syntaxfree – Page 10 – the liminal edition

Odd Musical Pairings (Podcast and Picks)

A while back I highlighted some podcasts I’d quite enjoyed, and I’d like to continue that because it helps me keep track of them too. So here’s NPR All Songs Considered’s Odd Musical Pairings podcast, which I liked because I’ve always had an interest in musical collaborations, and why some work while others don’t.

Most of what they featured was already known to me, but The Face Of Love (Eddie Vedder and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan!) was a much-welcome discovery. They followed this up with Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash doing Girl From The North Country, making for a one-two punch of awesomeness which made me hate myself for not having listened to Nashville Skyline in about nine years.

As for the collaborations that didn’t work, it’s a pity the podcast page already tells you the full playlist, because knowing what’s coming somewhat spoils the unfolding tragedy of Bono’s verses in his I’ve Got You Under My Skin duet with Sinatra. Still, if you’re the sort that enjoys watching horror movies with unlikable characters in them just so that you can savour watching them die, check that massacre out.

I tried to come up with picks of my own to make this post less parasitic, but found it harder than expected. I have one clunker which everyone else seems to love, and some favourites which aren’t really that “odd” once you go a little past the initial incongruity of the pairing. But what the hell, I’ll list them anyway.

Let’s get the clunker out of the way first. I know the Alison Krauss and Robert Plant album got shitloads of acclaim but I found it very lacklustre. There are a few pretty songs (I like Your Long Journey), and kudos to Robert Plant for not being all Led Zeppy, but when you pair a leading light of bluegrass with an icon of blues-rock, you do expect to hear a bit of both in the end result. Instead, Alison Krauss sounds beautiful as usual but the songs she’s singing lack the verve and personality of her work with Union Station, and Robert Plant just sounds like a good backup singer. I could play the particular examples I’m thinking of, I suppose, but life is too short to listen to boring music. So here’s one of the better results of the collaboration: Gone Gone Gone.

And now for some favourites:

Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield: What Have I Done To Deserve This – Dusting off (sorry!) retro divas for modern collaborations has been done before (cf. Take That featuring Lulu on Relight My Fire, KLF featuring Tammy Wynette on Justified And Ancient) but I like this one best, for the inimitable elegance of the song and how Dusty blends in so perfectly without any of the vocal scenery-chewing that tends to result in these situations.

Loretta Lynn and Jack White: Portland, Oregon – Only odd if you don’t already know about Jack White’s passion for American roots music. He’d been persona non grata in my iPod for a while because of how violently I dislike Seven Nation Army, but his contributions to the Cold Mountain soundtrack and the amazing production he did for Loretta Lynn’s majestic Van Lear Rose album soon got him back in there again. This ode to the joys of a sloe gin fizz-fuelled hookup is an inspired match – both are in fine voice, his ebullient guitar work underlines the chutzpah of her singing, and I adore the chemistry they have in the video.

Mariah Carey with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony: Breakdown – Such collaborations are routine in the late 2000s pop landscape, but were nowhere as common when this came out in 1998. I recall Mariah being one of the first big stars to start the trend, and this is one of the best of those pioneering efforts. Bone Thugs’ distinctive sound makes this more memorable to me than many of the other pop/R&B tracks that have been done since, and I especially like how Mariah’s own phrasing seems to echo theirs.

Hercules and Love Affair with Antony Hegarty: Blind – This wasn’t a pairing I expected to like, since I’m not a great appreciator of disco revivalism or Antony Hegarty’s singing style. But once taken out of the dreary atmosphere of I Am A Bird Now (sorry, it’s the only Antony and the Johnsons album I’ve listened to and I was bored stiff) and recontextualised in the upbeat, infectious melody lines of Blind, Antony sounds robust and vital rather than precious. I still remember the first time I heard this – one of the other girl DJs played it at Hacienda the same night I popped my DJ cherry, and I immediately realized that every single song I’d lovingly picked out and sequenced for my set had just been effortlessly eclipsed.

