We were awake and up before the alarm, so it was straight up for breakfast, so as the day’s planning was somewhat uncertain, it had to be a cooked breakfast day.
THE HORIZON COURT TOUR – part 5
Down the centre of each side of each buffet, parallel with the first two hot stations, is the sweet pastry/bakery section. In the past this had the most appetising chocolate covered doughnuts, or doughnuts filled with jam, custard, apple etc., but the PC big-wigs at head office must have sent down a directive “no more fattening doughnuts” - as if you couldn’t get fat from all the other stuff available…
Anyway, there are two stations, each containing 4 compartments, so you take your pick from whatever the bakery has decided to tempt you with, so that as an alighting slim, lightweight passenger, you disembark weeks later as cargo. This could be Danish pastries (cherry, custard, apple, apricot etc.) muffins, or various other delights. Apart from an occasional Danish pastry, (just one so far), I find it very easy to avoid this section.
We met Mal and Megan, Alex and Terri down in the atrium and strolled straight off the ship easily enough. Now a bit of recent history here for future cruisers. At many ports, there is a shuttle bus put on by the ship to the nearest town, but in Phuket, the taxi collective is heavily unionised, or organised. When a cruise ship tried to put on a shuttle bus a year or two ago, about 200 taxi drivers blockaded the port so that the shuttle was trapped. So it is either a taxi (from within the port area, where they had to get a ticket or a pass to get in) or immediately outside the port gates where there are about 100 taxi drivers, who may or may not speak English.
We needed a van for the six of us and the first two wanted $100USD+ and didn’t speak very good English. (The collective usually agrees the rate too, so they have it pretty well sewn up.)
Terri approached another van driver and agreed a rate of $80 for 5 hours. The van was clean and his English was pretty good, so off we went – straight to a jewellery emporium!!! I didn’t bother getting out of the van – which probably reduced the driver’s spotters fee.
Travelling in Thailand (and Vietnam) fascinates me. There are any number of small businesses roadside. The guy with the guitar in his lap was running a print shop.
On we went to a very impressive temple complex, where every few minutes, a guy in camouflage gear set off a load of very loud “Happy Crackers” in a brick kiln.
Back on the road, we saw the road signs for ‘Big Buddha’ – which we could see about three or 4kms away at the top of a steep hill. When we told the driver we wanted to go up to it, he really wasn’t at all keen. (We heard the same story from other private tours.) A somewhat acrimonious discussion followed, as he wanted an extra $20. Quite why, we weren’t sure.
We are glad we insisted as it was a very interesting stop, with the monks all chanting away, with the leader using a microphone. It fascinates me, this mix of ancient tradition and modern technology. Shrines with LED lights are another frequent sight.
We carried on with our tour via a beach or two, (Kata?) and on to Patong, where we had a two hour shop stop. Goodness knows what this place is like at night as every other establishment seemed to be a bar, club or eatery.
We sought refuge in a modern shopping centre and changed $20USD into about 600bht. This was enough for a superb ‘purple wheat bread’ toasted chicken and avocado sandwich, a coffee, lemonade and two Danish pastries. Not very Thai, but although much of the food around was cheap, we didn’t feel like a cooked meal.
We got back to the port OK and we made up the driver’s charge to $100 by virtue of a tip. We thought that a total of $40 for the van and $20 for incidentals was good value. That 600bht also paid for a 110bht greetings card and back at the port, two cans of coke at 30 baht each. I think we had about 22 baht change by the time we got to the end of the day, which really was cheap for what we got. Would we really want to spend a week in Phuket on holiday? Probably not, though a lot of people spend their days inside their resort complex, rather than out on the streets - and thoroughly enjoy it.
Back on deck 11 for the sail-away where many pics are taken, though the subject matter is hardly paparazzi material.
At dinner, just about dessert time, tomorrow’s entertainer Ace McDermott came around doing magic tricks at the table. We were stunned! Jo had to pick an imaginary card from an imaginary pack – and Ace fished it straight out of a real pack!
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