garyandlinda – Page 8 – saskatoonie.com

November 15, 2021November 16, 2021

Big Buddha Phuket

The front entrance to Lady Naya Villas. We were standing here waiting for a Grab when a scooter went by with 2 people on it. Check it out!

We started the day with some sunshine. However, before we were done breakfast the skies opened up again. It’s starting to look like a massage day today.

Yesterday was overcast but it didn’t rain all day which allowed us to walk 5.7 km. We made a couple of trips up the hill and even walked to the Little Persian Restaurant where we had Falafel Wraps for supper. They were delicious. We sat around for a while and ended up visiting with the only other patrons in the restaurant. He was from Iran and she was from Belarus. They live in Thailand full time. Interesting talking to them. The woman from Belarus spoke perfect English. And, yes, she has heard of Alberta and their Covid fiasco.

With the outlook so rainy we decided to book a Thai massage. We messaged Pa, the therapist Gary had last time, and we ended up booking for the two of us at 6 pm. Not exactly our ideal pick of times.

Once the sun came out we ordered a Grab to take us to the Big Buddha. It cost ฿172. We did wonder if we would ever be able to get a Grab back to the villas when we were done. It’s a long way to the Big Buddha up a twisty road! In the end after walking around the Big Buddha site it cost us ฿600 to get a taxi back to Rawai, it was cheaper than Grab at ฿638. Once they have you up there it’s a captive market. Literally. It’s a mile up and miles from anywhere!

It’s a very interesting structure. It is giant! We got a few good pictures and some video while we were there. We also purchased a tile as a donation to help maintain and rebuild the Buddha. You write your name on the back and it will be used on the upgrade. We also were blessed by a monk. He does a chant and places a bracelet on each of our wrists, Linda’s on the left wrist and Gary’s on the right wrist. He then did a blessing using some palm frond tied together and dipped in water. We both were bowing our heads trying to keep our glasses dry!!

We had the taxi back from the Buddha drop us at Thai Food by Tookky. An order of chicken satay and vegetable spring rolls and a couple of soda waters helped to fill us up a bit. The weather started to look rather threatening again, so we headed out hiking down the road to the massage place. We had to break out the umbrellas shortly after we started and walked thru a gentle rainfall, thankfully the sky didn’t open up. While we were a bit damp when we arrived they weren’t too worried we were a few minutes early. Both our massage girls, Pa and Fang arrived just minutes after we did and before we knew it we were getting our Thai massage. They did an amazing job!! The owner Oi, told us she owns the Sports Massage across the street also and opened Herb Massage this year. Herb Massage is very small, only two massage beds and two chairs. She uses Herb Massage as a teaching spa and actually lives in the back. She said it is very convenient to be able to be back and forth between the two locations. While she said this was a teaching spa, we certainly never felt the massage therapists were anything but proficient. We both had excellent massages and will be back again!

After our massage we hiked home, stopping at our favourite little locally owned shop to pick up some more soda water. His wife was on the till tonight and she warmly welcomed us, her husband was in the back part and he called out his greeting. They certainly recognize us and know us. We’ve totally wiped out their supply of locally produced candied peanuts and brittle and they’d had to restock the water and beer cooler multiple times after our visit. We are happy to support a small local business who has likely found it very difficult in the past year with fewer tourists and less money in locals pockets.

We had a good outing, we always wondered if it was going to rain on us. Weather! The other unknown is whether you can get a Grab or not. Now we have been here for a while, we are re-thinking the whole rental car idea as we have seen how the traffic moves. Red lights are just a suggestion and if you slow down you best be putting your 4-way blinkers on. Maybe we’ll rent a car next time. Driving on the left side of the road is backwards for us.

November 13, 2021November 13, 2021

Humid

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.

November 10, 2021November 10, 2021

Cloudy

It was hot and cloudy today. After having a couple days with periods of rain in the evening, the clouds make us a bit hesitant to venture too far from our villa. We finally decided to go for a walk but we did haul around umbrellas just for insurance. We walked around the neighbourhood and inspected a few new construction sites. There is a huge 4 bedroom villa going up behind Lady Naya. Since it’s built on a steep hill there is a lot of excavation and concrete pillars being erected.

