Great thing about being on holidays is not having to wake up early and strangely enough I have been sleeping like a log, something I haven’t done for years. Maybe I was destined to be on holidays.

Today was started at leisurely pace and we decided that we would travel over to old Phuket town to do some sightseeing and a spot of shopping. Before we left Townsville Robbie had seen a walking tour treasure map on the web of historical sites in old Phuket Town. We wanted to get the real feel of Phuket Island and not just the flashy glitzy party atmosphere of Patong Beach where we are staying (although there is nothing wrong with that).  So keeping that in mind our mission for the day is  to be at one with the local community and what better way to get the ball rolling than to travel like the locals do on the ‘Songthaew’ which is the bus that all the locals use. It is a  bit of a slow process on the bus but you get to see the ‘real ’lives of people in the streets and the sounds and the smells along the way as the bus has no windows. Everyone piles in on bench seats which run down the sides of the bus and one in the middle. Another bonus is that is only 25 baht per person (about 75 cents). There was the ‘bus bitch’ a surly woman who collected the fares from us all and she was lovely to the locals and bossy with us tourists she kept pushing us to move up the bench but all part of the fun.

We weren’t real sure where to catch the bus as we asked the tour people in our hotel and they said you catch it across the road but that was all the detail they gave us. So we went across the road to wait, and as across the road is the beach we had a bit of a wander around along the beach until the bus finally arrived.  We saw a couple of girls sunbathing topless which I thought was very disrespectful and inconsiderate, public nudity is considered offensive in Thailand and it amazes me how people on holidays disrespect other peoples customs and culture. There is a time and place for everything and a family beach is not the place, however when you put that up against some of the sights up Bangla Road I guess it’s really pretty tame. Gee I am sounding like an old prude.

The bus slowly moved down the length of the beach so we just jumped on board. It did stop for us which is always a bonus, so we got to see the different little beaches along way at a snails pace. We were moving so slow you could have jumped off bought a drink and got back on. I am surprised the street hawkers didn’t jump on board to try and sell us something but then again we were probably safe from that as it was a bus for the locals and tourists usually got tuk tuks.  An extra bonus as while we slowly moved through the city streets we actually could see people just living their everyday lives.

We actually didn’t have a copy of the walking map with us but Robbie has a photographic memory so it was etched in his little brain he knew exactly where we needed to go and I just followed his lead.

We got off the bus and a taxi driver was already humbugging to drive us around to see the sights. He was amazed we wanted to walk. We ran into him at just about every intersection throughout the day, he was persistent if nothing else.  After we had politely given him the slip, Bata Scout (Robbie) Godden knew exactly where to go to see the sights. No guide book or treasure map needed, having Robbie on a holiday with you is like having a walking talking Lonely Planet book and compass.

Old Phuket Town was an old mining city and like anywhere else in the world where there is a mine people will come in search of their fortune. Tin was the commodity but these days I think it relies more on tourism and the historical nature of this city draws people from all over the world to have a look. The Hokkian people from Singapore, Penang & China mainly settled this area in bygone days and their cultural practices still remain.  Although a modern city it looks like it has been frozen in time and it has a Chinese vibe about it.

First stop was The Saeng Tham – Shrine of the Serene Light which was old but not ancient, it was built in 1891 so the brochures tell me.  It would have been a very easy shrine to walk by and miss as from the street in looks like an impressive entrance to a very ordinary lane way which also looked like a construction site, to the unaware you wouldn’t even bother venturing inside. Luckily Robbie knew exactly what it was and just where to find it as there are certainly no big signs out the front inviting you in. So many people just walked by but it was a lovely shrine that had many old illustrations done in Chinese ink on the walls which were tarnished by time and the smoke from the incense for over a century.

The buildings were in the process of being restored by a group of men and women rendering the façade by hand.  I am sure piecing it all back together will take years as the building processes in Thailand still generally follow the traditional methods. Unemployment isn’t heard of In Thailand, you work and that’s all there is to it so these artisans would have many years of employment ahead.

Just up the road from there is the ‘ON ON hotel’ which isn’t of any cultural or historical significance except I guess it would have housed miners in the olden days. For all you movie buffs, it’s claim to fame is it was where the hotel scenes where actually filmed for the Leonardo DiCaprio movie ‘The Beach’ (one of my all time favorite movies and another bit of trivia for you, I actually spent my 50th birthday at Maya Bay 2 years ago where the beach scenes of the same movie were filmed). Hmmm bit of a theme happening me thinks.

Robbie actually went up stairs in the hotel and found one of the bedrooms open. It wasn’t very flash no Hollywood tricks, the rooms were almost as they were in the movie, very simple but clean, in an old sort of way. It was about ¼ star rating definitely cheap and some of the rooms even had a fan (they advertised that at the front desk as a draw card) !

No, we didn’t check in, I don’t care if Leo had slept there in the movie I am more a 4 star girl!  We weren’t the only people there checking out the hotel there were other couples there taking their photos out the front too.