Sneakyguy

Since Alec has ~~abandoughned~~ failed to update his blog for over a year now, I thought I’d share an alecdote to reassure any of his former readers that he is still very much committed to breadmaking. People who give a shit about baking may already be aware that making sourdough bread requires the cultivation of a disgusting bacterial soup called a “starter” which is fed flour and water on a weekly basis in order to keep its lethal toxins at an optimal level. (My theory has always been that Industrial Light and Magic only had to increase the starter feeding frequency to once a day in order to create the Jabba the Hutt special effects back in ‘77.)

Having experienced some hilariously epic fails in his previous sourdough starter attempts (I’ll let him tell you the tales himself, if he ever bloody gets round to it), back in January he managed to concoct something which appeared to be a success. He never actually ended up making bread out of this starter, mind you, but you should understand that insofar as this batch didn’t explode in his face, coating our kitchen with more yeasty residue than Tila Tequila’s *cough*, it was well-described as a “success”.

So anyway, Alec had this happily non-explosive starter, but was faced with the problem of several weeks’ worth of business travel, which would make the personal care and feeding of his fetid germfields somewhat difficult. Which led to this conversation:

Alec: If you had a pet, say a cat, and you decided to go on a holiday, someone would need to feed your cat, right?

Me, unsuspectingly: Of course.

Alec: And you know that even though I hate cats, just because I love you I’d help you feed your pet while you were away, right?

Me, suspiciously: Yeeees.

Alec: Well, if you think of me as having several million tiny little pets…

Mick Foley + Tori Amos = Awesome Tag Team

I don’t know how many other people out there also love pro wrestling AND Tori Amos, but since Mick Foley’s[1. I know him best as Mankind, so others my age may find that a familiar touchstone as well.] article about how Tori Amos changed his life was pretty much tailor-made for someone like me to enjoy on a lazy Saturday, I thought I’d share. I kinda love that it was also another wrestler (Maxx Payne) who introduced her music to him, and it is my firm view that lines like “my aim that night was to have the best barbed-wire match ever” improve any article they appear in. I don’t want to spoil the ending here, but you’ll find out how Foley’s repaid Tori for the inspiration she’s been to him, and it’s really rather heart-warming.

Wikipedia’s Mick Foley entry is, by the way, rather good reading, because the detached Wikipedia writing style only makes the ridiculous pro wrestling storylines it describes even more hilarious. Samples:

“Foley began a hangman, a spot where a wrestler’s head is tangled between the top two ring ropes The spot is usually painful but safe (though in WCW the danger factor was raised slightly because their ring ropes were not actual ropes, but elevator cables encased with rubber). Unbeknownst to Foley, however, 2 Cold Scorpio had earlier complained that the ropes were too loose, resulting in the ring staff tightening the ropes to the maximum. As Foley struggled to pull himself out, he tore off two-thirds of his ear and underwent surgery later that day to reattach the cartilage from the ear to his head, so that a total reconstruction would be possible in the future.Later that year, Cactus Jack and Kevin Sullivan were scheduled to win the tag team titles at Slamboree in 1994. Foley had to choose between reattaching his ear or wrestling in the pay-per-view and winning the titles. Foley chose to wrestle and won his only championship in WCW. Later on, Foley was frustrated by WCW’s reluctance to work a storyline around losing his ear.”
”Although conventional wisdom holds that the Hell in a Cell match was responsible for Foley’s rise to main event status, live television crowds did not initially get behind Mankind because of the match. Foley decided that crowds might respond better if Mankind were more of a comedy character, and so he became less of a tortured soul and more of a goofy, broken down oaf. While Vince McMahon was in a hospital nursing wounds suffered at the hands of The Undertaker and Kane, Mankind arrived to cheer him up. Having succeeded only in irritating McMahon, Mankind unveiled a sock puppet named Mr. Socko. Intended to be a one-time joke, Socko became an overnight sensation. Mankind began putting the sock on his hand before applying his finisher, the mandible claw, stuffing a smelly sock in the mouths of opposing wrestlers. The sweatsock became massively popular with the fans, mainly because it was marketed (mostly by Jerry "The King" Lawler during the events) as being a dirty, smelly, sweaty, repulsive, and vile sock.”

