Thailand Update
Its been quite a while since we updated the site, and so this will be rather a long update!
We are currently anchored outside Yacht Haven, a small marina in the north of Phuket island, close to the bridge to the mainland. It is a good place to be because they have an arrangement where yachts at anchor pay 600 baht a month, about 60 shekels, and can use all the marina facilities, including their gym and swimming pool, hot showers ( the first hot showers we have seen since Egypt, by the way..) dingy tie up, drinking water from a natural spring and easy access to the road. The north of Phuket is much quieter than the south, no shopping malls or girlie bars, and the population is mostly Muslim villagers. There are some nice local restaurants though, and the best is Mama’s, which is right on the waterfront. Luckily they have beer and pork, since Mama isn’t a Muslim, and the prices are the same as in the rest of the local places, e.g. cheap! The countryside around the marina is nice, lots of green and plantations of rubber trees, lots of streams and water buffalo, and little villages with chickens running loose on the road and even monkeys sitting on the roofs of the houses sometimes.
Since we bought the scooter, we have done 5000 km on it, poor little thing. It has worked really hard, because apart from going all over the island on it, we have been to Phang Nga on it and even went quite a long way with Inbal as well, until we rented an extra scooter. People here tend to use their scooters as family cars, and we have seen entire families of up to 5 people on one scooter, new born babies over the mothers shoulder ( usually sleeping peacefully), people carrying planks several meters long, huge pots of food, two dogs on one occasion, and yesterday, two people with three songbirds in large cages. The law in Thailand says that the driver has to wear a helmet, and that writing text messages while driving is forbidden, an enlightened attitude! However, it seems to be accepted that scooters are exempt from most regulations- they don’t pay for parking, even in restricted areas, they often drive the wrong way even on main roads, and traffic lights are just used in an advisory capacity. Actually the scooter is the king of the road, because all the other traffic is always scared to death of hitting one. We load ours down with shopping, and have managed to get up to probably 30 kilos balanced round us at times, but we are still amateurs.
We have sailed into Phang Nga bay twice so far, once by ourselves and once with Inbal, who visited us last month. It is a lovely area, stunningly beautiful and good to sail in. The bay is well protected, and the whole area is shallow, so that you can anchor anywhere. There isn’t a long reach of water in any direction, because there are islands everywhere, so there are no large waves. This is lucky, because on the first trip, we sailed out of our anchorage near Ko Phanak straight into a big squall. Squalls here can be pretty violent, and this one had a good 40 knots of wind. Since we had been sheltered by Ko Phanak, which is a high, mountainous island, we had no idea of the squalls strength, and got hit unprepared, with sheets of driving rain and gusts of wind which threatened to knock us flat. But, in 6 meters of water this is less of a problem than it would be elsewhere- we just let the anchor go, got the sails under control and closed our trusty tarpaulin over the cockpit. In an hour everything was back to normal, although we did rip the genoa. It was an old one which we had found in Chagos though, and wasn’t actually much good even before it was ripped, so that didn’t matter much.
We returned to Ko Phanak with Inbal, because we liked this island particularly. Ko Phanak has 6 hongs, which are big caves, hollowed out of the limestone by waves and rain. Some are dry, above sea level, but the most interesting ones are entered by kayak. The largest is on the west side of the island, close to the northern tip, and it is about 200 metres long. If you enter it at half tide you can go all the way through and come out in an inner lagoon, which is completely enclosed by steep cliffs, overgrown with jungle and with the sounds of exotic birds and monkeys echoing round the walls. Unfortunately when we went with Inbal the tide was still too high, so we could just see the light coming from the lagoon coming through the entrance, which was still underwater.
Ko Phanak also has a big open lagoon with weird shapes carved out of the limestone, like rooms open to the air on one wall, and it is obvious that when these were made the sea level was much higher than today’s. The whole island is full of stalactites and stalagmites, and hundreds of bats roost in hidden caves, and fly out in huge flocks at dusk, bound for the fruit trees on the mainland. At spring tide, when we were there, the lagoon dries completely- we were glad we had anchored a bit further out!
Going back up to Yacht Haven is much harder than going down, because there are very strong currents which mostly sweep down the narrow channel between Phuket and the mainland. Going down, we were carried nearly all the way without any effort at all, but coming back the first time we had three different engine problems, including an exploding oil filter, which sprayed oil everywhere, including the salon, since the engine door was open. We anchored and fixed the sea water intake which was blocked, did another 2 miles against the current and anchored again to fix the slipping alternator belt, did 2 more miles and the oil filter exploded, anchored, changed filter, cleaned the mess, and eventually got back, and went to have a well earned beer at Mama’s! We were glad that the second time, with Inbal, all the possible engine problems had already happened and been fixed, and we actually got all the way with only a little heating up, probably caused by a crab in the sea water intake!
