A Few Scattered, Barely Connected Notes about Phuket, in Which I Lie to My Mother

I miss Phuket. I mostly spent the month I was there trying to come to terms with the fact that I was in Thailand, which didn’t become at all real to me until the third week, despite eating dinner every night looking at this: 

 and this:  

Our hotel was really out of the way at the southern tip of the island, and we had to take a tuk-tuk, which is basically a big pick-up truck outfitted with benches, to get anywhere.

En route to Patong. We have no idea what we're in for. 

At first I thought that an inconvenience, but after a few excursions  to more traveled areas of the island like Patong:

This is a tame picture. The whole place is basically a brothel. 

I found that I preferred it that way.


Our hotel had some sweet little touches, like this ...basin? Massive vase? Thingie?...

...where women would sit once a week placing tiny blossoms in the water:

in various designs.

Just outside the hotel was a spirit house.

I've since learned that these are found all over Thailand, outside private residences, office buildings, schools, and even big box stores. They’re based on the vestiges of a belief that by building in a certain place, you’re displacing spirits who already live there. If you don’t want bad things to happen to you, you build them a house of their own and bring them offerings of rice, sugary drinks, water, incense, and all the other things spirits apparently enjoy.

Spirits are thirsty.

There were cats and dogs wandering all over the little community supported by the two hotels on our beach. Some of the dogs were friendlier than others, and the friendly ones sometimes came to hang out with us when we were lounging on the beach during the day or singing Bob Marley off-key in the evenings. I made friends with this one, and called her Lucy. 

Pitbull/ corgi mix, maybe? Cuteness. 

She was a sweetie.

One Sunday I rented a motorbike (which I may or may not have promised my mother I wouldn’t do) to explore the island a little bit. I didn’t get incredibly far, since every time I came to a road that was more than two lanes I panicked and turned around and went back the way I came, but I followed the coast south:

and then north,

climbing steep hills on this incredibly girly, not at all kickass motorbike.

I saw some nice houses

 and some not-so-nice houses

 and other sweet stuff.

And just to prove that mothers are always right even when they're halfway around the world, I did indeed crash my motorbike.

Carnage. 

Thank goodness I was wearing a helmet.