Coastal Scenes and Reflection, Phuket

Merry Christmas! Laem Sing Beach

Our friend John from our teaching course rented snorkelling gear here and gathered a handful of expat and Thai friends together for Christmas day. Tania ended up getting her bathers tangled in a 'Scuba Scooter' and was temporarily marooned in waste deep water 'til our housemate Suzy leant her boardshorts. The untangling came onshore after Tania had relinquished her bikini bottoms.

Kata Noi area

I called it Lazy's beach. A long ride down a very steep windy road with the occasional fallen rock brings you to a dirt turnaround/parking area perched on a hillside overlooking the water. To get to the beach you start by walking through the garden of the only house in that particular location. This gives you the golden opportunity to pay one of the residents approximately 100 Thai Baht for a drink and loose directions to the beach... With the aid of a rope you make your way down a slippery dirt path to a small pebbled beach with matts to doze on in the morning shade before the sun climbs higher into the sky. Finding one of the quietest secluded beaches in Phuket was a pleasure. I spent many mornings there while Tania was teaching at a nearby kindergarten. A good place to unwind after a marathon motor bike ride through early morning traffic. When I first rode down to the beach I passed a young European guy on a scooter riding up the hill with a gibbon on his shoulder. I saw him later at the beach and asked him where it had come from. He told me he was just riding up the hill and he saw the gibbon coming out of the grass. He stopped to talk to it and it jumped on his shoulder, so he took it for a ride. I asked him "Where's the gibbon now?" and he said after passing me on his scooter a group of Thai men made him stop and give back their gibbon!

For many years in these parts gibbons have been taken to be sold or kept as pets, or quite often trained by handlers as companions that tourists will pay to photograph, which I saw still happening in Phuket. These practices are supposedly banned. The rapid development of Phuket also encroaches on their ever dwindling natural habitat. They are now endangered and a small sanctuary has been set up at Bang Pae to provide a place for rescued gibbons to recover in quarantined enclosures and for others at risk to develop in a protecetd environment before being hopefully reintroduced to the wild.



Kata Noi beach

Naiharn area

Elephant shrine above Promthep Cape.



Laem Promthep



Looking north from the cape

Bang Tao area

For a while we taught English at a community centre not far from this beach. The centre provides free English classes to the local community and was set up as a joint project between a local tsunami relief fund, the large Laguna resort development and the Choeng Talay local council.