January 22, 2020
Things were a little low keyed here today. We walked down the beach before it got unbearably hot. The hottest part of the day we spent on our deck, we went for an occasional swim in the pool to keep cool.
We got our 1/2 watermelon out of the fridge, and darned if it wasn’t frozen. Our mango and passionfruit also got froze a bit. We ate the remaining watermelon and it sure was cold, it still tasted refreshing in the heat. Late this afternoon we asked at the front desk about the local market. It is too far to walk and the manager said she would give us a ride for free in their tuk tuk because they needed a vegetable run. We grabbed our shopping bag and headed off in their tuk tuk. Wish we could have taken some pictures, but we were a little pressed for time. We bought a watermelon 72 baht, 4 kgs, $3.35 CAD. We bought a huge bag of passionfruit, a total of 23 passionfruit, also 2 kg, for 120 baht, $5.16 CAD. That’s 22 cents CAD each. Compare that to $1.25 to $1.50 each at home in Saskatoon. And, they are twice as big here than at home and much juicier. Finally we bought a kg of mandarin oranges. They were 60 baht, $2.60 CAD.
We got our stash in the fridge, which by the way is now having a hard time to keep up. The room gets hot during the day when we are out as the air conditioning is off. Maybe by morning it will have everything chilled to a non freezing cool. We keep our room at 28º – 30º during the day if we are inside and a cool 25º after we get under the duvet which is fairly thin by Canadian standards.
Once we had the fruit stashed we each ordered a mango smoothie and took it to the restaurant and ordered supper. Linda had red curry chicken and Gary had the same as last night, stir fried chicken with cashew nut. It cost us 228 baht, $9.79 CAD.
We walked to the corner store for some more beer. Before we bought the beer we continued down the street looking at different restaurants. We were tempted by the ice cream store but didn’t really have any appetite left. We did scope to find the busiest restaurants and took notice. It’s a good way to know which places are good. We walked by one restaurant that was empty, the waitress was outside sitting on her scooter smoking a cigarette. Gary said her job security looked bleak.
It’s barely 9 pm and we are ready for bed. The heat and humidity is very tiring, especially when you throw in a couple of beer. As we sit in our room, the outdoor bar across the street has live music, they are playing Sweet Caroline, very popular music over here.
You should find a couple of video links below. One is a fast motion (hyperlapse) walk down the beach, the other is a look at the surf, rocks and sand.