Day 75, Year 4: Another Shopping Day
Date: Monday, January 5, 2009
Weather: Beautiful, Sunny Day
Location: Ao Po Grand Marina, Phuket Island, Thailand
We are very much enjoying being here at the Ao Po Grand Marina. We are on the eastern coast of Phuket Island and can see the beautiful limestone cliffs rising straight out of the sea in the northern Phang Nga Bay. The marina is at the end of a road about 8-10 kilometers from the main road. There is one modern condominium on the road, but otherwise it is just a sleepy little Muslim village. We can see the Ao Po public pier with all of its fishing boats as we drive back from town. At low tide,
it looks like you could walk out to the pier, but today we drove in late in the afternoon. It was high tide and all of the boats made quite a beautiful picture. The disadvantage of being here is that we have to rent a car to get anywhere, but we have been connected with a young man who has a brand new Toyota Corolla that he rents out. We pay about $23 US for a partial day and will pay $40 for a full 24 hours, so it is not dirt cheap, but affordable. The young man brings the car to us at the appointed
time and then comes back to pick up his car which is a nice service. The advantage of being here is that the marina staff is extremely friendly and helpful and we love the remote location.
Today we worked on Windbird until 11 am getting the Dorade boxes ready to varnish and finished getting the life-line netting secured all around. We then headed south toward Phuket Town making a few stops along the line. Just after we enter the main road to town there is a road leading to a gibbon rehabilitation center and a place where you can ride elephants in the bush. I stopped there to check out the details of taking Sam there on his second birthday while he is here. It looks like the perfect
place as the riding trail is on flat ground and the length of the trip can be adjusted to fit Sam’s tolerance of the event. He loves elephants, however, so this should be perfect. On we went to the marina chandleries looking for a plug that would allow us to plug into shore power and to drop off our mangled length of toe rail to be “refashioned.” We then made a bee-line for the Tesco Lotus super store to buy beer before 2 o’clock. After 2:00 pm you have to wait until 5:00 pm and that is when
we were to have the car back at the marina. We made the time deadline and did a bit of food shopping while we were there. It was much less crowded today so we took the time to get well acquainted with the place. This is probably where we will reprovision for our trip across the Indian Ocean this time next year, so learning what is available is a good thing. And most everything you can imagine is available except for canned green beans, canned spinach, and canned salmon. Those items are staples
on Windbird for long passages, so we will have to continue to search for these items.
Our last stop of the day was in Phuket Town where Mark picked up his glasses that we had dropped off for repair and where we bought more time on our Thailand cell phone provider. Mark was driving and I was navigating and we got a bit lost, but eventually we got to our destination. We were driving into town from the west instead of from the north as we have previously, so this is my excuse for getting us lost.
I got the first coat of varnish on the Dorade boxes when we got back to Windbird and Mark got us connected to shore power. So things are settling in here. We are thinking of our kids as Justin and Jo are headed back to the US from England today and Heather and Jed are finishing their packing for their trip to Thailand. We will spend the next two days just hanging out here at the marina getting ready for Heather, Jed, and Sam’s arrival and talking with Justin and Jo once they are home. Then on
Thursday we will rent a car again and do the final fresh fruit and veggie run to get ready for two weeks of sailing. We are also hoping that we will get to meet our friends Robert and Tina of Shirena for lunch in Phuket Town that day. Robert called today and said that they should be returning from the west coast of mainland Thailand on Wednesday and will be in Phuket on Thursday to apply for a permit to visit the Andaman Islands. Since we will have a rental car on that day as well, it looks like
we should be able to connect. We haven’t seen them since Singapore, so it will be great fun to reconnect.
