Friday, February 08, 2019

Koh Lanta - Day 3

Every day we make notes for this blog, we need to look up the day and date to know where we are on the calendar.  We had a great breakfast down the street. We ordered mango sticky rice and coffee.  

Breakfast, mango sticky rice served on a huge banana leaf with a cup of coffee. The little cup on the plate is warm coconut milk.

We were full all day long except for a moment when we saw a bag of potato chips. They were balsamic vinegar, and they will be the last we eat (of that flavour) but did sound better than seaweed flavour.

We had to top up our cell phone data, that was more work than we expected.  We went to the 7-11 and asked at the cashier, she pointed to the door.  We were confused, a fellow English speaking person directed us to the ATM like machine outside.  There we attempted to reload the phone.  We could not get it to feed the paper bills into the machine, then we tried coins, no luck. We left and looked for another 7-11 and on the way we came across a mobile phone store.  We ended up getting looked after there.  

Off to the beach, on the way back to the hotel Linda bought a new wide brimmed sexy hat.  It was 250 baht, about $10.00 CAD. We then stopped off at the hotel and picked up our air mattresses. They are a pain to haul around but its definitely nice once we hit the water.  We started on the beach by our hotel but the wind was blowing the dry sand in our face so we walked about 1 km down the beach where the bay curves west and we get more protection from the wind.  Eventually Gary went down towards the main road about 2 city blocks to buy smoothies.  They are 1/2 the price of beach smoothies.  He came back with 2 mango smoothies and a pomelo segmented and ready to eat.  That was our afternoon snack. Mmmm. All of that for 120 baht or $5.00 CAD.  They are getting to know us at that store, so far we have bought sunglasses for Linda, 2 smoothies on 2 different days and fruit. Gary asked how much for the pomelo and the young gal said 50 baht but for you 20 baht!  OK, we are on the loyalty plan.

We are getting ready go for supper, and it feels like we both had enough sun for today.  We might have to find shade tomorrow which is not an easy thing to find around here.  The weather has been hot and sunny, sorry for all you people back home. Don’t forget we are heating our house just like you.  Ok, that was insensitive!  It is hot here, what can we say! Right now our biggest problem isn’t the cold weather it is who tracked the sand onto the bed?  

We both showered and there is still fine sand!  Our hotel Lanta at Home makes you take off your shoes at the street, the sand is a menace for everyone.  We learned a trick, fold the duvet all the way to the headboard. Put the pillows on top when you sit on the bed the sand stays on top of the duvet and we just shake it off to get under the sheet. Not rocket science.  

On the way to supper we stopped at an ATM and got baht.  We ended up paying 220 baht for a ATM fee ($9.31 CAD), we took he maximum out which was 20,000 baht. Tangerine charged us $2.00 CAD and the total was $883.90. Just under 2% and credit cards are typically 2.5% surcharge on foreign exchange.  

Tonight Linda had sweet and sour chicken with rice and Gary had yet another version of hot spicy chicken and cashew nuts with rice.  We met a young couple from Denmark with 2 little kids, one, 8 months and the other, 4 years old.  They’ll be in Thailand for 2 months on parental leave which is similar to maternity leave. On the way back to the hotel we stopped at the ice cream store and we ran into the Danish couple also going for ice cream.  It was pretty cute as the 4 year old was going to come and sit with us.  Gary had showed her his “broken finger trick”. 

Totally full and feeling over stuffed  🤮 we headed back to the hotel and purchased some beer to restock our fridge, we also bought aloe vera lotion and cheap sunglasses for Gary to wear in the ocean rather than his prescription ones.  Both of our old cheap sunglasses for wearing in the water got broken recently so needed replacements. Linda got a bit too much sun today, Gary too but not as bad.  We lathered with a newly purchased 30 SPF sunscreen this morning which maybe its not as good as our tried and trusted Banana Boat Sport that we typically use!      

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