Two days ago, I continued my exploration of Phuket island and discovered that the town of Phuket itself is dead boring. Not much to do, and since it was a Sunday, everything was closed on top of it! So I found my way out of the sleepy little town and headed for Koh Sirae, a small island just to the east of Phuket, connected by a bridge across a small causeway. Turns out this small little island is pretty much foreigner free (a good thing) and simply miles and miles of coconut, banana and rubber trees, and fishing villages in every bay. It was great! I spent a couple of hours exploring the majority of the island (impossible to get lost!), found Tsunami Village near the mangroves, and then decided to try out the restaurant at the abalone farm. Have you ever had abalone? It's pretty harmless as a food, a bit rubbery, but nothing to write home about. I also had something called a mantis prawn, or a mantis shrimp. Ugly sucker about 8 inches long with not alot of meat. They have an extremely hard exoskeleton compared to a normal shrimp (which apparently they feed on) and a bit of a fishy taste.
Yesterday, I spent New Year's Eve exploring around Kata beach. I discovered the viewpoint and then an awesome little private beach just to the southeast of Kata Noi. I followed this steep road down from the viewpoint until it turned into dirt, at which point a sign told me "go to beach", so, okay, why not?! It apparently was Mr. Siam's beach, and a beautiful little place, complete with restaurant, cold drinks, and the steepest friggin' trail leading a good 500 feet to the beach itself! After paying my 100 baht for access to the beach (and a bottle of water), I made the hike in sandals down to the bottom to discover only 4 other sun worshippers on the sand. It had the most awesome basalt outcrops so I bouldered up the side of one and plunked myself down for a sleep. The beach owner provided thick mattresses to lie on, so I scaled back down the rocks, went for swim and retrieved a mattress. Try bouldering up a cliff with sandals on and a thermarest in your hands! Needless to say, the exercise lead to a gash in my big toe (which now splits open and bleeds every time I whack it with my skipping rope, or pivot too hard on it), which I failed to notice until I got back up to the top of the outcrop. The gushing blood was the first clue that maybe I had done something to it! Oh well. A chunk missing from my right big toe, but I won't miss it. Although it was the first mishap of the day, that last day of 2007. I also wound up ditching my moped in downtown Karon, doing about 5 km/h, while trying to turn around along side the road in gravel. No damage to myself (except a skinned knee) nor the bike, but a good lesson in the dangers of traveling on one of these things. I've seen a number of fallen bikes in the middle of the roads and don't want to succumb to a case of road rash this early into my trip.
As the exciting party animal I am (NOT!), I wound up back at the gym and attempted to get my DVD player to work with no success (it's very fickle - sometimes it actually turns on, sometimes it will eat the DVD and not let it go), so I watched TV for a bit. My attempts at staying up til midnight were shortlived when I fell asleep at 9pm for the 2nd night in a row! Woo hoo!! The sun definitely takes the energy out of you. And I didn't even train yesterday!!
Today was another quiet day. I woke late (9am) and decided to forgo training in the morning for a ride into Kata for breakfast (crab and noodles) and then a coffee at the internet place on the main street. I then spent a while wandering along Kata beach, stooped over looking at various sea things washed up on the beach - coral, rocks, shells. I am attempting to find a cowrie for a friend back in Ottawa who collects them and doesn't have any from this region. Although in the process, I discovered the cool little patterns that the sand crabs make by extracting sand from their homes. They make little balls of the sand, and push them out onto the surface. Sounds boring, but the patterns that they make are fascinating!! Spirals, fractals, cones, etc. I now have possibly the world's best (only?) collection of crab ball sand formations! It's amazing what you can find to occupy your time when on holidays! The big crabs, they aren't at all creative and their dens have what amounts to blobs on the outside. The smaller crabs, the symmetry in their sand balls is amazing. Whenever I can figure out how to get the photos off my camera (need a card reader), I'll post some.
I also booked a day (Saturday) of diving. It's an introductory dive with a PADI certified company in Kata. They do a morning of videos and lectures, then take you out for a session in the water on the beach, then 2 dives in open water just off shore. If that works out ok, and my inner ear doesn't bother me, then I'll probably complete my open water certificate while here as well.
Late this afternoon I went for a run and then spent 10 rounds on the heavy bags at the gym, blood spewing on the mats from my toe. I'll have to figure out somehow to tape this thing up so it doesn't gush anymore. Tomorrow is my first day of real training. Not that what I've been doing on my own isn't training, it's just tomorrow is the first day with two full classes with the instructors. We have some nasty weather here right now, so I think I'll be happy to stay around camp. I drove out to Chalong Bay after training (mmm... banana pancakes on the pier...) and the boats are rocking around wildly, the sky is quite black and it looks like we're in for a storm. That said, since I'm not that eager to be on a motorcycle in the rain, I should head back! We'll see if I can last past 9am tonight.
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