simon cabaret - yep, all guys

sea gypsies and lady boys

We hit the road relatively early this morning on a mission to find some famous cookies in the Old Phuket Town.  After many false starts in a maze of one way streets, we eventually found the cookie place at the very ed of a dead end street - and it was closed until later that day.  Whilst the cookie trail went stale, we did manage to find a local deli that stocked their product anyway.  First choice was a type of sesame seed crostati that just fell apart in your mouth and left a lovely sesame taste.
In a tribute to child brainwashing, have you ever tried to type or write the word 'sesame' without actually following it with 'street'.  I have just had to delete street after every instance of sesame in the preceding paragraph.
Leaving old town, we headed east across the bridge and onto Keke island, a small island just off the coast of Phuket.  Our purpose was to visit a village of sea gypsies and experience a little of their culture.  The reality was quite a sad affair not too different to driving through some of our own remote indigenous communities.  
A rest in the afternoon prepared us for the highlight of the day: the Simon Cabaret.  This world-famous all-singing all-dancing drag show covers top-10 hits from all around the world.  Rory and Indi were both enthralled with the costumes and the pageantry of the show.  Slightly concerning that when Rory was told all of the people were men (even the ladies), he said "I would like to dress up like that".  Not on my watch, dude ...
Indi was so tired that she had a real monster face going on, so Jo put her to bed straight away after the show and then relaxed in a warm bath.  Rory and I 'hit the town' for dinner and a massage.  It is hilarious to see the massage ladies fight over who gets to massage him, and he not only knows it but plays up to them shamelessly.  We had quite an exhausted little boy by the time he crawled into bed about 10:45, but certainly well pleased with himself.
<< will upload photos tomorrow >>

splash and the mainland

A lovely day yesterday, with a visit to the north of the island.  We had intended to take the kids to Splash Jungle (again) but Indi fell asleep in the car enroute.  Rather than wake her, we decided to continue straight on, over the Saracin Bridge, and onto mainland Thailand.  If time permitted, we would have just continued all the way to Krabi, but the monster awoke after a two hour sleep so we turned around and retraced our steps.  
Interestingly, on this visit Rory also completely conquered whatever fear he may have had of the water slides and we belting down them with complete abandon.  He even headed down some of the adult slides on a circular tube with Jo (also her first time on  water slides).
With the kids properly exhausted from a poolside lunch and several hours in the sun, we loaded them back in the car for a very peaceful trip home.  Deviating via Surin and Kamala again, we just meandered along the country roads that balance between sheer jungle walls on one side and small cliffs that drop into clear water on the other side.  The roads are impeccably maintained, well signposted, and clearly designed by someone who had no access to a ruler for drawing straight lines.  I don't think there is 100m of straight road in the entire journey, which makes for exhilarating driving.
A lazy dinner in central Patong was topped by an early night for Jo and a 90 minute foot massage for me reading Robert Ludlum on the iPad.  Having 600 or more books available on the one device is definitely dangerous, and I am having way to many late nights engrossed in a book.

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jungle jockeys

elephants on the hill

temple top view

big buddha

big buddha (not a reference to Tony's waistline)

 After a quick visit to Tescos (yes, they really are in every corner of the world) for Nappies and other supplies, we headed off the see the Big Buddha.  This is a statue of Buddha that can be seen from almost half of the island.  Set on the top of a mountain, it is constructed from hundreds of thousands of marble tiles, and has been under construction for many years as it relies entirely on donations for continuing work. 

Coming back down the mountain, we spotted an elephant trekking group and Jo & Rory joined the tour for a short while.  Indi & Tony stayed behind to pat the baby elephant and talk to the tour operators.  Indi is considerably braver than Rory when it comes to pachyderms, and she would have quite willingly turned mahout and driven one off into the wild by herself.  Some great photos and I think Rory may have finally conquered his nervousness around the beasts.

monkey see, monkey do

Our car arrived (with baby seat) this morning, so we decided to revisit the previous day’s plan.  Heading off to the northwest of the island, we visited a gibbon rehabilitation centre where they try to save injured and orphaned gibbons for reintegration into the wild. 