Inbal arrived at the end of August, and it was so good to see her. She has grown up a lot in the last year, and is working and living in Jerusalem . We went to collect her at Bangkok airport, which is probably one of the worst thought out airports in the world. It is funny, because the Thai are usually good at building, and are very aesthetic, but Bangkok airport is hopeless. There are lots of different exits for passengers, so that where-ever you wait you can miss each other, and when you finally do see each other you have to walk 200 meters in the wrong direction to actually get on the right side of the gate! Anyway, eventually we managed to meet, and had a day in Bangkok, seeing the Royal Palace and the Emerald Buddha Palace and visiting the Chinese Quarter before getting on a long distance bus back to Phuket. After a day or two resting and relaxing we toured the island, went to every beach, every shopping mall and up to the Big Buddha. It was fun showing her things, especially because we had had time to get to know the island, and knew where to take her. We had forgotten that Inbal lives mostly on pizza, pasta and icecream, all things which Thailand does not excell at, but we managed to find some good compromises, and Inbal discovered that she likes pad thai too!
After coming back from a nice two days sailing in Phang Nga bay, we took Sheva to a dogsitter ( a very nice place in a villa near Ao Chalong with an English-Thai family) and flew to Laos. This was mostly because we had to renew our visas, but it was interesting to see Laos too, although really it just resembled a poorer version of Thailand. Laos was intensively bombed during the Vietnam war for some reason, and is still a bit shell shocked, as well as having a slightly Marxist government which doesn’t help at all. From Laos we crossed back into Thailand and went by the worst long distance bus in Thailand to Chiang Mai. We really hadn’t planned to go there, and went just because Inbal wanted to, and we are glad she got us to go. Chiang Mai is a very nice town, full of Wats ( buddhist temples) and big markets full of cheap clothes and mementos, loads of good second hand bookshops. After a day walking round the town, we split up, and Inbal got her teeth filled for a quarter of the price it would cost her in Israel, Oren went for a massage, and I spent as long as possible looking for books before being dragged back out of the second hand bookshops.
The next day we took a guided tour to the hill villages, and saw the long neck tribe and two other tribes as well. It is pretty touristy, and their village is supposed to be just a set up so you think it is a real village, but it was interesting to see them anyway. One of the tribes have these awful old women who won’t leave you alone and want to force you to buy some bangles or something, they are really hard sellers but we didn’t buy any. We visited a huge cave with lots of buddha statues in as well. It would have been nice to spend more time there, there was a lot that we didn’t see, that is the trouble with guided tours. If we get time to go back to Chiang Mai we will go up there on a moterbike and spend all day.
The next day we went by local bus to Chiang Rai, and visited the White Temple. This is a modern Buddhist temple, built all in white marble, and has lots of wonderful, strange statues and paintings. There are even white fish swimming in a white moat round it! There are pictures combining Superman and Spiderman with traditional Buddhist motifs, and so much to see that it also deserves a second visit. It was well worth seeing , well done to Inbal who suggested it. We returned to Chiang Mai to our guesthouse, which was very nice, clean and quiet, central and had tv with cable for 250 baht for a double room and 150 for a single! This means that Sheva could have had a room for the same as it cost to have her dog sitted( or should that be dog sat?)!
We traveled back to Bangkok by sleeper train, really the best way to travel. For 700 baht you get a bunk with fresh linen, pillow and blanket, and sleep all the way to Bangkok! I loved it, much better than the bus. We had another day in Bangkok, went up and down the river by ferry although it was a bit noisy, and went to the biggest mall in Thailand, where Inbal lost her phone and managed to find it! Then we had a go on the sky train, and Inbal had a foot massage by fish as a finale before we saw her off at the airport.
After getting home we spent the next week or two just recuperating!
After getting back to normal, we are still doing yoga, and are actually getting quite good at it. We seem not to be losing weight any more though, and this may be because I have started to learn how to cook Thai food. We like it so much, and Oren says my green curry and red curry is actually better than Mamas! This is because I put more meat in and give him more rice too. Actually it is very easy, because I buy curry paste which is most of the work. We have bought a polystyrene box, and get ice from the village, so we can buy vegetables and meat for three days, it stays really fresh. We go to Thalang, which is the nearest town, take the laundry which we do for 20 baht a wash at the laundrette, get all the meat and veg at the market and beer at the supermarket, and wobble back fully loaded!
One Response to “Thailand Update”
 Comment by uri October 27th, 2009 at 2:18 pm |
hello lesley and oren, so much pleasure to read … write and write more and more and we will read everything |
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