Phuket has its own amusement park, a sort of Disneyland in a real Thai theme: FantaSea. In the early evening we make a short tour in the park that is well decorated and illuminated. There are heaps of fantasies and realities e.g. two white tigers in their luxury 'apartment'. There is an international buffet in an enormous and royal decorated 'salle de banquet'. After that we enter the real big theater in the 'Palace of the Elephants' to see on and around the stage a turbulent and spectacular show with beautiful costumes, sound and light effects, acrobatics, a glance over Thai history and culture, and a lot of elephants.
On the west coast of Phuket peninsula are about ten bays with white sandy beaches and above them tower the hotels and apartment complexes. No palm trees grow on the beaches to provide shadow, so some hundred parasols next to every two reclining chairs offer a colourful sight from the water. In the evening you shuffle with the crowd of tourists along the hundreds of little shops and restaurants, most of them with terraces and good music on a pleasant volume level. That is changing when you enter the 'girlie-bars': here is modern (rock)music and everywhere you see girls in short skirts and high heels 'dancing' on the counters. Just take a barstool and order a drink. Half of the visitors are just tourists curious about the Thai 'nightclubs' and the other half of the visitors and young guys and men who make their appointment for later in the evening. On the beach we buy with a few other Dutch yachties a big paper lantern that through the heat of a burning fuse slowly goes up in the air with all our wishes for the new year.