Out of sheer boredom we walked to OB.OON for something cold and wet. See the pictures below. Linda had a Passion Fruit Soda and Gary had a Passion Fruit Smoothie.

We also ordered Caesar Salads because it was 11am, time for an early lunch while we were out.

Linda’s Soda was 70฿, Gary’s Smoothie 80฿, Caesar Salads each 89฿, total = 328฿ or $12.45 CAD for lunch.

After the light lunch we walked farther in search of restaurant options for tonight. The rain continued to stay away. We still hung on to the umbrellas! According to the weather radar the main rain clouds were moving from east to west just north of us across the north end of Phuket.

We found a few places to eat, one of them, The Little Bamboo is fairly close, the other one, Kallot’s Restaurant is about twice as far to walk. They both have excellent reviews. The Little Bamboo does not sell alcohol but they do sell inexpensive fruit smoothies. We walked back towards our villa.

Spirit Houses

There is a little doll house sized shrine at the entrance to our Villa complex. These little structures are very common in Thailand where Buddhism is practiced by up to 90% of the people. Thailand has the second largest Buddhist population in the world. These dollhouse size structures are known as “Spirit Houses”. They are miniature temples raised on pillars, they can be simple or heavily decorated, and made of wood, concrete or brick. Apparently these miniature temples are constructed by an expert, and placed in a location where they will never fall in the shadow of the main building. Often, the property owner will call upon a Brahman priest, or sometimes a Buddhist monk, familiar with the rituals to assist. The priest will also perform a formal ceremony to invite the guardian spirits into their dwelling.

Offerings are made daily, in the form of incense, candles, flowers, food and drink. It is possible to see food ranging from pork and rice to heaping plates of fresh fruit and water to sweets or crisps packets, always arranged neatly, often with cutlery and straws provided.

As a matter of fact while we were looking at restaurants in town, one of the ladies we encountered was lighting sticks of incense just outside her restaurant.

When we got back to the villa we hit the pool. Can you believe it was actually cool?

We read for the rest of the afternoon. It was still rain free by 5 pm so we walked to the Little Bamboo Restaurant. We had chicken with vegetables and cashew nuts, fried chicken with holy basil, mango smoothies and soda water. The cost of our meal with tip was 300฿, about $11.40 CAD. Definitely a bargain.

On the way back to the villa we stopped at the little store and bought 8 bottles of soda water, and many bags of local candied peanuts and peanut brittle for snacks. The funniest part was when the store guy said “what, no beer today?”, we laughed and Gary patted his stomach and said he was getting fat. The store owner thought that was pretty funny. In reality, we have enough beer in the fridge, partly because today we didn’t drink any. Must be the cloudy weather.

The pandemic has caused a huge hardship on the Thai economy. We are doing our best to help the local economy by eating at these street corner little hole in the wall restaurants. While the meals we have been eating are a bargain for us, they are also a lifeline for the local restaurant owners and staff.

Just across the street from our villa is this building that used to be a massage parlour. Everyone knows how good a Thai Massage is. There are plenty of places boarded up for lack of customers now. Even the more sketchy massage parlours with ladyboys offering their services are really slow. We know this by walking by a handful of these sleazier places every day. Their attendants (politest word we could think of) are sitting out front fixing their nails or makeup as we walk by. Some say hello, most don’t, at least not to us.

November 9, 2021November 9, 2021

Visa Day

We are off to Phuket Town for a Visa run

Yesterday we got all of the required documents for a Thai visa extension photocopied and organized. We are so thankful for Marisa’s guidance and for printing all of the required forms we needed. Today Andrew drove us to the immigration department in Phuket Town. We stood in line for about 10 minutes to present our documents to the information clerk. He was an older gentleman and he was not Thai. All guesses are he is a French citizen retired in Thailand doing volunteer work. He sorted our papers, had us sign one of them, write out email address and phone number and then he stapled them all together. He even stapled our passport photo that we had done at CAA in Saskatoon before we left. We suspected we might need a passport quality picture. Call it intuition, or maybe internet. Either way, once our original return flight got cancelled we knew we were going to stay longer than the allowed 30 days that Canadians are allowed to stay for free. Too bad it’s so complicated. We wish Thailand had a 90 day visa on arrival like Malaysia has.

