One thing you certainly don't have to worry about over here is money, because unless you're staying in the Ritz and dining out at Chez Posh on caviar every night, Thailand probably isn't going to break the bank. Before setting off tomorrow on an exploration of the many beautiful islands which make up the province, I decided this morning to splash out on an introductory tour of Phuket island, expecting it to cost me, as it would anywhere else, a small fortune. Getting back this evening, a quick calculation shows that what it actually cost me was a fiver. This leads me to the inescapable conclusion that it probably isn't even worth worrying about what I'm spending while I'm here. Thailand has one of those currencies which doesn't feel the need to bother with two different units of measurement - why say twenty pounds and fifty pence when you can just say two thousand and fifty pence? This does tend to make your head want to explode for a while when you first arrive, because everything you buy sounds as though it is costing you an arm and a leg, but when you finally decide to sit down and work out how much of your budget you've got left you usually find that you haven't actually spent anything. To put the cost of living over here in perspective, five pounds back home wouldn't even cover a fraction of the petrol costs needed to drive our tour group around the island, let alone pay the driver or entrance fees for any of the attractions - and there certainly wouldn't be any profit involved.

Our English speaking guide had obviously sent off for his diploma from one of those non-existent universities on the internet run from a council flat in Croydon by a bloke called Bob. Whatever language it was he was speaking, it was about as far removed from English as a sausage is from a banana. At a push, it might have been possible to interpret the occasional word or two, but he also chose to speak so fast that it was hard to believe he wasn't just making words up as he went along. For 300 Baht, however, I wasn't about to complain and just enjoyed the scenery from the coach window, asking the guide to repeat anything I really felt I needed to know whenever we stopped for a photo opportunity or a coffee break. Hell, for 300 Baht, I would've been happy with the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show. After a while, a number of us did start to get a bit annoyed with the way our guide kept adding "Yes?" at the end of every sentence as though expecting someone to contradict him at any moment, but since we couldn't understand 90 percent of what he said anyway, we just tended to nod politely. I also become a bit sceptical of the few things I did understand, especially when we were informed proudly that they train monkeys to pick fruit from the trees for them. After six months of training at a special university for monkeys in Bangkok, our guide told us, they can be taught to avoid picking the poisonous fruit and only come back with the delicious ones that won't actually kill you. There's only one issue I have with this, apart from the obvious point that the whole thing is completely stupid: how exactly do they not end up with huge piles of dead monkeys? I mean, these are not exactly animals known for their ability to fetch anything without eating it themselves on the way back. I should say, for clarity, that I can find absolutely nothing to confirm the existence of any sort of monkey university anywhere, even using that wonderful font of knowledge known as the internet - a source of information which our guide had clearly forgotten existed. I can only conclude, therefore, that our guide was the Thai equivalent of Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses, having a laugh at our expense, or that his grasp of the English language was even worse than any of us had previously suspected.

Our first stop on the tour was at the originally named Three Beaches Viewpoint, where we all scurried off to snap away at the breathtaking view of, um, three beaches. One thing this island certainly has in abundance is scenery, and our guide followed closely behind nattering away in whatever language he was speaking, grabbing hold of people at random and spinning them around to look at something particularly spectacular as though they might otherwise have missed it. Collecting us together as a group before reboarding the coach, he quickly started making stuff up as he went along again - or, at the very least, reinterpreting the facts for dramatic effect - informing us that Jurassic Park was largely filmed on the island. This would be stretching the truth to say the very least - parts of Jurassic Park 2 were filmed on Phi Phi Leh, an island I will be sailing past tomorrow on the way to neighbouring Phi Phi Don, but as far as I can tell, if the film crew did spend any time on Phuket it was only to enjoy the nightlife. Looking down on Phuket's forests stretching away to the horizon, however, with the three beaches of Karon, Kata and Kata Noi nestled in between, it wasn't too difficult to imagine a few raptors hiding out there somewhere. Probably not a lawyer on a toilet, but a raptor or two maybe. (1)

One of the most visited cultural locations on Phuket is Wat Chalong, a supremely beautiful Buddhist temple built to a traditionally grand design and situated to the north of Promthep cape at Phuket's most southerly point. In fact, Wat Chalong is such a culture shock after the excesses of Patong Beach that it's a while before you even feel worthy to set foot inside, just in case you might've been tainted by the proximity of such western decadence. The temple is quite simply the pride of the island, a fact that was obvious from the hushed tones in which our guide spoke of it, even if we couldn't understand a word he was saying. Luckily, copious amounts of literature is available either at the temple itself or on the internet for anyone happy to do a little research back at their hotel, so our lack of a guide who either spoke our language or knew what he was talking about wasn't any sort of handicap. Wat Chalong, it would appear, played a major and unexpected part in the ruthless war between Chinese workers and the local people in the late 19th century, at a time when the island was seen as something of a power in the world of Tin Mining. Chinese workers began arriving on Phuket looking for work, happily creating communities in which to live while spending all their spare time cultivating copious amounts of opium with which to lessen the pain and stress of their days down the mines. Shortly afterwards, the rest of the island began to notice what was going on and demanded that local land owners declare opium illegal and start confiscating it from the workers, which didn't exactly do down well with the Chinese. I'm not quite sure what people were expecting, to be honest, but I think it's safe to say that the islanders were a little taken aback when the Chinese workers rallied together and went on a murderous rampage rather than actually doing what they were told. Fearing for their lives, locals fled to the temple where the Abbot, Luang Pho Chaem, just shrugged his shoulders and declared that he'd lived there all his life and had no intention of being chased out by the Chinese. Nobody really knows what his intent was when he said this, although it's fairly safe to say, as he was a Buddhist, that it wasn't exactly a call to arms. The locals, however, chose to interpret it as such and proceded to declare war on the Chinese workers, which probably would've made the Abbot quite angry if he had been allowed to express any such emotion. The locals piled into the Chinese like there was no tomorrow, finally getting the upper hand after Bangkok noticed that something untoward was going on down south and sent the army in. Stoned on opium, I don't expect the Chinese did too much to fight back, greeting the soldiers by sitting in a circle, calling them "dude" and inviting them to chill out.

