This morning I woke on the bus after not much sleep at about half past midnight and decided to demand Vincent sang happy birthday to me. He refused but did come up with a piece of chocolate Swiss roll as birthday cake so was forgiven, lots of people on the bus wished me happy birthday too so it was OK, although one lady said I looked good for 50...hmmph. When we got about 5 hours from Phuket the bus stopped and we were all told to get off for a break and take our bags. We guessed what was coming. An uncomfortable 5 to hours mini bus ride. When we got close to Phuket they stopped the minibus at a travel agent and said that if we paid 150 extra we could get the minibus to our hotel rather than the bus station. This seemed like a total con and after the several changes and not much sleep we weren’t in the mood for it. Eventually the lady (who was obviously a man at one point, not too long ago) convinced us and we paid up and got on. It was a rough ride the rest of the 5 hours and of course they had the AC on full cold so we huddled under blankets and tried to check out the scenery. There were a lot of tree plantations which I guessed to be rubber and when we got closer we could see little cups attached to each tree, presumably to collect the rubber. There were quite large hills with lots of trees and lovely blue skies to see too. Finally we reached our little hotel which seemed to be OK. It was called Lamai Guesthouse and had a ground floor room for us as there was no lift, which was ideal. It even had free Wi-Fi for all of a few hours. We got in, showered and changed then hired a moped. This has become a great way to travel for us and is very cheap.
The next thing to do was to contact Laura. She was one of the reasons for us visiting Phuket, it is nice to see friendly faces along the way when you are travelling so far. We managed to text her phone and she was able to come out for my birthday drinks that evening. Still shortless (well I did have the shorts I bought in India still but they were too big, filthy and I had at one point rather stupidly superglued them to my leg – no really, it happens – so they had a hard bit on one leg where the glue had been) sadly I was proven to have made a bad choice. Bangkok may have been crazy and may have had XXXL in the shorts but I really should have bought them there. Phuket had a choice of 5 pairs of shorts, not that they were lacking in shops but every shop sold the same five styles of Billabong shorts over and over. When I finally found a pair of shorts that weren’t pink and flowery and Billabong the shop keeper said 1300 Baht! The pair in Bangkok had been 150 Baht. I finally gave up on ever finding shorts and went home to shower and eat before going out.
We met Laura at the end of a walking street called Bangla Road. It was obviously the heart of Phuket’s night life. When Laura and her boyfriend arrived, also by bike, we walked all the way up the street to Rock City, this was quick to become my favourite bar. There was a huge stage at one end of a 2 story high hall, behind the stage was a huge plastic King Kong with its mouth open and on the stage was a really great band. The drummer had an amazing array of drums and cymbals and knew how to use them so we spent a happy few hours singing along to Deff Leppard, Guns and Roses etc. After that Laura wanted to take us to a show. The two things Phuket is famous for is Muay Thai boxing and Lady boys. Laura is training as a boxer and wanted us to watch her fight the next day so we opted for a lady boy cabaret show. This was pretty funny and they mimed their way through various diva classics such as ‘Diamonds are a girl’s Best Friend’. After the show they came and chatted to us and recommended a club called Hollywood’s. After our previous success at a club of the same name we went to dance the night away taking along a girl called Lee who was Chinese but lived in Thailand. I think she was impressed with our ‘xiexie’ and ‘ni hao’. Eventually we headed home abandoning the moped in what looked like a safe area, we would have to come back for it tomorrow.