Today I scootered over to Chalong Bay for breakfast. I had some foolish idea I'd catch a bunch of boat owners in the cafes or on the pier, but the place was just packed with tourists milling about in life jackets and cramming themselves onto day charter boats.
Chalong Bay might be a good place to find a boat going towards Sri Lanka or India, but it's just a bay with a shitload of boats floating around. There are no docks to loiter on and try to talk to people, though there is a super long pier and an immigration office.
I had breakfast and waited for Viktar to come meet me, reading "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found" for a bit of research for a country it looks like I'll never get to by boat. Viktar is the CouchSurfer I'm staying with, a Belarussian who's been working for a fly-by-night time share company that has started scamming its employees, not just the customers.
We went to Boat Lagoon, and I talked to a couple people there. They told me the same thing, I'm late by 2-4 weeks. Awesome news. I also began to theorize that the middle of the day is not the best time to hang around docks hoping to talk to people. That's probably when they're inside away from the blistering sun, or out doing fun shit.
Viktar went back home to sleep off a hangover before he spends tomorrow calling up the clients his company is planning to screw - pending payments - so he can screw the company since he was fired without getting paid. He thinks the company might send someone after him, so he's bailing from his apartment to stay somewhere else, but he's giving me permission to stay there, and possibly absorb the brunt of hired thugs who don't care who I am. I picture the opening scene in the Big Lebowski.
I went to the Royal Phuket Marina and found a middle-aged Aussie guy, shirtless with a sloppy barrel of a torso, lightly furred, deeply tanned minus the armpits, hosing down a rug. He's heading out to the Andamans, then Sri Lanka and India, but he doesn't want to take on crew.
"Need anyone to cook or clean or do the grunt work?"
"Nah, I've got a wife for that."
The silver lining is that there is at least one boat still heading west. He mentioned some friends going that way too, but also that they don't likely want to take on crew either.
I followed signs to a pier, but it was all local junk fishing boats, and all the roads and alleys leading to the various docks smelled like absolute shit and the water was full of trash. Not the place to catch a ride across a sea, that's for sure.
I drove to Kata beach and laid in the sun among whale-like Russian couples - I actually think I saw the fattest woman ever to wear a bikini - and topless beauties. Submersing myself in the warm Andaman Sea was like heaven closing around my body. The water is clear and warm and shallow and clean, and the sand is white and pure and visible beneath the water for hundreds of meters.
I realized I hadn't been on a beach for ages. I'm spending tomorrow on Patong Beach, apparently Phuket's version of Hampton Beach, because it's the closest to where I'm staying and I returned my scooter today.
Oh also, what I said in the last post about Phuket not being as bad as I thought: well I take that back after spending the evening on Bangla Road last night. It was like a riot in the bad neighborhood of hell. Entertaining for sure, but the sort of place that makes you glad humans invented nuclear weapons.
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