Ode De Puke-ette

We have spent almost a week in Thailand, in a beach town called Phuket. (Said foo-ket) We have experienced the most odiferously offensive days of our lives. It truly deserves its own chapter in Dante's Inferno. The smells boast amazing pungency and variety so as to boggle the mind. Use your imagination and explore with me some of our favorites.

By far the most frequent and gag-reflex-inducing is the sewage. Sometimes it wafts up from open grates in the sidewalk while other times it blows in from seemingly nowhere to engulf the senses.

Far less frequent and offensive is the traveler's body odor. This is usually a quick flash as you cross paths with a fellow tourist and is gone before your eyes water.

Another category which shouldn't be horrifying (but really is) is the Asian food concentration areas. This is where many vendors in a small, unventilated area, are cooking odd and disturbing foods which the western palate can only shrink away from. After stumbling into one of these areas, you can generally see them coming and can avoid being engulfed by their stench.

Then there is the standard trash dumpster foulness. I think we have all been attacked by that odor, however there is the lovely additions of heat and humidity which bakes this special concoction to a heightened ripeness.

Finally, there is that grand smell of sea side places across the globe: the fish market. Somehow this town takes the fish market smell as a pleasant one, and it seems it can pop up anywhere. (Even in the ultra-modern, beautiful, air conditioned shopping mall we've frequented.) I am especially susceptible on this odor which has brought bile to my throat many times in the last few days.

So that has been our time in Puke-ette. Cataloging the olfactory offerings of this equatorial hot spot. Tomorrow we get on our cruise. Yay!!! Similan Islands, Sri Lanka, and India here we come! Today we stopped at the grocery store to stock up on a few snacks for the trip. We found our standard travel staples: Oreos and Pringles. The Pringles offered a slightly different taste than normal; two of the featured flavors were soft shell crab and seaweed. Seriously. Need I say more?