Culture

Phuket has come a long way from the tropical island bungalow on a secluded beach with freshly caught squid frying over a rudimentary barbeque. Most of us have traded seclusion for the convenience of 4 or 5-star comforts, great food, a view shared with many other guests, and a pool that you get up early to reserve your place with a beach towel.

I’m a fair man. When I only know one side of a story, I’ll admit it. So, for the record, this is just one side of at least a two sided story. Having said that, it’s my side and many men share a similar narrative, so it deserves to be told.

By those new to Phuket, you are often asked, “Where did you celebrate Songkran?” And then they’ll go excitedly into a story about how they spent the whole day in Patong and shot everyone with water and got drenched and had the best day of their life in the world’s biggest water fight. However, should they be foolish enough to ask a long-term expat what they did over Songkran, they’ll get back a bitter response like, “I hid in my house over the entire benighted period. Thank the gods the whole blasted thing is over for another year!”

As a means of raising money, most sizable temples or “wats” will have a seasonal fair where they charge the merchants a bit of money to run their stores, games, or other activities on the temple grounds for anywhere from a few days to a week.

One of the great things about Phuket is the huge range of people that call it home. There’s the locals with families stretching back generations and generations, later Chinese immigrants who came here to work in the tin mines and now the influx of Europeans and just recently Eastern Europeans, Russians, and Middle Easterners.

There are distinct stages in a person’s acclimation to Thailand. Nearly every aspect of your life in Thailand requires different solutions. In fact, even the problems change. You’re no longer worried so much about how to clean your house or fix your car because someone else does that for you, but you do need to spend a great deal of time setting up companies, working through visas, and jumping borders.

Just whistle while you work; And cheerfully together we can tidy up the place; So hum a merry tune; It won't take long when there's a song to help you set the pace.

If it takes one thing to be a waiter in Thailand, it’s the ability to always look down while navigating even the busiest of restaurants. I say this because in nearly every restaurant I have been to here, the waiters, waitresses, staff, cashiers, and anyone who might be in any way connected with the operation of the restaurant has an almost uncanny ability to avoid eye contact.

The world of dating in Thailand is endlessly complicated. The temperamentally calm Thais are excused from all moderation and rationality when it comes to jealousy. Stories circulate about acid attacks by jealous women against their husband’s or boyfriend’s lover and it’s widely, if apocryphally, attested the penis reattachment surgery is most ably practiced by Thai doctors because of the frequent necessity for it.

Tipping didn’t use to be a big thing in Phuket. I remember six or so years ago when I first came here that Thai people would often call you back to the table when you left some money because they thought that you had forgotten to pick it up. When you explained that it was a “tip”, most were very grateful and some said that you didn’t need to leave it—it just wasn’t necessary.