to my huge room overlooking one of the place's two pools, turned on the television to demonstrate that it works, turned on the air-conditioning, set at a temperature that would remind me how cold I would have felt in China's deep-freeze-spell, turned on all the lights, in mid-afternoon, pointed out the room's safe and the balcony's seating arrangements. Next to the bed there was so much space I could practice summersaults without banging into furniture. In my last Bangkok room at HAPPY HOUSE, there was barely enough room to walk sideways between the bed and the wall, a real problem if you sport a belly!

At check in they handed me a stack of brochures, offering elephant rides, Thai cooking classes, ATV adventure rides - with pictures that show crossing a river with the machine, a boat rip to Pipi islands, a four- wheel drive jungle safari (1 1/2 hours), jet boat rental, tandem skydiving, presumably the kind George Herbert Walker Bush, the elder of our glorious Bush presidents, made famous when he did it for his ninetieth(?) birthday.

Room instructions warned against tattoos because they risk coloring the bed sheets, 50 dollars for such bed sheet damage. Loss of a beach towel would set me back 25 dollars, loss of room key 60 dollars, loss of safe key - the guest's problem if stuff got stolen from there - but the key costs 70 dollars. Also, the instructions said, is is not permitted to hang laundry from the balcony railing.

I felt real happy and welcomed, but wondered if there are costs/penalties involved with my washing my own sweaty shirt and underpants. Bravely risking it, the stuff got washed - by me - and draped over the TV to dry, not on the balcony.

Just to get the password for WiFi you have to practically crawl in front of the reception, they treat it as a generous extra gift to valued guests. All the cheap guesthouses so far had WiFi and visibly posted the password for anyone, guest or no guest, to simply copy it.

"If you bring a guest to your room it will cost you an additional eighty-dollars per night," the helpful receptionist said.

"Even if she sleeps only on my side of the bed and doesn't brush her teeth?" I was tempted to say, but didn't.

As for the nearly deserted Patong Beach of twenty-years ago that I remember, whatever words one might chose to describe it now, "nearly deserted" would be a gross misuse of vocabulary. It is a carnival - in my opinion not a pretty one. My description of Cambodia's Siem Reap over-the-top commercialization, could be applied here if one added a few derogative adjectives.

Here in Phuket's Patong Beach, the Indian tailors with offers of fifty-dollar suits, including shirt and tie, don't take "no thank you" for an answer. They pull you towards their establishment just as vigorously as the massage girls, the straw hat sellers, the restaurant touts, and hordes of other sellers of stuff and services. In an absurd way I feel sorry for them. They all try to make a living but the competition is so tremendous none have a chance unless they are ruthlessly aggressive.

Signage is in Russian, Chinese, German, Polish, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, French and, of course, English and Thai. Restaurants offer fare from all over the world. Even in the simple plain ones, in side alleys, food costs at least double of what is goes for in my favorite parts of Bangkok.

When checking out Phuket digs online, HORIZON BEACH RESORT HOTEL listed no requirement that guests have to be overweight. So, as a pleasant surprise I discovered one pleasant aspect in my four-and-one-half-star temporary home. At breakfast (included in hotel price) I feel slim, trim and fit, compared with the majority of other guests. With rare exceptions the chubby crowd looks hairless, for men, or coiffed in blueish-whiteish hairdos, for ladies. Most are dressed in brightly colored "mod" outfits graced by crocodile, polo, CC and D&G emblems. A Russian at the table next to mine in the lobby - the only place where the hotel's precious WiFi works - yells since quite a while at some travel agent on his cell phone because he wants his elephant ride excursion deposit money back on account of today's rain.

The rain is the reason why I write instead of walking from one end of the beach to the other.

Got to find out where I can extend my Thai visa. It turns out, when coming into Thailand by land, they issue only fifteen-day visas, as opposed to thirty days with an airport entry. With my booked March 22 departure I would overstay my overland-fifteen-day visa by seven days. A German backpacker in Khao San pointed that potential problem out to me because it happened to him. Today he even sent me an e-mail with a reminder because it would be an expensive omission not to get the extension before the day of departure. Thank you Klaus, I'd already forgotten about it.

Now, after getting the run around for one-and-a-half days, fifty-five dollars for taxi rides, a few dollars for passport photos and photocopies, and sixty-dollars to Thai Immigration for a seven-day visa extension, the problem is solved.

Idle observations:

What do they do in Thailand with plain-looking young women? Practically none are to be seen, anywhere, anytime. The young women's visible spectrum goes from "good-looking" to "fabulous" and then all the way to "absolutely stunning".