Veni, Vidi, Voltaire

Over the years I have used many excuses for neglecting this blog, but I bet invoking Voltaire is still a new one: “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” The various other distractions in my life have meant that I haven’t been devoting as much headspace to writing blog entries as I used to, with the result that I have a bunch of incomplete ones lying around which I started, felt dissatisfied with, and never finished. Of course, this means that rather than deciding to either work on improving those entries or trashing them and starting anew, I became hopelessly trapped in a quagmire of guilt and inertia.

In my defence, while I admittedly lack this basic life skill of Not Being So Freaking Neurotic, I did spend the time away somewhat usefully. I’ve done some good cooking, taken photographs I’m proud of, stencilled my own T-shirts and made a photobook of our January trip to Laos, among other things. It may not seem like much, but when you’re not very artistic it can take up a lot of time and energy to design and lay out a photobook which doesn’t look like it’s been authored by Stevie Wonder.

Anyway, where I’m going with all this is that this blog turns ten – ten! – years old on November 7th, 2010, and I couldn’t bear the thought of letting that anniversary pass with the deafening silence that’s been the norm here lately. I love this blog, and I regret that I’ve let it slide so much over the past few years. I update my Facebook profile often enough with random observations and drunken Youtube odysseys, but obviously that will all disappear into the ether when Facebook’s star fades and we all move on to the next big social networking thing. And whatever transient warm fuzzies I might get from a few “Likes” there, nothing really compares to the joy and satisfaction blogging has given me – the internal ordering of thoughts that writing always forces me to tackle, the intrigue of other people’s responses, and, years later, the invaluable experience of being able to look back in time with far more clarity than memory alone will allow.

So all this has been a convoluted way of saying I’m back, really. Cross my heart, pinky swear, back. I can’t promise that all my posts will be humdingers because I have embraced Monsieur Voltaire as my new yogi in this regard, but they will at least appear more regularly than they have been. And because another quote attributed to my new yogi is “The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out,” I’ll end here for now. See you soon.

Please Take This Personally, Redux

There has been silence here for far too long, I know, for no real reason except that work was crazy for a few months, and then because I had fallen out of the habit of writing blog entries it was difficult to get back on the wagon. A fair amount of fun has been had which, as usual, I have totally failed to write about here – among other things, we did a short trip to Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta, long trips to Laos, London (with a side trip to Pavement’s ATP) and New York, I had a wonderful 30th birthday party at my beloved Black Forest (soon to close because the building is being redeveloped!), and we discovered the ultimate TV bliss of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

But what finally forced me to get back here was something decidedly unfun, which I still felt I wanted to tell you about: for any of you who’ve been here a long time, you might remember that in 2005, I had minor surgery to remove breast lumps. They turned out benign, but it was still an anxious time for me and those who love me. And I wrote about it here back then, because I wanted to warn other women my age that this wasn’t just something that their mums and “older women” had to worry about, it could also affect twenty-five year olds whose only prior boob problem had been said boobs’ tendency to pop out of bikinis in the course of a wakeboarding faceplant.

In a few hours’ time I will be having another operation, to remove another lump. It is a little more worrying now than the last time, because they were fairly sure the last time that the lumps were fine and it was left up to me whether to bother taking them out or not. This time the advice (based on analysis of the ultrasound) is that the lump is “indeterminate”, fed by blood vessels, and should most definitely be removed and biopsied.

