Rain Rain Go Away
The overnight torrential rain finally let up late this morning. By 11 am we headed out to buy more fruit and other supplies like beer. We walked about 2.8 km to the largest fruit stand we have found, they have everything. We bought mandarin oranges, red dragon fruit, 30 passion fruit, a tray of peeled pomelos, watermelon, 3 mangos and 3 avocados the size of a softball, all for 940 baht. $36 CAD. We wonder if they are taking advantage of us. They tally the prices on a calculator as they weigh stuff. Actually it takes 2 calculators, one to take the weight and multiply by the price per KG, and then add all the purchases up on the second calculator. There is no till tape or receipt. Either way it’s a bargain for a weeks worth of food. Fresh tropical fruit we can’t get at home.
We stopped for lunch at Thai food by Tookky. We actually ordered Grab delivery from there one night. We happened to see the place as we were walking by and stopped in for lunch. Som Tum salad was ฿60 and vegetarian spring rolls were ฿70. The Som Tum salad contains Thai chilies, fresh garlic, dried shrimp, fish sauce, sweet palm sugar to soften the blow of the Thai chilies, peanuts, juicy limes, cherry tomatoes, green long beans, and shredded green papaya. The salad was delicious, the spring rolls were also very good. We can’t seem to make veggie spring rolls at home like the ones we get here. We also had 3 beer, not each, no. one and a half each. With all the rain it has become more humid than the bathroom shower. We were dripping wet. We could have consumed 3 beer each but we needed to be able to walk to the curb when the Grab vehicle came to take us back to the villa.
We washed all our fruit and left it to dry. We walked up the road to the little store and bought all of the locally made candied peanuts that he had on the shelf. From there we went to check out the Herb Massage a couple doors down from the Family Mart. It seemed very clean, and very empty. We asked if we could both get a massage. Originally we planned to get a foot massage but for a few ฿ extra we could get an hour long body massage. How enticing. We had walked a lot today so we twisted each other’s arm to have a fantastic massage. A generous hour long massage for us both was ฿598 or $22.89 CAD. That is not a typo, that’s for both of us. Just to be clear, the same protocol is followed here as at home. Mask on facing up, and loosened off facing down. The massage therapist wears a mask the whole time. We did have to take our mask off to drink our cup of tea. The tea was like Chai tea but maybe ginger tea, who knows, it tasted good and was hot. We got the massage gal’s phone number so the next time we want a massage we will text her for an appointment. Going back tomorrow might be too soon, but the next day is definitely in the cards. She was so thankful for the business and thrilled to think we would come back.
We walked from the massage place back to the villa, had a quick shower at the pool and went for a swim. It probably wasn’t the best idea as it seemed cold until we got swimming. We didn’t last long in the pool because it’s much colder without the sun shining. We ordered food again tonight from Grab. The Grab app is like Skip the Dishes at home, only they deliver on motor scooters here. Oh, and the deliver charge is only ฿5, that’s 19 cents CAD. Once again that is not a typo. Our Panang Curry with Chicken and steamed rice was very good.
Today we walked 5.5 km and 2 floors in elevation (20 feet). We also managed to get around today without getting wet. It was mostly a dry afternoon but it did shower a bit while we were having our massage. The humidity is nothing like we ever get at home. At 1 pm it was 26ºC with 90% humidity. At 5 pm it was 26ºC and felt like 30ºC with 86% humidity. The forecast for Sunday and Monday is a bit wet, not the 50 to 60 mm of rain per day (2 – 2.5 inches) but only up to 10 mm of rain (4 tenths an inch). We’re looking forward to some sunshine.
The last bit of news is in both the good and bad column. Last night we got an email from Cathay Pacific. Our flights home have been cancelled for the 4th time. We spent 2 hours on the phone with Cathay Pacific, we now have our new flights home booked for December 5 via Toronto (instead of Vancouver). We will hopefully land in Saskatoon Dec 6. Hopefully. If you read this far you deserve some bonus information. This past week, we booked flights back to Bangkok Thailand, departing Saskatoon on January 7, 2022, this time on Air Canada – Saskatoon > Toronto > Seoul, South Korea > Bangkok.
We have been told that Cathay is having a huge problem with flight crews being ale to work due to the severe Covid restrictions in Hong Kong. Thus the staffing shortage and maybe passenger shortage for this Hong Kong based airline. Flight crew work many shifts, possibly staying at isolated facilities between flights and going for extended work periods without going home. It seems the quarantine length has been shortened to 14 days from 21 days around the end of October 2021. The flight attendant told us it is very difficult because they are away from family for a long time.