Really Great Porn

We all agreed that we will always have plenty of time for Porn. Yay for PORN!

Mr Somporn was our impromptu tour guide. He asked us to call him Porn which we readily took on board, after we stopped our giggling and saw that name on his business card.
Nearing the end of our trip, we still hadn't made the effort as a group to get our arses to Phuket City. It has a population of around 80,000 apparently with 30,000 or so transient peoples. It is only about 30 minutes by road from Patong. Patrick Segal had also made a conscious effort to make it to Phuket, and had a wander over to our local cab rank (neatly outside our 7 eleven, outside our hotel) while I was off with my motorsickle screaming around Patong and discovering what I though was the "heart" of Thailand's back streets. This effort by Pat proved to be a masterstroke of international diplomacy and planning. Pat had negotiated with Porn to take us as a group to Phuket city, hang around while we shopped for a few hours and then back to Patong for 300 Baht. ($12ish) Its important to note here, that Porn is pretty much the friendliest cabby I have ever met. Upon meeting Pat those two had some sort of a strange bonding ritual involving belly rubs or something... where Porn was guessing Pats weight or something. PAT HELP HERE! So the next day we all jumped into the Cab, while I managed to convince Wayne to get himself a motosickle of his own, and as a group we fled Patong. **SEGUE - I was looking for prime shopping spots to pick up some cheap perfumes. Let me offer free advice - DO NOT GO SHOPPING FOR PERFUMES/COLOGNES IN PHUKET EVEN THE DUTY FREE. If you are going through Singapore, buy it there. Duty free if you want gift with purchase, or alternatively at Lucky Plaza if you want save a few deca-dollars. I can confirm that the perfumes at Lucky Plaza are not knock offs and you can save heaps off the marked price with a bit of bargaining (I paid $40AUD for an $80AUD bottle of Bulgari)END SEGUE**
So the plan was to cross the hills at the back of Patong and meet up at the Central Festival Shopping centre I found the day before. This is one of those massive behemoth shopping centres you find in any city around the world, cinemas, cafes, supermarkets, restaurants etc built in. The supermarket was one of the best I have ever had the pleasure of shopping in. Its no secret to those who know me, I love a bit of grocery shopping and this place was pretty bloody heavenly. They have all the same stuff we have in Coles here, except so much more! The other bonus is the massive price range of all these goods. You have your good cheapness for most items, through to exhorbitantly expensive items, such as a tea cannister I found going for $45AUD! But anyway, during the ride out, the team in Porn's cab talked to him about giving us a bit more of a tour around Phuket town and he was bloody enthusiastic about it and wanted to show us a lot of "Real Phuket" the stuff that most tourists apparently dont see. After a fair bit more shopping and a quick bite at the deli's, we thought Porn would be getting pretty bored by us having spent almost two hours at this Central Festival. So we walked on down to meet him and settled on moving towards our next destination. I had the maps in my bag, so I talked to Porn to see where we were going and after sharing a smoke we were off with me having a clear idea in my head of where to and how to get there. I found out at this stage that I am not so good with maps.... Hers another tip: Be good to your mother. And another: Dont assume that maps in Phuket include all intersections with traffic lights and that the Anglicised name of streets on maps is the same as those on signposts. After a quick excersion to determine where we were going Wayne and I found the Buddha we were looking for and as you can see, its not that bloody small! This Buddha was nestled on a hill side somewhere above Phuket and as you can see we are the only people here! Of course at the top of this hill there were tonnes of tourists, but Porn's tour to places tourists dont really go was already true. We continued on up the hill to get a view of Phuket from above before we got to explore the city. At this point Wayne and I decided my map reading skills were as good as my helmet hair, so we decided to tail gate Porn in his cab for the rest of the day. He took us to a bunch of great spots for visuals of the city and to Wat Chalong, a temple complex where we met his family.



TO BE CONTINUED