I was starting to get a bit thirsty and hungry so Robbie made a bee line for the Wilai Restaurant which by no coincidence was next door to the next two points of history that we wanted to see, the China Inn the oldest hotel and the oldest Drugstore selling Chinese folk medicine and Thai herbal medicine for over 100 years. During lunch a quick tropical storm moved in and it pelted down with rain. So we had to settle back and have a Singha beer or two until the rain stopped, (darn that pesky rain, hic, hic) we weren’t the only ones taking refuge from the rain and it was a pretty good place to sit and watch the world go by the food was seriously cheap and seriously good, Thai food the real way.

There were a couple of back packer type girls on the next table taking advantage of the free Wifi nursing their one drink for over an hour and feverishly typing away on their smart phones. It was a bit surreal really, as on one hand we are sitting in a restaurant that looks like it has been there forever the décor is out of the oriental eighteen hundreds and they offer up free Wifi.

The drugstore was amazing I bet you could buy anything in there, we saw dried snakes, bats, seahorses, many, many herbs and things I really didn’t want to know about. In Leo’s movie he goes on a wild night in the city and ends up drinking Snake blood, I was just hoping no one was going to offer us snake blood to drink.  I bet you could get snake blood in this drug store I have no doubt in my mind. I didn’t even joke about it and I also didn’t say it out load as even if I whisper something to Robbie the locals seem to hear me, they don’t miss a trick.  This was a family business just measuring out their potions and tonics as they have done for generations. They had no problems with us taking photos and it was definitely like stepping back in time, the smells were all very organic and mystical.

After the rain stopped I had a little extra spring in my step from the Thai beer and we continued our walking tour along Soi Romanee, the ‘Street of Joy’, which also translates roughly as ‘naughty with the ladies’.  This street was flanked on both sides with Portuguese inspired buildings with Chinese inspired decorations in many cases &  painted in bright colours all very interesting you could feel the history just oozing out of the place. Again there were numerous people wandering the street taking photos. We came upon one Chinese gentleman that didn’t look too full of joy in the ‘street of joy’ he gave us & the other tourists the evil eye. Apparently back in the mining boom this was the red light district so had a very wild history. But nowadays it is a sleepy city street and the Soi is made up of homes, cafes and businesses full of character and charm.

We saw old banks, an old post office and many other buildings that looked like they had been there for hundreds of years, it was mesmerizing.  We were continually being badgered by taxi drivers wanting us to jump in their air-conditioned cars but all we wanted to do was walk, explore and take our pictures.

The markets we wanted to go were closed and a local man told us they closed at lunch time & it was now about 4.30pm. The taxi driver popped up again to have another crack at us and said he would drive us home but we had now stumbled upon a food market and the locals were all going in to eat and buy produce for their evening meals.

Never the less we found the market to be a great place to take photos and watch the interactions between all the people & I do believe we were the only westerners in there.  We got busy with the snapping of photos, much more interesting than wandering into Woollies. Again everyone is so happy to show off their produce and giggle when we took their picture. Everyone loves to see their image in your camera and is eager to pose. Getting a candid shot is very hard.

Refrigeration is not a concept used in this market it’s all just out there on the table not even on ice. The meat, fish and poultry unrefrigerated and not cooled in any way but all mega fresh and dotted with a fly or a hundred. Ewwwwwwwww.

         

The spices and herbs looked amazing and the aromas were divine. It would have been great to buy some spices to bring home but I watch’ Border Security’ on TV  and our customs people would never let us in with it.

We weren’t sure when the bus was heading back to Patong but found a nice lady from Belgium who told us the last bus was due to leave in 10 minutes so we had done well getting back on time. We caught the local bus back to Patong which was full of students and workers on their way home after a busy day. The locals only get charged 15 baht to ride the bus, us cashed up tourists get slugged that little bit extra which really is fair enough as we are getting the privilege of interacting with people just living their life and the bus bitch on this trip was even more bossy.

We finished the day off with a Thai style pizza. No, it wasn’t swimming in chilli or lemon grass, it was a pizza with Salami, anchovies, ham and mushrooms which are the usual pizza toppings we have back home. Unfortunately something got lost in translation and each topping was placed independent of each other on the pizza so there was an anchovy section, mushroom section etc etc. Eating a whole slice of pizza with only anchovy on it was a bit hard core but the other sections weren’t too hard to handle.

Dinner finished we stopped at a tour vender on the side of the road and the girl was so helpful we were with her for ages booking two tours, and the funny thing was the longer we were there the more she knocked off the price without being asked to.  By the end of it I wasn’t too sure what we had booked but do know we had a tour on the following day and would be picked up at our hotel at 10. She said it was a half day tour so was a little cheaper. We wandered along the beach road to our hotel getting the usual barrage of offers for T-shirts, handbags, suits, sarongs, watches, massages, sunglasses and tuk tuks.  No thanks everyone bed time for this little black duck my little legs have done a lot of walking today, Robbie went out to get is weary bones massaged but I just wanted a nice shower and to laze around in our gigantic bed watching a bit of Thai TV. I get so excited when they say a word I know makes me feel multi-lingual.  LOL  . Time to sleep !