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Flâneuring Through The Streets of Thailand: Part 1

Phuket The Tourist Island

Ever since reading Edward White’s book on The Flâneur, I began fancying myself an itinerant traveller and thought I would write about my latest holiday in that style.

I was fortunate enough to join some of my friends on a trip up north to Thailand. The initial plan was to have a long stay for perhaps two weeks but it was cut short to 10 days due to everyone having his or her own plans after that, myself included. Nevertheless, it was a very enjoyable trip.

On the night of the trip, I got all my stuff packed as hurriedly as I could after a very harried week of exams, moving and getting errands sorted out. After saying my goodbyes to some friends, I rushed as fast as I could, together with Chin Heong, to the bus station. It turned out that one of my friends have not arrived but all was in good order when we finally got onto the bus. It was going to be a long journey all the way to Haadyai and true enough, we were unceremoniously awakened at each stop point, which includes the rest houses where we answered nature’s call and ate. It has been some years since I’d ventured so far north of Malaysia; one was during my student days while attending a student conference. We also had to get down the coach at each customs checkpoint. It was my first time using the chip-embedded Malaysian passport and it was nice to not to have to wait in the line when you’re blurry-eyed. But alas, the Thai authorities do not have a machine to scan through your enhanced passport so back to the line it is…

We were also taken to a duty-free shop near the border so that the bus company (or drivers) could get their commission. I must say the toilets stank and there isn’t really a lot to see other than the standard imported goods. Nothing interesting. We reach Haadyai at around 8 something am, Thailand time (which is an hour quicker than our Malaysian time) and settled to getting a van for our trip up to Phuket. Haadyai was our first taste of Thailand and it was interesting to find people who could speak both Mandarin and Hokkien. I got myself The Bangkok Post and settled to finding out about what was hot news within the vicinity of the country. It turned out that the arrest of the former dictator of Myanmar, Ne Win and his daughter Sandar Win, were in the papers for a few days preceding the day I first read about it. Things were not too expensive in Haadyai and we got to sample the Thai’s version of noodles (it took a bit getting use to) with some unfamiliar looking ingredients.

We were soon packing into the van but it was a steamy ride all the way to Phuket (with a few stops for lunch and nature’s call). But everyone was getting dizzy and irritated from claustrophobia and it was a relief to finally reach our hotel, Marine Bay , at the outer fringe of Phuket, within walking distance to the Patong Beach . The hotel is small and has a homey feel to it, though being located within a very tourist-centric town, one have to excuse certain strange characters that come and go in the middle of the night. We spent a lot of time out except late at night when we are back to roost in our hotel rooms. My friend, Chin Heong and I decided to visit the islands lying on the outskirts of Phuket , including the beautiful Maya Bay (which was unfortunately corrupted by the moviemakers of The Beach staring Leonardo Dicaprio), Loh Samah Bay, Pi Leh Cove, Viking Cave, Monkey Beach, Tom Sai Beach, Hin Klang (where all the coral reefs are supposed to be but they are nearly all dead! Must be due to the encroachment of polluting agents…sigh) and Kai Nai. The islands are breathtakingly beautiful (though not overwhelmingly so) except for the profusion of pot-bellied tourists and scenes akin to (Miami Vice meets Baywatch).

In the Monkey Beach, you could actually see monkeys who seemed to be used to human contacts and are grabbing every tidbit given to them by their human counterparts, and that includes soft drinks cans and bottles as well as mineral water bottles. I wished I could had taken a picture of a monkey playing with a soft-drink can as it screamed of Post-Warhol, but then as you would read later, none of the pictures came out. While swimming within the caressing folds of the sensual sea, I wished that I had access to a waterproof camera to take pictures of the multi-coloured fishes swimming with me. In accordance to the package we paid for, Chin Heong and I got a free hotel lunch, where we were seated with some Swedes, French and some other non-English speaking Europeans. A Frenchman, whom I later had the pleasure to meet, was telling us about the delights of a particular French alcoholic beverage (I wished my memory served me better when remembering things I can’t spell). The activities were not very varied but it was the variables in the sights that made the whole trip memorable. I took a whole load of pictures but most did not come out, as I’d not loaded my camera properly. (Thumbs down for me) We did not go down Viking Cave as it was off limits to visitors ever since a company had cordoned off the area for their bird-nests collecting activities (another capitalist encroachment) but it was lovely to see the aqua blue waters and the virgin greenery of the place. Near the hotel where we had lunch, we saw some of the female tourists sun-bathing topless and I even walked past two well-endowed ladies strolling nonchalantly topless, that despite the illegality of it all (or so the guide book told me). I would say that the islands and bay hopping were the best part of the Phuket trip for the rest of the place were very garish with their emphasis on the tourist industry (hence the rather pretentious nature of everything). But be careful when looking for holiday packages and try to find out more before making any decisions. Use their tourist guide booklet as a starting point and take your time in choosing. Try to get reputable agencies for in that way, you would not be cheated off your moolah and get good services to boot. Even then, this could still be expensive for a budget traveller.

