lavalise

[lavalise]

dream vs. reality

Who doesn’t dream about sharing their amazing adventures from their long-dreamt backpacking tour around Asia?

 I am not going to lie, this is not this kind of a post, because I haven’t been backpacking in South-East Asia. I went to the backpacking dream destination Thailand, but on a very spontaneous family trip with my parents and my sister. We only spent a week in Thailand, Phuket in particular but I thought one day in specific was worth writing about. Our trip to the famous James Bond islands or the Khao Phing Kan islands which is their original name. These islands have been used in the 70’s James Bond film ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’ and since then have become one of the flagships of Thailand. I decided to write this blogpost because we had an amazing day, but there was one moment that really made me think and realise once again that not everything in the world is picture perfect.

Our day started by being picked up by a mini bus at 7am in our hotel. We then spent an hour on the wobbly streets of Phuket before we reached the harbour area where all the boats leave from. We then get onto our speedboat that we shared with around 20 people. Before you reach the famous island first, you spend a good hour on the speedboat trying not to feel sick before you reach the island where the James Bond island is visible from. This is the bit that left me thinking. You cannot go on the actual island, because it is only a rock, but there is an island in front of it that has a proper, man-made, walking path which leads you to the main part of the island. When you get to the view point, suddenly tourists appear from every side and it was so overcrowded I couldn’t believe it. This was during the monsoon season, so definitely not at its busiest. Apart from all the tourists, there were also a few souvenir stalls cramped on that island. My sister asked for the price of a bowl and the lady told her a ridiculously expensive price. As you should do in Thailand, we tried to get the price down. The lady however didn’t want to go down so we walked away. Instead of just letting us go, she came running after us and grabbed my sister’s arm and dragged her back to her stall. I have never seen someone being this aggressive with a potential costumer. She kept on to my sister until we finally purchased that bowl. Personally, I was really shocked about that, because first of all they bring such a huge number of tourists to that tiny island every day that it is probably going to be severely damaged in a few years, but then they have souvenir stands there, which is a bit ridiculous if you think about it, because after all you are literally in the middle of nowhere. The aggressive behaviour of that lady was worrying, I mean my sister had a bruise (!!!) the next day, but in the end, she was probably just desparate to feed her family.

 Even though I have been to many typical touristy places such as the Eiffel Tower, Las Vegas and even the Niagara Falls, I was a bit disappointed to see that even Nature is exploited in this extent to make money out of the tourists. This experience really showed me that not every dreamy photo you see of a destination is the accurate representation of it.

[lavalise]

Thailand 2017