2025 Thailand – Phuket
25th January 2025
We booked a Bolt taxi to take us to our last stop The Village Resort & Spa in Karon Beach, Phuket which despite being only 100 miles, it took four hours. At least it was door-to-door instead of using taxis and ferries which would probably have taken longer and been much more hassle.
The hotel was beautifully designed in a Japanese Feng Shui theme with single-story villas. We had a detached villa at the back which was nice and quiet, featuring a walk-in wardrobe and a luxury bathroom. It had an expensive-looking bath but I don’t know who would want to take a bath in such hot weather. The bedroom was a bit weird as there was no bed, just a thick mattress and to get to it we had to climb two steps. Getting in and out of bed wasn’t easy and I was concerned that in the middle of the night, I might forget about the steps and go crashing to the floor but it wasn’t a problem. I was able to sleep on almost anything but the mattress and pillows were so hard I couldn’t get comfortable. Federika really struggled with them but surprisingly we got used to the mattress and they gave us softer pillows.
We were tired so as usual we had dinner in the hotel for the first night. There was a young lad behind reception when we arrived who spoke good English but the rest of the staff spoke very little so ordering wasn’t easy. Federika asked the waitress what was in the salad and as the waitress had no idea, she went to the kitchen to ask the chef. She returned five minutes later telling us what was in the salad but we didn’t understand a word. She went back to the kitchen and returned ten minutes later with a sheet of paper that she read from. “It has red ore, green ore and yellow ore.” We gave up on the salad.
Next day we went to the beach having been given the wrong directions by the receptionist. We arrived at the main entrance and as soon as I saw the beach my heart sank. It was three kilometres long and it looked like every inch of it was covered in deck chairs and umbrellas like an advert for the Costa Del Sol. 
We started walking along the beach and thankfully the sunbeds started to thin out and we managed to find one near the sea in a quieter area. Ironically it was right opposite our hotel on the other side of a lake so had we been given the right directions we would have gone straight there. There was a row of restaurants nearby, so what with the sea being cleaner than in Ao Nang we were very happy to find a comfortable place on our first day.
Ours was one of the most expensive hotels in the area so I was surprised to see how naff the breakfast was. A whole area was devoted to Thai food which was more suitable for lunch. There were cheap slices of nameless processed cheese and meats, cheap muesli and a poor selection of fruit. To top it all, the toaster gave off an electric shock which was no surprise when I saw the plug socket was hanging off the wall. They had a sister hotel which was next door so I went there to see if the breakfast was any better but it was the same selection, despite that hotel being half the price. Despite all that, it was probably still the best hotel in the area.
We went to town every night which was buzzing and had a great selection of good restaurants. As always, we enjoyed strolling around the shops even though they all seemed to sell the same things but we generally managed to find something to buy. There was live music everywhere, ranging from an Elvis impersonator who had the crowd eating from his hand 
to a Duo play the worst version of Bohemian Rhapsody ever attempted.
During our travels, I was often disappointed that with so many countries damaging their economies in an effort to reduce pollution and carbon emissions, others had no interest, even in the most simple ways. Trying to replace petrol cars with electric ones was ambitious (if not impossible) but surely something as simple as banning plastic straws was not too difficult. In Thailand they served nearly everything with plastic straws, even glasses of water or fruit juices. I read that there were nearly two million street vendors in Thailand and every one of them used plastic bags to wrap their sales. If every seller used ten bags a day that came to around seven billion a year and that didn’t even include the shops and supermarkets. Airconditioning ranged from cold to unbearable and turning it down to a reasonable temperature would reduce carbon emissions and lower costs so everyone would gain. Despite the heat, every hotel we stayed at had a quilt on the bed. Why? We would take the quilt out and sleep with just the cover and it was still too hot. We still had to turn the A/C on but a lot less than if we had used the quilt. There must have been dozens of other ways to reduce global warming but there seemed to be no interest in it, and that was just one country.
At the end of one beach day, we sat on our balcony and fed the birds. 
