I was only 27 when I arrived in Patong. Now that I am leaving, I feel 28. Well, that has very factual reasons, more so than emotional ones. First and foremost, it was my birthday a couple of days ago – so there you go. It’s a fact now. I survived that damn 28th year of life, the one where all the rockstars die or kill themselves. Like, you know, Hendrix, Jones, Joplin, Cobain, etc.

Well, other than purely a calendar thing – I also feel like this place has tired the hell out of me. I stayed way too long and spent way too much money.

But let me tell you this one thing – when it was fun. It was fun.

Patong beach is average at best. The place is overcrowded and nowhere in the world other than maybe Pattaya are there more sex workers per square meter. At night, the whole play turns into some magic show of naked flesh and neon light. It is fascinating at first. It does get old quite easily. There are a couple of rock bars with some decent live music. The food is overpriced like hell, and I couldn’t find any of my ‘lay-back and enjoy reggae bars’ that I so loved in Ko Lanta.

So why am I writing this post if I didn’t like it? It’s because I wanted to write about every place that I visited so Patong needs to be there.

I was there with Johannes and Naomi, we used it as our hub to explore the rest of the island. We rented an amazing flat from AirBnB and all in all, we had a lot of fun including buying a champagne bottle in the middle of the night, flirting with go-go dancers, singing with the band in rock bars, and bribing the police for not wearing a helmet on the motorbike. I was very discrete and no, I am not proud of it. I had never bribed anyone before and now am wondering whether it’s actually in my South-East-European blood. May well be. The other time the police stopped me on the road outside of Patong and searched my bike – I thought it was for drugs or something and only let me go 20 minutes later. That was scary. But no bribes or nothing required.

As about the rest of Patong – what is there to say? Phuket is beautiful and Patong is a great place to start exploring.  Would I go there again? Most likely not! Pictures to follow.