I’m telling you all about this again for a few reasons. One, I’ve hardly told any of my friends about this recent development because when I’m hanging out with them I want to have fun and forget about my worries, not bring the mood down. At least now I can just direct them to this post so they’ll know what’s been up with me, and then when we hang out we can go back to talking about how it’s always dick’o’clock in Spartacus: Blood and Sand and how annoying it is to lose one entire level of your fridge to your husband’s flour collection. Oh, hang on, that last one’s just me.

Two, apart from reinforcing what I said five years ago that even young women should be mindful of these things, I wanted to share what could perhaps be described as a cautionary tale about not taking enough charge of one’s health. I knew about this new lump for six months before going to the doctor, a private clinic in my office building. They sent me for an ultrasound in a private radiology clinic, which said the lump looked benign. A year later, I asked for another scan, and got the same advice. I trusted this and took no further action, partly because I was lazy and wanted to believe that nothing else needed to be done, and partly because it didn’t occur to me to second-guess medical professionals.

A few months after that while speaking to my cousin, a doctor, she suggested I consider removing the lump anyway due to its size. It took me four more months to bother going to the public polyclinic (I had decided to go the public health route for the surgery for reasons of cost) to get a referral to the hospital where I had had the previous surgery. From here on things progressed rapidly, because the public health system evidently saw this as a matter of much more concern than the private healthcare providers I had used previously. I had an appointment within days, an incredibly thorough ultrasound a few days after that which picked up numerous lumps that the private clinic scans hadn’t reported (but none except the one I originally sought advice on were of concern), and an operation date within weeks.

Hopefully, the biopsy results will show all is well. But if it isn’t, I will be so angry with myself for being so laid back about it, for allowing a breast lump to stay in me for two and a half years when I could have had it removed within two months. It’s easy for me to blame the private doctors who didn’t take the lump as seriously as the public doctors did, but ultimately I should have taken better charge of my own health.

So that’s how things stand. In a few hours, a team that has never won the World Cup will raise the trophy for the first time, and a few hours after that, I report to hospital for my surgery. For those of you who pray, I’d be grateful for your prayers. I’ll end this by repeating what I said the last time:

Girls: you already know what you should do. Do it.
Guys: do all you can to make sure the women you love take the time and trouble to protect themselves.

Update: I was given the all clear. However, based on the biopsy results I was advised that in time, if left in there and not removed, this lump could have developed into something less than benign. Suffice to say I’m glad, thankful, and determined to be less of a lazy dumb-ass, going forward.

2009 Music Rundown

I listened to more new music in 2009 than I had the previous year, but it’s still difficult to list much that I enjoyed enough to recommend to others. (Posterity note: The album I listened to more than any other in 2009 – The Bug’s London Zoo – would’ve been up there with Third and Rook as one of my favourites of 2008 if I’d actually managed to listen to it within that year.)

But onwards to 2009. Or backwards, rather, given the tardiness of this post.

Albums:

Warm Heart Of Africa (The Very Best): When raving about this album to Benny a few weeks ago the best explanation I could manage was to stammer “It’s like…African pop for people who like dubstep!” But I did this glorious album a disservice, because my description, apart from being clumsy (Pitchfork’s review broke it down somewhat better) is useless to anyone except music nerds. In truth, this is just one of the most effortlessly engaging albums I have heard in years (try Julia) and I honestly believe it’s an album for everyone, except people who don’t like joy. My favourite release of the year, IN A YEAR WITH A SONIC YOUTH RELEASE. If that’s not a recommendation from me, nothing is.

The Eternal (Sonic Youth): I know, I’m just so full of surprises. OK, this isn’t quite as good as any of their other post-NYC Ghosts And Flowers albums or Thurston’s lovely Trees Outside The Academy from 2007, but it still presses enough buttons for me. Continues in the somewhat accessible vein of Rather Ripped, sometimes too much so (What We Know, Poison Arrow) but there are still plenty of examples of the band being melodic without losing themselves (Leaky Lifeboat, Antenna).

