Day 77 12th feb
We awake from the first reasonable nights sleep in a while and leave the hotel in search of some breakfast....
All of the street food stalls have been removed and replaced by parked cars... You'd never believe it was the same place as what we saw last night...
We decide to go back to the Harley Davidson place from last night...
The breakfast is ok.... The building and bike collection is excellent !!
The owner is clearly a huge Harley fan and has a good size collection on display.... Some are obviously very old like the Indian queen that hangs above the bar and some are modern custom bikes with huge tyres over 12 inches wide.... and theres everything in between... Many of the fixtures and fittings within the restaurant are made from old bike parts.... The menus are mounted onto old brake discs, lightbulbs hang from motorbike wheel light shades, and the door handles are made from old tools.... But the best area by far to see the conversion of everyday items into motorbike part substitute items are the toilets.... The whole flush mechanism is exposed and made entirely of used bike parts including pistons, conrods, gears and welded chains.... It looks like a huge piece of ancient Victorian machinery that's been shrunk, and it all works perfectly...
You could spend all day walking around the bar area alone admiring both the workmanship and most of all the foresight and creativity of mind that's necessary to create the things within....
From here we head off to explore... We are located at one end of the beach so we walk down the main road towards the other end.... We're looking for another bag.... As we've picked the odd thing up along the way and our main bags have become tighter and tighter on space, so an additional is now required and one that's hopefully got wheels..
The prices in Phuket are out of context to the rest of Thailand.... There crazy, way over the top... But it is a major tourist town so I guess we can expect it.... After going to a few bag shops and leaving almost straight away we eventually find a shop where the seller has her head on planet earth and purchase a bag.... With wheels !!
From here we grab a ice cream and head back to the hotel... Dump the bag and head back out.... We just wonder... Heading again towards the other end of the beach... It's pretty hot so we mainly stick to the covered street markets.... We do end up buying a few things, as now we have a new bag we've not got to worry about where things are going to go...
We've walked for hours today and end up grabbing a quick bite to eat in a quiet little cafe, then setting off on a quest to fine a white and a black cotton reel.... We'd bought some fabric flag badges for our bags whilst in Bangkok and there still in the packet they came in... As we have a couple of quieter days ahead I'm keen to have the thread so we can sew them into our bags... My bag has also picked up a small hole from when it was strapped to the bike in Vietnam, so the flag badge will cover the holes well, and add strength too... From here we find a bar on the beach and have a couple of drinks as the sun sets.... There's a number of speed boats that tow parachutes behind them up and down the beach... They must reach a hight of 100 meters.. The tow lines are massive which means the parachute ends up almost horizontal with the pull from the boat bellow. We watch a number of flights and can see from the parachute hangs two people, one being the person that's paid to be doing the flight, and a Thai guy who just lies across the horizontal parachute strings as it flys.... He controls the parachute whilst you enjoy the flight... Only one person has the luxury of actually having a proper seat, or being attached to the parachute in anyway... One slip from the Thai guy and its a long way down for him.... When they finish we wonder back to the hotel and I start to attach badges....

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