Our plan for this morning was to have breakfast then spend a couple hours down at the pool. The skies had a high overcast; perfect! However, during breakfast, the clouds began to pile up and the skies started to noticeably darken. Just as we walked back to room, the skies opened up and it poured rain in torrents.
Downpour of torrential rain.
Can barely see through the rain.
Rain is coming down hard and fast.
And this is how today became, “The Amazing Race, Phuket”, starring Eron and Roger. Because of the rain, someone, not to mention any names but her initials are, Eron Hamill; decided this would become our marathon shopping day. We made a list, checked it twice, and were going to try and pick up everything on the list this afternoon. The biggies on this list were a stainless steel table-top Satay BBQ grill and a stone mortar and pestle… not a wooden one, not a ceramic set, but a stone one. I should’ve known those cooking lessons in Chiang Mai and Koh Lanta would somehow lead to more luggage and heavy lifting. Plus, we needed(?) more spices and sauces… what was I thinking’, the twenty pounds of spices we bought in the Big ‘Kok were obviously not enough….
So, Eron looked on the internet and found a place that may actually carry most of what we were looking for. It’s called, and I kid you not, the “Super Cheap Co. Ltd.” Their flagship store (with some 3,000 employees) in Phuket suffered a catastrophic fire last year… sparked by an electrical short… who’da thunk… in Thailand?!?! This store is still operational but in temporary quarters adjacent to their old site. So, per our driver’s suggestion, we went to their smaller location in Patong (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patong).
We didn’t spend virtually any time in Patong itself and we were only there in the daylight hours but we immediately saw the differences between Karon and it’s bigger neighbour. Patong is a much larger town (now officially a city), it is visibly busier, there are many more Farangs out and about, and the tourist-orientated bars and restaurants are both more numerous and more elaborately (read, gaudily) decorated. We could only imagine that their night-time scene is a total madhouse of lights, sounds, smells, and crowds.
Our driver dropped us off on the edge of a small parking lot next to, what at first glance, appeared to be a refugee tent-city in the middle of Patong. On closer inspection, we could see that it was composed of a collection of tents, tarps, and tin-roofed shelters covering about a two square block area in total. We selected a shopping cart (one with the least dysfunctional wheels), took a deep breath, and plunged in.
First view of the inside of the Super Cheap.
With it’s ramshackle collection of roofing materials, packed dirt interspersed with parking lot pavement floors, combination of shelving and tables piled high with merchandise, pallets of bulk goods stacked almost everywhere, and leaks dripping from the roof (from todays rains) it looked like we stepped into a post-apocalytic version of Costco that rightfully belonged in a Mad Max-ian world. We had to repeatedly look around to see if the employees were wearing metal-studded leather clothing and carrying barbed-wired-wrapped baseball bats. However, the variety, volume, and exotic nature of some of the goods was just amazing. It was just mind-blowing to walk by a table of dried foods(?) one couldn’t even identify, turn a corner, and then be standing if front of shelves full of items as mundane as bulk toilet paper.
A variety of dried mystery-foods.
Preserved vegetables… we think.
10 lb. bags of unroasted cashew nuts.
Ready-to-eat take-out foods.
The bigger store in Phuket reportedly has a huge pet section including foods, accessories, and live pet sales. The Patong store only carried the bulk pet foods and a limited selection of accessories.
Dog food section.
The Super Cheap also featured stores-in-a-store. These specialized departments carried everything from automotive accessories to electronics, to clothing, and hardware. So, we weren’t surprised when we finally found the stone mortar and pestle. In fact, they even carried multiple sizes of both the mortars and the pestles… we, of course, bought the largest (and heaviest). What did surprise us though, was that they did not carry the ubiquitous Thai table-top Satay grills… an item that even in sleepy little Koh Lanta, we found piled in homeware stores. So, after wandering about in this alternate-universe store for several hours, we paid for our goodies (including a pile of sauces and spices) and hailed a taxi.
We explained to the driver about the Satay grill we were looking for; using our usual combo of pantomime, bad Thai, loud Canadian, and a note (one of the Super Cheap employees had kindly written out Satay BBQ grill in Thai script for us). He nodded to indicate he understood and off we went… we drove, stopped at a likely shop, were told they didn’t have any… then repeated. This went on for more than a hour; we must have criss-crossed the entire southern portion of Phuket Island several times – we passed by several places enough times that we actually recognized them. Finally, we said enough (well, I kinda said “Phuk-et!”, but this is a PG site) and we headed back to the resort.
