Money Money Money

Distance Traveled:   11,000 kms (BNE-MEL-SYD-BKK-PKT)

Flags Collected:   0
Time Difference: -3 hours (from Brisbane)

Soundtrack:   Stormfront's Beatles Album

Currently Inspired by:   Nothing. I'm chilling.

Stacks:   Tripped up steps while reading a text message, stumbled on a street while gawking at clubs. No bruises, but plenty of bites and sunburn.

Words written:    Haven't started yet... I should remove this until I have because it makes me nervous
I realise that I said my second blog would be a week or so away from now, but I have done more than I expected and need to get it all down before I forget!  As always when I travel, I go through an initial period of timidity in each new country before my confidence can build again.  Thailand is no exception, and as a result I have nothing to add to my 500 Kisses album at this stage.  However, I do have a new album called Phuket / Patong which you can access by clicking here.  Oh, and there are more photos in the food album as well.  I chose not to put the deep fried witchety grubs, locusts and crickets in the food album, because I have not yet summoned the courage to eat them.  However, as promised, this is something I will do (and take pics of) before I leave the country.  See below.  Appetising, no? Eeep!

 

I'll get my gripes out of the way quickly.  I am looking forward to getting off the beaten track a little so I can have an interaction with a local that does not involve them trying to get money off me.  The incessant "wanna handbag madam", "brand new shoes madam" "taxi, madam" is driving me crazy, not in the least because I absolutely detest being called madam.  Another thing that bugs me is obsequious behaviour, such as bowing.  I always bow back if I can to try and reduce that feeling of guilt that arises whenever I'm faced with it, but ideally I would have them just not do it in the the first place!  I'm sure I had more gripes... oh yes.  My legs are covered in nasty little sandfly bites (my fault) and there are too many scruffy looking dogs about the place which make me sad.  NOW, onto the good stuff:

I freaking LOVE this place.  The crazy heat, the constant sound of waves, my huge hotel bed and nice room for $70 per night, the weird-arse Thai versions of western breakfast, cheap street meat, the higgeldy-piggeldy streets and architecture with slums next to McMansions and modern service stations next to weird slanty garages made of rusty corrugated iron, hysterically misspelled English signage, the cutest kids EVER, awesome food and fruit, drinking frozen mai tais out of pineapples, the tasty crispy seaweed things that I've become dangerously addicted to, those browned up older western guys with no shirt and too many gold chains on, the constant noise and colour and movement, the adrenaline rush you get just trying to cross the street, streets full of mismatched blinking neon signs at night... ahhhh.  

I have spent days doing nothing more than walking to the end of the main drag and back then getting sunburnt by the pool at the hotel (again, my fault) and sipping on cocktails.  This was the perfect place to come and recharge my batteries before getting stuck into the writing.  

Yesterday I went to some famous Phuket sites such as the Karong View Point (gorgeous), the Big Buddha (impressive), Chalong Temple (ridiculously ornate), the Cashewnut Factory (oh, I'm getting to that, don't worry) and the weekend markets, surely the largest markets in Thailand if not up there are one of the largest markets in the world.  I walked through them at a fairly decent clip where possible and couldn't even get through them in an hour and a half.  Incredible setup though, and well worth the trip.

Now, when someone refers to a place as a "factory", what springs to mind?  Rows of machines and workers busily doing repetitive tasks, churning out masses of whatever it is they are making.  Right?  Well, the cashewnut "factory" that we went to was basically a giant shop, full of tins and packets and jars of various different flavours of cashews, and also a selection of various dried fruits, meats, (next to the dried pork they had pictures of two little pink baby piggies, presumably in case you couldn't read the sign.  Does that make you hungry?  Mmmmm) and a variety of sweets.  Doesn't sound much like a factory, does it, until you get to this tiny corner, where a lone woman was sitting with a big bucket of cashews in their shells, picking one up, pressing a foot lever after a which a prongy thing at her hands came down and cracked the shell, then splitting the shell and prying out the nut with another prongy thing and popping it in an icecream bucket.  One woman, just doing this over and over.  Now, I couldn't help but ask myself - is this woman responsible for the shelling of South East Asia's entire cashewnut harvest?  Apparently it was the largest factory of its kind in the entire region... meaning any smaller factories would have to contain zero workers and therefore not be terribly productive.  It's a head scratcher!  I went into that place planning to buy nothing and left with a veritable treasure trove of flavoured cashews, orgasmically good toasted coconut things, cashewnut juice - carbonated and in a softdrink can (oh, yes) and other stuff that now I'm not really sure about.

For whatever reason I am not in love with the idea of Bangkok and big cities right this second, so after I land there on Wednesday I will stay in Wednesday night, explore the floating market on Thursday (no jokes about flooding, please), and then Friday I have booked a flight up to Chiang Mai, and an elephant safari.  This is something I have been dreaming about since I concocted the plan for this trip, so I am extremely excited.  I will stay in Chiang Mai for a week or so and then very slowly make my way overland back down south and stay in little towns where possible, then head back to Bangkok for a few days before beginning my Cambodian adventure.

In the meantime, I have three more days of luxuriating in a nice room with nice food and lots of English speaking people around me, and I intend to make the most of it.  So, until next we speak....

*LOVE*

N

p.s. Can anyone explain to me the significance of having cats at all sacred sites?  Are cats sacred here?  Am too lazy to look it up.  I am definitely enjoying getting to pet some kitties although it makes me miss my babies back home :( 

p.p.s. Send me your news!