The white stuff

I've mentioned here before that while we in the West busy ourselves with tanning on the beach, in the salon, and from the supermarket aisle, here in Asia it's all about getting pale.

A conversation with a friend here who was heading away to a beach destination for the weekend revealed that she was worried about coming back with her skin darker than it currently was. For one of the only white members of a family of five brothers and sisters (most of them have a lovely olive complexion, as opposed to my pale, pinkish blue aura) this was hard to fathom.

I've spent most of my life envying my sister's beautiful complexion, which despite now living in England, turns a lovely shade of brown whenever she spends more than ten minutes in the sun. My skin turns several shades of bright pink through magenta, dies, and then peels off leaving a freckly, blotchy shade of white.

Freckle-faced and ranga kids of Australia, this is the complexion we were beaten up for and taught to despise all our school years. Over here it's almost a prized possession!

If the aspirations set by billboards and TV ads are anything to go by (and lets hope they're not), the perfect Asian face is one that is barely recognisable as Asian, with a pale, white complexion. Faces all along the highway into Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai, and Kuala Lumpur all stare down through eyes with the faintest hint of Asian.


Does this guy look Thai?

But why? With farangs coming from all over the world to find the loves of their lives, why aren't there posters of beautiful dark skinned Asian faces advertising everything from shoes to Ovaltine?

Look how beautiful these everyday people are!

Buy any sort of cosmetic product that you apply to your skin over here (deodorant, after shave balm, moisturiser, skin whitener) and it will claim to turn you whiter. Like this one:

This one comes with sheep placenta! Mmmm...

In fact, a recent deodorant purchase saw me score a free face wash product, which had the added bonus of whitening. So naturally, I decided to do undertake a scientifically robust experiment to see what effect, if any, it would have on skin that is already melanin-challenged.

The Experiment

I took a before photo, used the face wash every day for the past 25 days, and present to you now the results of this experiment for your own edification.

Before

After

Thanks to www.yearbookyourself.com for the pics.

D.

Shower Power 2

I don't want you to get the impression that I'm a shower snob, but once again, a hotel — actually, a five-star resort — in Phuket has got my dander up with it's lack of shower prowess.

This time, the Evason (a beautiful place with lovely staff) has left the great unwashed just that little bit more unwashed.

My expectations were so high too — I walked into the room to find not one, but two showers in a bathroom big enough to host an Amway party. All my hopes and dreams were dashed the first time I tried to step beneath their cleansing waters.

Not a bathroom for tall people

The first thing you'll notice is the the ceiling is very low — I could place my hand flat on the ceiling. This didn't particularly bother me, but I immediately thought of some taller colleagues who would run into trouble here. I mean, I'd hate to see Craig Dawson trying to shower in here. Well, there are many reasons why I'd hate to see Craig showering in my hotel room (no offense Craig), but that's for a different blog.

The next problem was the lack of pressure produced by the shower head. Instead of the "shower-like spray" you would expect from a shower, five trickling streams fell directly to the floor, like some toothless old man dribbling out of the side of his mouth.

The dribbler setting

I did my best to rinse and lather, but it was like punching some holes in the bottom of a styrofoam cup and using that as a shower. Hopeless.

Luckily for me (or so I thought) there was also a bathtub with a hand-held shower attached to the tap. I'll use it instead. However, I was now back with my former shower problem of shower heads mounted to the wall by people who obviously don't know what showers are for.

This one was mounted directly beside the bath taps, about level with my kneecaps, and pointing out across the bathtub — not down the bathtub lengthwise — and out the bathroom door. This meant that I could either have very clean thighs, or an Atlantis themed room.

I checked out a friend's shower who was also staying at the time (not Craig) and discovered the same design challenges.

While most people come back from a holiday looking forward to their own bed, I slept fitfully on the flight home dreaming of my shower.

Home sweet home!

D.

The song of the sausage

Today I had my very first case of "Tourist Tummy", also known as Thai Belly or Bali Belly if you're in that part of Indonesia. Now I feel like a real tourist! All of my friends were getting it from our Chiang Mai trip, and I was beginning to feel a bit left out. Not any more.

It was the sausages that did it. In my defence, they had been taunting me ever since I arrived in Thailand, and like a sailor strapped to the mast while listening to the call of the sirens, I've resisted their charms for two whole months.

Last night I was out wandering around the Phuket Indie Markets (a great little local haunt with none of the usual tourist fare for sale) working up an appetite. There were several food options around, but most of them involved the arduous task of sitting at a table and ordering from a menu, and then having to wait while they cooked the food! Boring.