Moderat (Moderat): I already enjoy each of the acts in this collaboration on their own, but I really hope they keep working together too. Apparat’s moody headphones universes get roughed up by Modeselektor’s dancefloor sensibilities (Slow Match), Modeselektor’s sonic freewheeling benefits from Apparat’s talent for creating and building atmosphere (Rusty Nails, Porc #1, Porc #2), and I get a new favourite pre-clubbing album. (Well, it would be my favourite pre-clubbing album if I could actually be bothered to get off my ass and go clubbing.)

Farm (Dinosaur Jr): Part of why I love this is definitely the nostalgic hold 80s/90s US indie rock will always have on me. But even when I try to shed that and pretend I’m assessing this album through fresh ears, I’m still struck by its effortless, unaffected ability to just bring on some good tunes and rock out. And like I said earlier, J Mascis’s guitar playing just makes me so damn happy.

Dragonslayer (Sunset Rubdown): Every now and then an album comes along and reminds me that I can still like indie pop. Spencer Krug’s hiccupy David Bowie voice appeals to me much more than the usual reedy-voiced SNAG or alterna-ingenue vocal stylings that abound in this genre, and there’s something wonderfully full-bodied and spacey about the production that brings out the stateliness and drama of the songs really well. When I’ve had a bad day at work I just want to crawl into tracks like Silver Moons and Apollo and the Buffalo and Anna Anna Anna Oh! (yes, I know, execrable name but give it a chance) and let the bubbly reverby guitars bathe me like a jacuzzi.

Us (Brother Ali): As much as I can often be easily contented with crass booty jamz, and equally easily bored with “worthy” hip hop, Ali’s lyrical achievements here are just too impressive to be missed. He’s not the most complex rhymer around but the sincerity and depth with which he’s able to take on subjects like the legacy of slavery (The Travelers), child sex abuse (Babygirl) and the experiences of new immigrants, children of divorce and closeted gay teens (Tight Rope) is incredible.

Songs:

Surgical Gloves (Raekwon): So much rhapsodizing has been done about Only Made 4 Cuban Linx Pt II that I feel the need to explain why it isn’t in my albums list. Honestly, I’ve been too distracted by reading on my commute to listen properly to the lyrics, so while I have enjoyed the production, I just haven’t engaged with the album as fully as I did with the albums which did make the list. This track, however, stood out to me from the first time I heard it. Alchemist slices up a Styx sample to make it sound like a malfunctioning CD player, Raekwon spits lines like “We blow you out your peacoats”, and the end result is just slick.

Heartless (Kris Allen, live version from Top 3 night on American Idol): It’s really hard to find this on Youtube because most of the clips there are either the studio version, or the audio-only live version. This canny, game-changing performance formed the basis of my shock epiphany that although it was undoubtedly cooler to support Adam Lambert, the person I really really wanted to win was Kris.

Velvet (The Big Pink): This and the album it came from are great comfort listening for me, for times when I don’t feel like “working” to enjoy my music. There’s nothing gobsmackingly creative about this track, no new layers to discover each time you listen to it, but sometimes you just want a straightforward instantly accessible slab of moody bombastic feedback-drenched drama which gives you what you want and gives it to you now.

Halo (Beyonce): You laugh? Wait till you hear how many other Ryan Tedder penned pop songs I also love madly (Apologize, Bleeding Love, Battlefield), then laugh. I’ve never been that keen on Beyonce – I don’t like watching her perform because there’s something I find a bit frantic about her dancing – but the vocal twists and turns she does here are really well executed. I fully intend to butcher this song in my next karaoke session, especially the “haloOOo” bits.

Fostercare (Burial): This pipped King Midas Sound’s Meltdown very narrowly for status of my favourite track on the “new stuff” disc of 5 Years Of Hyperdub. If you already know Burial, this is more of what he does best. If you don’t, I’ll spare you my yammering about textures and sample manipulation and just urge you to experience this haunting, otherworldly trip for yourself.

