Beach Bumming and Thai Market

A mellow day yesterday. We hit the beach in the morning, and stayed for a good chunk of the day. Kata Beach is gorgeous - the pic I caught doesn't even do it justice.

For those who know me well, you know how happy I am near (and in) water, and the water of the Andaman is so warm! After years of stepping tentitivly into the Pacific ocean off of Nor Cal, I was genuinely surprised, and after a moment to adjust my thinking threw myself in for a swim. What a treat.

In the late afternoon we hit the road from Phuket Town, which actually gained it's city status in 2004. We had hoped to get "off the beaten path" a bit, as the beach areas of Phuket are pretty geared toward tourist, to the extent of hosts of restaurants, cabs and souvenir vendors trying to grab you off the street and make the sale. (This aggressiveness could also be because we are sliding ever more into "low season." We had read about an open air market and driving into town we did spot one. It was unlikely that this was the one we had read about, but we stopped anyway.

What we ended up finding was a real treat. A Thai farmers market, get this, for Thai people. Since it was the outskirts of Phuket town and around 5pm, we gathered this was a spot many would stop to get dinner ingredients or take out.

We wandered around the market, and I began to take lots of pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bruensk/sets/72157626797869487/

Everyone was so friendly and we were informed at one point that it was odd to see us there (being non-Thais). I began to approach people for portraits, mainly kids who were running around playing together as their parents worked or shopped. At first they kindly assented, but after walking the loop around the small market several times, many had already seen what I was up to and they began to offer and chat with me as best they could given I know no Thai. This was the kind of "immersion" that had been a bit elusive throughout our trip, and I spent the entire hour or two (no one was keeping track) with a huge smile on my face and the knowledge that the photos I was getting were better than any souvenir I could buy.

Back to Kata beach, the three of us headed to a bar restaurant which I was loured into by: its pool table, Regan-Era-classic-rock-super-hits-of-the-80s/Van-Halen-Pandora-playlist, and a Connect Four! set on every table. A deadly combination for staying late and drinking too much. Good times.