Dano's Day 5 & 6

Day 5:  Woke up, broke the fast at the tom yum place and met Martin's colleague Tarmo at noon to get the motor scooters.  Driving in Thailand is on the left and is done with a sort of devil-may-care disregard for the limits of both municipal code and human physiology.  To have the wind in my hair -- and the hair on the back of my neck on end -- as I wove my way through Thai traffic was exhilirating to say the least.  I wore a big smile on my face -- I couldn't do otherwise through clenched teeth & my lips flapping in the wind -- for the rest of the day as we zipped around Phuket.  A double honk of the horn is heard a lot in Thailand -- I think that's where the tuk-tuk gets its name: an onomatopoeic label for the sound of its horn -- and means, generally, either check your shit because something's wrong with your whip, or else, "Get the fuck out of the way because I'm right behind you and I'm coming through."  Whenever Risto would pull in front of me as we rode I'd give him surreptitious double-taps on the horn, or slide up behind him at stoplights with a screeching of my breaks.  He never tired of that.  That night back at the Roxy Risto and I met up with Shirley and Alex, an LHC alumnus who is taking a TEFL course in Phuket.  We made a pretty early night of it, in the course of which bedbugs attacked.

Day 6:  Up early again, scratching like mad at a row of five red bites on the back of my left arm.  I don't think much about it at the time and work a lather of DEET onto myself before I go out.  Risto & I head for the southernmost tip of Phuket to start beach hopping.  Rawai beach has a fish market with squid, all manner of fish, conch and a cornucopia of shells.  There are some sea gypsies there, their muscles like steel cables taut underneath their skin, tanned a coffee brown by the tropical sun.  They ply and mend their nets and sit in the shade of the coconut palms.  On to Nai Harn beach with loads of Frenchies soaking up the sun, a beautiful wat (Buddhist temple) and a lagoon; it's one of my favorite beaches on Phuket.  North to Kata Noi beach, a Russian hangout.  Risto teaches me some key phrases in Russian, e.g. "You are very beautiful, what is your name?"  Quick swim in the turquoise crystal waters of the Andaman Sea and then north to Karon Beach.  More Russians and the best swimming beach on Phuket as there are no damn buoy lines (yet there are dippy girls zooming around blindfolded on jetskis).  On to Paradise Beach just southwest of Patong where we are caught in a rainstorm that begins in an instant, battering the tiny beach with fist-sized droplets driven by a howling wind.  Half an hour later and it's stopped as quickly as it started.  Next stop, Patong Beach.  Patong is the main tourist drag, and what a drag it is.  Shop owners practically grab your hand as you walk by, shaking your arm out of your socket and working the only English they know: "Where you from?  You come and see (insert worthless trinket, bauble or dubious-quality suit here).  I make it cheap for you!"  Everyone is grimly determined to enjoy themselves within their two-feet-in-diameter personal space and they all jostle and elbow their way along as if there were someplace to go.  Risto tries to contact his friend who lives here, but he's not home and so we head back to Phuket Town.  Once there we meet with Shirley, Alex, and an Indonesian girl named Ratih.  Shirley tells me that my tattoo -- the one I've had for many, many years and still was not exactly sure what it meant -- is a traditional Chinese ideogram and that, although she is Chinese, she can only decipher half of it.  It starts, "Piercing.  Power..." something something.  Sounds pretty good to me.  I'll have to wait until I meet a Lithuanian before the rest of it is translated for me.  So, our diverse little band of travelers is joined later on by three Thais, an Austrian, an Australian and a Cuban-Ojibwe from Timbuktu.  We all go out dancing and I go Travolta on them, at one point even doing the chicken dance.  Ratih and I head back to the On On for a traveler's powwow.  She tells me about Indonesia and I begin considering travels further south...