First Stop Breakfast,

in the Sandwich Shoppe,

just round the corner we stopped off there for breakfast,

nice and clean we all stoked up for the rigours of the day, we decided to take a look at the Phuket equivalent of Walking Street in the day light,

lots of new buildings,

the first of a few go-go bars, but no where near as many as Pattaya, also they tend to be in one street only,

but this is the rage out here, making the bars look like caves with theme scenes on top of them,

like the unpainted lion and painted tiger,

this one still under construction, getting ready for the high season,

in Walking Street itself some have already been finished,

like this one,

or here,

complete with tiger,

although small mini buses these are referred to as tuk-tuks,

the view along the main rows of go-gos, with beer bars in the middle,

at the end Suzy Wong's,

I am not sure if this one has any thing to do with the one in Pattaya,

there are new hotels all around here,

like this one, the Kee Hotel,

also many designer spirits bars,

most of this brought about by the events of 2004,

in the next street another few new ventures,

complete with Predator and Alien, not sure about the donkey/horse,

then time for a quick beer,

and a look at the beach,

surf's up,

we are making our way towards Tritrang beach, but we stopped to take a picture of the canal,

over on the other side of the bridge,

we then arrived at the beach resort, this drive is not for the faint hearted, the roads are narrow and twisty, not to mention some are so steep it is almost impossible to drive up them on a bike if fully loaded,

a nice restaurant over looks the sea,

clean sand,

and plenty of chairs to chose from, but you can only sit here if you have purchased a meal,

the resorts shrine,

I thought I could see an aquarium at the end of the restaurant so I went to have a look,

it held two Alligator Gars, Atractosteus spatula,

so called because of their alligator like snout, this tank is way to small for them, in the wild they can grow to nearly 3 meters!

notice the needle sharp teeth, they eat other fish so they need to pierce the slime and scales of their prey first time every time,

we then made our way to the Buddha being constructed on the top of the forest in the Nakkerd Hills between Chalong and Kataat Laem Phromthep, there will in fact be two Buddha images, a smaller one, 12 metres high, made of 22 tons of brass and costing 8 million baht, was completed a while ago,

the other is the giant Buddha image, which will face eastward toward Chalong Bay and Phang Nga Bay beyond, when finished, the Phra Puttamingmongkol Akenakkiri Buddha – to give it its official name – will be 45 meters high and 25 meters across at the base,

the site is ongoing, with many pictures of the work so far,

with many pre production drawings on display,

like this one,

the image itself is nearly complete,

but there still is alot of work to do to the surrounding area,

the image is made up of thousands of marble tiles,

work still in progress,

inside one of the temple rooms a bag of 37 coins can be purchased,

one is placed in each of the bowls I guess for good luck,

at the far end there is a shrine,

where prayers can be made,

there are many images there,

we next took a walk to the top of the hill,

over looking the bay, looking over the green roof,

towards the top of the picture there is a row of red roofs,

one of them is Jeff's, 'I can see your house from here!',

we then made our way to the front at the base of the image,

where there was alarge bell, Da stuck it first,

followed by Jeff,

and Diana,

the dragons surporting the bell were quiet ornate,

would they have been cast in one I wonder?

in any event a lot of work went into the making of it,

under the Buddha there are many bronze statues,

a close up of one of them,

there are also two statues at the entrance to the rooms that will be inside,

the bronze Buddha,

this is a model of what the site shoild look like when work is compleated,

there was also another shrine,

I belive it is the Hindu God Ganesh,

this is one of the surrounding pieces in the process of being finished,

lighted candles and donations can be left here,

there are many shrines on the way down from the viewing level,

like this one,

the view looking over the bay,

in Hindu belief Goddess Ganga was a celestial being and descended on Earth on the request of the great king Bhagirath to relieve his ancestors and find them a place in heaven, this is a shrine to Her as she rides her mount the magara (crocodile), I am wondering if this is her?

we had finished our visit so on the way back we stopped at one of the many rroadside picnic bars,

lovely view, we were waiting for the sun to set,

coconut shake for Diana,

orange for Da,

I decided to try to be artistic,

I had visions of these two bamboos siloeted against a firery red sunset, but it never hapened,

we had a quick look at one of the many elephant trecking places on the way down, but then home shave and shower, then we were out.