We were eventually called (by the number he assigned us) to the immigration counter. This was a bit confusing because the plexiglass, masks, accents and soft spoken Thais all contribute to make hearing what is being said very difficult to understand. As well we each had to sign every single sheet of paper we submitted, and pay 1900฿, (Thai baht) which is $72 CAD. We each handed over 2-1000฿ notes and returned to the waiting area. Once again we were called to the immigration counter where we were photographed. Then back to the waiting area. Finally we were called up to retrieve our passports, our visa paper and our 100฿ change. It wasn’t that hard, but without the guidance of Marisa and Andrew we would have had to make 2 trips to town. Marisa knew which papers to print out for us. She definitely knows her stuff! One last thing, our extension is good for 30 days, we only needed 4 days but it’s the same price either way!

For lunch we walked up the hill to a Russian restaurant. We ordered borscht that came with a slice of bread. The borscht was good, but not as good as Linda makes. This is Gary speaking, just to be clear!

We walked farther up the street to the Family Mart, where we bought some mixed nuts, cashews and a few Tiger beer (Tiger is a brand we prefer). We stopped at the little store on the way back to our villa and stocked up on fizzy water, a few Chang beer and some local Thai peanut brittle. The soda water is very refreshing and is good to rehydrate. While the Chang beer is not our favourite, its still ok and the guy running the little store needs the business. On days like today, any beer tastes pretty good.

Did we mention it hit a balmy 32º here today? Yes, very warm and humid. You notice it feels like 37º ? We can attest to the feel like temperature today. We stumbled back to the villa, sat inside and read for a while to cool off. Later we sat in the pool until our blood got below boiling temperature. While it was very hot today, the sun disappeared behind clouds after we got back to the villa.

The pictures below don’t really show the flower attached to the palm tree that well. It is amazing, it just lives in the coconut tied to the tree.

We haven’t made plans for tomorrow yet as the last few days it has rained later in the day. It’s best to make plans when we know what the sky looks like in the morning. The forecast is calling for sun, cloud and possible showers for the next few days. As of 7:30 pm today it has not rained. That said it looks threatening enough that we are ordering our supper via Grab tonight, again. Ordering meals via Grab is very economical as the food is delivered by an individual on a motor scooter! We are trying a new Thai place tonight so will see how it goes! The whole meal including delivery, 385฿, about $14.75. That would include Massaman Curry, Penang Chicken Curry, 2 Mango Smoothies and one complimentary plate of mango and fruit (complimentary for spending over 300฿). The fruit consisted of one whole mango and one half of a pineapple. The pineapple was peeled which was the best part. That’s a tedious job. Now we have extra fruit for breakfast tomorrow! What can you get delivered to your home in Canada for under $15 CAD including a tip?

November 7, 2021November 7, 2021

Pool Day

Lady Naya Villas - Pool Day

We have a whole month here so no rush to be at the beach every day. It was nice to just lay around the pool in the shade and read. The shade moved away and we had full sun so we ended up in the pool. By 4 pm the shade was moving back to our lounge chairs. Maybe the shade moving back was a bad sign of things to come.

Little Persian Restaurant

The Little Persian is a 15 minute walk from our villa. We headed out for supper a bit after 6 pm. There were a few clouds but mostly blue sky. We saw lightning way off to the North. While we were eating a fantastic meal the rain started.

The pickles you see above were homemade and delicious. We also had a Shiraz Salad to share which consisted of diced tomatoes, onions and cucumber with a deliciously seasoned tangy lime based dressing. We each had an order of Chicken Kebab with rice. They were huge and we should have only ordered one to share. We have 1/2 leftover for tomorrow. For dessert we had Baklava, also homemade and very tasty. By this time the rain was coming down hard.

