Day 37

It started to dawn on me how little time I had left on the island earlier in the week and I decided to take the weekend off from training and see some more of the island. On my map I saw a little island with a road from my island going to it, so I thought I'd go check it out. I had to go up through Phuket Town to get there and I got lost there forever. Its basically like a 3rd world version of Chinatown in NYC. Lots of buildings and congested traffic and honking. I got out of Phuket Town but then I got lost in some slums closer to the water. They were mostly bordered by these canals with semi standing water and old rat infested boats rotting in them. I finally found the road out to the island and went to explore a bit. It seemed mostly residential and I followed some of the roads around the coast. Off the side of one road was a road with what looked to be an unmanned guardshack and enough room between barriers to fit my bike through, so I decided to pursue it. It ended up going right to the top of one of the tallest hills on this little island. The incline of the road was really steep and I was glad my bike was able to make it up. The view was really nice with almost 360 degree of nothing but ocean and islands. I walked around in the woods up there for awhile, and then I sat for a long time and watched the fishing boats coming in. The sun was starting to set behind the clouds when I finally decided to take off. As I was starting to leave I looked down and saw a mother with a teenage daughter behind her and toddler in front of her on a motorbike heading up the hill. On the way down however I only saw the mother and the toddler on the bike. A couple of minutes later I saw the other daughter walking and laughing, the incline had been too steep to carry them all up. I got back on the road and explored in a different direction and ended up in this little fishing village. I passed a big Habitat for Humanity construction project sign and reason that all the little shacks were new since the tsunami. The village was mostly people hanging out in their shacks, cooking, doing laundry. Dogs, chickens, kids and ducks were all running around outside. One shack was playing music and there were people dancing inside. I was getting alot of wtf looks from the people watching me roll through. I don't think in an aggressive way... just shock and confusion as to what I was doing there. I didn't stop to take any pictures though. I headed out of there back on the road and was on my way off the island when I noticed a dirt road off the main road with arches over it, like the entrances to a temple, except I didn't see any temples around. I thought about this for a second while I was driving and decided to turn around and try the road out. I came up to a little group of bungalows with monks out sweeping and pushing wheelbarrows around. There were some buddha statues so I stopped and took a couple of pictures and one of the monks told me to drive around the corner and follow this road up to the top of the hill and there was a temple at the top. At one point the road split with a no left turn sign so I bore right and kept heading up. The road curved around the hill at the top and there were statues built into the mountain all the way around the curve. I went all the way around the circle and came back to where I had just turned right. I backed up a little and saw some stairs so I headed up. It was a little ways up to the very top and when I got there the temple was closed. I was at the very top now and wanted to see the view from the other side of the temple. There was a ledge big enough to stand on going around the side so I scaled the building around to the other side where there was a large covered area with a great view. I hungout up there for a bit and it was dark by the time I got off the island and I had absolutely no clue where I was or if I had enough gas to make it to a station. I started going in the direction I thought the camp was and came upon a lively outdoor market. They looked like they had alot of stuff I hadn't seen in other parts of the island so I stopped to eat and look around. I was pretty hungry and it was really cheap here and there was alot of different food for sale here so I just kind of grazed between booths. First I had a kebab with big meatballs on it that looked so good. It wasn't good at all and I don't even think it was meat. Then I had a sausage on a stick which was different and decent. Then I tried out some of the bakeries for dessert. I was one of only a handful of farangs that I saw the whole night there so it was obviously not really a tourist destination. This did mean that shopping was much more laid back here without the people trying to grab you or barter with you non stop. There were more second hand clothes here than I've ever seen (probably our donations.) There were some artists selling their goods and lots of arts and crafts stuff. There was a guy with leather goods, lots of seashell jewelry booths, a guy with intricately carved wooden canes and boxes. A few booths had these little buddha carvings with guys looking at them with magnifying glasses like they were checking out diamonds. I stopped and looked at a few of them and befriended one guy who explained it to me. The monks used to do these little carvings and would sell them to make money. Or sometimes a temple will find a bunch of them in an old pot or something and then sell them to raise funds. Now there are collectors out there and like art historians they can tell when a carving was made and which temple, etc... So people began making counterfeits. Its kinda like antiques roadshow I guess for them to sort through all these and find a good one. Turns out I was talking to the son of the owner of this booth and he said I could come pick one out for free from the cheap bin. His dad came over and started to explain to me how to find one that was genuine. He then helped me dig through the cheap bin and find one carved out of wood. He said it was from a temple in Bangkok from the 1920s. There were some other ones I saw that I liked and I asked if he had any of those that were genuine. He disappeared for about 10 minutes looking through all them (there were hundreds of little carvings) and came back with one. Then he told me to wait and he went behind the counter and was looking through newspapers for another 5 or 10 minutes while I talked to his son. The newspapers had lots of pictures of different carvings and were probably trade papers. He finally came back and showed me this picture that looked exactly like the one I was holding. He said it was from a temple in central Thailand, I forget the name. Due to the length of time he took looking for a real one I gather most of the ones he was selling were fake. Before he showed me how to spot the fakes they had me completely fooled. I guess he was okay giving away the secrets since I had befriended his son and I was leaving on Monday. So I asked him how old this one was and he said 17th century. I headed out of there and ended up going down enough dead end streets that I didn't even know what direction home was. I finally found a road I recognized and made it back to the camp too late to do anything but put in a movie and passout.