If one goes further out to Phuket Town, one can see the still rather tranquil scene, with the people bustling about, doing their business, though the tourism concept is always within the paradigm. If you really want to go on a budget trip, try making friends with the locals and ask them about good and cheap places (this is virtually non-existent within the Patong township) to eat, be thick-skinned when bargaining; do not allow their ‘sad’ demeanour to soften your heart for they are very well-trained in the psychology of tourists, do not buy anything from the children as that would only encourage more parents to send their children out as street vendors at night (but surprisingly, the streets did not boast of too many of these children while I was there, perhaps due to the latest crackdown).

The nightlife of Phuket is milder, compared to what you would get in other parts of Thailand like Bangkok in particular. As Phuket boasts of many European tourists, you could get newspapers from France and Germary selling at the newsstands. After the clampdown on nudity, you would not see any a-go-go girls dancing topless or bottomless at any of the pubs, though they strive to be as skimpily dressed as ever. There are always pub owners and guest relations’ managers of these pubs and discos that would try to entice you to come in. I went with Chin Heong to one of these joints and they proved to be rather boring, for you just sit there and see bored foreigners frolicking with some of the girls. The music played is rather dated and boring.

One interesting nugget about Phuket, and later Bangkok is the proliferation of books for tourists, especially the men, on how to negotiate with the a-go-go girls, on the social maneuverings engineered by these girls, and many more, including one on the history of Thailand’s red-light district and even ‘love letters’ supposedly written and received by these girls. Foreigners who had gotten to know these girls wrote these books. Hence be prepared for a little condescending attitude, although some of the books were written with some empathy. While at Phuket, I managed to chat up a Brit who had been there for some years and he was telling me about some good places to go to in Bangkok and also how to take buses from here in Patong to Phuket town as oppose to taking the ‘tuk-tuk’ (Phuket’s version of a taxi mini-jeep) which would cost a bomb for foreigners, unless you are willing to haggle every time.

We managed to discover one delightful seafood restaurant at the outskirts of Patong, which is quite a distance away, thanks to friendly guest relations’ officer of our hotel. The food is good and cheap, and that in Phuket! Nine dishes served for seven had us all stuffed silly, not to mention the great services rendered by the waitresses. I also tried a kebab shop which sells kebab at exorbitant prices but at least it tastes authentic enough. We usually haunt hawker stalls, as they are more in accordance with our budget. The bad thing about Phuket is how vendors descend upon us like eagles in trying to hawk their wares. You hear all kinds of funny phrases coming up (including ‘I love you’!) spoken at random to the various passing tourists. There is this perception that if we could afford to come here, we definitely are a moneyed group.

Indeed there exists a bustle of activities at night, including various massage parlours and hair saloons, opened late into the night. While walking around the streets at night, Chin Heong and I came across a group of foreigners and locals having some kind of rendezvous and holding court at a back lane tiny coffee-shop, at a quiet part of Phuket (and peace is something hard to connect with at the town center). We spotted two Caucasian girls traversing the back alleys just to get a short cut back to their hotels. We were a little lost and were following them in hope of finding our way out, but that was not to be the case, unfortunately.

I tried a spa located within a 5 star hotel and as I was trying to save, I took the cheapest treatment I could (it was still costly to me). But the thirty minutes spent were heavenly, with the smell of scented oil and soothing music to ease my tired mind and a massage to relieve my tired muscles. One gets privacy and a lovely view of nature from the vantage point of a wall-less massage hut, not to mention being pampered. It was indeed a pleasure dome quoted by Samuel Coleridge in his poem Kubla Khan. And I am typing this to Vivaldi’s concertos.

Phuket is a good place to shop for pearls, as they are much cheaper than in most other parts of the world, including Malaysia, as I’d discovered. All in all, it was an unforgettable experience but I do not really want to go back unless I want to visit the islands again or shop for more pearls. For better authenticity, I would rather go to the Northern regions. However, preservation of ethnic cultures will soon give way to capitalism.