I opted for the street vendor with the charcoal grilled sausages instead. It's like home-cooked McDonald's - fast food, but tasty. Lovingly prepared by a very friendly chap, who had formed the sausages by hand earlier that day. Rustic. And I'm pretty sure organic. As it turns out, there was a lot more organic material than I had bargained for.

I don't think it was just the sausage that had me feeling a little green (and not very environmentally friendly) the next morning; it was probably more the quantity that I ate. I ordered two of his finest what I think were beef, cased sausages. While he sliced them up for me (all part of the service), I spied a little bundle of uncased pork sausages - hand-rolled, just like I do with sheftalia back home (almost).

When he started bagging up my original order with my very own eating stick, and I saw that it came with a fresh cut salad, I ordered one of these juicy looking boys that had been calling to me everyday on my way home from work. "Mr Hii-iiiw!", they called. "Don't we look tasty?" Their songs wafted on the breeze as I walked through night markets: "Dawi-iiid, we smell delicious, nah?"

I ate half of them on the way back to my hotel. They were aromatic, spicy, with good texture, and not at all like the greasy, fatty things you get outside Bunnings on a Saturday morning in Brisbane. And the raw sliced cabbage served with it was sweet and crunchy - the perfect accompaniment. The flavour was not unlike a pepperoni, though without the greasy film left on tongue and finger.

I finished them off at the hotel, felt full and slept well.

The next morning, the sausage was kind enough to let me wake up, get out of bed, and get a drink of water before it started to ring the alarm bells in my stomach. Actually, it felt more like Rolph Harris playing his wobble board while jumping on a trampoline.

That's when my stomach decided to kick Rolph, his wobble board, sausages, and trampoline out.

I have had what I can only describe as a "no passing wind day". I couldn't take that risk. I won't go into all the gory details, but let me just say that I didn't eat a lot today, and what I did eat was very bland. Bottles of water, Coke Light, and black tea ruled my gastro-intestinal world today.

So I'm now sitting at a five-star resort on the Southern tip of Phuket, which has four or five gourmet restaurants and its own private island. I'm hoping that by tomorrow my stomach will have sorted itself out, because I was really looking forward to sampling most of what they have on offer here.

I'll probably give the gourmet sausage a miss though.

D.

Phuket, let's drive!

In the words of Winnie the Pooh, this is a long story, and even longer when I tell it.

Driving in Phuket seemed like such a good idea. It's not Bangkok, the traffic isn't crazy, crazy, crazy (just one level of crazy) and my hotel was only about 1km down the road from work.

There's a work vehicle, so if I crash it, the worst that can happen is that Robbie keeps my salary for the rest of my life, and I get a job cooking muffins in the Brisbane office full-time.

As it turned out, the driving to-and-from work bit was fine - it was on Sunday when I decided to head to the shopping centre I'd read so much about on Phuket.com - Phuket Central Festival - that I got myself into trouble.

It looked pretty straight forward on the map - head down the main road the hotel is on, turn right at some street I can't pronounce, which runs into the street where the giant shopping centre is. I'd been past it before as a passenger, so once I got my bearings I'd be fine.

I did get to the shopping centre without any serious drama, although I ended up driving in through the service entrance at the back, rather than the main entrance like a normal tourist. I still don't know how that happened.

I wandered, I shopped, I had a latté (can someone please tell Thailand what a flat white is?) and I decided at 12pm that it was time to make a move back to the office to drop the car off, so I'd be back at my hotel in time for my 1pm airport transfer.

What I hadn't noticed on the way to the shopping centre was that some of the streets were one way (it's hard to tell over here OK?!). This meant that I couldn't simply follow the same route I'd taken to get there. I had to deviate.

No biggy - I figured that I'd just follow the signs to Phuket Town (where the office and hotel are located) and I'd recognise some roads, and David wouldn't have to sit in this little car for over an hour hurling abuse at the town planners of Phuket.

That's where I was wrong.

Every street I drove down, I would come to a point where I thought, "oh, I know where I am", and dutifully take the direction my brain told me was correct. Wrong. After 35 minutes, I ended up back at the shopping centre. So I followed the same route again, only this time taking care to drive what I envisaged would be parallel to my original route. Wrong.

At one stage, I even got back onto the road that the office is on! There was much joyous singing and celebrating in the confines of that little car (Jazz never sounded so good!) as I drove down Thepkasatri Road. But alas, the party was short-lived, as Thepkasatri Road turned into Phuket Road and I drove down the same street I had been in three times already.

