Phuket tour part 2

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The Temple of the Goddess of the Sea (Suza’s photo)

Sam San Shrine built in 1853 serves as the patron saint of sailors. Suza and I had actually skipped this stop but doubled back when we read that the temple is dedicated to “cruisers.”

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Phra Phitak Chyn Pracha Mansion 9 Krabi Road

The “grandest angmor-lao (foreign mansion)” was owned by a Phuket born Chinese mining tycoon. Until recently it had been uninhabited for many years. Bearing the lucky # 9….has many Sino-Colonial features including Doric styling seen in the 3 sets of archways.

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New life as a cooking school and restaurant

Maybe the next time we come it will be open. The banner said that the “soft opening “ went from February 27th to March 30th. Suza and I were a few days too early. Days later, when Randal and I walked by we saw some chairs set out in rows on the lawn, but nothing different. Cooking classes seem to be a big tourist draw here. Randal took an all day class 10 years ago during his world bike trip.

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Oldest Herbs Shop in Phuket

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Filling a prescription

These concoctions are used for medicine, vitamins, herbal soups, etc…. Suza and I bought some herbal soup mix and also some Goji Berries (Lycium Barbarum.) The Goji Berries look like oval shaped dried cranberries. I just took about a tablespoon of them and they taste a bit like chocolate licorice. (That’s amazing in itself since Chinese medicine always tastes terrible.) They are supposed to invigorate my liver, kidneys, and lungs; maintain a strong immune system, stabilize my blood pressure, lower my blood sugar, prevent cancer and improve my eyesight. I think there are some included in my soup mix too. I know that chicken soup cures a cold so maybe these magic berries work too. I guess I am a bit skeptical though I have no rational reason to be. I do know that when we were in China and Randal was very, very ill with food poisoning, he had great care and the doctor was wonderful. Dr Zhou.

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Time for food!

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A lovely and relaxed lunch

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Info from the China Inn menu

It was a long, narrow, tall building. The front rooms offered items for sale. The very back was the dining area. A separate building at the end of the garden was the kitchen. We sat and relaxed and ate lunch while it rained briefly. And, although the day was mostly very sunny and hot, the shaded dining area with a few fans was very comfortable.

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Ngoh-Kaa-Kee

“As a strong feature of Phuket’s unique Sino-Colonial architecture, the ‘five-foot way’, arcade or ngho-kaa-kee is the high roof covered, curved archway. This walkway allows the visitor to browse many shops without exposure to the weather. Some archways have been closed in, while others, under municipal conservation programs are voluntarily being re-opened.” www.ArtAndCultureAsia.com

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Can you see the dragon’s face?

I read that many of the building fronts supposedly resemble the faces of dragons. The door is the mouth, the big windows are the eyes and the small curved windows above are the eyebrows. I can see it.

End Part 2

Ru

DoraMac

Phuket

Hi Everyone,

  It’s Wednesday the 3rd of March.  We are still waiting to find out if our Vitron Inverter can be fixed or if we need a new one.  Things just move way too slowly here….  Our relaxing, easy going, laid back visit to Thailand has been anything but.  So far, during this Year of the Tiger, we are running into its claws!  We have done some touring while waiting to hear about the inverter.  Here is part 1 of Touring Old Town Phuket.

