RANDOM MUSINGS

It's 6:00 in the morning on December 27 here, the earliest I've woken up on this trip. A short while ago, I heard monks chanting in a temple somewhere down the valley behind us. Now, there's at least one rooster crowing and I can hear several jungle birds up in the trees, plus the occasional car on the highway (no tuk-tuks or motorbikes yet).

A few random thoughts and factoids before I jump into the shower:

Bandaids over foot blusters are totally useless when you're wearing sandals and walking on the beach. They just come off after the first few steps. Just wash the sand out of any broken blisters as soon as you can find clean water if you don't want the wound to become infected.

The lightweight, moisture-wicking pants that convert into shorts are indispensible. I bought mine through Campmor's catalog and wore them in Patong yesterday. Great for keeping your legs clean while walking the town streets (and offering some further protection against additional motorbike burns). Then, when you arrive at the beach just zip off the bottom portion of the legs and you have an instant swimsuit...

One of the many perks here at L&S Kamala Bay Village is the free laundry service. Just drop off your dirty clothes when you leave the hotel for the day and they will be waiting for you when you return in the evening. Any items that need to be ironed will be delivered to your room early the next morning.

In Patong at least, there seems to be just a dozen or so different types of shops ad infinitum. You've got your tailor (usually Indian-run), tacky T-shirt shop, knockoff jewelry and handbag shop, 7-Eleven, massage parlor, open-air expat bar, go-go bar, pharmacy, currency exchange, Internet cafe, digital photo service, travel agency selling all sorts of local and regional tours, and a large variety of restaurants (both open-air and enclosed). These types of shops and business are repeatedly endlessly all over the town of Patong, with things like Muay Thai boxing stadiums and hotels breaking this up from time to time. Oh, yes - almost forgot the dozens of backpacker/expat slummy-looking hotels north of Bangla Road which I get the impression are more for short-time sex than anything else (you see A LOT of gorgeous young Thai women holding hands with fat old farangs - foreigners - headed towards those places from the bars).

The night market is the place to go for inexpensive food. There's a huge variety of stalls selling all sorts of wonderful-smelling items along the main beach-front road. Patong has several different night markets. I might check out another one tonight and see what they sell (I'm on a quest for a tsunami shirt, amazingly hard-to-find yesterday as the increased amount of tourists quickly snatched them up much like the newspapers).

More later

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