We were unable to walk back to our villa and we could not get a Grab. In fact the Grab vehicles are hit and miss here, especially at supper time. We finally contacted Lady Naya Villas and begged for a ride Andrew was kind enough to come get us. Yes it was still raining. While we were waiting for Andrew we visited with the owner. He is from Tehran and has lived here 5 years. By then we had actually moved inside the restaurant from the outdoor seating area as the wind was driving the rain in where we had been seated. The owner whose name is Hojet gave us a plate of amazing shortbread cookies to nibble on. Yes, the cookies were also homemade. A coffee would have been perfect but we wanted to sleep tonight. Last night was the first really great sleep we have had since turning our clocks upside down. Phuket is 13 hours ahead of Saskatoon.

We think Andrew is going to take us to the Thai immigration office tomorrow to extend our Visa. We only have a 30 day ViSA because our original return flight was to depart November 28 but it got cancelled and our return date is now December 3. Hopefully!

November 6, 2021November 6, 2021

Phuket Day 6 – Our COVID test day

Kermit the Frog

Last night we found Kermit outside our villa. The video below doesn’t really show the size of the frog.

Stick up the nose day!

This morning Andrew (Lady Naya Villa operator) took us for our second and final covid test to complete the Phuket Sandbox. We will need one last test to head back to Canada. We’ll worry about that at the end of November. The test today was done at the Kata test station, at Kata Beach. They only swab one nostril where as the Phuket Airport testers do both. They do go very deep just the same. We can check results before 10 pm today. Twelve hour turn around tests were just under $100 CAD that’s about 38% of what we paid is Saskatoon. Haztech in Saskatoon may charge way more but they don’t violate your nasal cavity quite so deep, just your pocketbook!

Andrew drove us around a bit including through old town Phuket. It is very scenic Sino-Portuguese architecture. This style is also known as Chinese Baroque, Straits eclectic architecture or Peranakan architecture which is an Asian hybrid style incorporating Chinese and Portuguese architectural styles. The style is very similar to the construction found in Georgetown, Penang Malaysia.

We got back to the villa shortly before the sky opened up. We sat around and ate avocado for lunch with a coffee. The sun came out around 2pm, the temperature was 31º and sticky humid. What better time than to hike up the hill to the Family Mart store! Part way there we stopped at a small locally owned shop and checked beer prices and bought 2 ice cream treats for 30 TB or $1.12 CDN, yes for both. At that price and location, we’ll be back again. From there we finished the hike to Family Mart and bought snacks and a few food items then it was back down the hill towards our villa. We stopped back in at the local shop and bought beer so we didn’t have to lug it as far. The owner asked if we wanted to open a can to which we replied “no.” Although, once we stepped outside we noticed he had a table and umbrella and some seats out front so Gary scooted back in and bought a couple more beer that we enjoyed at the table before hauling all our purchases home.

Supper tonight saw us catching a Grab and heading to Kata Beach to Highway Indian Curry Restaurant, an Indian/Thai restaurant. The gal driving the Grab had her two year old in the front seat with a baby bottle, some toys and a small tablet playing kids video and songs. She did comment how slow tourism has been and they are hopeful that more people will start to arrive. Supper was excellent, we enjoyed onion bhaji, chicken tikka masala, steamed rice and garlic naan.

Once we had paid the waiter we opened the Grab app. It took us quite some time to finally book a Grab for our ride home. It turned out it was the same gal and her little child who picked us up again! She actually was a great driver. It was a very twisty and winding road with lots of sharp curves and steep hills. The terrain in this area is quite rough with steep hills and jungle.

Gary checked when we got home and no covid results back yet. If we can stay up long enough we’ll likely find out by 10, if not we’ll find out in the morning. We aren’t too worried as we have been very cautious and we are both feeling great.

Just before 9pm, only 11 hours after our test we logged in to view our COVID test results. Guess what?

November 5, 2021November 5, 2021

Karon and Nai Harn

Karon Viewpoint and Nai Harn Beach

The usual for breakfast! We were surprised to cut into a dragon fruit and find the flesh red. We have seen those before but the previous ones we bought here were white. The red ones are better! We also had bananas, mango and passion fruit.

Today we looked at flight options to come back to Thailand in the new year. Can you believe that seat availability in January is disappearing? Life here is great, who wouldn’t want to return during our Saskatchewan winter? We’ll talk about that another day, but one way or another we will be coming back!

Today is sunny and warm, or should we say HOT. Many would call 30ºC with 85% humidity hot. We think it’s perfect. Both of us are finding the arthritis much better.

