Day 2

The overnight bus ride to Phuket was not what I had expected. The woman at the hotel showed me a picture of a nice, double decker bus, promised air conditioning, VIP, and whatnot. It was true- for the first part of the ride. The toilet was horrible and had no toilet paper (really not that strange here in Thailand) but there wasn't a spray either. (I'll take a picture of a regular toliet here sometime and show you- they have two foot spots on either side of toilet, you squat, and then there's a bucket next to it that has a bowl and water. I'm getting good at using them, since the stops on the bus ride were at places that had these and the public toilets are like this as well.)

When the bus pulled up, I thought of the Knight Rider in Harry Potter. The bus was glowing in purple strip lights, inside and out. I was told two stops and I'd be in Phuket by 10:30am. Well, we had one stop for dinner and then we stopped again at a place where I thought there would be breakfast. They told us to take all our bags; we were switching buses. I got out, we had coffee only, and waited. Next thing I know, a small mini-van shows up, a guy gets out, and yells "Phuket!" Those of us going to Phuket jam ourselves together with a little air conditioning and cramped legs. It wasn't so bad, but we only went 10 minutes down the street where he told us to get out again. There were many people on the side of the street, all looking lost and little taken advantage of. Guys were trying to sell bus rides to Patong for 300 baht per person. The first minibus that showed up and said, "Phuket!" I jumped on. I sat in the back with absolutely no leg room for another 4 or 5 hours. There were nice people on the bus from Canada, Australia, Sweden, and Denmark. We talked a lot about what we could do once we got to Phuket and commented on what we thought of Bangkok. (There weren't many nice comments.)

One conversation intrigued me in particular. We talked about all of the dogs in Bangkok. On every street, there seems to be feral dogs just lying in the sun. You walk by and they don't even pick their heads up to look at you. They are totally calm. One of the men on my bus said that he tried feeding some of them crisps and sweets, and the dogs totally turned up their noses to it. He was told, "These are Thai dogs; they only eat chicken and seafood," by a local. Think of our most pampered dogs- they will eat anything! But these dogs that have to scrounge for a living eat only the best!

Anyway, after that bus ride, I got to my hotel and slept away the afternoon. I got a call that my bag was at my hotel, blessing of all blessings. It was good to have my things back again. So, I got dressed and went downtown. It turned out that I was one of only about 10 foreigners in town. I'm assuming all the other tourists got hotels on the beach and spent the time there instead. But the celebration in Phuket was broadcast on TV across Thailand. I saw some pop music singers, a fashion show, and some more traditional entertainment. I made a friend with an older German man, Hans, who spoke little English. We had a couple of beers and watched the fireworks. Despite all of my sleeping earlier, after the fireworks I went straight to bed and had a good sleep through the night.