At last, after dodging left where I had previously veered right, I found myself a mere 20-30 metres from the office, and at about 1.30pm I locked the car and raced to the office foyer to return the keys to the weekend CS staff.

Naturally, being a Sunday, the elevator was away visiting relatives down the coast, so I had to run up four floors to get to the front door. My Phuket swipe card would not let me into the office, because this was a secure workplace on the weekend, and I had no business there.

By this stage, my nerves were a little frazzled. I couldn't help thinking about my driver who may, or may not, be waiting for me at the hotel 1km down the road.

I rang the doorbell which summoned one of our champion Phuket Customer Service staff, whom I have never met before, and who no doubt was wondering why this farang was ringing her doorbell on a Sunday when she had work to do.

I reached into my pocket and grabbed the keys and handed them to her with my swipe card saying - in my best Thinglish - "For Khun Tasnee". She nodded and repeated "Khun Tasnee". I thanked her in Thai, and exited the building as fast as I could.

This was about the time that I discovered that the proliferation of taxis and moped taxis in Thailand is unique to Bangkok. I walked (very quickly) all the way to the hotel without seeing a single taxi, or person who might be cajoled into giving me a ride.

I got to the hotel, asked if a driver had been for me and they said no. The desk staff offered to call me a taxi for the airport, to which I heartily agreed.

As it turned out, taxi here referred I think to a friend or family member who owned a car. When he arrived at 1.50pm, the driver asked me what time my flight left, and when I told him 3pm, he gave me a look and said "you not much time". I couldn't have said it better myself.

He was very nice, and we chatted all the way to the airport about his family and my family and what it was like living in Bangkok, which is where he was born.

At one point he asked me "OK I speed?", and used the internationally recognised hand signal for pushing the accelerator flat to the floor. "Sure, if you like." I'm not sure if that word choice would get me off on a technicality in court or not. Sean?

To cut this long story short:

• I arrived at the airport and stood in line to check in - my flight was delayed by almost an hour so there was no real rush after all;
• traffic from the airport in Bangkok was terrible so I sat in a taxi for about an hour and a half listening to Thai talkback radio;
• I arrived back at my apartment only to find that I couldn't get in because I had given the wrong set of keys to the smiling CS staff member in Phuket;
• I had to mime leaving keys in Phuket and not being able to get into my apartment to the security guard;
• I had to explain leaving keys in Phuket and not being able to get into my apartment over the phone to the building manager who speaks no English;
• I had to wait for the caretaker to let me in with a master key;
• I then went to bed wondering how I was going to lock my front door when I left in the morning.

And all because I decided to drive in Phuket. Next time I'll walk.

D.

PS. I received a very nice email on Monday morning from the airport transfer company apologising for not being there to pick me up at 1pm, as they thought my pick-up time (and not my flight time) was 3pm. I told them, no harm done - don't worry about it.

A word on Patong

Last night was my first night ever in Patong, so I feel I have to say something.

Wow.

There was so much happening, I don't know where to start. So I won't.

I'm out on a tour to Phi Phi Islands tomorrow, so I'll have the whole day to process my Patong experience. So watch this space ...

D.

My Phuket shower experience

This is just a quick post to vent my frustration with the shower in my Phuket hotel room. I'm having trouble enjoying my showers here, and not for any of the reasons you're probably thinking someone might not enjoy a shower in Phuket.

I work in a team called User Experience and Innovation — part of our job is to take care of the little things that some people over-look until they're not there, or they don't work properly.

Like search and booking functions on a website, proper design and layout, and muffins on a Monday morning. You don't notice they ain't there until they ain't.

Well the shower in my room here Phuket — a lovely room by the pool, where they fold your towels into elephant shapes — is neither innovative, nor conducive to a pleasant user experience.

The shower head itself is fine — the general hand-held hose attachment you would use to easily apply water where it's needed. However the bracket that it is supposed to sit in to give you a worry-free and hands-free shower experience, makes the shower head point directly out at your face.

Even if you duck, or stand to one side of the shower head, the water then shoots out past your head, against the back wall of the bathroom, soaking everything that gets in its path.

I haven't yet come up with a solution (no pun intended), besides holding the shower head under my arm, or turning the taps off every time I want to go hands-free.

I'd appreciate any tips from seasoned travellers who may have similar bad user experience in non-innovative showers.

And for those who are disappointed because you were expecting to see photos of me in the shower, these are for you.

D.