Aching muscles and clean beaches

Somehow, after nearly 9 years in Thailand, I have never been for a real Thai massage. I'm not really into the idea of massage, don't feel the need for stress relief, do not have knotty muscles and if I need to relax, an hour in front of the telly with a cold beer works wonders! (OMG! What a slob!)

Well, my wife recently paid a years membership at the Royal Spa in Phuket town. I think it was 2600 Baht which allows certain things free, some at a discount and she got a 5000 Baht voucher along with the membership. Yesterday we spent a morning at the spa taking a sauna, and then a 90 minute Thai massage. We got our own private aircon room with 2 massage tables, relaxing music playing, herby smells in the air. At times I started falling asleep and then was woken by sharp fingers digging into muscles not used to such attention! I reckon I'll try another massage sometime soon.

Weather yesterday was OK, bit cloudy, bit windy, a few drops of rain, some sun... Today has been mostly very sunny, but windy too. A few light patches of rain in the afternoon. I wandered down to Karon Beach at about 9am to snap some pictures of the waves and the blue skies. Phuket's main beaches all face west and at this time of year we can get some strong winds from time to time - yes, this is the southwest monsoon season, and monsoon refers to the wind. So although, like today, you may have blue skies, please don't try and swim in the sea if it looks rough.

 

It was a fine morning, but as I have noted before (See weather report on 19th June) at this time of year the beaches do sometimes look a bit messy due to marine debris being swept in by the wind and waves - bits of wood, plastic, nets, old shoes, bottles... there's a lot of cr*p out there in the ocean and it gets blown over here by them SW winds.

As I was taking photos of waves, hundreds of people suddenly appeared on the beach armed with big black bin bags. They advanced along the beach leaving the sand all but spotless. If you sunbathed on Karon beach this afternoon it would have looked perfect! The clean up was organised by the Karon hotels association and Karon municipality. Well done.



It was like magic.. a wave of people picking up all the rubbish leaving golden sand in their wake...