In the main hall of the temple, a statue to Luang Pho Chaem commemorates the part he played in putting down the rebels, an honour I'm sure he would find difficult to accept given that Buddhist monks aren't exactly known for their warrior tendencies. Nevertheless, after the Chinese uprising was crushed he was awarded a title by the king and is now looked upon by the people of Phuket as something of a local hero. People come from all over the island to stick pieces of gold leaf to the statue out of respect for what he did for the island, proving once again that Thailand has altogether too much gold lying around. Outside, the grounds surrounding Wat Chalong are no less impressive than the temple itself, gardens stretching out in all directions and providing a place to meditate and stroll among the trees and flowerbeds until your feet ache and you can't wait to go back inside and take your shoes off - which is, of course, compulsory.

One room of the Wat was full of locals praying, and we tiptoed respectfully through leaving them to meditate, although it didn't appear that anybody was remotely bothered by our presence or had even noticed we were there. Buddhists are, of course, nothing if not understanding and tolerant - something which is certainly refreshing when you've spent your life in the west surrounded by stress and deadlines. Buddhism is not so much a religion as a philosophy, which is why they don't spend their time trying to force their god on you as many religions do, and also why I am so much more interested in listening and taking an interest in what they believe. It is, if you're interested in a slight digression at this point, a set of teachings based entirely on the words of a man called Siddhartha Guatama who, according to Buddhism, achieved enlightenment around 2500 years ago at the age of 35 while sitting under a pipal fig tree. Siddhartha, who has the distinction of being the only icon in history to have a name like an east end cockney barrow boy, was born and raised in ancient India in the region now known as Nepal. He spent his early years enjoying life as a prince, being given whatever he desired and living a life most people could only dream of in a universe before Playstation. Then, at the age of 16, he was suddenly and unexpectedly married off to his cousin, and they both lived in ignorance of the world around them until Siddhartha's 30th birthday when he decided one day that it was about time he got off his backside and went outside to survey his kingdom. This proved to be something of an eye-opener, because up until that point he had clearly been under the impression that everybody in the world lived to the same standards as he did, and the realisation that his kingdom was actually filled with the old, the sick and the starving was too much for him to take. According to Buddhist teachings, although personally I think he probably had a bit of a sit down first, Siddhartha immediately announced that he needed to find the path of enlightenment and asked his father for permission to do so. His father, who hadn't noticed that he was 30 years old and therefore probably old enough to leave home, refused outright, so Siddhartha decided to create an art form now mainly practiced by street performers in Covent Garden - he become the first human statue in history and stood unmoving in one place until his father came to the conclusion that his son was just too stupid to have cluttering up the place and let him go. Siddhartha packed his bags and headed off to devote the rest of his life to abstinence from all worldly pleasures. As you do. Over the next few years Siddhartha became a beggar, studied under various hermit teachers, developed meditation into a fine art and managed to just about starve himself to death by restricting himself to a leaf a day. To paraphrase the teachings of Buddha slightly, this is the point at which Siddhartha decided he needed a new plan.

Siddhartha created the "Middle way", which has a slightly different meaning depending on which branch of Buddhism you listen to but is essentially a transcendental path away from self satisfaction and worldly pleasures and towards the pursuit of wisdom and enlightenment. Settling down to meditate under a Pipal fig tree one day, he told his companions that he wasn't going to get up again until he had found a way to understand the truth about everything - something he apparently managed to do after a number of weeks of starving himself, and presumably at about the same time the hallucinations kicked in. By this time, though, his friends had got bored and gone home. Siddhartha Guatama had finally achieved enlightenment, and became known as the Buddha, or "Awakened one", probably after a certain amount of suggestion on his part. Enlightenment brought with it an understanding of the four noble truths of Buddhism, which are a series of statements which connect together logically - we crave our desires (some wish to attain pleasure, some wish to attain happiness, some wish to kill and some wish to love, etc); these cravings lead to suffering; to relieve suffering one must eliminate craving. To eliminate craving, one must follow the Eightfold path which will ultimately lead you to the state of Nirvana which, as a child, I firmly believed was the next state over from California.

This, of course, is all rather complicated and very much at odds with the western philosophy that happiness is whatever you want it to be. If you find true happiness in meditation and giving up all earthly vices, then that's fine - but if your idea of supreme bliss is going out on a Saturday night, getting totally rat-arsed and waking up in somebody else's bed, then that's fine too.

(1) Doing research for this entry, I looked up the clip from Jurassic Park of the lawyer being eaten by a Tyrannosaurus on YouTube. On the list of comments people have left underneath, the very first one read simply: "WTF - Is this real?". Somebody, somewhere, has sat and watched a YouTube clip of a man on a toilet being eaten by a creature whose entire species was wiped out 65 million years ago, and then immediately felt the need to ask if this is film of an actual event. To be honest, I don't know why I find this strange - as I write this, it is the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic and there are quite a large number of people posting on internet message boards that they thought Titanic was "just some film" and asking if people think they are stupid. Quite seriously, if you're going to announce your lack of education for all to see on the World Wide Web, asking if people think you are stupid afterwards probably doesn't help your cause.

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.