Patong Beach - Phuket, Thailand

I'd never really wanted to go to Phuket in the first place. Unfortunately, that was where the dive center I'd booked my live aboard through was located. Thus I found myself, barely fifteen hours back in Thailand, stepping off of yet another plane and headed towards southern Thailand's premiere resort destination, Patong Beach.

It was evening when I arrived in town and I saw no sense in hitting the beach at 7pm, so after checking into a hotel and touching base with my dive shop, I allowed my jet lag to get the best of me and called it an early night.

The next morning I had a whole day to kill in Phuket before my dive boat left. After enjoying a simple breakfast of rice porridge with fish and a cup of instant coffee at a nearby cafe I decided to wander down-wind and check out the nearby beach front.

To say that Patong Beach is over developed would be an absurd understatement. And to simply call it tacky would be an insult to kitsch. The massive urban sprawl that lines the shore here is a labyrinth of Go-Go bars, 7-11's, fast food restaurants, sex clubs, Family Marts, and T-shirt shops that extend as far as the eye can see.

It's only mid-January, so of course most of the businesses here still have their "X-Mas" decorations up. Gaily colored images of Santa Clause are proudly displayed next to posters for (God help me) Thai Elvis impersonators and price quotes for massage parlours that promise every customer a "Happy Ending." It's as if the Las Vegas strip threw up on Highway 99, travelled all the way across the ocean and washed up up on these shores, jumbled but intact. Feckless fodder for one culture to use to exploit another.

It would have been hard to tell that I'd reached the actual beach except that I could clearly see thin blue line that separated sand from ocean. Besides that nearly every square meter of beautiful white sand was covered with recliner beach chairs and gaudy umbrellas advertising Cheers Beer, Red Bull, and Western Union. I could barely find a sparse enough sliver of bare sand to walk a straight line along slide the surf.

I gazed into the water at the jet skis, cruise ships, and luxury yachts that bobbed along the horizon, mobbing the view, and cursed myself for contributing to this whole God-damned mess.

It was an insult to anyone with taste. Though it didn't seem this would be much of an issue, as no one here appeared to have any. Strolling up the coast I looked over towards the folks who called this place paradise. Every one of them seemed to be twice my age, and three times as drunk, though it was only 11am. Old Swedish men in yachting caps and Speedo shorts, aging French women still shamelessly sunbathing topless at 65. Americans with their beer bellies and beer cozies, and thick necked Germans digging deep trenches in any bare bit of sand, as if anticipating some impending invasion to which only they were privy.

If this were paradise, then I was glad Eve had bitten into the apple.

After a short half hours walk I could hardly stand it any longer. I went back into town and found a small cafe where I could while away the afternoon with my Graham Greene and my Arthur Conan Doyle. I could only hope that my diving trip would make this all worth while, because so far, this was not my idea of a good time.