Global Enemies (Lynx & Kemo): OK I’m totally cheating because I know this came out in 2007, but ever since their barnstorming gig at Home in 2008 I’ve inexplicably failed to rave about them on this blog, and that can’t go on. This track was included on their 2009 debut album (which, unfortunately, I haven’t heard yet), so Imma sneak it in that way. Kemo’s lyrics aren’t as intriguingly esoteric here as in Carnivale but his deadpan style suits the bleak prophecy of this track perfectly.

Keep The Streets Empty For Me (Fever Ray): Sometimes here on the equator rain comes suddenly and heavily in the pre-dawn hours, moving across the ground in sheets with the wind. For night owls like me these are magical times, when the world is cool and peaceful and mostly mine. This is a song for the minutes just after that rain dies away, when the cascade of droplets from rain gutters and awnings slows but doesn’t stop, each tiny impact rippling the puddle where it lands, each rippling puddle part of a shimmering tableau that hardly anyone will see but me.

Last note:

No personal 2009 music summary of mine could possibly omit what happened on June 25th, 2009. I already wrote a fair bit in this blog about the joy Michael Jackson brought to my life, but reading over it again I’m struck by how much I still had to leave out.

I’m not over his death. I know how this makes me look to people who are too sensible to be this affected by the death of someone who never knew they existed. And I also know how blessed I am that so far, I have not had to suffer the loss of someone truly close to me. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. But for now, there are times I still find myself ambushed by emotion that I thought I had exhausted the night of his memorial service, the night I cried all the tears I had not shed in that dry-eyed, numb week after his death. I still think of him randomly, like when one of my first thoughts after seeing Avatar was how much he would have loved it in all its technologically groundbreaking, spectacularly beautiful, treehugging, militaristic, schmaltzy splendour.

But this is a music post, and I did actually intend to end it with something related to Michael Jackson’s music rather than my emoness. One “silver lining” (if you could call it that) of his death was the rehearsal footage his fans got to see in the This Is It movie. I loved this because he usually wouldn’t let the world see anything until it had been meticulously engineered to run to uberperfection every time. I think this clip of The Way You Make Me Feel rehearsals gives a refreshingly raw glimpse of the person and artist I will never forget.

Phuket Day Four: What Everyone Else Does On Phuket

This is the last in a series of posts on our holiday to Phuket. You might like to read the others too!

Phuket Day 1: Kayaks and Caves
Phuket Day 2: Phuket Town
Phuket Day 2: Mandatory Minigolf
Phuket Day 3: Beaches, Buddha and Bargainhunting
Phuket Day 4: What Everyone Else Does On Phuket

Simply because it would be nice to finish blogging one trip in totality for the first time since the inception of this blog, here is what we did on our last day in Phuket: nothing much, because this was the day we tried to do what everyone else does on Phuket.

After a leisurely breakfast in our hotel we walked to Kata Noi beach, took windswept pictures, drank girly cocktails at the Katathani Resort’s beach bar, and had an indulgent and really rather decent Italian meal at Capannina restaurant before retiring to our hotel pool (and the day-long happy hour at the poolside bar) until our flight home.

Quarantine (Eavan Boland)

Perhaps I’m just mushy because my husband’s away on a business trip and I miss him, but I liked this poem.

I am not exactly sure if Alec would warm my feet with his chest while we were both dying of starvation and cold (this would be asking a lot of anyone – my feet are blocks of ice even in normal air-conditioning), but he does go out in the mid-day sun on the weekends to buy me bubble tea and ayam penyet, which is also worth something.

