jaro gruber ;-): xmas in thailand, TH

well, today is the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, isnt it? we dont care because we spent this christmas in cape panwa, at the southeastern part of the phuket island in tropical south thailand, you know? well, lets turn my blog back to 2019, the last time we've been to thailand, which still is one of our most favorite countries in the world. lets enjoy few views at the former capital and in europe not too well known city of ayutthaya 🌞

me, collecting waste at our cape panwa hotel's

private + quite clean beach => TH is nice 😄

panwa bay, local people neighborhood + dirty beach => TH is ugly 😈

the hippie restaurant at that dirty beach. believe me,

we wouldnt step in, if we'd see it at day time first

so how is thailand really? it depends what you look at, isnt it? enjoy few insights and many, many pictures mostly made by my wife👩. why? it would take too much time + effort to step through all my approx 1,300 pictures made during our nice 2 weeks vacation. well, i'll probably upload few of special value to me later anyway, wont i?

unlike the buddhist north, south thailand has a huge muslim population. here on phuket abt 15-20%, at our place cape panwa and at the phi phi islands much more, if you asked me
beautiful colors, colors, colors ..
huge contrast between the clean + nice + friendly luxury hotels and heaps of trash in the streets + beaches + in the sea ... soooo sad, isnt it?
a crazy difference between the low and high tide out there. we could swim only during the high tide. thx goodness we have had a table with 'best time to swim' in our room, so it was easy to plan our day sea-water-friendly
massage, massage, massage ... still quite cheap, i've been almost every day for 1 or 1.5 hours ...
food is still cheap (3-6 euros per lunch/dinner outside the hotel and even in the hotels you will get the regional thai dishes below 10 euros. drinks, especially alcoholic beverages like beer are more expensive than in munich / germany in both, the supermarkets and in restaurants
labor still quite cheap, so the massage + pedicure + tailor + laundry + other services still much cheaper than comparable services in germany ...
it is better to exchange cash / money (euros) in the many currency exchange booths than to exchange in banks or withdraw thai bahts from ATMs (high commissions) ... of course, do not change at the airport or in the hotels
are the thais more christmas crazy than we europeans? i dont know, it was maybe just the decoration for tourists in the streets + restaurants + hotels, wasnt it?
many many weed shops (it was legalized here after covid)
what abt our cape panwa hotel above the kantary + panwa bays?

a really beautiful, clean and nice place to be. huge seaside rooms and few luxury bungallows with own pools, beautiful arranged garden, a funny 100m tram line from the hotel down to the beach, enough sunbeds + sun umbrellas for all guests at the beach, maybe not eneough at the main swimming pool at the breakfast restaurant. unfortunately, few german families still reserverved their favorite sunbeds with their stupid towels + water shoes, as if a sunbed 5m away wouldnt be equally good or good enough for the day. what an external shame (fremdschämen) for their stupid + egoistic behaviour!
free of charge shuttle service to the kantary bay down the hill to their sister hotel 'kantary'. it was approx a 9 minutes walking distance. believe me, during the hot wet days was the shuttle the better option to move around, wasnt it?
a private beach, which was cleaned every morning by 2 employees and during the day by me and 2 or 3 other guests out of 100 - 200 ... well, you will always find some plastic brought by the waves or left over by tourists
the most guest are from GB, russia + germany, if you ask me. sometimes you also hear some french + italian speaking folks
there is a former aristocratic house from approx 1910 directly at the beach, which looks like a museum and functions as a beautiful dining place in the evening. you have to make a reservation, the prices + offers are similar to the main breakfast + dinner restaurant
in the next bay to our hotel is a tin smelter and refinery company called thaisarco with an adjacent industrial port or at least a terminal. yes, there are always 3 or 4 cargo ships at the open sea in front of our hotel awaiting loading or unloading. many of them have the LPG signs (liquefied petroleum gas such as propane or butane). there have been tin mines on phuket before, today there is just a tin museum left over .... tin mining reminds me on the past riches of the ipoh city in malaysia
anything else? yes, we miss some thai temples + monks here cape panwa. there are just the symbolic mini indoor temples in buddhist houses / bussinesses. real thai temples are in phuket city and the like

day trip #1 => round-island trip in southern phuket

chalong temple
big budha statue
old city of phuket ~ town gallery 'hall' aka view point above the city, one of the many chinese temples, the historic streets with 150-200 years old buildings in sino-portuguese style (or often called also sino-european) as the bussiness & trading district used to be chinese, you know? it looks similar to the old city centers in malaysia. they've called it colonial style there ...

day trip #2

elephant jungle sanctionary ~ a retirement place for old elephants, which couldnt work any longer and would probably be killed otherwise

day trip #3

never again: mass tourism aka boat tour to the phi phi islands (koh phi phi) with its baby sharks occupied maya beach, famous due to movie 'the beach' with leonardo di caprio. a stop-over for snorkeling / jet ski / parasailing at a small island overrun by masses of tourists

day trip #4

boat tour to coral island

any conclusion? dear thais, thx for the nice time here in your country and yes, if i could wish s.th. for thailands future: please clean-up your country. all this mostly plastic waste all over the beaches, streets and in the sea .... it is not nice at all. for sure nobody feels well in such a dirty environmet, not even the captured carrion eater komodo dragon, which we have seen at coral island screening the waste from the retaurant ... well, there are many people who dont want to see your stockpiles of waste ... i dont think we will visit thailand any time in the (near) future again

pictures, pictures, pictures: