Food in Phuket

Here's some food I had in Phuket:

This little street cart was selling pad thai for 40 baht. She would cook it for you on the spot.

cooking pad thai

Pad Thai for 40 baht and so good. Oh man, just looking at it makes me miss it.

a little cart selling a abanana pancakes. they'll cook in on the spot.

cooking the banana pancake.

oh boy, this was good. banana pancake.

the first was so good I had to try another. chocolate banana pancake... oh man this was excellent.

Strawberry. It was not real strawberry, just jam.

American Breakfast.... mmmmmm

banana pancake

pineapple fried rice

soup

porridge

burger at Baan Suay, it was pretty good and I was dying for American food at this point.

orange and pineapple shakes at baan suay

more burgers at baan suay, told ya I was craving american food.

cheap eats from a 7-11, all of this was less than $3.

BBQ "buffe" for less than $3.

hawaiian pizza. the waitress seemed happy to practice her english on me and did a short little hawaiian dance when she served it.
Wiener Schnitzel, sold everywhere because phuket is crawling with europeans

UFC orange juice.

Dino Burger

Buffalo Steak House "The best steak in town" is also the only steak in town. It SUCKS. It's super small and expensive. It's really not even all that good as far as steak goes. You can make better steak yourself at home.

More pineapple fried rice.

fish and chips.



kabobs.

See those little things hanging up on the cart? At first I thought it was rat meat but I think it's squid... I dunno.

fruit cart

spaghetti that was not very good


wiener schnitzel with fried rice.

wiener schitzel again... i developed a liking for it.

ham sandwich

pancakes with some white crap all over it. i wasn't a fan.

pineapple shake

strawberry shake

bbq

small pizza, not very good.

deep fried ice cream

fruit stand

fruit stand

fruit stand

pineapple shake and some flat noodle dish

pork cutlet burger

fried bananas

pad thai for 80 baht
lemon shake
here's me being a pig. the first dish i ordered... noodles
the second dish i ordered... chicken and chips
the third dish i ordered.... banana pancakes

And yes, I ate all three all by myself. I'm such a pig. When the waitress brought out all 3 to my table and saw it was for one person she started laughing. All I could do was smile sheepishly and start wolfing down my food. In my defense, I had just gotten back from scuba diving and felt completely famished.

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My Phuket Hostels

Baan Suay Room

I stayed in a few different hostels in Phuket. Here hey are.

The first one was called Baan Suay. It was alright, the owner's wife was very nice and tried to make the guests' stay as pleasant as possible. Her husband was from australia and had decided to make a home in Phuket. They had two little children together. It was a little far from the beaches and ants crawled all over my tooth brush. The food was quite good and that's where I got a good fill of western food. Yes, western food, don't judge, I was home sick.



The next one was only $3 a night. It was a dorm, but nobody else was there. It was actually not too bad. The person working there was new, a traveler as well who had set up this place to earn some money before her next trip. I felt bad for her because she didn't have much business. There was no AC but the fan worked well enough. There was also no wifi in the place. There was another establishment that welcomed me to use their wfi but that meant having to leave this hostel, a pain when it was raining.

View from $3 hostel.

My bed. Across from me was a bunk. Nobody else was there.

The sink in a $3 hostel.

The toilet in a $3 hostel.

Cold showers only.

The problem? The bathroom had no hot water for showering. This kinda really sucked, even in the topics. So after a night with a cold shower I left.


I found another hostel called Pineapple. It was clean enough. I was tired from all my traveling so I decided to live in luxury. I opted for a single room with AC and my own bathroom. Yes, there was hot water. There was a little fridge, fans, a small desk, a very small TV, and the wifi extended to my room. This cost $15 a night. Besides exploring Phuket I also slept in super late, play videogames on my computer, fixed my computer's wifi problem, and just really enjoyed doing nothing.

My room at pineapple.

My room at pineapple.

My bed.

Toilet in my room.

