Reader Submission: On the chain
From October 2019 to March 2020, I drove a Toyota Land Cruiser from the Netherlands to Malaysia with a good friend. In the part through Thailand, a good friend traveled with us for 2 weeks, part of this journey ran through Thailand. During the trip I wrote a few stories for our travel blog, two of which were about Thailand.
on the chain
In the meantime arrived at Phuket, the ride from Khao Sok to Phuket was just under 170 km, so "so easy". The maisonette we booked turned out to be slightly smaller than it looked in the photos and so did the swimming pool, so the advice was to head in before you take the spiral staircase, otherwise it will be a hard confrontation with the stucco at the top of the stairs!
Quickly get the stuff out of the car and look for mopeds to stay a bit mobile. Casper and Paul went straight to the beach after lunch on Patong beach and I went into town on a moped. Around 6 o'clock we would meet again at the paddling pool of the apartment. In the evening, go into town for a nice meal and wow what a hustle and bustle in the city, less than a 2-minute drive from the apartment, literally hundreds of restaurants from whole food barns to small street food tents. Where shall we go? Just sit down haphazardly and it turned out to be great food, after dinner a few beers and yes where else than Thanon Bangla the Walking street in the middle of Patong Beach, it only differs one letter but it is very similar to Patpong in Bangkok, but without the Night market then, what a noise every bar does its utmost to get “over” the noise of its neighbour. The result is that it is better to actually sit in the bar than just outside because then you will hear music from 6 sides.
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Great to see all those different types of tourists, most of them are past the shame of a fat tripe because they either don't have a T-shirt on at all or it's a bit rolled up halfway their stomach, well nice navels - let's say it again say! After 2 beers Paul stops the noise, Casper and I go a little further into the "neighborhood" for entertainment. Wow look here, promo; bottle of Heineken for only 65 Baht we have to go in there and yes it turns out to be a great place and there is actually a real DJ (estimate him about 45 years old) playing quite nice music, fortunately not too much bothered by "local" ladies asking for lady drinks, as a real Dutchman they can have a sip of Heineken from me, but I don't think that's really the intention! At about 2 o'clock we think it's enough and go on our way to the moped, fortunately less than 800m home so that shouldn't be a problem, as long as you put on your helmet because otherwise the police will stop you!
The next day we go to Paradise Beach, a closed private beach where the Unkonscious festival will be held for the next 2 days, this is the largest trance festival in the Far East. The festival is of course in the evening, but we're going to check during the day how that will look like, well hello, is there supposed to be a big trance festival here tonight? There is really nothing to see from the decoration for a show or anything, the beach is also full of clearly non-festival visitors, it starts to come a bit in the middle of the afternoon, some music can be heard and some creaking comes from the turntables, we decide but not to buy tickets for the festival and to have something to eat with a beautiful view over the bay. We end the afternoon on Patong beach with a nice Changetje watching the parasailers that skim over our heads every time, it surprises me that accidents don't happen more often. After another delicious Thai meal, have a drink on the walking street and as surprisingly inquisitive as we are, Casper and I decide to go to the "promo Heineken" bar again, after all, it is his colorful evening tonight because the day after tomorrow he is already going back to NL and he leaves at 06:45 ri Bangkok so it won't be a real colorful evening tomorrow.
Really nice music again but at half past 2 I'm a bit done with it, we arrive at the scooters and it seems as if there is a chain with a padlock on our scooters, huh what is that now there is also a rolled up piece of paper inserted into one of the links, what does it say? Note with only Thais on it…….parking ticket of € 30,-, why GVD they are completely screwed up……I walk up to the policeman and start scolding him as if they have gone completely mad, but of course that doesn't help much, in fact, the agent walks away shaking his head and makes a gesture of just look at it, well Casper is wiser and enters into a dialogue and takes out 2.000 baht, after which the agent quickly bites again, with his huge bunch of keys the chain is quickly removed and we can go home. Afterwards I wonder how this scam actually works because when we arrived there was a taxi driver on a wall pointing out that we could park our mopeds in that spot and when we later gave the money to the policeman, he was right passed on to a taxi driver who further "handled" the payment, so just a conspiracy, where the policeman does not "take" money, but probably receives an envelope with contents from the taxi driver at the end of the evening, where the loot is of course Sam Sam! Still a less pleasant end to the colorful evening, but it's good that the police here is corrupt, we already knew that.
The next day we went to the Tsunami memorial park on Kamala beach, but only the memorial stone was there and the park was under renovation. Casper and Paul decide to go to Patong beach to lie on the beach and I want to see the Big Buddha on top of the mountain again, in 2009 I was here with Sabina and then this Big one was still partially in the scaffolding, now it's mostly done. After my visit to the big Buddha, I decide to drive along the various marinas to relax and “look at the boats”. In the evening a nice bbq at an all you can eat fish restaurant, and then the alarm clock at a quarter to 5………to take Cas to the airport. And we continue to Ao Nang where we have booked 2 more nights, arrived in the afternoon and again arranged 2 scooters and immediately went to eat something on the boulevard, huh what is that now that it says everywhere “Buddha day no alcohol”, is that a joke? No unfortunately it is Feb 8 and that is Buddha day in all Buddhist countries and that means no alcohol today! Fortunately, we manage to get a restaurant owner to pour a Chang into a few coffee mugs so that we still have some vitamin B with our Pad Thai! And yes, the entire entertainment area in Ao Nang is hermetically sealed tonight!
Submitted by Frank