puket day 1 (27th july)

Night bus to phuket (26-27 july):The seats were what I would expect from buisness class if it were a plane journey, but they were still uncomftorble compared to a real bed.The journey was fairly uneventfull,bar a complimentary meal at 2am in the morning.This was a night bus, It started at 19:30they played a film for two hours and then the lights went out to allow people to sleep/rest. the last thing i expected was to be awoken by trumpets as part of a prerecorded mesage to anounce a meal!How about, instead of a complimentary meal, we could have a complimentary shuting the fuck up? Its nice to have food included but mabie they could serve it at a more reasonable hour (22:00?). I can understand that they do it on planes but, plane journeys are blured by diferences in time zones and they are alot more descreet.If they are going to serve food they move from person to person and ask individualy, letting people continue to sleep if they are sleeping.But Anyway, the trip was about 650 bhat (13 quid) and fairly efficient. I would recomend it to people that dont NEED a full nights sleep.
phuket town - Kathu - Phuket town - kathu (27th july)
Arived in Phuket town at 7:00. Had a Hotel "booked" and went to get a taxi Knew the name of the location on paper but had no idea where it was on the island as I wasnt the one to book it.Got asked to pay 450bhat (9quid) which i now think was way too high (for the distance i expect i would pay a little less in england). I still dont know what i ought to be paying. Though At that point I didnt know where i was going anyway or how far it was.Got to the hotel and got asked how long i wanted to stay, the booking didnt seem nesaseryat this point because there was no mention of it. The price per night was what i expected though (500bhat).It was a miserable start to the day, First impresions were poor as the hotel semed to be in the middle of nowhere, neither town nor beach. along the rout there was nothing but a handfull of small shacks and food stands. the roads were buisy, but it looked like cars just getting from one coast to anotherIt was raining and the sky was gray. I slept for the first 4 hours on arival. After that I went out for a walk to see how far i could get towards Phuket town. It was still drizzling, but I couldnt be arsed to spend the whole day in the hotel even if the weather was crap. I was met by a couple of dogs who became hostile towards me for some reason.Most dogs seem to ignore you and let you walk past withou issue. These two dogs started growling as i came close. I slowly backed away, they lost interest so i crosed the street to continue my journey. On this side of the street there was more dog trouble, though it didnt affect me. Two dogs were fighting inside a small cafe, about another 4/5 dogs had been attracted to the noise and were watchingThis was about 50 meters away from me and the cafe owner was hitting the dogs with a long handeled brush in an attempt to stop the fighting, or at least move them away from her property.I walked a little further And hailed a bike just because i couldnt be bothered anymore. He didnt speak a word of english and I dont speak any usefull thai, so i was standing at the side of the road pointing at a map, And then getting 20bhat notes out my wallet one at a time until he seemed happy. The journey cost me 140bhat, about 300 less than the same journey earlier that day, but it was by bike rather than car.My impresions of phuket town were also poor, Even though it was low season and there were few tourists abot you could still see the influence.So far I had spent 600 bhat on transport and had seen almost nothing, so i was a little depresed. I went to try and relocate the bus terminalI had arived at just to try and scout out how to get to krabi. I couldnt find it just by walking about as I had no knowlege of the town.I asked a young couple walking past that looked like tourists if they knew where it was, they were spanish, but spoke good english. They didnt know where it was though. But they were kind enough to give mew a map of the island with scaled up versions of the main town and beaches.
This gave me a better sence of scale as i knew where i was compared to the key features of the island and roughly how long it would take to get there. I still hadnt seen anything interesting at this point, but At least I knew the island was smaller than i first thought.I expect I could walk to Patong beach in less than an hour or get there for about 150 bhat (3 quid) in a taxi and mabie a little less on a moped (if the map I have is to scale and not a stupid cartoon map like some places have).Transport could still end up being a pain though. I have spent about 750 bhat (15 quid) in one day on transport to nowhere in particular. some places on this map are a little further.a slightly more expencive hotel in phuket town or the beach could work out better overall.Lets just see how this turns out.
No photos today