The owner of the hostel was an british man. He seemed like a man maybe in his 50s that had given up his life in the UK to settle permanently in "paradise". His wife was a thai lady and they had some children together. He didn't seem to be able to speak thai or understand it. They were both ok, and the workers there were very nice but had limited to no english skills. He did try and raise my rates while I was staying there. I just told him to put me in a cheaper room then, which I had no problems going to. But after saying I'd be willing to go to the dorms he said "ok you can stay for your rate".

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Time For The New Thai PM To Go Already?

My blogs are really behind, so my Thailand entries are from Nov 2008. I thought it would be interesting to follow up on events that took place during my trip. During my stay in Thailand protesters took over the Bangkok Airport until the military decided to remove itself from power. A new Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, came in (not through elections) to replace the military power that had been in place in their peaceful coup of former PM Thaksin Sinawatra.

Well, it appears the new PM has worn out his welcome. Protesters, supporters of former PM Thaksin Sinawatra, want the new PM, Abhisit Vejjajiva, to step down so an elected PM can come into power.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7965319.stm

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Random Phuket Pictures

Porn Laundry

Porn Souvenir

"No I don't want a f*?kn tuk tuk, suit, or massage, thank you very much"
If you've ever been to phuket you know the feeling.

Walking around the streets of Phuket.... hey, a random baby elephant. You can pay a few baht and feed it peanuts.

Dino Burger, Flintstones theme restaurant.

This starbucks in Phuket was completely empty. A foreshadowing of starbuck's over expansion and its current decline? (this picture was taken around Thanksgiving 2008)

Mc what?

Elvis in Karon.

Some homes (I guess they're homes) next to the Kata Beach Bars.

A Tuk Tuk in Phuket. They don't look the same as tuk tuks in Bangkok even though they're called the same thing. There are smaller red tuk tuks in phuket, but they look more like this truck than the Bangkok tricycles with motors.

Muay Thai

Live entertainment at dinner... the band.

Fly me to the moon

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Just Say No to Jet Skis in Phuket

I mentioned in my last post about renting jet skis in Phuket being a scam. Well, here's a video from someone that learned it the hard way.

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Phuket

Sunset in Phuket

After leaving Siem Reap it was off to Phuket, Thailand for beaches, beaches, and more beaches. If you're searching for beautiful weather, warm water, and relaxing massages and drinks on the beach under the sun Phuket's the place for you.

I stayed at Phuket for quite some time. It wasn't because I love the beach, I'm really not a beach person, but rather I was tired from traveling so much. I needed a place to rest and relax. I needed to stay put for a while, sleep in and do nothing. Now, I realize that all my traveling is probably viewed as a very extended vacation for most people reading, but traveling takes a lot out of you. My mind and body needed to rest so I did, and what nicer place to rest and relax than Phuket? I didn't do much other than eat, fix my computer's wifi problems, sleep, and I learned to scuba dive (more on this later).

Karon Beach Turnaround

Karon Beach

Karon Beach, very beautiful when it's not raining.

Karon Beach.. don't rent the Jet Skis... it's a scam.

You can rent a umbrella and chair... people come by selling drinks and ice cream.

It's not always pretty at the beach.


Speaking of not pretty... don't forget your sun screen at the beach. Me after 5 minutes in the sun with no sun screen... ouch!

It rained a lot while I was in Phuket. Lots of on and off showers. Pretty annoying for someone from Southern California.

My family freaking out over my stay in Phuket due to the huge typhoon! Huge typhoon? Yeah, the one that happened in 2004. Only problem? I was there in Nov of 2008. Yeah.....

I was surprised to see so many Europeans in Phuket. It was crawling with scandinavians. After that there were plenty of australians, english, and a few russians. There were very few americans, in fact I did not meet a single american while I was there. The lack of americans means all the restaurants showed soccer nonstop since none of their customers were american. Soccer? really? come on. Luckily for me if I needed my NFL fix I was able to tune into some games via the internet. See my post on how to do so.

