Week 5 – My Birthday in Patong!

Hello, everyone! I’m 48!!

I just celebrated my birthday on Patong Beach, Phuket, Thailand! Never in my life did I think I’d be saying that.

I had to get that out of the way…I love birthdays, and I love eating, and the two combine so happily for me on my birthday 🙂 But more on that in a bit.

Table of Contents

• A Surprising Encounter
• My Birthday
• Other Stuff

A Surprising Encounter

Other than my birthday, it was a fairly quiet week. We did some wandering, and guess who we saw? Come on, guess. You’ll never get it right.

The Hell’s Angels!

We thought it was pretty amazing, but maybe it’s not, maybe everyone knew that Thailand was a vacation mecca for Hell’s Angels? Honestly, we’re not sure if they were on vacation or not, but there was a pile of them.

We’d been wandering off the main streets, and went up a side road as a sort of shortcut (all the bars there had been closed) but, surprise! Some of the bars were open and full of Hells Angels in full leather regalia. For all they were in bars (and possibly on vacation) they didn’t seem very happy or smiley.

I thought of asking if they’d mind if Wayne took a photo of me with them, but they also didn’t look too approachable.

Sorry, no photo.

So we sped up our wandering a bit until we were out of their bar area (territory?!) and finished walking home.

My Birthday

Okay, I think we waited long enough… let’s move on to my birthday! It was November 8, by the way.

We started with a quick breakfast at home, then walked to the beach for a swim. We’ve been here 5 weeks now and haven’t gone swimming in the Andaman! Now, neither of us are great swimmers and neither of us are water-babies who can’t get enough water, so that’s not surprising. But also, we can’t have spent over a month in Patong without swimming, right?

It was beautiful! A beautiful, sunny, hot-but-not-too-hot morning and just enough of a breeze to keep you from melting but not make the waves too big.

The water was a beautiful turquoise green-blue, and incredibly salty and buoyant…it took no effort to float and ride the waves. And it was as warm as bathwater! Which may be a turn-off for some, but it’s awesome for me because one of the main reasons I don’t like swimming is because I get cold.

After swimming, we lay on the beach for a while, people-watching and crab-watching. There are a lot more tourists here than there were, but it’s still wonderfully, beautifully uncrowded at the beach. And there are loads of tiny little transparent crabs running around on the sand (so fast!) as well as some bigger ones; they scoot and eat something and then dart back into their sand-holes.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it all…I was just filled with happiness.

After we had enough of that (because face it, we’re not lying-on-the-beach people, not that there’s anything wrong with that) we walked towards home, and Wayne surprised me by taking me to my favourite fry place. Their fries are so darn good! You’ve probably seen another photo similar to this, but hey…I love fries. Check out my ocean-frizz hair.

After the fries we walked home for a shower, then Wayne gave me a lovely foot-rub while we lay on the bed. To be up-front, I get multiple foot-rubs each day from Wayne. I’m the luckiest woman in the world. But this was special, because it’s my first footrub on my 48th birthday!

And, it was followed by vegan chocolates!

Cue moans of envy, right? The bigger one’s like a Ferraro Rocher except better, and the smaller a bit of peanut bliss-in-my-mouth. Yum! Yes, mom, I shared with Wayne 🙂

And then, vegan chocolate cake!

Yep. Cake before lunch. Because, A. it arrived first and I couldn’t wait and B. it’s chocolate cake! Hello! Yumyumyum.

And once we ate the cake, it was pizza time! Ohmygod I loved this pizza. Totally vegan (of course) and with a beautifully thick and fluffy crust. Veggies and faux meat that was really tender, and the cheese! It’s a nut-based cheese they make that forms a cheesy saucy layer and is soooooo good. Wayne ordered 2 pizzas because they looked small, but one would have done us both. But it worked out because – pizza for breakfast the next day!

Wayne had both the sweeties and chocolates delivered by Grab. The cake and candies were from Vegan Bakery by Heart (no website, but they’re on Grab) and the pizza from Vegan Phuket. Can’t recommend them strongly enough!

And after all that food, a nap.

Then we walked up to Massage by Ked for my Birthday Massage! (Notice how everything is about me on my birthday?) I had an Oil massage instead of a Thai, thinking it was aromatherapy, but wasn’t; it was just oil. It was really nice because it’s a massage, but I actually prefer the Thai! Wayne really liked the oil because it wasn’t as painful for him.

We took a Grab taxi home because it was raining, showered the oil off and got ready for supper. Then we took another Grab to our favorite Indian restaurant in Patong, the Tantra Indian Restaurant.

We had pakoras (best pakoras ever), baingan bharta (really nice, but not even close to the baingan bharta at Tandoori Mint…they’re in Brockville, Ontario, and make the best baingan bharta we’ve ever had), and rotis. Mmmmm, Indian food.

After supper we walked across the road to the beach and sat on a swing for a bit taking some really bad photos and laughing. Then, another taxi home, more foot rubs, and bed.

It was an absolutely perfect, wonderful, lovely and amazing day. And I got to spend it with the best person in the world, so it couldn’t be otherwise. Thanks baby, I love you.

That photo, by the way, is a revenge photo…I just saw some photos he posted of me on Facebook. Love you, sweetie!

Other Stuff

Not a whole lot else has been happening here. We’re still enjoying walks pretty much daily, having lots of dips in the pool, and taking photos. During our walks we’ve noticed there are a lot more street vendors opening up, a lot more construction happening, and a lot more tourists. It’s definitely not overwhelmed with tourists, but now we pass them everywhere, as opposed to seeing the occasional one. A big change in just 5 or so weeks.

We’ve taken to feeding the cats on some of our walks.

Taxis & Gas Stations

We love all the colorful taxis. They line up along the streets, and some have psychedelic strobe lighting, some blare music…fun! The drivers sit along the side of the roads calling “Taxi!” as you walk by. For each of these taxis there are 2-3 motorbike taxis…they’re quite comfortable taking 2 customers behind them on a motorcycle, without helmets. We haven’t tried that yet!

Gas stations here are a treat! Mostly, there are bottle fill-up stations where they just sell gas by the bottle; pretty sure they’re old liquor bottles:

We’ve come across a couple of actual gas station tanks, randomly located on the side of the road:

And we’ve seen one or two large “typical” gas stations as well:

Sacred Tree & Shrine

Here’s a few photos of a particular shrine we frequently pass. We come across shrines everywhere in Thailand. Most hotels have a small shrine, there’s often one or two around parking lots, many homes have a small one in the yard. Even small storefronts and massage parlours may have a shrine in front.

This is a larger one, located beneath a banyan tree. The banyan is mentioned in many ancient Indian sects and scriptures, and is considered to be the tree of immortality. It represents the creator of the world, Lord Brahma, as well as longevity. The many branches droop down and root, so the tree enventually covers a very large area.

This one is incredibly large, about 30 feet in diameter and surrounded by a short stone fence.

The shrine below it is full of different statues and photographs of Buddha and different deities and gods such as Lord Ganesh. We thought it odd that many were broken, but learned that broken religious articles are placed in shrines like this so that they’re not discarded.

We also learned that sacred trees aren’t usually cut down for any reason; roads will even be built around them. That may explain some of the trees-in-the-sidewalk situation!

Random Photos

We didn’t take a sunset photo this week (gasp) so here are two other random photos that make us smile. Enjoy!

The only other news we have is that we visited a Visa Agent to explore our options for extending/changing our Visa. It’s almost time to leave Phuket, and we’re planning where we’re going next!

Any guesses where we’ll be heading? Drop them below!