What to do when it's still raining

A while back we blogged about what one can do at the hotel when it rains. But what if you don’t want a spa, don’t want a cooking lesson and don’t like watching movies?

You can pass your time reading a number of books left to us by generous guests, while sipping a specialty coffee!

Our Games Room offers a variety of games to play, including table tennis. However, if you want to borrow a game (Monopoly, Cludeo etc) to play in your room please ask Guest Relations. 

Enjoy delicious cakes and cookies at the Café Andaman or visit the newly opened Cafe Kantary at the Panwa Village over the hill.

Whilst you are there you might want to pop into the Phuket Aquarium, which is a little further down the street, and visit the turtles behind it!

Don’t forget that compared to other places in the world the rain here is warm,

 and if you do get caught in it you dry out rather quickly.

If your adventurous and hardy enough, you can even jump on a local bus and take a tour of the island or visit its 5 best view-points – you might even find that it’s not raining on the other side!

              

Thai whisky – very special…

One thing you hear and read about a lot when you live in Thailand is Thai whisky.

One of the all-time-favourite brands amongst drinkers of the local spirit is Sangsom Whisky. (Ed – not that I can taste the difference).  

When visiting a bar or nightclub in Thailand, it is common practice to bring along your own bottle of whisky and the venue will supply you with the mixer, i.e. the ice-cubes and the soda, water and coke to mix -  and this is what you pay for with a very minimal or sometimes no additional corkage fee. 

The bottle of alcohol can be left behind at the bar or club for your next visit – which does bring the drinker back!

Anyways, all this is simple BUT I must add that you can sometimes also find these bottles for sale by the roadside for a fraction of the price. They once carried alcohol but they now contain petrol and a bottle costs about 35 Baht!

So coming home late at night be careful! 

And don't get tempted by a cheap bottle on the side of the road…

              

Knitting in Thailand – trendy?

As a long-time Thai resident and regular contributor to this blog who gets the (work-related) opportunity to visit all of the Kasemij properties throughout Thailand, last week whilst I was staying at Cape Panwa I met a couple of guests who were trying to find the answer to what they felt was a conundrum – they wanted to know what the female street vendors they sometimes saw armed with spools of knitting wool and slabs of wood were doing?

What the ladies were doing is called "board knitting" - a form of "loom knitting" that has long been practiced in Thailand, but has only recently become a fashionable pastime with the more sophisticated women, both here and around the world. The guests wanted more information about this skill - at the hotel we have created a rather competent concierge to cope with the more common requests from guests but this one somehow missed their radar.

So I  tried to assist and suggested the guests ask Tim where they could purchase the equipment in order to try loom knitting as he has lived in Phuket for over ten years - luckily he was able to save the day (Ed - well Chuen his wife was).  Tim was able to find some knitting boards and spools of wool, while the guests managed to find a book of board knitting patterns.  So together they organised a special day when the guests and staff at the Front Office all had a go.

Would you like to have a go? We suggest you try making yourself a scarf and then go to visit Doi Suthep in Chiang Mai, where you can stay at the Kantary Hills – it’s colder up there.

              

The cat that waves at you wherever you go

As part of the team that writes this blog I try to be observant wherever I go, in case I can pick up something of interest to share with you readers.

courtesy of Art and Culture

I was whiling away the afternoon in a coffee shop in Phuket Town on my day off recently, without my camera; and as I looked around and I do so love the idiosyncrasies of Phuket Old Town I noticed something new.

A cat was waving at me from the counter! A smiley metallic one that is. After that I started noticing them in the shops everywhere -  in Phuket Old Town, on trendy Nimmanhaemin Road in Chiang Mai and at Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok.  I assumed (wrongly) that this cat, which waves it’s arm up and down continuously, was something of Thai or Chinese origin – I was wrong.

The cat is Japanese and is called ‘Maneki Neko’. It is also referred to as a Beckoning Cat, Welcoming Cat, Lucky Cat, Money Cat or Fortune Cat and has a massive worldwide following as well as a number of interesting tales as to its origin.

It is placed in a significant place by the shop/business owner to bring about favourable results and life success – so now we both know.

              

Something I should have done 30 years ago

"It's something I should have done 30 years ago" - over Happy Hour cocktails at Top of the Reef Tim challenged me to guess what the "something" was that a particular guest had lamented to him about earlier that morning. 

Answer: Scuba Diving.

The guest then walked into the bar and Tim introduced us. He was positively glowing as he recounted how he had wanted to take up diving some 30 years ago but had only just gotten down to it here at Cape Panwa Hotel.  

He had tried the free 'introduction to scuba' session offered by the diving company ‘Sea Bees’  in the hotel pool and was so hooked he immediately signed on for a proper beginners' course!!!  

I would have liked to introduce him to one of our regular guests Brian who was here two weeks previously. Brian went diving at Koh Racha Yai and Noi, Koh Dok Mai, Shark Point and Phi Phi and he always dives with 'Sea Bees’ – “a brilliant company” he always tells me.

Here are some of Brian’s photographs – what did you want to do 30 years ago? 

Could you do it during your trip to Phuket?