I had an encounter with a rather large and fat sweedish man. My guess is he was about 6'4" and maybe 280 pounds. He was fat, but still, much larger than me. I'm 5'11" and while traveling dropped to 158 pounds. Well anyway I was eating dinner at a restaurant and he had too much to drink. He sat down at my table rather belligerently. Not wanting any trouble I tried to diffuse the situation by trying to find common ground. I asked if he was sweedish, and when he confirmed I brought up Peter Forseberg, one of the premier NHL players during the mid to late 90s and early 2000s. He replied with "Peter Forseberg? F*** you!" Not knowing how to respond, I said "what? Peter Forseberg is awesome, F*** YOU!" Yeah... that will diffuse a situation alright. He challenged me into why I thought Forseberg was awesome. Well, I was an avid NHL fan for many years and so I easily brought up his game winning shootout goal in the olympics for gold (which became a stamp), his beautiful abilty to handle the puck and protect it, and how while carrying the puck he'd hit the player trying to to hit him, not to mention the Stanely Cups he won... and even during penalty kills the time he just skated around by himself causing Chris Pronger to get so pissed and slash Foppa causing another penalty. Peter Forseberg is a national hero in sweeden for these reasons, but mainly for the gold medal in the olympics. Anyway, our big fat belligerent sweed here seemed rather impressed that I knew what I was talking about and said "I love you" and kissed me on the forehead. Um.... if he had been a smaller guy I might have punched him for that... but he was drunk and maybe it's a sweedish thing to kiss other dudes. I Don't know. Anyway, he put his hand in an arm wrestling position and motioned for me to clasp it sort of like shaking hands. It was a little risky, but I decided to accept and it wasn't the friendliest of hand shakes but I did it anyway. I said I was America. He said "How can you be American?" Um.... my country just elected a minority president....you know, there are lots of minorities in America. But whatever, dumb drunk guy.

An english man later told me that beer is so expensive in sweeden that sweeds don't drink a lot; so once they get to Thailand (a major tourist spot for sweeds) they tend to binge drink due to the low prices. Well, since they don't drink much at home they don't really know their limits and become known for being douches. I don't know how that is, after all it is a generalization, but this guy was the only sweed I met on the trip. It was interesting to say the least.

There are a few different beaches in Phuket. I stayed in Karon and Kata beach. These beaches are quieter and not quite a lively as Patong Beach. I skipped Phi Phi Island which is supposed to be the most beautiful beach there because it was quite expensive and I still had more places to go.

para gliding at Kata Beach

Kata Beach

Kata Beach

Kata Beach, it's not always pretty... man with nasty speedo.

Kata Beach



I posted this before... but I'm posting it again. While I was in Phuket protesters took over the Bangkok airport. However in Phuket this was about as bad as it got... as nasty old man with his bar girl.

Topless girl. The scandinavians and russian women are known for going topless. It's not always a good thing. yeck.
From behing it's not much better.... gag. Ok I know most people get pictures of the young good looking girls ... well let me tell you, thre aren't many of them. This is reality. Reality bites sometimes, either that or I've got a slight masochistic streak.

Thai kids playing in the water.

There's lots of bars lined up along the street. It's not in a building you can see everything going on. Lots of thai girls, or thai boys playing pool or looking bored. Plenty of foreigners visit them. I stayed in Karon and Kata which is not really known for exciting night light so I couldn't really give you the scoop on that sort of thing. Still, the women are cheap and I saw plenty of men buy the bargirl for the week or however long. The bar girls would then be the constant companion provided the man pay for all her expenses. It's a little nasty seeing all these old europeans with these young girls, but hey, whatever floats their boat. I heard the rate was about $30 USD for a week. I could be wrong, I only got 2nd hand information.

Lady boys inside for you!

Walking by these establishments can't be avoided if you're planning to get around by walking, though I should mention Phuket's not really a walking city. It has poor public transporataion. Anyway, all these "women" (I swear some were guys..... or really ugly women with deep voices) would yell at me to come join them. None of them though I was American so they'd yell at me with cries of "mushi mushi", or "ni hao" or "anyon ha say yo", basically greetings in japanese, chinese, and korean.

There are always cries of "where you from", not only from bar girls but from people trying to sell you things. The reason they ask this is so they can set the rate at which to charge you. If you come from a rich country, you get charged more. Just say you're from Jamacia. That's a tip I got from world ramblers.

Phuket Airport... time to leave.

I stayed in Phuket when the airport in Bangkok got taken over by protesters. In Phuket things were pretty calm, everything was business as usual. There was really nothing to be freaking out over. The airport did seem busy, but it was working. There were no hold ups in Phuket. I Think the extra traffic was from people trying to leave Thailand or trying to fly into Bangkok. They would opt to use Phuket as their airpot an then travel by train to Bangkok.

Map of Phuket

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High Speed Trains in the USA?

The stimulus bill signed by President Obama last month contains $8 Billion in aid to trains. By the time I was born train travel in the United States was pretty dead. The highways built during the 1950s and airlines have been the dominant ways to travel for as long as I've been alive. Trains? why would anyone want to take the train? It's actually not that cheap and it's slow.

I guess times are changing, and I for one welcome that change. While traveling in Asia train travel was the best way of traveling bar none. The high speed trains I rode in Taiwan, Japan, and China were and absolute joy to ride. They were very fast, very quiet, very smooth and very convenient. High speed trains travel at up to 200 mph and you don't have to deal with the hassles of checking for a flight. What's not to like?

One of the Republican Party's super stars Governor Bobby Jindal was quoted as laughing at outrageous technology he thought came from science fiction movies in the stimulus bill, specifically magnetic levitation high speed trains. Well, Bobby Jindal certain proved what a retarded douche bag he was (or should i say he's just another republican?) and he's also wrong about the mag lev trains. This technology is real, and it's cutting edge. Quite frankly American has fallen WAY behind the rest of the world in train technology and I would be so happy to welcome a mag lev train. Basically magnets lift the train above the track so that it travels with much less friction. Since the republican party hates science (at least they have in my life time) I don't think they understand that means the trains can travel faster. It's really amazing engineering. Shanghai China has one such train from Shanghai to the airport. I got to ride it, and was delighted to be able to do so. Like I said earlier about high speed trains, they're fast, quiet, and smooth. The mag lev was no exception.

Now in addition to high speed trains I rode subways and conventional trains. In Asia conventional trains are quite affordable so they're great for backpackers. Comfortable? Fast? Smooth? Not so much, but they're really cheap and that's the trade off. It's not terribly uncomfortable and as a backpacker you need to get use to that. It wasn't an issue for me, I adapted quickly and was pleased with mt savings. I did ride in first class from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, and it was quite nice, though still not totally smooth.

Link to USA Today Article on High Speed trains in America's future.

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i what? Nokia E71 please

My take is you really don't need a cell phone while traveling. In fact, while bouncing around the world it's more fun to not have a phone where people back home can bother you. But, if a phone is what you want look no further than the Nokia E71. It is an Unlocked Cell Phone with 3.2 MP Camera, 3G, Media Player, GPS. This is the U.S. Version (Americans, do not get Asia versions, you will regret it when you come home.).

This smart phone has it all, and is pretty sleek and stylish in my opinion. It's also very thin, so it fits nicely in your pocket. It comes with a mp3 player, a video player (will play flash youtube videos too), a built in GPS, 3.2 megapixel camera, can record video, check your email and surf the web via WIFI or your data plan. It has a super nice qwerty keyboard which really makes typing emails and sending text messages very nice. I really love the keyboard, think it's totally superior than any touch screen or regular phone pad. I should also say that I am very pleased with the battery life. With normal usage, including taking pictures and using wifi, it will last me about 2 days. With heavy usage I can still last the whole day before having to recharge. With minimal usage it will last me at about 3 days.

No carrier picked up this phone in the United States so it is only sold as an unlocked phone (this is good!). That means you never have to be tied down in a contract. It uses a sim card, which unlike the USA, Asia has taken by storm. This means once you get to the new country you could simply buy one of their prepaid sim cards, pop it in your phone and have a local number!

You could of course also just use your carriers plan, but both ATT and T-Mobile (US carriers that use sim cards) require you to be tied down in a contract to be able to roam. Boooooo. I suspended my account with T-Mobile while travling because the sales person told me otherwise. Anyway, roaming is obviously very expensive, so it wasn't a big loss for me. Also don't forget... you can get a local number via pre-paid sim card cheap cheap abroad. =) Just pop it in and go!