The bellhops kindly gave us a drive back to our room where we dropped off our purchases, had cool drink, and got a chance to take a breath. We couldn’t believe that we couldn’t find a Satay Grill in all those stores. We decided to enlist the assistance of the bellhops. We spoke with them about our difficulties in finding a grill and asked for suggestions as to where try next. The consensus was to try their local version of Home Depot; the “Homeworks” in Phuket. So, in a taxi and off we went again.
Our driver was keen to help and even stopped at several small homewares stores along the way. To add to the whole surreal feel of our BBQ-quest, just as we walked into the mall where the Homeworks store is located, we saw this restroom sign for sale. We looked at each other, neither one of us were hazarding any guesses as to what it meant…
Restroom sign for sale.
When we entered the Homeworks store, it was like walking into a sort of a blend of Home Depot, Rona, and Lowe’s. And again, we got that whole alt-universe, deja-vu feeling as the products on display were all same, same as home but just different enough to make us look twice. No luck here either. They direct us to a “BBQ store” in the same mall. We walk out, turn right, and lo-and-behold; it is a store actually called, “The Barbecue Store”. Unfortunately, most of their inventory was western-styled BBQ’s with only one Satay grill – a stainless steel 24″ X 40″ model on a trolley… nice, but just a wee bit big for our carry-on luggage. Their suggestion, try the nearby “Big C” store.
Our very patient driver happily agrees to take us just up the road to the Big C. As this is the biggest department store chain in Thailand, we had high hopes. Pulling up to the Big C, the deja-vu feeling hit us hard. Walking in, it struck us both; the Big C was an almost exact clone of Walmart… right down to the merchandise-mix and departments. After speaking with several employees, a manager finally told us they did carry the grills but not now because BBQ-season was finished. Phuket had a “BBQ-season”? How the hell do you have a “BBQ-season” that is “finished”, when it’s bloody BBQ’ing temperature all freakin’ year ’round? We just had to shake our heads in wonder and repeat the mantra; this is Thailand, this is Thailand, this is Thailand…. Knowing it was pointless to argue that in the rest of the country, BBQ-season was apparently not over because the grills were available even in small shops, we finally admitted defeat. The grill-gods have decreed I shall go home grilless. We asked our driver to drop us off at Karon’s Tuesday Evening Walking Market instead of at the resort.
He dropped us off in front of a temple complex near the centre of town. The market is set up on the grounds of the temple. Much of the market was more of the “same, same” stuff but they did have a nice assortment of leather goods. There was also a large selection of street-foods available.
BBQ meat stand at market.
After seeing and smelling all the tasty stuff available at the market, it was time to search for a place for dinner in Karon. When we walked out of the temple grounds, we saw a first (for us) in Thailand; an actual Traffic Policeman directing traffic and pedestrians at the entrance to the temple grounds… nothing here ever happens proactively so, some unfortunate Farang must’ve been run over here in the recent past… so bad for business you know.
Traffic Policeman directing flow at entrance to the market.
We wandered about for a while and did a little more shopping before ending up very near the restaurant we were at last evening. Tonight, we chose the, “Bai Toey” (http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g1215780-d2219978-Reviews-Bai_Toey-Karon_Phuket.html).
Bai Toey Restaurant.
Eron beheads their famous teddy-bear shaped rice… to give me some of her rice.
Front of the Bai Toey.
The Bai Toey was a good choice. The dishes were quite tasty with some nice heat (spiciness) to them, the service was attentive, and they had a multitude of electric fans providing welcome (and very necessary) air movement. The only points that prevented them from achieving a 5/5 score were the slight skimpiness in meat portions in the dishes and the Farang-pricing (kinda unavoidable in the Karon Beach area). After eating, I lit up a Partagas Black (Nicaraguan) tin – refreshingly, there were no sideward glances or comments out of the corners of mouths from any of the Farangs.
We gathered up all the evening’s purchases, got a taxi, and headed back to the resort. After a long, hard day of “shop ’til you drop”, I felt like I had actually been in an episode of the Amazing Race. It was nice to be able to sit on the deck, crack a cold bevie, put on some tunes, and light up a nice stick. Of course, “Frenchie”, our Tourettes-bird from Koh Lanta had sent word ahead and his brothers were mocking me for not finding a Satay grill from the trees across the road; “Focque Ewe”, “Focque Ewe”, “Focque Ewe”. Well, screw you… I may not have an actual genuine Thai stainless steel Satay Grill, but my old Hibachi grill will do in a pinch. The Hibachi ain’t as pretty as a new SS grill but you guys can mock me all you want… after we get home and I’m grilling’ up a mess of your cousins, Messieurs Chicken Drumstick and Chicken Thigh.
East to Hedon
East to Hedon 