I already had a fairly good idea what I wanted to do in Phuket before I set foot outside my front door back in England, mainly due to the number of people who suddenly appeared out of the woodwork to gush about the place when they discovered where I was going. My travel agent also spent a good two hours waving brochures at me, each filled with pictures of crystal clear seas and perfect white sandy beaches, unaware that I usually go on holiday looking for culture rather than relaxation. On this occasion, however, I decided to entertain her on the basis that Thailand's idea of a beach holiday is less about lying around getting a sun tan and more about exploring some of the most incredible scenery on the planet - so to miss any of it would leave me deserving of a very hard slap in the face. Planning for my trips is usually a rather minimal affair to say the least - I book a plane, obviously, because walking to the other side of the planet tends to get my feet wet, but beyond that I like to go where the wind takes me. If I've booked a week in a hotel and turn up to find that the entire resort is covered in six foot piles of trash and swarms of flies, then I'm forced to spend the week walking around with a peg on my nose and covered in insect repellant before I can move on. If I've only pre-booked a bed for one or two nights upon arrival, I can always extend my stay if it turns out that I've arrived in paradise, or run screaming for the train station at the earliest opportunity, pursued by flies, otherwise. So, to have several days booked in Phuket and to know exactly what I wanted to do here was a little unusual for me, although it did make my tour rep's job quite a lot easier when he turned up after breakfast this morning. Arriving in the lobby at the arranged time wearing his hard-sell face and carrying a book entitled "1001 ways to get people to buy what you're selling", he was rather taken aback to find that it took him all of about fifteen seconds to sell me on the idea of doing everything he had in his repertoire. He probably got promoted.

All my instincts told me that Patong Beach would be everything I hated about the modern young person's package holiday - a million drunken Brits lounging about on the sand after a debauched night on the tiles, yelling obscenities at any woman who dared to walk past dressed for anything less than a Siberian winter. However, my first tour isn't until tomorrow so it didn't take long to decide that forcing myself to emerge into a world of discarded fast food wrappers to see if there was any culture hiding away in a dark corner somewhere would be infinitely preferable to sitting by the pool all day waiting for James Bond to arrive. I really do hope you're reading these blogs in chronological order, or I probably sound as though I've finally lost it completely.

The town is considerably different without the beating music, bright lights and, presumably, ladyboys that come out after dark. I say "presumably" because it really is difficult to tell - for every man in a dress with the unmistakable face of a builder from Fulham, there are three others who look exactly like Liv Tyler. For many men, it's hard enough to find the courage to chat to a girl in a bar back home, but it must require a whole new level of skill over here - can you imagine how shy you might suddenly become if it was necessary to begin every conversation with an attractive woman with the words "Excuse me, I hope you don't think I'm being too forward or anything, but are you a bloke in a dress?"

The promenade seemed unusually quiet and relaxed this morning, occupied mainly by couples walking arm in arm or tourists perusing the beachfront shops. The gulf and islands of Thailand (hey - they rhymes) have a certain hippy feel to them which is reflected in the clothes stores you'll find along the sea front - don't expect any ultra fashionable designer clothing here, unless it's labelled "Versarchy" or "goochy" and sold by a dodgy looking man hanging around on the corner with a barrow full of handbags. There are more psychedelic colours on the coast of Thailand than you'd find in a whole bucket of LSD. Granted, Phuket is a little more fashion conscious than many places I've been over here, but you're still far more likely to spend your time surrounded by people in long flowing hippy skirts, saris and sarongs than anything designed in the western hemisphere or at any time since the sixties. And that's just the men.

Having touched on the issue of fake branded goods, I feel I ought to expand on the subject. This really is a problem in Thailand in general, as locals attempt to cash in on Western tourism by offering things which people probably couldn't afford back home. We're all familiar with the whole "fake Rolex" thing, which has become such a well known phenomenon that owning a fake Rolex no longer serves the purpose it presumably once did. I imagine that, at some point in the distant past, it was possible to buy a fake Rolex from a market tradesman in Mexico and then use it to make girls swoon at your apparent decadence when you returned home - now, of course, it's hard to find a dog who doesn't own a worthless piece of plastic covered in fake diamonds. Anybody who splashes out fifty grand on a watch these days just looks like a show off and a bit of a tosser. So nothing new there, then.

Buying from a big department store over here isn't any guarantee that what you'll get is genuine, either. This morning, I wandered into the single biggest store on the whole of Patong Beach - a place absolutely riddled with escalators and mezzanine levels and booths filled with brand name goods. After spending quite some time marvelling at the sheer size of the place and getting lost within its maze of corridors, levels and shops within shops, I finally discovered the music department and treated myself to an "ultimate collection" of CDs by Madonna. Pleased with myself for having acquired the back catalog of such a megastar at a bargain price, I came back to the AMARI coral beach this evening and slipped the first CD into my computer only to discover that it was a collection of covers by somebody who sounded almost, but not entirely, like Madonna. Nowhere on any of the CD cases, which are exact copies of the real album covers, does it say anything about this at all. If I've learnt anything from this experience, I suppose it's this: If you do decide to buy any expensive designer goods from the other side of the world, it's probably not worth storing them carefully in the attic for fifty years and then taking them to the Antiques Roadshow - you might be in for a shock.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.