Patong Beach

This place is a wild swinger loved by the youth. You will find many bars, hotels, and restaurants of all sorts. A long beach separated from a road by palms, where you can eat, drink and have massage. On the other side of the road you will find shops. A crossroad - Bangla Road - is the hottest one. But I am not the right person to talk about Patong - you should be much younger. 

In the south end of Patong you will find Simon Cabaret, which many people find very attractive. Here men act as women and often found more beautiful than women in real. What we found at a visit - yes they had really managed to show some kind of beautifulness and the scenery was magnificient. If I avoid thinking of the line-up of the actors after the performance the feelings for the visit was positive. Before the performance started the following big display was shown:

After seeing this I thought I could expect a performance without any disturbances, but not at all. There were an eternal flashing all through. If the threat about fining the enterprise would be very rich. 

The water quality in the sea is not  so good here, but with a long-tail-boat you will be transported fast and cheap to Freedom Beach, which is the nearest coral reef good for first-time-snorklers. 

A friend of mine - Mr Pop - has now built a new hotel in Patong Beach, the name of which is Poppa Palace. He says the name is a combination of his own name Pop and Pa for his father who he in this way will honour. We visited it in November 2005 and it looks great, but with low prices. His web site is: www.poppapalace.com. This very friendly person is fascinating. He once started another hotel, which he at that time called Pop Cottage at Kata Beach. But after some time he lost interest in it and let his mother, Mrs Seweieb Wuthithamaporn,  take over so he could spend his time with about 40 dogs and several big carp fishes, which he takes care of at home some kilometres north east of Phuket Town. Once the dogs were stray dogs in bad condition. Now they are getting healthier with good nutrition and medicine. Once when I visited him he had chained all the dogs, which made me feel safe. But after a while some of them were released and I soon had them as my friends. I also met his wife. Her name is Cat! Below a picture of them together with one of the dogs, who some years ago looked very bad with hardly no fur at all:

His mother has now changed the name of her hotel to Orchidacea. A suitable name according to all the very beautiful orchids she has in the hotel garden. See more about this in Orchidacea Resort.

On one of my biking tours somewhere between Karon and Patong in a heavy hill I took a pause for talking to a woman, who was sitting at the edge of the street cutting bamboo sprouts. Besides the bamboo she also had an old bike and she asked me if we could go together over the mountains. That might have been interesting but thinking about her very old bike without gears I had do deny. I asked her if I could by some bamboo. OK she said, so I collected about 3 hg. She wanted 10 Bath, so I gave her that and was about to go. She explained to me that I had missunderstood the deal - 10 Bath for all. But I explained to her that I could not make use of so much. Then she did not want any money at all. When I insisted she showed a big smile. Her name is Kanya and she lives in Patong in a very small flat without furnitures - just a mattress and a rack for hanging her clothes on:

The roads from Patong are very steep in all directions. On top of the hill on the way to Phuket town I wondered why nearly all cars gave signal when they passed the place. A Thai friend told me then that there is a Buddhist temple at the top of the hill and that when Buddhists passed they showed honour to Buddha when giving a signal. He explained that so far no Buddhist ever had any accident here but many Muslims and Christians had been involved in accidents here.

Some years ago I decided to make a long walk from Patong to the waterfall in Kathu. After some kilometres a young Thai girl stopped her motorbike and asked me in very bad English where I was going. I told her and she offered me a ride. After some more kilometres she passed the cross road going to the waterfall. So I told her to stop and let me off. She stopped and said to me that we shall not go to the waterfall. I became a big question mark - what did she mean? She then said 'mai fon, mai nam tok', which means 'no rain, no waterfall'. I was still a big question mark - so where are we going now? Just hang on, you will see. My curiosity made me to obey. Soon we came to Kathu, where she stopped and asked me to join her. She entered a temple where she bought two bunches of incense. One she gave to me and told me to follow her and do the same as she. The air in the temple was thick of smoke, but I hold out and fell to my knees in front of Buddha and lit my incense on every place in the temple. When they were finished we hurried quickly away and soon we arrived to Phuket town, where a giant religious ceremony (katin) was passing through the streets with fire-crackers exploding around. I saw participants with masks (khon) representing different gods, among others Hanoman - the monkey god. Some of the participants had penetrated their cheeks by sticks, some with heavily split tungues. Blood was streeming down their bodies. In the long procession I saw many badly hurt by the fire-crackers. One had got it in his eye, which did not stop him from participating. I managed to get free from these and I don't think I was a goal. All the time the girl was running in a high speed and I had some difficulty to keep up with her. Finally the adventure was over and she asked me to sit up again on her motorbike. When we returned to Patong she told me that she should start working within 15 minutes. Her name was Cherry. I told her now that I wanted to talk to her, so we sat down on a stone bench. I first asked her why she had taken me up from the road. She answered: "I saw you were a Buddha". Now I really felt curious. "But - how ... ?". "Yes", she said "your white dress and you walked and walked and walked". When I showed her my Buddha amulet, she was not surprised. "I knew" she said:

 Now I asked her why she never smiled like other Thai people. She said "Cherry not happy, have no friends, no papa, no mama, no contact with brothers and sisters, Cherry not smile". I had to fight my tears - so touching. I told her she must smile a little to get friends. Then there was a little smile on her lips. "Oh, look", I said, "you just got a friend". "Have I", she replied with a big smile, "I will not work today, instead I bring you to Kata". So she did and now we were friends. In Kata I offered her a vegetarian lunch and we split. We never met again. I wish I could show a photo, but my camera was on my room that day, but see my painting:

This story has also been published in 2Bangkok. 

It looks simple, but I'l tell you: It is very heavy!

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