Blackpool away from home? Amazing! Well you’d think…

So, today we spent the day in the nearby town of Chaweng. Home to backpackers galore and men brandishing monkeys on the beach. We were warned by Catherine, the lovely lady who owns a nearby bistro, that it is “like Blackpool”, and we all know how much I love good old Blackypool! However Chaweng is also home to the cinema and some larger shops, so off we set this morning.

We arrived just as the sun came out (it’s been raining a lot recently) and so set off walking down the beach road. There are hundreds of market type shops, not to mention massage palours (not of the tug and rub variety, just so we’re sure), and people trying to entice you into their restaurants. We were on the lookout for a shopping centre and the Tesco/cinema complex, but after a good 40 minutes of walking, couldn’t find it anywhere, so decided on a posh smoothie at a hotel resort on the beach, and then a bit of sunbathing. The beach was…loud…to say the least. Far away from the relaxing ebbing and flowing (to quote Island Man) of the waves in Lamai, it was hard house, people trying the hard sell with ‘local goods’, obnoxious tourists and, the piece de resistance, a man brandishing a monkey, and simply stopping and shouting “Monkey!” at us. Yes, I am aware that you have a primate hanging round your neck, but you’re in my light…so….

The trip was not all bad though – it’s good to get out and explore different parts of the island, and I got 2 bikinis for 15 buff, so, silver lining n all that! In other news, we’re off out for fish this evening and hoping to get a scooter this weekend to get to the west of the island, which is by all accounts supposed to be idyllic. No more Blackypool hopefully! Plus there’s no Pleasure Beach, and basically Blackpool without the Pleasure Beach is simply a large, loud, flashing toilet full of pink feather boas, and no one wants that as a holiday destination now do they?