Life on Phuket

Phuket Island is paradise - for the past couple of days Rod, Leo, and I have been hanging out, scooting around Rawai Beach, partying a little and relaxing a lot. Leo has a woman at his house named Moon that cooks and cleans and generally takes care of us (there's also two other guys visiting here named Gary and Nugget - I'll be hanging out with Gary in London once I get there).

So after the fight Thursday night we went bar hopping in Patong Beach - this was an area devastated by the Tsunami in 2004...but it's back and as crazy as any place I've seen. The main street is closed off and resembles Bourbon Street in people watching, debauchery, drinking, and sex.

Speaking of sex, and more specifically, the sex industry...it's alive and well here in Patong. We went to a club called the Dragon Club...here the women dance on stage - some dances are choreographed - and the other times they just dance on stage to the bad music. But the interesting part here is that the girls are numbered. Here's how it works: you tell your waitress which girl you like and then she comes over to meet you. If she likes you then she'll come home with you. You have to pay the bar a cut (like 200-400 baht, about $10) and then shell out some cash for the girl. And then you have to arrange her transport in the morning so that she can do this again. But the thing is you have to treat the girls well and be nice to them, or else they won't come back with you. And the whole thing is happening in the wide open, not like the US or any other western country. It's quite easy to see why the industry survives - for $100 you can get a young, hot Thai girl for the night and then send her home the next day...

So after hitting the club (and we is Leo, Rod, Nugget, and Leo's girl) we got a few drinks across the way and kept watching the nightlife unfold.

The taxi ride home consisted of riding in the back of a truck for 35 minutes...first class, baby! Then Nugget and I hit up some bars before I decided to make it back to the hotel room. (I'm staying in a hotel because there are only 2 beds in Leo's home. Leo arranged a room - let's not call it a hotel - at the Stone Inn.) This room is a step up from a prisoner's pad, and not a bug step mind you. The bed, if you could call it that, is hard and sits in the middle of a small room. I was greeted by 2 dead cockroaches on the floor and another one on the way to the bathroom. But it's a place to rest my head and by that time of the night I was drunk enough not to care.

The next day I woke up arond 1:30 - the latest I've slept this entire trip - and then made my way over to Leo's. Moon was preparing a barbecue for the afternoon so we grubbed and watched the Waratahs play the Crusaders...

oh, gotta go, the cars starting...