While I had avoided it in the past, Thailand’s infamous Phuket beckoned as an interesting place to celebrate the end of 2008. This bacchanalian beach town was overloaded with pubs, drinking stalls, chatty bartending entertainment girls, smoky pool halls, topless ladyboys, dubious massage parlours (where happy endings were advertised with reckless abandon), raging discotheques, and an ample supply of hedonistic tourists enjoying the mayhem.
It was Christmas morning when I was finally able to stretch my legs after the 15 hour bus ride from Bangkok. The warm weather and palm trees welcomed me in a manner much different than last Christmas’ chilly Canadian winter. Chris (from my Mekong Delta travels) picked me up on his scooter and we aimed for the beaches where his brother’s ex-pat friends played some fierce beach volleyball every afternoon. As we put away the volleyballs and floated in the calm warm salt water, the evening sky exploded above us into beautiful pink clouded hues. By the time we showered off, the non-volleyballers had finished preparing a massive Christmas BBQ of chicken, fish, assorted spicy thai dishes, which we washed down with boxed wines. I didn’t miss the cold snow and slush of a Canadian Christmas.
We found ourselves on the same beach for New Years Eve, but with an even more extravagant BBQ and heaps more people that filled the beaches as far as the eye could see… and beyond. The night air was filled with anticipation of the midnight fireworks, and hot air lanterns softly floated up into the heavens like luminous jellyfish. As promised, the party back in Phuket continued with ferocity until the New Year’s sun finally put everyone to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment