Day 8 of my first vacation in 3.5 years

Well it seems as though this trip is well and truly cursed because the people that I came to visit in Phuket have all come down with stomach bugs and I am the only one who has been spared this fate. It makes zero sense to me because in the day that everyone got poisoned by something we all ate all of our meals at the same restaurants and drank at the same bars.

There was finger pointing going this way and that about what particular food item was to blame but this doesn't change the fact that all of shared the same dishes and I must just have rock guts from living here in SE Asia for as long as I have - which also doesn't make sense because the guy that is laid up the worst with bad guts has actually lived here longer than I have.

So the past day has been spent just hanging out in an apartment and playing video games or watching TV waiting for the next meal. I guess this is just fine with me because I am not a tourist in Phuket or Krabi, I lived in both of these places for years and have seen all of the natural wonders already. Instead I ended up at a local bar which was an absolute dump but apparently is popular with the local expat population.

I am not showcasing this bar because it is awesome but because it is iconic of what the REAL life of an expat is like here in Thailand and everywhere else I have been that has a high level of expat population. The notion that other people probably have is that we hang out in fancy beachfront bars sipping cocktails out of classes with little umbrellas in them but the reality is that we tend to gravitate towards some dive bar local like this one that endlessly has sports on that most of the patrons do not care about, but can't help but look at.

The owner was a nice guy but it was pretty clear to me that he gave up on actually giving a shit quite some time ago. The beers were as cheap as they are going to get in Phuket - which is more than double what they cost in Vietnam.

The only reason why I am going here is because I found out something about my Thai simcard that I have been paying a monthly fee for every month since I moved away from Thailand in 2020 only to discover once I got back here that the data package doesn't work. Therefore, I do not have the benefit of something like a map app and Phuket is a bit daunting with the winding busy streets so therefore I do not venture very far from my friend's house out of fear of not being able to find my way back or even being able to contact him.

So for the past day I have been popping down to this bar to speak to the few locals that I have met and have a few beers. I'm not a fan of drink driving so I don't have too many, not that they really punish something like that here in Thailand that I am aware of.

As I have mentioned in several of the other posts, I haven't really been enjoying my vacation time and have been lamenting how much money this is costing me to just have a relatively bad time, but then I randomly found this meme on 9gag and it kind of made me think a bit.

If I can find any good out of this 12 days I am spending away from my condo, my current city, and my dog, it should be this. I already have a profound appreciation for my life and home in Da Nang after just 8 days of being away. When I do finally get back there I will at least for a little while, stop moaning and taking the ease of life that I have there for granted.

I have been very happy with how my dog Nadi is taking the absence of me because that was something that I was really worried about especially since she is staying with 2 other dogs and Nadi, while a huge fan of non-children people, is not a fan of any other dogs.

I've been getting daily updates and while this picture might not seem like much you need to understand that neither one of these dogs in the picture like to be near other dogs. The one that isn't Nadi is a rescue from abusive owners and is basically afraid of everything. The fact that they are comfortable standing next to one another on a sofa is very big and great news.

I've been told that Nadi has kind of adopted a leadership role at the house and kind of tells the other two dog's what's what. She is significantly older than both of them so perhaps dogs are able to communicate their ages in ways we cannot detect and there is a certain respect that comes along with that.

There was a thunderstorm in Da Nang yesterday and Nadi really hates those. I told her caretakers to just allow her to cuddle up with you and she will be fine. I think that a lot of dogs are like this but Nadi is extremely afraid of thunderstorms and if I am back at my own condo she will sometimes sit on my head for comfort. She calmed down after the storm passed, as I knew she would.

As it stands now I have done almost nothing in Phuket that a normal tourist would but am moving on to Krabi tomorrow to finish out my time here in Thailand. I booked the flight from Krabi to Bangkok already for the day that I am leaving to go back to Vietnam and I am not even going to leave the airport despite the 5-hour layover.

Perhaps my revisiting of Krabi, a city that I lived in for nearly 16 years will spark some interest but based on how the experience has been so far, I am not getting my hopes up. I am grateful for my friends and their generosity, but I think that I am just one of those guys that doesn't really want to go on vacation anymore.