French Kissing Elephants

We decided yesterday that after 21 years of riding motorcycles, I'm finally responsible enough to ride a scooter through the streets of Phuket.  I understand the hesitation on Molly's part; streets here are tough to navigate.  There's a lot of lane sharing going on between scooters, motorcycles and cars and on top of it all, you have to drive on the left side of the road.  Don't even get me started about circles or roundabouts as some call them.  That's just a total free-for-all.

We rented a hot pink sweet little number that was later nicknamed Barbie for 150 baht ($4.50) a day.  We awoke this morning and decided that today was the day we'd finally leave the three roads we've been frequenting for the past 4 days.  We started our trek by heading down to a beach that was suggested to us called Tri Trang for lunch.  Lunch was lovely, except I got the shrimp and ever since my friend Rob informed me that the "vein" in the shrimp is really shrimp equivalent of it's large intestine.  When it's clear, it means the shrimp managed to evacuate it's bowels prior to having it's head chopped off.  This tidbit of information has ruined me to shrimp forever.  Today, I was lucky enough to get a plate full of shrimp that had gorged themselves on a glorious feast just prior to being caught.  Molly, on the other hand, had a lovely beef curry dish which she seemed to enjoy quite a bit.

After lunch, we rode down the coast and saw some of the more beautiful beaches we'd seen so far, in my opinion.  We stopped at Karon beach first and stared in aw at the large and frequent waves pounding the shore.  We decided to get off the bike and venture towards the sea for a closer look.  When we walked to the sand, red flags flapped wildly in the wind and were all up and down the beach.  I looked to a nearby sign for answers as to what they meant and was informed that these flags denoted a very strong and unseen rip tide.  If we were able to find an area with a yellow and red flag, we could swim there on our own volition.  Lifeguards sat at the top of the beach, but it was pretty clear they'd do little but cheer you on if something were to happen.  I had to pee, badly, and am not known for good decisions so I ventured in.  They weren't kidding.  The waves were very rough, very frequent and the tides were swirling, but mostly pulling you out to sea.  I decided it was better to join Molly on the beach after a few minutes and a quick tinkle.

Afterwards we traveled up a very steep mountain (Barbie barely made it) and saw some really interesting stuff on the way up, including a young monkey fighting a puppy.  In case you're interested, the puppy appeared to be winning.  We got to the top of the mountain and saw Big Buddha, the largest statue of Buddha I'd ever seen.  Big Buddha sat perfectly on top of the mountain with near 360 degree views of the island.  It was pretty unbelievable.  We took some pictures and hopped back on the bike for the coast (not ride - ride would indicate I used the gas, this was all brake) down the mountain.  We stopped numerous times so Molly could take advantage of the viewpoints and take some pictures.  She got some pretty awesome shots all in all.

We got about 25% down the mountain and Molly let out a screech and demanded I pull over.  I pulled into a little dirt parking lot with a shotty little cabana that overlooked the mountain and main port.  However, there also happened to be a couple of elephants just hanging out, chowing down on some palms.  Immediately, the keeper of these elephants ran to us with hands up saying something to the effect of, "No, no, no, no, no!"  I think he thought we were looking for free pictures, which we were.  Molly told him we'd stopped for a beer and just wanted to take a look at the elephants.  The blonde hair, big smile and chipper attitude eventually won him over and before we knew it, he had introduced us to Natalie, a seemingly young female elephant.  He allowed us to pet her and then started to show us her tricks.  He had us both stand next to her, take a picture, then had her sit down and we took more, then he had her stand on her hind legs, etc.  Finally, he instructed me to get out of the picture and take the camera and asked Molly to stand next to Natalie.  He told Natalie to give Molly a kiss.  Before I knew it, she had warpped her trunk around Molly's neck and kissed her right on the cheek with her trunk while letting out a little..... well, whatever noise it is that elephants make.  It was priceless, but now it was my turn.  Same story, only this time, Natalie kissed me right on the lips and it was not a clean, dry one.  I felt like we had just french kissed.  It was gross and smelly, but still very funny.

We had a drink and came down the mountain before stopping at a coastal restaurant for dinner.  Tonight, we decided to just stay in as we bought our tickets to Chiang Mai tomorrow which is in northern Thailand.  We decided to fly for this one because it's quite far - 2 hours by plane or roughly 35 hours by bus/train.  We got our hotel up there already and will be able to log onto the hotels wifi with more stories.  จนกว่าเราจะพูดถึงอีกครั้งลาก่อนเหม็น.

This Hog Gets 60 Miles Per Gallon

View From Our Lunch Spot

Karon Beach

Karon Beach - Notice All the Red Flags and the One Red/Yellow

Big Buddha

View From Big Buddha Peak

Molly, Big Buddha, Blue Water Jug and I

Molly in Front of Big Buddha

Viewpoint on the Way Down the Mountain

Natalie and Stampie (Not Really His/Her Name)

Molly, Natalie and I

Natalie Kissing Molly

Keep Reaching Natalie, You Can Reach the Lips!

Natalie Having a Seat, Molly Relaxing on Her

Stand Up, Big Girl

View From The Bungalow Bar

Beach at Sunset