They must have left some crumbs on the floor because a rat arrived to finish them off. Outside the hotel one day we made friends with an elderly cat who looked just like one we knew in Croatia. She seemed to know where we were staying so arrived that night and patrolled our villa so we never saw the rat again. It came inside and took turns to sit on all our chairs. The poor thing had some sort of respiratory problem so it sounded like it smoked 100 a day.
One night we went to a bar where an excellent girl singer was playing live. There were cards on the tables for people to write their song requests which she invariably knew. It struck me how much easier it was now to play with backing tracks than when I started using them over 30 years ago. You couldn’t buy ready-made tracks so I had to record them and put them onto cassette tapes and I built a box which contained all the tapes. Copies were needed of all the tapes in case one of them got snagged up in the player. When I needed a song I had to look up what tape it was on, find it, take out the tape that was in the player and replace it with the new tape. There were three songs on each tape so generally I played whatever came next. Most singers read words from a book but I always insisted on learning them by heart to help me interact with the audience. Now, everyone was using tablets. They entered the name of the song and up it came with words, chords and a backing track.
When we were last in Thailand we stayed in a hotel where nearly everyone was Swedish. We had nothing against anyone from any country but we liked to stay in places where there was a mix of nationalities, so we fit into that mix. In Phuket, it must have been 80% Russian. There was a large community of Russians living there after fleeing the war and a lot of locals complained that their jobs and businesses were being taken. They claimed that the Russians had created apps that offered services that were used by Russian tourists, like taxi services and hairdressing. The Thai government welcomed Russians and offered them permanent residence but there was a long list of jobs that they were not allowed to do. The list included most professions, so I don’t know how they expected Russians to make a living.
One of the things we enjoyed most on holidays was eating fish but where we live in Croatia the fish was always superb and the only country we had been to which could compete, was India. A lot of the restaurants in Phuket had displays of fish at the front and they looked great but on the two occasions we ordered it we weren’t impressed. I had no idea whether it was the quality of the fish or the way it was cooked but it didn’t taste right.
Sometimes while Federika was shopping I went for a foot massage. I liked the tranquil atmosphere more than anything and the soothing music they played while I closed my eyes and drifted away. I was sitting there one day when a Russian family came in. The father went upstairs for a massage and left his wife and two children sitting downstairs. Out came the mobile phones and the kids started playing games with the speakerphone on so it felt like I was being massaged in an amusement arcade. I paid the masseur and left. Was there nowhere safe from mobile phones?
One morning there was a very strong wind which would have made sitting on the sandy beach uncomfortable so we sat by the pool for the first time since I could remember and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Federika really missed the sea but she had a problem with strong wind affecting her eyes so the pool was much safer. One thing I tried to do throughout the holiday was to make life as easy as possible and what could be easier than going from our room to the pool, to the restaurant and back to the room for a siesta? During the trip, I had some ups and downs but my mental health had improved a lot although I was not sure if it was down to the pills or the holiday.
1st February 2025
Our holiday had come to an end and it was time to make our way home. Having started our planning with the intention of making travel as easy as possible, I don’t know how we managed to finish with three days of travelling to get home. We had to fly back to India and spend a night there, fly to Heathrow and the next morning fly to Dubrovnik with a stop in Zagreb. It all went smoothly enough but we were shattered when we got home. At Phuket airport I was horrified when I saw the longest queue I had ever seen at an airport but fortunately for us, it was for Russian flights. Our check-in desk was empty and we went through security in no time.
There were many times before we left Croatia that I wished I had never booked the holiday and was on the verge of cancelling it so many times, but I was so happy that we went through with it and it confirmed to me yet again that anxiety/depression was like a playground bully that you have to stand up to or have it rule your life. What surprised me was that having felt so well the last weeks of our holiday, during the first few days at home I felt quite depressed. I had been looking forward to getting home and the relief that came with it and a part of me wondered if I would want to go on big holidays anymore. On our first day home, we started talking about our next holiday and I could have booked a flight to somewhere the next day. Fortunately, we both had lots of things we needed to do so I was safe from temptation.
2025 Singapore
