After inflating the dingy, attaching the outboard motor and putting up shade awnings I headed to Immigration, Customs and Harbour Master The formalities took less than an hour and about $20 shamelessly disappeared into a back pocket. Mind you for that donation I managed to get a harbour pass for 6 months instead of 3. Thailand, the land of smiles, after Indonesia felt like I had been catapulted back into the 21 century.
For those of you that don’t know Phuket is pronounced “Poo-ket”. Replenishing fuel, water, gas, beer and food. Sadiqi has a 60 litre fuel tank, plus two additional 20 litre jerry cans for diesel. Not having had rain for awhile I also had a couple of hundred litres of water to buy and load. I had to find beer as I had not had a beer for a week, due to bad planning and not being able to buy alcohol in Moslem Northern Sumatra. I needed to do a serious restock on food, as the last time I had loaded up with real food had been in Carnarvon Australia back in June. I had to replace tinned food that was going rusty after having been drowned in the knock down between Carnarvon and Cocos. I had my work cut out for me for a good few days. I was also going to end up with long arms after lumping all this heavy stuff around – one of the joys of cruising.
There are very good supermarkets like Tescos, seven-eleven stores and others a bit pricey but they had pretty much everything. After going shopping I certainly learnt to appreciate the simple pleasures in life again like bacon and eggs, steak and cheese etc.
While loading fuel on Sadiqi I met seppo Rex on “Pequod” who knows Bernard on “Papy Jovial” whom I’d met in Cocos Island – small world. He had sailed from New Zealand, stopping in the Solomon Islands, then non stop through the Torres Strait, up the west coast of Sumatra and onto Phuket taking 79 days. That was a very impressive trip. He had been sailing in the same waters as I had off Sumatra but had not stopped. Rex’s 47 foot motor sailor boasts an engine room with work bench etc. He even has the space to brew beer on board! Rex had been a fisherman and logger in America and Canada. I was pleased when he said that he had had more success fishing in the Pacific Ocean than he had in the Indian Ocean. There was obviously a lot more water between fish in the Indian Ocean than there was in the Pacific.
It was a full moon on Thursday September 24, therefore higher and lower tides. I went ashore to do some more shopping. On the way back to the boat, it was none too difficult to see that the tide was out and the dingy was high and dry. Nothing much for it other than to hangout at the Sand Bar with a beer or six and wait for the tide to come in.
The Sand Bar is run by Aussie Brent who also runs the Phuket Cruising Yacht Club. I met several other Aussies there and managed to get some really good information on how things work and where to get supplies in the area. Going ashore when the tide was out and trying to walk through the muddy ooze seemed funny at the time, wore thin pretty quick when you sink up to the knees in ooze. Having struggled through the ooze once makes for better planning and consulting the tide tables when the tides are low.The near by Wave Bar was not much more than 4 metres wide by 15 metres deep and boast its on mini pole dancing stage.
One can end up with a very attractive person gyrating in ones lap of possibly dubious or confused gender. The alleged girls were there to sell beer or their services. This had the potential of being a slippery slope that could end in some sort of regret or far worse. There was a proliferation of such “good time” bars near the jetty of Ao Chalong where girls call out and entice people into the seedy bars, pretty much, 24 hours a day and this was the low season. A week after arriving in Thialand Rex and I ventured to Patong Beach. The taxi dropped us off at a huge shopping centre called Jong Ceylon. The air-conditioning was nice, but other than that is was just a shopping centre. We headed to the beach for a beer and had to walk through the gauntlet of people selling; massages, rolex watches, tailored Armani suits tee shirts etc.,. I thought we could have saved ourselves the taxi fare and just stayed at Chalong Bay where there were not so many tourists. The one good thing, I confess, is there was a Burger King (Hungry Jacks), both Rex and I treated ourselves to a good burger and fries. I had not had a good burger since leaving Fremantle. Oh the decadence.
Much of the time was spent doing maintenance on the boat. I updated the failing sound system on Sadiqi with a new CD/MP3 player system. The new system sounds fantastic and consumes far less power than the previous system with CD changer and cassette deck. This has also freed up more space getting rid of the CD changer and cassettes etc.
