5th February - Patong Beach (Phuket) - night market

Wednesday 5^th February

 The Tiger Bar is quite different in the broad light of day.  I only found it by accident as I wandered, unsuccessfully, on my quest to get top-up for Pete’s computer dongle.  Walking Street is just a busy street full of traffic; there are dozens of shops, hundreds of tourists, thousands of shoppers, no ladyboys to be seen.  The tigers roar, mostly unseen…

We are in a direct in between the cruise ship and the dinghy dock, which has now revealed its true purpose – it is not only for us, to tie up our small rubber craft – it is for cruise ship passengers to alight and get loaded onto buses and driven hither and yon around Phuket.  There were two yesterday, with a constant stream of vessels offloading and re-loading passengers.  They come so close to 2XS we can see the whites of their eyes.  They take photos of us…and I take photos of them!  Some of the skippers are considerate, cruising past very gently; other whoosh past creating a big wake.  

Our little dinghy bobs about most valiantly.  We are very proud of this little boat.  It has been patched and mended and now only leaks a little bit of air.  While we had our Tribe aboard, we expected to take at least three if not four large humans at a time, from boat to beach, and it really is only built for two, like Daisy’s bicycle.  But there it is, faithfully doing its duty.  We hoick it up on the davits at night to give it a bit of a rest, and also as a deterrent – how easy it is to steal a dinghy off the back of a boat while the owners snooze away in their cabins??

Last night we walked along to the street market, a few hundred metres up the road from the dinghy jetty.  Yes – we were on a banana pancake quest!  We sat on little plastic chairs and ate not only banana/chocolate pancakes, but also, as a preliminary to this great treat: noodle soup (Pete,) dim sum (me) fried thingies on a stick and spring rolls (shared).  SO delicious!  And so fascinating.  Each stall is attached to a motorbike, which serves as a handy seat while cooking. 

And then when the cooking is done the cook just consolidates the load and drives home  Nifty!

 The market is very popular with locals and tourists alike.  It was all very idyllic, looking down at the beach where schoolgirls chatted

 birds perched on rocks

And rats frisked about just metres from our feet.  I tried to take photos of them – they were everywhere, very happy and healthy fossicking for scraps of food from the market.  But when I looked at my photos, I only had rocks; the rats were just a whisker away.