It has a GPS that is integrated into the phone! Nokia provides an application called Nokia Maps on your E71 for no additional cost which lets you use the GPS. You can either download all the maps of the areas you need at once and install it on your phone or download as needed with your data connection (either wifi or data plan). This would be great if you're lost... and while backpacking you WILL get lost.. but keep in mind getting lost is half the fun and half the adventure. =) If you decide to use Nokia Maps you need to make sure Assisted GPS is checked because Nokia Maps is useless without it (Tools->Settings->General->Positioning->Positioning methods). I didn't have an unlimited data plan (unless I'm connected via wifi) so I decided to use the Garmin Mobile XT for smartphones instead. It totally kicks Nokia Maps' ass bad. Quite frankly there is no reason to use Nokia's crappy Maps that need Assisted GPS (ie more of your money) when you can use Garmin's App and download the maps you need straight to your phone. More on the Garmin below.

The camera comes with a pretty decent flash actually. The pictures won't ever be as great as your new digital camera, but they're not bad at all. The videos come out pretty well too. A little note since I didn't figure this out until way after I had already had my phone.... press the 't' button to focus. =)

The built in media players work well. The mp3 player plays your mp3s beautifully, and uses the mp3's ID3 data for navigation like ipods. The video player will play a variety of formats including flash videos (which you can download from youtube and save to your phone), real media, etc. Currently it does not play mp4 files... too bad. It also does not play divx files but you can install divx player to remedy that (see below). If I find an update or a 3rd party video player I will update this post.

The only down sides to this phone are that the headphone jacks don't use the standard 3.5mm size and it does not allow for usb charging (LAME Nokia!). Still, with everything else it provides I was willing to overlook these faults.

Now for some software I think you should install on your phone to make it even more pimp:

$85-$100: Garmin Mobile Xt For Smartphones. Really, if you want to use your GPS this is the only way to go. My stupid Nokia Maps would sometimes take 30 minutes to get a satellite signal with out assisted gps. The Garmin Mobile XT does NOT use my assisted GPS, it uses only my internal GPS and locks on in maybe 3 minutes; that means it doesn't use additional data so no extra data costs for you! Once you have a satellie signal it actually keeps up with you as you travel around (unlike nokia's app). I cannot recommend this product highly enough if you want to use your GPS. Get it, get, get it. It comes with a basic world map with country boarders so you can see where you are. You can purchase maps, for North America, Europe, China, Southeast Asia (including Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, etc) and more! Search on the intertubes to unlock it's full potential. The only bad thing about the mobile xt is that there is no text to speech for street names, but seriously, for being able to pack a powerful GPS in your phone it's a tradeoff I can live with.

FREE: fring. Since you can use wifi with this phone I recommend you go out and install a program for your E71 called fring. fring lets you use your skype account on your mobile phone to make skype voice calls! I used it, it works great and it can save you a ton of money in phone bills. You can either makes free skype to skype calls, or you can call phone numbers if you put money in your skype account. fring also lets you chat with people using skype, yahoo messenger, gtalk, aim, and ms messenger accounts!

FREE: Opera Mini is the way to go for web browing. It's hands down the best mobile browser out there with the ability to resize the webpage to the exact size of your screen. You can zoom in on the parts you like or zoom back out.

FREE: Divx Player. Play divx movies on your E71! Do I need to say anymore? I didn't think so.

Free: Google Maps Mobile. With your garmin you really don't need google maps but it's free and it's fun. You will require a data connection to use google maps. If you don't have a data plan you will need wifi. Without data it's useless. Navigate to http://www.google.com/gmm/ via your E71 to download and install it.

Free: Gmail. If you use gmail get it, it's free and you can check your emails easily... though you can also use the built in mail app from Nokia or use your Opera web browser to log into gmail.com. Navigate to http://www.google.com/mobile/gmail/ via your E71 to download and install it.

Free: putty for Symbian OS. This one's for computer geeks that want to ssh to their computers while traveling abroad. How great is that? I was so stoked when I found it! This app seriously made my day! If this entry didn't make sense to you then don't bother getting it, you really will not need it. Just think of it as a computer geek thing.

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