Polarized - Patong, Phuket, Thailand

 

 

Hard like steel, soft like cotton.
Dark like an eclipse, bright like a star.
Still like eternity, floating like a leaf.

Sunsets - Boracay, Philippines

It's my second time in Boracay. It is still a great place: a little tropical island with white sand bays and cristal clear water. However, I have to admit that since the last time I was here things have change a little, and not for the better, unfortunately. There are more people, lots of package tours and silly attractions, less control, more trash and noise. 
We also heard some worrisome stories: big industrial groups are apparently planning to enlarge Caticlan airport in order to allow more and more tourists to reach the island, to buy land and build new resorts and residential compounds all over the place, even to build a bridge connecting Boracay with Panai island. 
I am afraid that in a few years they will have fucked it up.
There is one thing they will not manage to ruin: those beautiful sunsets on the main beach. 
I've seen a lot of great ones, in Asia and elsewhere, yet these ones, if you watch them at the right place and time, are really hard to match.

Biting insects, with photos - Thailand

Fucking insects/0

Are you obsessed with mosquitos? In this post I'll give you a reason to be glad you haven't come across something worse than that. Maybe even to start liking them a bit. You don't believe me? Hold on a second, read the rest of the post before you start making fun of me.

- Let's start with the chapter on sleep.
I'm not a very demanding person when it comes to looking for a room to spend a night at. At least when I am on a pleasure trip, especially if I am touring a developing country. I think it doesn't make much sense expecting rich-country standards in a place that is not actually rich.
The only phobia, nightmare, paranoia that makes me clench my teeth and shut my eyes tight for a few minutes after lying down has a slightly funny name: bedbugs! In the west we have nearly got rid of them when we used to lightheartedly spray the content of an entire can of DDT to kill a fly. After this extremely toxic product was banned, so that we didn't get rid of a few million human beings along with the parasites, in some areas the problem has started to emerge again.
Bedbugs then.

Bottled - Koh Samui, Thailand

I found a capped bottle, half full of water, rocked by the waves on Chaweng shore-line. I noticed something black tossing inside so I got hold of it and...my jaw fell to the floor when I found out that those one centimeter-long tiny stars writhing among water and leaves were actually baby frogs, as small as tadpoles! I wonder how did whoever it was that put them there managed to do it...

Some pictures of the bottle:

Obviously after taking those pictures I released them. I was expecting them to rush to the water but they actually strove up the sandy beach in the opposite direction. I foresee an invasion of croaking frogs at the resorts nearby.

Some photos of the freed baby frogs:

Neglected promenade - Pattaya, Thailand

Pattaya's promenade could really be a nice place. Its wide walkway where one can stroll, jog or sit down and watch the bay, its palm trees and the colorful multi-ethnic turmoil behind. Even the scant depth of the beach, only a few meters, from this point of view can become an enriching element in the composition of the picture: those looking at the sea will enjoy the deceptive impression of a single-phase horizontal plane that, although veined and streaked with ripples and shades, within the macro-element framework (water, sky, headlands and hills) appears pretty much like a uniform body, with hues that depending on the hour and the weather conditions can vary from dirty sleet to rhino armor, passing through the various standard gradations of flask glass and summer alpine sky.

It could be a nice place, indeed. But it turns out to be one of the most decadent (if not even degraded) areas of Pattaya, which in turn is one of the most decadent cities in South East Asia. One should wonder why the authorities have decided to loosen their grip on it to such an extent, to ignore it altogether in a way, when there already are lots of red light districts in town, catering to vice lovers of various kind, and this area could be the perfect haven for the innocent side of the city tourism.

Se lo han cargado - Phuket, Thailand

Lorenzo's gaze scans the profile of Patong: he's absolutely right, this beach is great. Especially now, when the sun is plunging into the distant waves and a golden dust has settled on the leaves that swell the hills at the end of the bay. Everything else reflects the same shiny hue: the clouds, the Arab and Indian tourists that awkwardly hang from the para-sails, and the jet-skis that break through the foam of the crests like a horde of fat insect-like robots.

Somewhere near the northern end of the beach though, one can spot, beyond the typical tangle of electric wires, a whitish patch among the green of the plants. It's one of the new development projects that are claiming the land between Kamala and Patong.

The next morning we decide to rent a scooter and we tackle the slopes of the snaky road that runs along the western rim of the island. After a stop and a swim in Nai Han, we hop on the bike and we cut eastward, until we reach the centre of Phuket town. We will spend the rest of the afternoon sipping mango shakes in the colonial district and pampering ourselves with an oil massage.

Inspired by the memory of yesterday's sunset, on our way back we stop at Kamala beach. The village is not very different from the other ones that we have seen today. Kamala beach welcomes its visitors with a few hotels and cheaper guest houses. Besides a bunch of restaurants there's a line of bars with girls in miniskirts yelling at those who pass by.

The cheerfully silly and relaxed atmosphere fades when the scooter heads southward, through the the narrow road that runs along the shore. The beam of light is swallowed up by the tropical vegetation and the darkness ahead, while the music and the noises are overcome by the vigorous sounds of the jungle and the sea. The environment takes up a ghost-like air and at the edge of the streets some strange figures appear. The thin white veil that wraps them up is neither a shroud nor ectoplasm matter, but just a thin layer of mortar powder. Dozens of men, women and children, busy themselves up and down the paths, pushing wheelbarrows or carrying buckets and tools.

We come across the first of a sequence of resorts: they cover the hillside like fans of cement, for hundreds meters from Kamala down south. Presented with such an astonishing scene, Lorenzo is reminded of a Sardinian gulf, as it appears to the visitors approaching on a boat.

Though the style of the buildings is not always bad, they're eating up the coast with merciless greed. Our scooter runs besides the file of workers, with buckets hanging from poles balanced on their shoulders, while a list of grotesque names unfolds in front of us: something like “The Plantation”, “Green Oasis” or “Blue Lagoon”.

A few months ago I was talking with Javier, a Spanish friend of mine, about Yangshuo, a nice little town in the south of China, that has also changed shape in the last few years. A sentence that Javier used to describe that ruination keeps buzzing in my head while I'm watching these scene:
“Oye, se lo han cargado bastante el sitio ese!”
You cannot translate a sentence like this, it would be like designing a cheap compact car and then stick a “Ferrari” logo on the radiator in front. It's a modern and wicked form of linguistic blasphemy.

I won't commit that sin myself, but I'm sure that the meaning is pretty clear.