Day 72, Year 4: Exploring Phuket
Date: Friday, January 2, 2009
Weather: Rain Over Night; Overcast with Sprinkles All Day
Location: Ao Po Grand Marina, Phuket Island, Thailand
I know we are not supposed to still be here in the marina, but our chores in town today took much longer than we had planned. So we will be leaving in the morning. It rained off and on all night last night. This was not a good thing for the varnish job on the cockpit coaming. Nor did it help the last of the laundry to dry. So the laundry has been brought inside to dry and it looks like the varnish job is salvageable if this weather ever clears up. In the meantime, we have no dodger or bimini
covering the cockpit, so we have to close up tight to keep the rain out of the boat. Since the weather wasn’t cooperating with our plans, we rented a car went to do some of our chores in town. We expected to be gone four hours, but that turned into eight. We had hoped to leave our piece of toe rail at Precision Shipwright to use as a guide in making a new piece, but they, as well as most of Phuket, were closed today. Most businesses will not open until Monday, but there were still enough open
to get quite a few things done. We stopped at two chandleries and bought black cord to put up the life-line netting to keep our grandson from going overboard once he arrives. We also bought a new bilge pump to replace one of the faulty ones.
We then went to downtown Phuket to the Tourist Information Center to gather a little more information, left Mark’s glasses in a shop to be repaired (the frames broke shortly after Kevin and Claire arrived), were successful in getting money out of the ATM as long as each transaction was less than $65 US, had lunch, and then started our “tour” of the major supermarkets. There are three and they are huge. And not only are they huge, they are unbelievably crowded. The hordes of people were overwhelming,
but worse than that was that they really didn’t have most things I was looking for. All three stores are like a Super Walmart. They have more clothing and plastic trinkets than they do food. I was most struck by the rows and rows of snacks and junk food. No pretzels (Mark is out and this is his favorite.), but rows and rows of different kinds of chips, cookies, and candies. And there was every kind of sugar and rice you can imagine–red rice, blue rice, green rice. But there was not much else.
The only canned vegetables are corn and mushrooms and most of the crackers are sweet. It was easier to shop in Langkawi but that is because we had a guide put together by cruisers telling us where to go. We have a lot more to learn about Phuket. I know this is where many cruisers provision for the long haul across the Indian Ocean, so there must be food out there somewhere. And you can only buy beer from 11 am to 2 pm and then again from 5 pm to midnight. Of course, we were shopping between
3:00 and 4:00 pm, so we had to skip that.
Instead of going straight back to the marina, we decided to take a little trip north, across the bridge, to mainland Thailand. We had hoped to find the Phang Nga Bay National Marine Park, but that alluded us. We did see the countryside which we always enjoy. We returned to the marina by 6 pm to find it VERY windy. There is a high stalled over the upper Thailand and the South China Sea according to the Thai weather site online and it is causing this rainy, windy weather. It should get better
over the next couple of days, and then come back again. I guess when Kevin and Claire left the good weather went with them, but I’m sure Heather, Jed, and Sam will bring a return of sunny skies. By the way, we haven’t heard from Kevin and Claire even though I feel sure they should be home by now. I hope I’ll have a confirmation of their safe arrival by tomorrow night’s log.