Eight o'clock this morning the driver from the day before's visa extension ride, who now knows where the immigration office is in Phuket Town, waited for me down by the beach road, as agreed. This time of day the streets are practically empty but it revealed yet another way creative local women attempt to invite men for whatever. They sit on a motorcycle, point to the back seat to take you to ... I have no idea where. To judge from the looks, their clothing and the kind of gestures they use to invite you for the ride, they are definitively not taxi motorcycle drivers. But then ... who else besides someone who needs to go to immigration for a visa extension, would be up and about this time of day in a holiday resort? Questions, questions.

Two times going and two times coming between Patong and Phuket Town, the taxi driver, along with all others on the road, honked long and loudly every time we crest a certain hill. There was no visible obstacle, so I asked.

"Buddha!" he said.

Indeed there is a little Buddha statue near the road there. They all greet him in passing - by honking.

Among all the restaurants along the beach, several of them Thai, one had a sign: Sorry, no alcohol served today because it is Buddha appreciation day.

The sole restaurant I saw thus honoring Buddha is an Irish Pub.

Next door to where I drink an outdoor beer, the top blinking neon sign announces: liquor, cigar, phone card, cold drink, ice cream

The sign below: massage, money change, travel/excursion desk.

Nowadays, every time I walk by a reflecting surface where an image of my body shoots back at me, a sound emerges that goes like, "eeeeek!" Maybe now, after my four-and-half-star beach resort, and having gone from one end of Patong beach to the other, and back, about a two-hour walk along the promenade of tanning humanity, that looks very much like a walrus colony, I might not be so critical about my own appearance anymore. 

The previous facetious question about what they did with plain-looking women in Thailand has to be reversed to a more serious; what did they do with good-looking Caucasian people, both women and men at Patong Beach? It is not just the body volumes that give the beach that Walmart parody look, it is also the body decorations, more so with males than with females. Hefty men give themselves the macho look - at least they think they do - with shark tooth, boar tusk, fire coral, all hanging from leather strings that compete with heavy gold chains around wobbly necks and golden loops in ear lobes. Favorite tattoos are of skulls, animal and human. Creatively shaped snow white bleached Fu Man Chu beards and jet black colored hair, or if that is impossible on account of bald spots, shaved craniums, are in.

Big bellies are predominant - none of the owners probably like them but carry them around just the same - I personally know that for a fact. It would be nice to to be able to say: Been there, done that, but sadly, in reality I'd have to say: Am here, doing that.

As for the women, most seem to have simply given up pretending and don't care anymore. It is lucky that going topless is not very in on Patong beach because the few that are bare chested make you want to run for anti nausea medication. Bikinis are just not made to restrain wobbly rolls of fat but some of the wearers try anyway.

I am here with them all and realize with horror, I fit in. My black leather eye patch must have been taken by many as a cool accessory.

Unlike on most beaches the world over, on Patong children practically don't exist.

The sand smells of sun screen. Off-shore is full of jet boats roaring about. Tandem para gliders, pulled along by speed boats, populate the ski. Water skiing, something that requires strong legs and good balance, is absent.

Way out in the bay a floating apartment complex, a cruise ship, lays at anchor. It is too far out to see what nationality.

At the south end of the beach a string of connected pontoons leads out to deeper water where the apartment complex's launches unload their charges; cruise inmates let out for a shoreside visit. Just having done my beach walk and ogled the walrus community, it seemed impossible to discover a yet worse looking collection of humanity. But the string of shore visitors coming over the connected pontoons proved that theory wrong.

To judge others as I do is ugly, unjust, unfair and elitist, but my excuse is the Romans' wisdom: De gustibus non est disputandum (there is no accounting for taste). What I am trying to say is, I prefer another lifestyle, other activities, other contacts. I certainly don't expect others to share my views and all are welcome to judge me as I judge them.

Most, probably a majority of holiday makers on Patong Beach in Phuket, love the scene and back home will describe it in glowing terms. As for yours truly, signed up and pre-paid online for a week, I am now counting the days left before departure.

For this afternoon I signed up to a Thai cooking course!!!!

A diploma will be issued to participants.

Students get to eat what they cooked.

Last night I had drinks with a young woman from Kunming in China (where I would have ended up if the Burma Road thing had happened! - and, yes, she confirmed, it was very cold there). Her father paid for the holiday to help her overcome a failed affair. We both drank way too much - and in the end we both giggled.

As another feather in the crown of my worldly achievements, I just got a diploma as a trained Thai chef. If you can amass the mess of ingredients required for the four dishes; Tom Yam Goong (Spicy Prawns and Lemon Grass Soup), Kaeng Khaiaw Warn Gai (Green Chicken Curry), Gai Phad Med Mamuang (Chicken with Cashew nuts), and Bua Loy (Rice Dumpling in sweet coconut milk), one learns how to make, you theoretically could, after the course, prepare a tasty Thai meal at home.

Future visitors to the loft or the farm - beware!