As we said before, the couple running this complex is beyond fantastic. Andrew offered to take us to the beach in Nai Harn. Along the way he took us to Karon Viewpoint which was quite impressive. We have a short video we uploaded to share below.

We spent the day at Nai Harn Beach and likely got too much sun. We were in the shade of the umbrella the whole time we were on the beach. The water was so inviting despite it’s limited cooling effect. We spent a lot of time bobbing around in the surf. The beach was busier today, probably due to slightly relaxed requirements to enter Thailand that started the day after we arrived. As of November 1 only one covid test is required on arrival at the airport. Since we arrived October 29, we need to have our second test tomorrow, Saturday November 6, which is our sixth day here. Wow how time flies. We are 99.9% sure we will test negative again because we feel fine. Actually, our villa has such great cleaning standards we feel pretty safe. Remembering back to our last trip, by the middle of March 2020 we were unsure if touching any surface in our hotel in Kuala Lumpur was even safe. Here at Lady Naya Villas the opposite is true. The cleaning here is great, when we return to the room after being out we can smell the clean!

Tonight we ate at Thai Curry & Seafood. This is our third meal here. Gary ordered king mackerel fried fish with Thai sauce, and Linda ordered massaman curry chicken. We both had mango smoothies and soda water. It cost 460฿ – $17.25 CAD. Linda’s massaman curry was so flavourful with real coconut milk, it was amazing. Gary’s meal was also very good, but the curry beat it out for flavour! While we were eating it started pouring down rain. Considering we walked to the restaurant, we were relieved it hadn’t started any earlier and soaked us.

After we ate, we walked down the street to the huge fruit market. We bought 40 passion fruit (3 Kg), 3 huge avocados and 2 dragon fruit. It cost us $19.40 CAD. That many passion fruit would cost $60 CAD back home and they would be 1/2 the size and no where near as juicy or tasty.

Another great day in Thailand is almost over.

Life is good here.

November 4, 2021November 4, 2021

A Slow Day

We had a bad sleep last night. Wouldn’t you know it, we had 2 phone calls. One at 9:30 pm from our VISA credit card fraud department to notify us that our card has been used in Thailand. Yes, we got that straightened out fast. It was our hotel booking for the next 1 week, $345 CAD for 7 nights. The second call at 3:49 am was from a business Linda deals with, they were just checking their client file and wanted to update things. We didn’t tell her she woke us up in Thailand. Our VOIP phone line is amazing, it sends our calls anywhere in the world.

Breakfast was our usual smorgasbord of fruit, mangos, pineapple and passion fruit today. We enjoyed a Skype call with Linda’s Mom, June. Technology is great for keeping in touch and the ability to do face-to-face calls is great. We chatted with other family last night too. Later we walked up the road about 15 minutes to a coffee shop for an early lunch. We have a video of our adventure below.

Our afternoon was pretty low key, between Gary’s toe he sprained bothering him a bit and little sleep last night we hung out at our villa, surfed the web a bit, read some books and basically relaxed.

Our outing for supper using the Grab app turned out to be a gong show. We had typed in the name of the restaurant we wanted to go to. The driver took us to the address the app indicated and was supposed to be right but there was no restaurant there! Go figure! It didn’t help that the driver spoke no English and we can’t read Thai. After a lot of head scratching and searching google and apple maps we made a plan to get back to the fruit market that we felt was near the restaurant we were looking for. Turns out the restaurant goes by several name variations – Lynn’s Mexican and Mexican Plus! We’d originally put in Lynn’s Mexican and ended up on a taxi ride to no where we wanted to be and had we typed in Mexican Plus we’d have got to the place we needed to be! Things could be worse, we only spent $3 on our ride and hour or so wandering the streets of Rawai Beach. If nothing else, we saw some more of the area and did confirm a few landmarks

