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February 09, 2006
Day trip to Patong Beach, Phuket
So having missed the dive boat that third day, being a bit worse for the wear because of the booz the previous eveing, and having no interest in hanging about the not-too-pleasant Ao Nang area of Krabi, I impulsively rented a 200 Baht/day 100cc Honda Wave scooter from the Internet shop next door that was getting to know me because of my frequent visits. Now I was on the road for Phuket, a ~240km. It took about 2.5-3 hours to get there (I was hauling ass—averaging about 100kph and topping out at 120kph) mostly along route 4 which takes drivers most of they way. Because of my high speed, I had to stop for some petrol halfway there—85 Baht for about 3 litters of 91 octane juice.
I must have made it into Patong Beach, the most popular and seedy part of Phuket Island, at about 11:30am. Once I became orientated I parked my blue scooter along the beach and headed for the water to cool off. Patong Beach is so much like the south coast of Spain or France that it is frightening—packed in beach chairs, topless women of all ages, and enough trinket vendors to drive the most tolerant person mad.
It was interesting to see the damage and recovery of the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. Many hotels and beach front infrastructure were either fully fixed up or under construction. But there were a disturbing number of buildings fenced off and clearly nothing having been done to fix them up since that horrible day.
Around noon I realized that there was some sort of festival/parade going on and walked around randomly until it was clear what the route was. It turns out to be the Gay Pride Parade for Phuket and is centered on that famous seedy road and the main beach road, Thanon Thavee Wong. It was a great opportunity for people picture taking and soon I should have plenty of interesting photographs up in the gallery. This is the second Gay Pride Parade I’ve witnessed in the past six months, the other being in Reykjavík, Iceland last September. 
The contrasts were interesting: Patong participants were generally male and dressed up in drag, while in Reykjavík there were many more lesbians and less men dressed as women. In Reykjavík it was basically a local and family affair with lots of kids, families and a generally good feeling about it. “Gay for a day”, is how Clement of www.ontheruntur.com described it. (You can also checkout my entry about the parade on www.runtur.com) The Patong parade seemed very commercialized—may of the floats and parade participants were employees of bars and discothèques dressed in commercially uniform outfits. Some where even handing out flyers to come join in the after parties, naturally held at the bars themselves. In Reykjavík it was much more of a civic affair.
A funny thing was that the Katoey community seemed to be left out too, along with the lesbians. (Maybe there aren’t that many Lesbians in Thailand…I do not really know.) But a group of about seven or eight rebellious, flamboyant, seductively dressed Katoey were roaming around half disturbing the parade. The officials did not seem to happy about it. The crowd loved it as they posed for pictures with all the tourists hanging out on the street. All in all, it was very entertaining. 
About 5pm I realized that I needed to start heading back for Krabi. Unfortunately, I got lost on the Island of Phuket and ended up east of Phuket Town, which delayed me nearly an hour. Once the sun set and the bug came out, I had to slow down because I was now not wearing any eye protection. Then it started to get a little bit chilly for my shorts-n-T-shirt attire. And finally I missed some of the side roads off to Ao Nang and ended up in Krabi Town central…all of this costing me another hour. Once back in Ao Nang at about 10pm I bumped into Terje while tracking down some dinner.
Whew, what a day.
Posted by stu at February 9, 2006 09:40 PM