While Mark tells tales of naughty scheisters in Patong, I will extole the virtues of the Thais who are our hosts at Aquamarine. They have been THE NICEST people. Always polite, always friendly, and very interested in seeing us experience the Thai culture. They've helped us with our crap Thai, which is fair because their English is generally pretty crap too. Nobody cares! Everybody just repeats themselves until they're basically understood. God knows how they deal with the French, Japanese and Korean guests!
Speaking of people from other places, we have been observing with horror as the French people fry themselves to a crisp under the Thai sun. Every Thai person we talk to tells us to use sunscreen - but being from Australia, they're preaching to the converted! We are well aware of the risks of sunburn and worse - skin cancer, so we slip, slop, slap at every opportunity. When we don't have to be in the sun, we take cover.
Not so with the European guests - they spread themselves out like strips of bacon, coat themselves in oil, and proceed to fry themselves to a crisp. Yesterday I spotted one guy that was so red, I wanted to take him straight to the mini mart and get him a bottle of Aloe Vera Gel. I'm pretty sure he had first degree burns. But it's not our place, is it?
It makes me wonder what kind of sun they have in Europe? Is there a hole in the ozone layer over the Cote D'Azure? Or it that phenomenon unique to Australia? The Thai sun is definitely not as biting as the Australian sun, or even that in Vanuatu, but surely they can feel their skin burning?
So while we relocate according to where the shade is, we watch the other guests collapse the pool umbrellas to get more sun. Suddenly I am thankful to our Government for going hard on the skin cancer scare campaign. It's saved us here. That being said, we have a half day in the sun tomorrow, and a full day on Wednesday. I am praying we make it out okay. There could be nothing worse than a 10 hour flight to London with the backs of our legs burnt. Cross you fingers for us.
1 comment:
There's no hole in the ozone layer here !
And Cote d'azur is as north as Tasmania is south, if you follow me. So the sun is not that fierce.
But contrary to what you've been seeing, we also have campaigns to promote the use of sunscreen and avoid the warmest hours (12:00 - 2:00).
Some of our sunscreens look like oil, though, that's why they might look weird to you.
Post a Comment