Ru

DoraMac

Phuket Town Treasure Map Tour ….part 1

We came to Phuket to relax, see some sights, and check out some boat yards. Randal had been here 10 years ago on his bike tour and had done quite a bit of touring on Phuket. So far this visit, with all of our unexpected boat issues, Randal has had to spend almost all of his time getting them resolved. They all began when we swapped boat yards to “save money” and to be closer to all of the marine supply and service shops here at Boat Lagoon. Not that Royal Phuket Marina was so far away; but you had to either walk several miles to the marine shops and small supermarket, or you could take the half-mile short-cut, including a tiny bit through brush crawling with ants, ugh! and then walk across the new construction area. So moving seemed to make sense. The channel between the two marinas is so shallow even at almost high tide that we had to basically crawl the 8 tenths of a mile between the marinas with barely enough water to keep us from sticking in the mud and were only able to breathe a sigh of relief when we were safely tied to our berth. But like a bad horror movie, as soon as we hooked up the shore power, our rear salon/pilot house Air Con stopped working. Then more importantly our Inverter stopped working. The inverter changes our DC current to AC current which we need for most of our appliances though not the frig exactly, thank goodness. I only sort of understand. Luckily there is an Air Con shop here and a Vitron Inverter dealer here too. The Air Con guys did get us the parts we needed and some spares and didn’t charge for their time which was nice. The inverter people came and mostly have no idea even when they hooked it up to their diagnostic computer. They do have a pile of old broken inverters that no one could ever fix. Doesn’t bode well especially since the company is in Holland and there a 3 day weekend here in Thailand. I’m writing this Monday so hopefully things will be back to normal tomorrow and Mick, the local Vitron deal will have some answers from the Dutch company. As it is now, Randal was able to jury rig everything so the AC power works with shore power or when we are underway; but not when we are at anchor. The bottom line is that we need our inverter fixed or we need a new one which, with shipping, costs about $4,000 US. I guess it will be rice and beans for dinner! 

In the mean time, I have gone touring. Our cruising friends Rick and Suza from Voyager are here too. They had come to Boat Lagoon for the boat services. This past Friday, Suza and I took ourselves on a walking tour of Old Town Phuket. Or rather Suza took me. She had been before but hadn’t had time to follow the walking tour. Both Randal and Rick had boat work to do and didn’t need our help so off we went feeling just a tad guilty. However, we both agreed that had Rick and Randal been there we would have spent more time in hardware stores and too little time really seeing the sights so it worked out best for everyone. If we have time, and he wants to go, I’ll go back with Randal and we can see the sights and the hardware shops and I’ll be okay.

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Walking tour map of Phuket Town

Phuket Town is a small part of Phuket Island located close to the east coast. It was the west coast, especially around Patong Beach that was hardest hit by the December 26th, 2004 tsunami. It is now rebuilt and we spent one afternoon there and that’s all either of us needed. It appeared a mix of Vegas, Atlantic City, and Key West. Great if you like that kind of thing. We’d gone to look for “Charlie” who’d owned a tour company back in 2000. But that’s the Patong story and this is the Phuket story.

According to the Phuket Guide book “most of the buildings in present “Old Town Phuket” were built over 100 years ago when the mining industry (tin) began to prosper. The architectural style of these buildings clearly shows the influence of “Sino-Portuguese” which had more depth than width.” The walking tour map says that during the 19th century Hokkien Chinese arrived bringing the row house architecture that we definitely also saw in Singapore. Like George Town and Singapore, Phuket was an important trade center for Indian, Malay, Arab and European traders. I found Old Town worth visiting, but it certainly didn’t appear to have the vitality or ethnicity of George Town, Penang. It was more like an “older town” housing a modern way of life than an “Old Town

Basically I followed Suza around having no specific interest of my own. She was a great tour guide and both of us had cameras so we took zillions of photos.

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Suza snapping a photo of the Bank of Ayudhaya Sino-Colonia building.

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A new pastel apartment complex built in the “row house’ style.

There were wired everywhere! It was hard to get good photos. Now the overhead wires are being buried underground in the designated Old Town area to be less obtrusive. Several days after this Randal and I went back and did the hardware tour of Phuket Town. We walked down this street to check out the supermarket at the far end. We also found that this was a good place to catch a taxi.

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Suza taking a photo of the chubby blue yoga figurines!

One of the best parts of touring with another “cruising lady” is that you can skip the hardware shops and browse in the souvenir –local products shops. We’d asked if taking photos was okay and were told yes by one clerk only to have another one several photos later tell us no. Suza did buy a pewter-looking tin bud vase decorated with elephants. And I have to admit that when Randal and I were in town we returned to the shop and I bought one too because of its elephant motif.

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Thavorn Hotel, the oldest hotel now a museum.

We didn’t have the time to tour and it was too expensive to just pay and leave in 5 minutes.

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I told Suza I felt as if we were on the Titanic!

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Cars but no overhead wire tangles in the olden days

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Pretty typical of Phuket town scenery with the two level buildings.

Phuket was fun to see but not architecturally special. The older part of town and the temples were more interesting architecturally.