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Crackers.

Inside a Phuket tuk-tuk.

People selling "Krathongs". Loy Krathong is a festival all over Thailand, where you float these boats with candles and incence into the rivers to ask forgiveness for abusing them. It's supposed to be very pretty on some rivers, but where we were it was into a sort of drainage pond.

Much more interesting to us were the hot-air balloons being lauched.

The market at the Loy Krathong festival at Karon.

No comment.

It was pretty clear to me that locals didn't buy anything at all from any of the stores in the main towns, which are completely devoted to extracting as much money as possible from tourists. Here is how they actually get their goods, from this market-on-a-truck. You can't see it, but there is an entire meat and fish counter in the back of the truck. I didn't want to get too close, because there's a definite tension here between locals and outsiders. I didn't feel it nearly as much in Bangkok.

Tourist shops.

Housing for locals.

Now we present a series on the scourge of the tourist-trap streets all over Phuket: the tailors. These guys are never afraid to get right up in your face in some sort of strange attempt to get you to go into their store.

Yes, that is supposed to be "Chinese".

This next guy is one of the most agressive in Kata Beach. He often grabs your arm if you are ignoring him.

Here is another of the agressive tailors trying to get a Scandanavian couple to go into his shop. I love the second shot. He looks as if he has never been rejected before, and the reality of it is just sinking in. It must be rough.

I chatted him up the next day, asking him how many tailors there are in Phuket. He knew off the top of his head: 260. I asked him why there are so many, and he didn't know, but he said that many places in southeast Asia have as many. He understands that the super-agressive promotion isn't the best way to do business, but I think he feels that if he doesn't do it, the guy down the street will have a leg up on him. He said three times in our conversion that it was "not good, not good" to be so agressive, yet he does it all day long.