To cool off after my cliff face hike, I took a drink at our resort’s outdoor patio, with the view straight from Fantasy Island. Below, a speed boat pulled into the bay and disgorged about 30 day trippers from nearby mega-resort island of Phuket.
The Phuket tourists were easily identifiable by their fluro pink loveheart stickers stuck to their T-shirts, put there so the tour organiser could easily identify them (and presumably also to tell them apart from all the other scoundrels that would otherwise be availing themselves of the tour operator’s services, gratis).
They got off the speed boat, put on bright orange life jackets, were fitted out with flippers, mask and snorkel, and then happily snorkelled their way through the next two hours or so in the gorgeous clear blue waters.
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Some of them hired banana lounges on the beach for 50 bhat (about $1.50) and relaxed in the sun.
They then jumped back on the boat, had lunch (probably sandwiches, Thai curries and some beautiful fresh fruit), travelled to another destination and repeated the snorkelling/sunbaking/eating/speeding-off routine.
Sometime in the late afternoon, they sped back to Phuket.
Over the next few days, I saw this show repeated numerous times throughout the day, every day. More than 300 tourists would arrive, did their thing, and depart. And this is just one beach on one island. Meanwhile, I sat high on the hill, sipping my ice-cold banana shake, with a sense that I was having a more authentic Thai holiday than them.
But was I?
During my three-day stay at Long Beach, I snorkelled the same bay as my “packaged” friends.
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My hotel was like any hotel anywhere in the world - it catered to people “not from here” and was probably not that much different to the hotel the “packagers” stayed in at Phuket.
Each day, I had lunch on the beach: a sandwich or Pad Thai with some fresh fruit.
Several times I hired a longtail (spewing black smoke and making a hell of a racket) to take me to another part of the island or another island for some snorkelling.
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