Our Mexican supper was pretty tasty. A short hike had us back to the Family Market where we picked up a huge bottle of water and then back to the fruit market. We stocked up on more mangos, bananas, passion fruit, avocado, pineapple and a watermelon for $13 CAD. The fruit here is amazing! We managed to get another Grab back to our villa. Originally we had debated about renting a car. Everyone always says rent a scooter but neither one of us feel that this is the time in our life to start riding a scooter particularly in an unfamiliar area and driving on the wrong side of the road to boot! After a few days here, we’ve decided renting a car isn’t high on our list and with the inexpensive Grab rides we could manage just fine. Even with tonight’s fiasco with the address we are still money ahead not to mention the stress of driving here. Our ride from Rawai Beach back to where we wanted to be was quite an adventure down some narrow side streets. One near miss wiping out a scooter on a blind curve and we were glad to be spectators. There is a huge part of Rawai that has narrow streets and tons of little restaurants. There are Tsunami Hazard Zone signs along the whole area. This is the exact area where a tsunami washed ashore December 26, 2004.

November 2, 2021November 5, 2021

Nai Harn Beach

We made our own breakfast and it was great. Banana, dragon fruit, mango and passion fruit. The mango just dissolved in our mouth it was so juicy and tender. We sit outside on our tiny deck to eat breakfast. It is so humid and warm. Speaking of humid, we had a thunder storm last night with a crack of thunder that woke us up around midnight. The cement was wet this morning from the rain.

After breakfast we walked to Nai Harn Beach. It took us about an hour. It was our first walk to the beach and maybe our last. Gary stubbed his toe wearing flip flops. Luckily he can still walk but his toe is blue. The reason we walked is to get a good feel for the area, restaurants and fruit and vegetable markets. We did find an awesome market to buy fruit on the way home. It will require some walking from the beach on the way back to our villa. We are probably some of the few tourists that walk anywhere! The manager of our villa said no one walks in Thailand, it’s either a scooter or vehicle.

Nai Harn is one of the nicest beaches we have been to in Thailand. It definitely ranks in the top. It is located in a bay that is very protected. It’s not huge, as in miles and miles long, but just perfect. The water was crystal clear and bath tub warm. The sand is fine and soft. The dry areas of sand were too hot to stand on comfortably, especially with a purple toe.

We spent over an hour in the water bobbing up and down on the waves. There is enough surf action to make it fun but not dangerous. We rented 2 lounge charis with an umbrella for the day, the cost was 200 baht, that’s $7.50 CAD. The guy made us sign in with our name and phone number and nationality to be used for covid tracing. The Thai’s have a good handle on things here. That includes wearing a mask outside when near others which may be overkill but at least we are here to enjoy ourselves. The lounge chairs are spaced far enough apart that masking is not required. Same applies in the water.

The Lady Naya Villas are operated by a very helpful couple. The have gone out of their way to make our stay perfect. Tonight Andrew offered to drive us into Rawai and drop us off at a very nice restaurant that he recommended. The restaurant name is Nakita’s. Linda had Penang Curry with chicken and Gary had Prawns with Cashew Nut. Both meals were delicious. Linda asked for spicy but the waitress had it toned down because she didn’t believe she could eat the spicy version.

After supper we walked to the nearby Family Mart, a somewhat glorified 7-11 and picked up a few beer and some plastic wrap to have on hand for all the fruit we have. Our little fridge at the villa is getting full, a crisper draw full of passion fruit, a watermelon, mangos, dragonfruit, beer and bottled water. Pretty much all we need! 21 passion fruit, one pineapple and 2 dragon fruit were $10 CAD. Just an FYI, the passion fruit are the size of a small apple versus the ones you can but in Saskatoon for $1.50 each that are the size of an average size kiwi.

We caught a Grab home from Rawai Beach where we were for supper. It was 93 THB ($3.47 CDN) which is a great deal as we certainly weren’t walking home again with Gary’s sore toe and Linda has a spot that sand and sandal rubbed. Tomorrow might just be a pool day!

November 1, 2021November 1, 2021

Phuket Sandbox

A New Adventure

On September 22 we booked flights with Cathay Pacific from Saskatoon to Phuket Thailand via Vancouver. We originally were scheduled to leave Saskatoon October 29 and return November 28. Our plans were changed when our return flight was cancelled which forced us to stay 3 days longer. Boo hoo, we are scheduled to depart December 1 and arrive in Saskatoon December 2. Actually, more on that later as our return flight home is cancelled.

