nights out in Phuket

This is a photo of Carol at Fantasea theme park in front of the lake full of Koi carp. Here are a few Fantasea photographs. We chose their basic package - no fancy seats and the standard buffet - which was all magnificent. There really is no need to buy the more expensive package.

We were welcomed by plenty of smiling Thai ladies, who obliged in having their pictures taken.

The show itself is in the "Palace of the elephants", which seats a few thousand!

There was an awful lot of gold blingy stuff about, such as the floating gardens beside the restaurant (where they do actually feed a few thousand people from the buffets - very well regimented and organised)

The dragon man showed me his moves, while my moves involved holding onto my tiny cup of popcorn and trying not to look silly....

Now for more games travellers play:

I've told you about our favourite two eye spy games, we abandoned the first game on account of it being too easy to spot western and thai couples, and the second game has disadvantages too. Taking photos of four or five people on a motorbike is tricky when the traffic is all moving towards you at speed. It is compounded by the realisation that where you are standing, there tends to be a contraflow for motorbikes.

The contraflow rule is this - where the traffic is moving in a certain direction, it is ok (if you are on a motorbike) to ride in the opposing direction to the traffic on that side, as long as you do this only where there are pedestrians walking. So taking photographs from the edge of the road, to be safe you need eyes in the back of your head. If they hoot they are about to hit you so that is no real help.

So what is the third game? Well we have decided it is "find the cheapest meal". The rules are

1. You have to feel full after the meal, it doesn't count to have a roadside snack afterwards
2. You have to be able to sit down and get some kind of service
3. You don't need English menus or even clean menus, or any prices

There are some hints to getting a good cheap meal - go where the Thais are eating, and forget the menu, you can after all just point at what others are eating or at the pot on the stove. Sometimes safest not to touch the menu anyway.

Yesterday we got it down to 200 baht or 4 quid for the two of us, and we ordered one chicken with cashew nuts and one yellow curry and some rice, and two iced teas (don't suggest you do this unless you like condensed milk in your tea)

This evening I am quite proud that we ate with loads of Thais in a restaurant with no menus and quite decent plastic stools and plastic tablecloths, and we had two bowls of beef and glass noodle soup, with aromatic greens and beansprout salad, and iced water for 80 baht (1 pound sixty p for the two of us) This is the lovely lady who cooked for us.

Afterwards we splashed out on a bag of honey and sesame coated nuts for 15 baht ( 30p) I felt I owed it to the lady to go back to her stall since she has sold me the same bag of nuts for just 13 baht when I was clearing my pocket of silly loose change. We haven't eaten the nuts as we are both full so we haven't broken the roadside snack rule.