Symphony

I was doing some clutter-clearing today and found this passage I saved from when I read Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter some years back. The protagonist is listening to Beethoven’s 3rd symphony (the “Eroica”) at the time, but you don’t have to have heard it[1. If you’d like to get to know the Eroica, good ol’ Youtube will let you travel back in time to watch the great Herbert von Karajan at work: Part 1, Part 2.] to let this passage take you back to the last time you listened to music that made you feel this way.

She could not listen good enough to hear it all. The music boiled inside her. Which? To hang on to certain wonderful parts and think them over so that later she would not forget – or should she let go and listen to each part that came without thinking or trying to remember? Golly! The whole world was this music and she could not listen hard enough. Then at last the opening music came again, with all the different instruments bunched together for each note like a hard, tight fist that socked at her heart. And the first part was over.

This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms held tight around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard. It might have been five minutes she listened or half the night. The second part was black-coloured – a slow march. Not sad, but like the whole world was dead and black and there was no use thinking back how it was before. One of those horn kind of instruments played a sad and silver tune. Then the music rose up angry and with excitement underneath. And finally the black march again.

But maybe the last part of the symphony was the music she loved the best – glad and like the greatest people in the world running and springing up in a hard, free way. Wonderful music like this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen.

The last time music made me feel like the whole world was a symphony and there wasn’t enough of me to listen was a few weeks ago, listening to Dinosaur Jr’s Farm and losing myself so happily in the guitar work[2. There’s No Here isn’t actually a standout track in this (consistently good) album but it’s a punchy example of one of my favourite things about Dinosaur Jr – how J Mascis’s guitar is basically like the fourth member of the band. If you’re feeling a little more emo, let Said The People build to the solo at 3.05.] that I almost forgot I was on my way to work on a Monday morning. When was yours?

Phuket Day 3: Beaches, Buddha and Bargainhunting

While our experience of Phuket was generally very positive, perhaps due to visiting in very low season, one of its annoyances was still in full swing: the powerful transport cartel that rules Phuket’s Western shores, resists all attempts to improve the abysmal state of public transport in Phuket and charges an arm and a leg to take you anywhere. I’m aware true travelistas would throw caution to the wind and vroom glamorously around the island on a rented moped, but ever since I heard what a state coroner had to say about motorbike travel I’ve been nervous about it. So the next best alternative was to engage a driver, and after a bit of research we contacted Daj, who is very popular with Tripadvisor forum members.

He picked us up at 10 a.m., and we headed south, passing Karon viewpoint on the way to the gorgeousness at the top of this post, Nai Harn beach. I don’t know what it’s like in high season, but on this low season Sunday morning it was pretty idyllic.

It’s popular with families because of its little lagoon that stays calm even as monsoon season waves crash onto the main stretch of beach. (I experimented with adding a texture when processing the photo below. I like the end result, but would be interested in your opinions: evocative or naff?)

This family parked right next to the sand and picnicked while their kids played in the shallows.

Once I’d managed to tear myself away from photographing Nai Harn beach, we drove on to Ya Noi viewpoint, which doesn’t photograph too badly itself.

At Rawai fishing village, I nearly fell prey to a very persuasive hard-sell. I bet she’d have overcharged me too.

The tsunami caused less destruction to Rawai than the west coast of the island, but I still found the sight of the children playing in front of the tsunami hazard zone sign poignant. I was delighted when I realized they were not only playing zero-point[1. I did a quick Google to see if I could rustle up a description of zero-point for non-Asian readers and found this bizarre video, apparently produced as some sort of outreach effort for the Youth Olympic Games Singapore’s hosting next year. The “fun” URL they’ve come up with for more of this stuff is “whyohgee.com.sg”. I think “doubleu-tee-eff.com.sg” might have been more appropriate.] – one of my favourite childhood games that I’d somehow forgotten ever playing until seeing them – but playing some of the exact same “stages” of the game that we did twenty years ago.

