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  Phuket, Thailand
Saturday, February 16, 2008

(Jim)

We are now on our third and last week at the Marriott resort in Phuket, Thailand.  I've talked before about the differences between tourists and travelers.  Most places we've been travelers or better, genuinely interested in getting to know how ordinary people live, committed to experiencing some of the real flavor of each destination.

Not here.  After a fascinating, overwhelming month in India, we were in serious need of some downtime.  This Marriott resort has been the perfect place to find it.  We have been off property only three times in more than two weeks (not counting frequent walks down the beach to a nearby shack for cheap and excellent Thai food).  We have not taken a single picture.

Now we are beginning to feel rested and ready for the next part of our trip.  At least, all of us but Jack.  Like the English sailors in the days of Nelson, Jack likes what he is used to.  Recently he has become nostalgic to the point of tears about every change in location.  For our stay here, we tried to swap out three banked timeshare weeks for three weeks in the Phuket Beach Club, the terrific villas we're staying in now.  Unfortunately, we got only two of the three, at either end of our stay, so we stayed in the hotel during the middle week.  Jack was heartbroken when we left villa #3133, and insisted we return there for our third week.

It was not to be.  Yesterday we checked into villa #2121.  Jack rallied almost immediately, fortified by some exciting FA Cup football games on television and the recent arrival of Descartes' Cove, a math-enrichment game from the Johns Hopkins distance learning program.

Part of the reason for Jack's poor spirits may be digestive.  Struggling with a weak dollar and a reduced paycheck from work, our trip has already cost more than we budgeted for the entire year.  We are really feeling the financial pinch, so having to pay for an unexpected eight days of $389 per night Marriott lodging has been a shock.  A burger here costs $15.  In the villa, we coped with high food costs by cooking ourselves, eating a lot of pasta with red sauce.  During our week in the hotel without a kitchen, we resorted to a more desperate expedient -- peanut butter sandwiches.  At 10 p.m. every night, the Marriott sells any remaining fresh-baked bread at 50% off.  We bought a loaf a night, and sometimes ate PB&J sandwiches for three meals a day.

I've always loved peanut butter sandwiches, but even for me this began to get old.  For one thing, even if spread on wheat bread, peanut butter ain't prune juice.  After a few days of an unvaried groundnut diet, Jack was...clogged, shall we say.  At one point, he had been in the bathroom for quite a while, when he suddenly called out in a panicked voice:  "I need a decongestant!" (I explained afterward that decongestants were for clogged sinuses, not clogged...you get the point.)

Later that day we bought a $7 box of All-Bran from the Marriott's small deli.  For the rest of the week we ate All-Bran and milk for breakfast, using the room's coffee cups as bowls.  All of our bellies perked up without the need for more urgent chemical stimulus.

Sometime during these three weeks in Phuket I've crossed an invisible watershed, and for me the trip is running downhill toward home.  I'm still excited about our upcoming destinations, but I'm also increasingly excited about the adventures awaiting us back in West Chester, Pennsylvania -- the kids' soccer, our church, returning to my practice and seeing firsthand all of the exciting progress made in my absence.

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