Thailand
My second and final weekend in Southeast Asia, Inna and I flew up to Phuket, Thailand for sightseeing and tigers!
While this blogpost only covers our weekend in Thailand, you can read about the rest of my two weeks in Malaysia here, and our other weekend side-trip to Singapore here.
Saturday, 24 March 2018
Saturday morning Inna and I were up early and caught another Grab car to KLIA. While there, we both picked up some chocolate, then got brunch at a place called Secret Recipe. I got a tasty “cheesy fire chicken wrap”.
Family Portrait
Share the Road
Main Street, Thailand
Git the Belly!
Give Skull
Motivating the Predator
Good Rubs
Eye of the Tiger
Want Some Tongue?
I Can Has Belly?
Tiger Ham
Buddhist Flags
Temple Shrines
Phuket Sunset
A Piece of Thailand
Full Thailand Photoset
Our flight on Malindo Air was quiet, with a landing that passed just feet over the Mai Khao beach before touching down. In fact, the landing strip is so close to the shore that the airport’s colored landing lights extend far out into the ocean, which we could later see shining on the horizon from our resort. We de-planed, got some Thai baht, and hit immigration to obtain more passport “cheese”.
Thailand! For me, who has derived a lot of benefit from the Thai Forest tradition of Buddhism, visiting Thailand was the fulfillment of a lifetime dream. Even though a meditation retreat wasn’t on our agenda, just setting foot in Thailand was a very big deal for me.
As a tourist haven, Phuket isn’t exactly a remote forest monastery. Instead, the island features a ton of super popular beaches, and is also the site of some of the worst devastation from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed a quarter million people. On top of that, Phuket set my new high-water mark for westward travel.
What surprised both Inna and I was the immediate and pervasive presence of Russian signage alongside Thai and English and Chinese. There were Russian signs everywhere-down to the take-out pizza menu in our hotel room!-and lots of Russian being spoken by airport visitors. Inna was most surprised that the people speaking unaccented Russian were very obviously ethnically and genetically Asian; logical, since the USSR spanned the entire width of Asia, but a surprise nonetheless!
It was a long but fascinating 75-minute cab ride from the airport to the resort. Avoiding the main highway, the driver took us along narrow back-country roads; at one point, we had to stop while a water buffalo blocked our way! Then we reached more built-up areas that match every stereotype of dumpy poverty-ridden Third World commercial blight, interspersed with stomach-turning party towns full of foreign tourists and the predatory natives who cater to them. Along the way, I tried to recall the Thai I’d learned in an adult ed course ten years ago, while Inna tried to avoid getting carsick from the twisting, bouncing ride.
I was frustrated by two odd technological limitations. First, although the Google Maps app allows you to download offline maps that you can use when not connected to the internet, maps of Thailand are not available. Fortunately, I’d been warned of this and downloaded dedicated maps. Secondly, the difficult Thai script would be the ideal use case for the Google Translate app’s ability to translate script shot using a phone’s camera, but again, that is not allowed. So the Thai government actually outscored Singapore as a visitor-unfriendly police state!
We arrived at Karon Beach and checked into our hotel-the Movenpick-which provided us with nice little lei-style flower wristlets. Our room came with a huge king-sized bed comprised of two twin mattresses side-by-side, as well as a balcony with views of both the ocean and the main pool area. Reminiscent of the strange electrically-frosted glass at the hotel back in Singapore, there were big wooden panels between the bedroom and the bathroom that you could slide aside to reveal a pass-through style opening. Strange!
Arriving around dinnertime, we walked the length of the resort’s large landscaped compound to their Brazilian restaurant. Along the way, we checked out the hotel lobby, the main and satellite pools, the spa, and the grounds overall. We also stumbled into their rec room, featuring a pool table with purple felt, and a pink foosball table! But overall, we were very pleased with the resort.
At the restaurant, I got a nice sirloin, some mediocre corn on the cob, and a new first: a Nutella milkshake! Meanwhile, Inna… Well, let’s see if I can do this justice. What does a Jewish woman born in the Ukraine, with an Israeli childhood, living in America, working on a project in Malaysia, on vacation in Thailand, who doesn’t eat beef, order for dinner? Brazilian charrusco barbecue, of course!
After dinner, since we were close to the beach, we crossed the busy main drag and checked it out. It was quiet and dark, in contrast to the loud commercial chaos along Beach Road. Some people had lit a paper lantern-balloon, and let it soar into the night sky.
Heading back to the hotel, we made our way to the room and turned in for the evening.
Sunday, 25 March 2018
Waking up early again, I let Inna sleep and got some sunrise photos from our balcony overlooking the Movenpick compound, the beach, and the Andaman Sea. Once Inna roused, we checked out Pacifica-the hotel’s breakfast buffet-which was excellent. Then we waited for a cab to take us to our morning destination.
Before my trip, Inna and I had kicked around ideas for where we might go. Langkawi? Panang? Bangkok? Angkor Wat? I considered staying in Kuala Lumpur to catch the final stage of the Tour de Langkawi bicycle race. We didn’t solidify on Phuket until Inna noticed one of her local coworker’s profile icons on Whatsapp: a young lady hugging a tiger. When Inna learned that there was a place in Phuket called Tiger Kingdom that let you pet tigers of all ages that had been raised in captivity… Well, our destination was set. So off we went!
Tiger Kingdom was absolutely amazing! You get 10-15 minutes in the enclosure with 3-5 animals, their watchful handlers, and an optional photographer. The place seemed well-run; the tigers looked healthy, the place didn’t smell, and the staff were attentive.
