Quite the loveliest touristy things so far have been the free tour to Cape Panwa with its elephant shrine, and a stop at the beautiful
Chalong Buddhist temple during today’s gratis tour, which was also a way to
check out the quieter, more low key (than
Patong) beachside options of southern Phuket: Karon, Kata, and Rawai. All from
the comfort of an air-conditioned, door-to-door service mini bus.
I had a brief
exchange at the elephant shrine with some young Japanese women, one of whom
spoke English with an Australian accent, having spent time in Oz. It was mostly
Asians milling about the lookout point, including Thai tourists who bowed and
made fragrant offerings of incense and fruit. Apart from Japanese, I heard
smatterings of Mandarin and Malay all around me.
The temple at Chalong was buzzing, yet surprisingly
un-touristy. I wandered around the temple, was draped in a shawl, asked to
remove my cap, and had my photo taken by an usher. I then drank the water of quite
the most deliciously sweet young coconut I’ve tasted yet. The vendor, at his
little booth in the row of laid back market stalls flanking one side of the
garden, chopped away at the nut with some kind of machete, and scooped out the
delicious flesh for customers to eat. That and some slices of pawpaw ‘pilfered’
(in a legitimate way) from brekky, were pretty much all I ate all day.
I find coconut to be
truly a miracle food of nature, one of those multi-purpose drink-foods. With
its inbuilt, hairy take-away cup, it’s the perfect self-refrigerating drink,
its juice thirst-slaking and cleansing. Both the water and the ‘meat’ are nourishing
and sustaining for long periods.
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