Miloping

A few days have gone by since my last post. We went to Phuket Central festival and it was a little disappointing, lots of shops, but not that great. We were there from about 12 until 2pm. On the way the hotel shuttle bus went via the gems factory, where Mrs Stevens was able to pick up a pair of earings and a nice necklace. The ladies at the gem factory were all very nice, providing drinks and showing us all the jewellery personally, on the other hand thats how they sell things. They wanted me to buy something, but I am not into jewellery so I kindly declined. There was a beautiful ruby bracelet that was designed exceptionally well, with the rubies as flowers in a bed of white gold leaves. Unfortunately it was above our price range this time round.

In the evening we went to Patong beach. At that stage of the trip I was quite fearful, so I was not looking forward to night markets. However, as it turns out we are here in Thailand in the quietest season, so the streets are almost empty except for the stretch of road that runs along the beach, it is still full of life. We explored the markets all around Patong beach and found quite a few bargains. The scariest part was when a shop vendor wanted to show us her secret bag room where she kept her best wares. As it turns out she was legit and Ying bought a nice bag from her, but I hate to imagine if a large man was hiding out there wanting to take our money and/or life. The stalls and alleys stretch for kilometres and there is plenty of clothes and trinkets to buy. It almost gets a little monotonous as all the shops seem to sell very similar wares, except for the odd shop here and there with garments that were different to the ones around there. We explored for at least 5 hours before coming to rest at an ice cream parlour overlooking a live band. Ying was particularly excited at the prospect of getting waffles and an iced beverage, I must say I enjoyed it immensely as well.

The following day was the safari, we were picked up by the tour and taken to a place to prepare for the tour. There we met many more Australians out on holiday. They took us up into the mountains where we met our elephants and drivers. Ours was a particularly cheeky fellow who had a ready smile but only 1 finger and thumb on his right hand, I wonder what happened to his missing digits. We spent 55 minutes riding elephants through the jungle, looking out over the ocean and looking at the trees and small creatures of the forest (don't worry I took photos). We then had a bunch of demonstations, first of which was the baby elephants performing which was nice, then we saw how rubber was made from the rubber tree to the factory. This is particularly interesting, they cut the tree each day and allow the sap to drip into a coconut bowl, this is then collected and mixed with some chemicals and put through a press and dried. This is all it takes to make the product ready for the factories. We were then shown how to make jungle curry from first principals, some of the herbs I had not seen before, including the tumeric from which the tumeric powder is extracted that I use to make Sri Lankan curries. They provided us with samples that were extremely tasty. Following this was a demonstration of how to shell a coconut and extract its oils, meat and milk. This was followed by pictures riding water buffalo, riding the buffalo cart and watching monkeys remove coconuts from trees.

The day was finished with a ride on a junk boat in the harbour, eating a smörgåsbord of Thai foods looking out over the islands. Quite an eventful day all in all.

I have more to tell about adventures on Thursday and Friday, but its dessert and movie time.