January 15th in Phuket
We are getting brave! Today we drove to 5 Star Marine at the Phuket Lagoon Marina. It’s about a 40 minute drive surrounded by crazy drivers! We helped package food into plastic bags to distribute to needy unemployed in Phuket and area. Each bag contains 2 bags of rice, 2 bags of noodles, 3 cans of sardines, one bottle of cooking oil and one package of laundry detergent. The team had already started by the time we got there so I am not sure how many got done while we were there, but over 200. It’s a hands on labour intensive time consuming process. We had an assembly line going. Linda opened the plastic bag, put in the rice, I put in the noodles and also helped Linda open the plastic bags. Opening the bags reminded us of trying to open the produce bag at the grocery store, some open easy and others it was a struggle! The next guy, Blair, put in another variety of packaged noodles, the next person put in the cooking oil, then sardines, then laundry soap and someone tied the bags shut. Then a Jenga building expert stacked the bags into a huge pile. When it was time to load them in the truck for delivery, we used the old bucket brigade system to hand them out of the building and into the truck. There really isn’t that much food in a bag but it is suppose to last a family up to a week. To qualify for a life bag you need to have been with out any food for about 3 days. This relief was only supposed to last for a few months to tide over the tourist dependant community through the covid crisis. It’s not really working that way because the crisis is once again getting worse than ever before! It has been 20 months of life bags, not what anyone expected!
Once done filling and loading the bags, we headed to the Phuket Central Market which is a huge mall. It’s really big! We had a few mistakes in our routing thanks to Waze, the navigation app that we usually use. We actually missed a turn due to an underpass that Waze didn’t have a clear reading on. We finally got to the mall and found parking. We went to the Big Camera store and bought 2 GoPro batteries for ฿980 each, that’s about $37 CAD. We found our way out of the mall and parking structure that was a huge multi level thing. Parking was free today which was nice. We are not sure why or if it’s free all the time. The coolest thing ever, they have valet parking at the mall. You drive to the door, get out and someone parks your car. That’s a really good idea! We had to hunt like crazy to find a spot, but we eventually did. 99% of people back their cars into the spot. This can’t be the same erratic drivers we see on the roads around here!
It was a long drive back to Rawai but we made it fine. The outside temperature was 33º. We actually missed a perfect beach day, but we had fun doing something else! We relaxed and enjoyed a couple of beer and placed a Grab order for supper. Tonight’s menu is from the Little Persian restaurant, a couple of chicken wraps and an Iranian salad. Plus, as our order was over ฿300 we get a free falafel wrap! We’ll pop that in the fridge and share it for lunch one day! We ate at the Little Persian a number of times when we were here last and really enjoyed their food. Grab is so convenient and it lets us enjoy our evening with a cool beverage and no worries of driving.
We have our accommodation booked in Koh Lanta, we are leaving on the speedboat ferry January 21. We will be staying at Oasis Yoga Bungalows for about 5 weeks.