My grandfather used to say ‘Nothing stranger than people’ – it was kind of a whimsical comment when he said it, but if you ponder it a bit it is true on so many levels.

Coming to an international destination like Thailand and spending some time just watching people on the beach provides such a wide view of various people and cultures, and can provide hours of entertainment.  I’m sure we provide some chuckle value to others, and certainly American tourists have lots of their own flaws in the international travel arena – like talking louder and slower to people that don’t speak English, in the hopes that that may help them understand.

I have to give some of these people at the beach full credit for being bold enough to do and wear the things they do, but it really ends there with the notion of of the credit.  There should be some sort of law or restriction about who can wear what out in public – that goes for both men and ladies, and the rule needs to include a scale that changes with age.  I have seen things on the beach that brought a smile to my face, and things that made me want to rinse my eyes with bleach.

Mrs. Columbus and I went down to the beach last night to watch the sunset and had to watch some girl probably in her late 20s of some sort of eastern European heritage prance in the waves.  This in itself is not noteworthy as there are 100s of people at the beach doing the same.  What made this like a train wreck that you could not look away from, was that her and her choice of bikini was really like 5 pounds of Jello stuffed into a 3 pound bag.  In addition to the garment being waaaay too small, the bottom bit was somehow loose, so every time she frolicked in the waves, said garment moved farther down her backside – and I had to wonder if perhaps she was a plumber in her home country.

Fortunately for us the train wreck moved on, and we were still able to enjoy our sunset, but it was just one more experience of the sort of things you can see when people are being – well, people.

We moved from Bang Tao to Kata a couple of days ago, and there is definitely a different pace going on here.  Bang Tao was very quiet, part of that is the layout – as I mentioned before it is not really a town, mostly just a strip of hotels, and not necessarily all that close together, so walking around there can be quite quiet and peaceful.  Kata is one of the 3 main beach towns on Phuket, and the difference is obvious, there is a lot more going on here even tho it is the low season, and the town and beach are quite busy – it feels like they are even busier than perhaps when we were here last year (even though everyone says tourism is down because of the protests earlier in the year) – shrug, go figure!?

We have not really done much since we got here except hang out by the pool 🙂  We did walk down to the beach for about an hour or so when we got here, and did do a bit of exploring today, but Mrs Columbus was drawn back in by the cool refreshing pool so we spent the afternoon lazing about.  We did walk down to the Red Chair for dinner as it was a favorite of ours from last year (someone recommended it to my parents on their first trip here).  The food is fantastic, and like last year we ordered a ton of food – Spring Rolls, Phad Thai, Chicken with Cashew nut, a Thai omelet, rice and 3 drinks all for just under $9US!! When it is good and cheap you just can’t do anything but walk away stuffed and happy.

We are thinking about walking down to Karon Beach tomorrow (it is about 8km) so that will be a nice long walk along the coast (unless the sun is beating down) but we will have to see how we feel in the morning – it really adds to the relaxation to feel no need to maintain any sort of fixed agenda.  I will enjoy it while it lasts 🙂

It is time for us to finish up the southern part of our travels.  After 5 weeks in southern Thailand we are leaving the beach and heading north to Chiang Mai and the interior of Thailand.  Our days in the south worked out much better than we could have expected, with rain (during the monsoon season no less) only impacting us for really 2 days out of the 35 or so that we have been here.

We changed our proposed plan a bit to and ended up going to Khao Lak and Kata at the end instead of going up the gulf coast and stopping in Bang Saphan and Hua Hin – I guess we will have to visit those spots the next time we are here 🙂  The change worked out for the best though as the weather was fantastic particularly in Kata and we had some great down time just enjoying the days we had left.

For our last day in Kata I finished up with a bit of spa time – I got the ladies to scrape the barnacles off the bottoms of my feet (and for me they did not have to use a Dremel tool for that), and then had them finish up with a foot and oil massage.  We rounded out the day with a trip to the Red Chair restaurant – this is a spot that was recommended by my parents as one of the places they frequented when they were here.  It is way off the beaten path, so unless you knew about it you would never find it, but it must be popular with the locals – we had some of the best Thai food we have had so far there, and it cost about 500 Baht (about $15) to feed the whole family – and we ate a lot there!

We left the hotel at 8pm for our journey to Chiang Mai.  We are flying the midnight flight to Bangkok, and then ‘sleeping’ in the Bangkok airport until 6am for our morning flight to Chiang Mai.  I am not sure how well this will all work out, but but I expect some tired, cranky people to appear at the end 😉

For our last stop in the south we decided to go back to Phuket and spend some time at Kata Beach. Kata is the next beach farther down the coast from Karon where we stayed last time, and has a very nice beach. The town is a little bigger and more ‘active’ than Karon, but not the zoo that is Patong, so a nice balance between the two.

We have spent a few days here just hanging about the hotel and the pool, going down to the beach and walking along the sand, and getting in some much needed shopping.  One of the nice things about Kata is that the shopping is close enough that the ladies can go out and get their fix in, and I can stay back and get a bit of work done, and some time relaxing by the pool 🙂

We don’t have any grand adventures planned here, just relaxing and enjoying the last of our Phuket time before heading north to Chiang Mai.  I shall try and upload some photos in the next day or so.