We spent time with tigers of three of the four age groups: smallest, small, and big cats (passing on “medium”). The smallest guys, about six months old, were utterly kittenish and adorable. Our first little guy was completely passed out, and what struck me was the immense size of his paws! Then, when another group left the enclosure, their more active tiger cub bounded over. At first, I was startled, but the keepers were okay with it, and the new kit decided to spend his time gnawing on our sleepy boy’s head. We also got to play with one girl who was teething and wanted to bite everything in sight (we were given a convenient log to proffer).
The biggest and smallest cats were most popular, so we were the only people visiting the “small” cat enclosure, and the handlers let us stay in there a good long time. Don’t let the “small” fool you, though; these were big, solid predators! We didn’t bring our photographer into this enclosure, which was too bad, because in the heat and humidity, my phone’s camera decided to act up badly.
We finished by visiting the Big Cats, and despite being huge, they were all pretty chill. In the midday heat, one was enjoying a big block of ice placed against her back, and then casually smacked Inna right in the face with the flick of a surprisingly solid tail.
Inna had been excited even before our hour-long visit, but she was downright giddy the whole time, which I found heartwarming. It’s not often she’s so unreservedly demonstrative, and I’m glad I could be there in person to share this experience with her. I was equally delighted, too, although hopefully a little less overtly. It was a stupefyingly cool experience.
To be honest, there’s no way to communicate how awesome it was to sit there, grab a great big tiger’s paw, and rub his belly. In the photos, both Inna and I are having the time of our lives, so I’ll let the photos do most of the talking. As Inna crowed, it was probably the best money we’ve ever spent.
On the return trip, our cab dropped us off on Beach Road, so we visited the beach again. The sea was blue, but not quite the turquoise of the Caribbean, because the Andaman drops off quickly once you’re away from the shoreline. We watched as a parasailer donned a life preserver and got strapped into her safety harness and took off from the beach. Just as the chute was about to be dragged into the air by the motorboat it was tethered to, her local handler, dressed only in a tee shirt and shorts, leapt up into the parachute’s lines, hanging precariously above the tourist’s head, doing the required steering.
The hot sun was too much for Inna, so we crossed back across to the resort, picking up ice creams on our way back to our room. After downloading and checking out all the tiger photos, she and I opted to go separate ways.
I grabbed my camera and hurried off toward town, interested in visiting the local Buddhist vihara: Wat Karon. It was quiet, and I didn’t see anyone other than some guys doing construction, so I just wandered around the grounds, taking lots of pictures. I left a couple dollars, some Thai baht, and some Malaysian ringgits in their donation box before taking my leave. I strolled through town before returning to the hotel room.
Meanwhile, Inna had gone to the resort’s spa for a massage (her credit card receipt says she purchased “1 ORIENTAL FOOT”), so I grabbed a towel and headed across to the beach, intent on absorbing some Thai sun on the last tanning opportunity of my Asian trip. I took a nice, relaxing swim in the Andaman, then dried off in the late-afternoon sun.
After returning to our room, I captured some excellent sunset photos from our balcony before meeting back up with Inna. On the way down to dinner, we hit the gift shop, where I picked up a nice little copper-colored Buddha painting to bring home: to be treasured as an authentic Buddhist item that I had picked up myself on a trip to Thailand!
My dinner, in the transformed Pacifica breakfast space, was a tasty Thai cashew chicken dish. Then back to our room to hang and enjoy our dwindling time in Phuket.
Monday, 26 March 2018
We had a languorous Monday morning, realizing that in less than 24 hours I’d be headed back to Pittsburgh. Inna looked and sounded happier and more relaxed than she’d been after her initial arrival in Malaysia.
We packed up and had another nice breakfast where I opted to try a taste of kimchee. Then we settled with the hotel and hopped our long van ride back to Phuket Airport. This time, the hotel’s driver took the busy, ugly commercial main highway all the way, but it was still interesting.
At immigration, we waited in a huge line full of Russians before getting our exit visa stamps. We endured some confusion due to a gate change, plus having to board a bus that drove us across the tarmac to our plane. The flight back to Kuala Lumpur was a little turbulent, but we landed, sidestepped past customs, and I got my third Malaysian entry stamp in ten days, followed by the usual cab ride home.
Leaving KLIA at 5pm, I would have less than 12 hours in Kuala Lumpur before I was back at the airport for my flight home. That evening was a blur of preparation: dinner at the hotel restaurant (Tex-Mex pizza), unpacking from Thailand and repacking everything to go home, taking a shower, ordering a 4am cab, and heading to bed.
Looking back on Thailand, what remains with me are the incredible contrasts. The most advanced Buddhist country in the world! But wow it’s a commercial dump! But the resort is really awesome! I can’t help but feel the dissonance of a reflective Buddhist culture coexisting with hedonistic beach towns of commercialized hell, massage parlors, pleasure girls, and a disturbing number of recreational shooting ranges.
All the same, between the beach and the tigers and it being Thailand and sharing all of it with Inna… it was an incredible and very memorable trip.
As you might imagine, there are a ton of amazing photos, so you should check out my full Phuket photoset. And you can get Inna’s perspective in her Phuket overview and Tiger Kingdom blogposts.
As mentioned above, you can continue reading about the rest of my trip in my Malaysia blogpost, as well as the side trip we made the previous weekend in my Singapore blogpost.