… or how I ended up sleeping on a beach, waking up with the sun on a beach chair at Lam Seng

An introduction to Phuket

I don’t even know where to begin. I started my trip what seems like ages ago – although it was only 16 days ago. The first week I spent in Thailand: Phuket – Ko Phi Phi – Krabi. This post is about Phuket.

Phuket was interesting. It was very touristy – especially around Patong Beach; The party beach of Phuket. However, I was very lucky that Alena whom I met last year on my trans-siberian railroad trip in Irkutsk near the beautiful Baikal Lake were able to meet up for the 4 days I was in phuket.

To all of you that don’t know phuket. It’s an island that is connected by bridge to mainland Thailand. It has 15 beaches and a buckload of (white) tourists. The most touristed beach is Patong beach which is also where the infamous Bangla Road is; A road about 200meters long with only bars and 100’s (yes!) of people trying to sell everything from cheap shots to russian girls to ping pong shows. Too much for me as I’m looking for something a little less “set-up”.

Lam Seng Beach

So basically what we did every day was rent a moto-bike and go beach hopping. South the first day, north the second and east the third 🙂 We found some good beaches but the best experience in my opinion was a beach called lam seng beach (from memory) which had no swimming and there was pretty much noone but the local shopkeepers. We sat down, got a beer and enjoyed the view. As the hour progressed we got to talking with the local guy (who had a pet monkey btw) and he offered thai whiskey. Before long i could of course not drive the moto home and it also started raining. So they offered us to sleep at their place which we did. We had thai whiskey and beer and talked with the guys in the shop (who also lived and slept there) and fell asleep under a beach umbrella in the cool rain with pillows and blankets. We woke up at 6:30 with the sun next morning and drove home. Truly amazing.

Conclusion

We had a great time beach hopping but I must say that I don’t really like Thailand that much and we did see a lot of dirty places and less than sanitary restaurants. Moto riding is fun in Thailand though – perhaps worse than in Penang. I got some great moto gopro footage but that will have to come later