Thailand - full of Thais

!!

Thailand is fab. That's what I have to say so far about my stay here. Arrived yesterday and waited about 2 hours for mum to rock up before heading to the hotel she booked. Of course it was slightly (read; vastly) different to the pics of "quiet place in the north" displayed on the internet - but I am not all that fussy. Our room last night was overlooking the sea and hence the rather noisy street between us and the sea. The water comes right up to the road during high tide so the left side of the street is covered in sand. So if there is another tsunami we will be the first victims. It was also overlooking a rather dense mass of power lines and some construction work. So today they moved us out the back so we are now overlooking the pool and a fake waterfall and such splendors.

This morning we spoke to a tour operator about riding some elephants and snorkling and the like. That will all happen on Monday and Tuesday. Meanwhile I have been preoccupied with trying to find some new bathers. No matter how fabulous you think you are, being told by people "we have size XL, especially for you madam" more than twice in the same day is gonna start taking its toll. I did find some lovely ladies this arvo though who helped me out without all the fuss about how huge I am, (although they did sell me the tiniest bikini in the world). I am getting more used to the bartering process. At first it was all, hmm, am I ripping them off? But now I reckon they are just trying to rip me off most of the time! Petang (sp?) is a very touristy area, gaijin everywhere, and I would like to get out and see some real Thailand at some point. Hopefully this kayaking thing will give me an opportunity to do that. Mum and I went to Phuket town this morning and did some shopping - or some window shopping as it turned out. I did buy some dried fruits and figured out afterwards that I was massively ripped off, still not having my head around the exchange rate for some reason. But what the hey.

The Thais seem mostly friendly, but perhaps a little jaded in this area. Shopkeepers are quite pushy when you are just looking, but once you are interested, particularly with restaurants, the service becomes quite disinterested. I feel like most of the food here is geared towards western tastes and I would like to try and find somewhere that is not trying to impress us. They often say "not spicey, not spicey" because I guess they assume that we won't like spicey food, when if fact, we are not fussed. Everyone seems to speak enough English to help us out which is just amazing. I feel really bad having to rely on others' studying my language in order to get around, but I guess I can't really study the language of every country I plan on visiting just to avoid that situation.

The weather has been warm, not as warm as Japan, just nice actually. While it is a cool change for me, mum is sweating up a storm since she came from the Adelaide winter. Last night we grabbed a massive bottle of vino from the nearby mini mart and sneaked it upstairs and sat around getting increasingly happy for a few hours before bed. It was good to catch up on the all the stories from home.

Well, next time I will tell you about how to ride an elephant and how to be James Bond. De dum dawaaaa.