Just the previous day, we had paid a street vendor 100 baht to pat and spend time with a baby gibbon in the street.  I won’t ever do this again having spent time talking to the staff at the rehab centre.  The only way that the poachers can get the baby gibbons is by shooting the mother in the wild and in the tree where they spend 95% of their life.  Only one in nine baby gibbons survive the subsequent fall from the tree.  Of those that survive, they are used for display/income purposes for abut a year and then simply discarded because they have lost their cuteness.  By this time, they have lost all skills to fend for themselves and usually simply starve.  Not a pretty picture, and at least the Thai government has made possession of these amazingly trusting animals an offence.  The calls of the adult gibbons are quit eerie, and it makes a wonderful sound when a heap of them get going at about the same time.

Enroute home, we deviated via Surin and Kamala on the west coast.  Dinner at the Andamon resort in Surin proved to be an unexpected highlight.  The kids played in the shallows of the beach, and we enjoyed a lovely meal in tropical conditions as the sun set over the water.  Our table was just a metre or so from the sand of the beach, and we all enjoyed cocktails (Rory elected for a mocktail instead).

between a rock and a hard cafe

Today started badly, with the car we had hired turning up with no baby seat installed.  Their “sorry, no have” was met with our “sorry, no hire”, and some general grumpiness all round.  Our plans for the day had been predicated on having the car, so this threw us into disarray a little bit.

We decided to jettison all plans and just have a lazy day by the pool.

The evening saw us catching a tuk tuk  down to the Muslim quarter and eating dinner at the Hard Rock Café. 

The walk home proved entertaining with an invitation by a street vendor to view some dodgy DVDs.  This cause a rigmarole of market alleys before finally arriving at a clothing stall.  I thought that we must have misunderstood the chap, when her removed some of the displayed clothes and invited us to step through an almost invisible door set behind the clothing rack.  Inside the small back room were thousands and thousands of bootlegged games, videos, and other dodgy material.  The cloak and dagger aspect of it was actually quite hilarious.

bus tour gone wrong

tropical sunset

beach bums

win some, lose some

Very busy day today, with a full program of stuff to do.  We hired a car and driver for the day ($50) and headed south.  Enroute we passed an ATV adventure sports centre and Rory was VERY KEEN to stop for a visit.  This ended up being a half hour 4wheel buggy ride through the jungle outskirts with Tony riding and Rory sitting between his legs in the front of the bike.  The pace was sedate, and the highlight was passing large groups of elephants wandering about and munching on the plant life.  They seemed utterly unconcerned by the two bikes, and we passed many of them within metres. 

Interestingly, the ATV centre also hosted a shooting range – with possibly the most lackadaisical management ever seen.  Both staff and customers wandering around with loaded weapons and some truly terrible firearm handling practices.  The firearms aren’t just little 22’s either; they offer everything from shotguns to fully-automatic machine guns.  I wonder how many ‘accidents’ they have here that could have been easily prevented with a little sensible management.

The next stop of the day was the Phuket aquarium with the kids racing around the underwater tunnel and heaps of individual tanks.  The quality of the venue is nothing like Perth’s AQUA, but the staff were very friendly and the centre was well run.  Phuket Aquarium is perched on the cost near the southern promontory, and the views across the bay show heaps of small islands and secluded bays that must make fantastic sailing.

Our trip back towards Patong offered a detour towards a lookout that showed 270 degree views of the island.  Whilst the lookout was actually nondescript, the highlight was the ‘pooperazzi’ who surrounded Indi and Rory for heaps of group photos.  Rory stayed shy as usual, but Indi really played to the crowd and was kissed, cuddled and flash-bulbed from all directions.

Leaving the lookout and joining the main road, we stopped briefly at an elephant training centre where Rory finally overcame his fear of these big buggers to actually feed a bunch of bananas to one of the baby elephants.  He is still very nervous around them, but getting better by the day.

An afternoon sleep was in order before setting off via transfer bus to Fantasea, one of the islands most famous attractions.  This Vegas-style all singing, all dancing show has counted hundreds of the world’s notable people as attendees, many of whom are pictured on the walls in the entry hall.  The show features dancing elephants, trapeze acrobatics, traditional Thai music, and lots of glitz and glamour.  Indi and Rory offered a running commentary throughout the show to the amusement of all around us, and both were still wide awake at the 10:15 finish time.

Because they were so over tired, the trip back to the hotel was less than pleasant, and culminated in us losing our camera (stolen/dropped/other?) when we arrived back at the hotel.  Whilst it was disappointing to lose the day’s photos, we have certainly got some wonderful memories of the kid’s faces.