While waiting to work up an appetite for lunch, we went to see the Big Buddha, already seen in distant evening silhouette in the previous post, and really damn freaking big when you’re up close. The statue is still under construction and surrounded by scaffolding, which makes for easy cheesy faux-spiritual photo captioning as follows. (I tried another texture experiment with the photo – again, opinions appreciated!)

Wat Chalong doesn’t have the history or ornate decoration of other temples you can see in Thailand, but it does feel like it has a life as a local centre of worship beyond its tourist visitors, which is what I always hope to see in religious sites I visit.

For lunch, Daj drove us to Phong Phang Seafood at Palai bay. Upon walking in it was immediately obvious that this was the sort of place where all the guides take their tourists – it even had a separate room where all the guides were eating their own lunches – but the food turned out very decent. The “apple balsam leaves salad” (sounded interesting, but I still have no idea if that’s the correct name of the leaf or not) in the photo was the first dish we’d had in Phuket where we found the level of spice remotely challenging, so given our reasonably high tolerance for spice I’d say the restaurant hasn’t totally watered its food down for tourists. The ambience is pleasant too, sitting in breezy shade looking out at long-tail boats in the bay. I scampered a few metres down to the beach after lunch for this picture, which I quite like.

After lunch we went to Khao Kad viewpoint at Cape Panwa (my photographs weren’t very good) and the monkey mangroves at Ko Sireh. It was rather depressing that visitors are not in the least bit discouraged from feeding the monkeys here (we didn’t), so I expect some of the monkeys just spend a lot of their day lounging by the river eating fruit that literally landed right at their feet.

In accordance with my strange tendency to be besotted with every kind of animal baby except the human baby, I squealed a bit at this.

In conversation during the drive, Alec asked if Daj knew a good place to buy muay thai shin pads and most conveniently, it turned out that Daj has been doing muay thai since he was a child. He said that for good quality shin pads we could go to Jungceylon (snazzy tourist mall at Patong) but for cheaper stuff there was a place in Phuket Town that locals would usually go. I expressed the view that we should buy shin pads at a value commensurate with the quality of Alec’s muay thai skills, so we went to Phuket Town.

The place the locals shop is called Supercheap, and is pretty fantastic. It’s in a dim, cavernous warehouse space bigger than any hypermart in Singapore, with an incredible range of choices for anything you could dream of buying. It’s difficult to capture in pictures and I didn’t wander too far from Alec and Daj while they were poring over the shin pads for fear of getting lost, but I saw electric guitars in the distance, multiple three-tiered shelves of children’s tricycles and more varieties of rice than I have ever seen in one place.

Once the boys were done with their shopping (Alec got his shin pads, Daj got craft scissors for his daughter), Daj drove us to his friend’s muay thai gym to let Alec have a look at it, but unfortunately they don’t train on Sundays so nothing was going on when we got there. The last stop before dinner was the obligatory sunset at Laem Phromthep, and Daj had got his wife and daughter to meet him there. We didn’t find the crowds detracted from the experience, though perhaps it’s different in high season, but as scenery goes I was a little underwhelmed. Sunsets are always beautiful, but this spot probably isn’t so significantly more beautiful than other sunset views in Phuket as to justify the hassle of finding a parking lot.

We ended the day in Rawai again for dinner, with fish grilled in salt, fried chicken with garlic and pepper, clear sour seafood soup, steamed rice and 2 Cokes for under 500 baht. The chicken was a disappointment (soggy) but the seafood dishes were unsurprisingly fresh and generously portioned. They initially brought us an insipid sweet’n’sour sauce with the fish so we asked for something spicier and got the proper Thai stuff. I always blame stuff like this on the white dude who goes around with me.

Finally back at the hotel, we bid farewell to Daj. For anyone who comes across this post while researching a trip to Phuket, we found him professional, cheerful and responsive to our particular requests, such as going to Supercheap for the muay thai gear, and his English is fairly good. I’m sure that finding our own way around Phuket on rented transport would have been lots of fun in a different way, but we were happy with our day with him.