Phuket, Thailand - January 27

Clear, hot, 33 degrees, real feel 37 – I don’t believe it…I think it is about 45 degrees with 100% humidity.

Hot, hot, hot is the theme for today, with a sprinkling of wet, humid and damp – WOW! When we head out in the morning around 8:30 it is warm, but holy cow…by the time mid-morning rolled around it was full-on HOT.

Today’s events are a tour of Phuket island. First we stop at Patong Beach. This is a very touristy area with a huge white sand beach. Phuket with its development and tourism focus is a huge contrast to Myanmar where we’ve just come from. The stop here is just for a few photos and a toe dip in the sea. We’re not drenched…yet.

Phuket has its very own Sea Shell Museum. This is a quirky place with a ton of really quite cool shells from all over the world including a massive 550 pound shell clam shell. We do a bit of shopping here and find a shell for our Christmas tree.

dried fish - can you spot the eyeballs??

The most fascinating stop we make today is the cashew nut factory. It’s not actually the cashews that are fascinating, but the rest of the food for sale here. In addition to cashews in more flavours than anyone could imagine there are a ton of dried fish and shellfish. The best part is that everything they have for sale is also available to sample. I have no idea what half of what I try is, but I loved it. It was all dried so I figured how bad could it be…none of it was bad at all, some better than others. I particularly liked the teeny-tiny dried fish with very visible eyes. The one thing that I probably wouldn’t try again is the dried durian fruit. This fruit is supposed to taste wonderful, but smell like a baby’s diaper or raw sewage - there was actually a sign on the Singapore subway that indicated a fine for bringing one on the subway. I’ve never tried one, but the dried version didn’t thrill me, Chris felt a bit bamboozled I didn’t tell him it wasn’t wonderful – oh well!!

Our last stop is to visit a Buddhist temple, Wat Chalong. This is a complex of temples and hawkers. This temple is different from ones we’ve recently visited in Myanmar in that we actually visit inside and the buildings are much smaller. Apparently in Thailand a way of making a sacrifice is to set off fire crackers…every so often we hear very loud fast banging sounds…the fire crackers. They actually have a brick or cement structure constructed for setting off the first crackers.

We spend the rest of the day on the boat – I spend it inside, it is just sooooo HOT!