The Beach

Rode Thai Air

Am back from Thailand. It's raining here in Tokyo and I am miles from the beach. What a world. But no matter, I will carry the beach with me inside as long as I can. But eventually it will get forgotten and washed away, like a vacation always does.




I went snorkeling for the first time, which was highly delightful. Having never been to the beach in Mexico or the Caribbean I have to say it was a little weird to be the wealthy foreigner and all the more weird because the Thai women don't sit out on the beach and get tan, so it felt like we weren't sharing it with them. But I was happy to see that during the late afternoon sun, when you don't burn, the Thais would picnic on the boardwalk and the kids would play in the waves. Granted Patong Beach is perhaps the last place to go to for a slice of Thai life. I haven't seen that many westerners in a long time. Moreover, most Asian women, except perhaps for the Japanese girls who like hip-hop style, have a fear of "being black" and are pretty covered up at the beach (also due to more conservative dress standards).

The boys who worked on beach renting chairs, jet skis and what not were a very nice dark color, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder as when I was just sitting in the sand a few Thai ladies and their daughters, from a farther off province, asked to take pictures with me! I saw a similar thing in the airport when Chinese girl took pictures of a little German toddler with gold ringlets.

One surprise of the trip was talking to the Thai employees of HIS, the Japanese travel agency that we booked our tickets through, in Japanese. Here in Japan we had been explained that transport to and from the airport was included, but I had though that meant a hotel shuttle. But no! It was a shuttle by our travel agency who knew how to recognize us by the pens we were told to wear around our necks, proudly marking us off as Japanese tourists. Our Thai representative spoke excellent Japanese and it made sure to explain everything to us ad naseum, in true Japanese style. As Japanese customers, we were even recommended a massage package called "kimuchii kousu" (feel-good course), which was about 3 times as much as the prices described in the lonely planet. The way back was more fun though, we had a couple more lively guides who were highly amused to be dealing with us and we joked around with them in Japanese. It was fun to practice Japanese but it was also nice because it was the most I actually got to talk to Thais that brief trip. Tourist trap or not Phuket was wonderful.



Temple dumping grounds