We booked with Cathay Pacific because of their exceptional customer service. It seems like once a week we are getting schedule changes. Not just Cathay, but our Air Canada segment from Saskatoon to Vancouver as well. Flying in a covid world has added a new dimension of complexity. For example, before you can enter Thailand (as of October 1, 2021) we needed to book our airline passage, book covid insurance and apply for a COE – Certificate of Entry to Thailand from the Thai Consulate in Vancouver. We uploaded the documents for our Passports, insurance and our vaccination status. Once pre-approved we booked our first week of SHA Plus accredited hotel in Phuket and two covid PCR tests each, one on arrival in Phuket and one for the sixth day. Once all of the conditions were met and approved for the COE we got our approval email and downloaded our Certificate of Entry to Thailand. It includes our Passport numbers, flights numbers, dates of transit, and name of our hotel (Lady Naya Villas) in order to enter the Phuket Sandbox.

The complexity of the Phuket Sandbox is daunting but not really all that difficult. The Thai Consulate in Vancouver has been extremely helpful and informative.

Our final step before departure is a negative RT-PCR test. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is a laboratory technique combining reverse transcription of RNA into DNA (in this context called complementary DNA or cDNA) and amplification of specific DNA targets using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). You got that, right?

Now for the tricky part. You need a negative covid PCR test 72 hours (3 days) before departure. That would mean before your first flight, unless your first flight is domestic. Guess what? We leave Saskatoon at 6pm on October 29, then we hang around Vancouver for about 5 hours. We actually depart Vancouver at 2 am Saskatoon time. We arranged for our Covid test to be 72 hours before our flight departing Canada, which is what is required but no one makes it easy to find that level of information. In fact we were told by Cathay that 72 hours before initial departure on the first flight of the ticket. Not exactly correct.

We arrived at the Saskatoon airport at 2:45 pm, about 3 hours before departure. We presented our binder of travel documents to the Air Canada agent in Saskatoon. We are the first people he has checked in for Thailand in a long long time. There was a short lineup at security and they made Gary open up everything he had in his carry on case. Both of us were swabbed with their sniffer for whatever it is they are looking for. Drugs? Explosives? We didn’t ask.

Both of us, are loaded to the nuts. The extra things you need to carry for COVID are bulky and heavy too. We have extra hand sanitizer and about 30 spare masks in our carry-on.

Our trip started out on the wrong foot. We arrived at Saskatoon Airport about 3 hours before its scheduled departure. We proceeded to board the plane on time. We moved out onto the tarmac and sat. And sat. Finally we were informed that a computer wasn’t working. They rebooted it which takes 15 minutes. Eventually we had sat there for about 45 minutes. Finally back to the gate and we had to we disembarked. They had to refuel the plane and reset the computer. They tried several times, each time shutting down the power and waiting. They shut off the plane completely and the pilots went for coffee. They came back and finally got the computer started properly. They had to file a new flight plan. We boarded and took off about 3 hours and 15 minutes late. We made it to Vancouver and grabbed some A&W food. Please don’t hate us for that, it was the only place open and closed right after we got our order!

We checked in at gate D68. All connecting passengers had to provide their documents. We were well organized with our binder full of paper. We got to sit some more, waiting to board, but not as long as we would have had to wait if the computers on the previous plane worked better. We looked forward to a 13 hour and 35 minute flight to Hong Kong. We should make our next flight to Phuket because there is an 11 hour layover. This flight to Hong Kong will depart 10 hours and 30 minutes after our friend Peggy dropped us off at the Saskatoon Airport.

Our 13 1/2 hour flight from Vancouver to Hong Kong was was comfortable. We flew in an A-350-900 which is the Airbus equivalent of the Boeing Dreamliner. We slept about half of the flight. We arrived in Hong Kong to an absolutely empty airport early in the morning HK time. The layover went fine, we ate a few snacks and wandered around the airport. Hot lemon tea was the best thing for the dry throat from flying. Our flight to Phuket departed at 4:15pm but due to the time change between HK and Phuket we arrived after 8pm, it was a 3 hour flight. We saw a glimpse of our first Thai sunset on approach to Thailand.

The well oiled machine of the Phuket Sandbox worked flawlessly. We got off the plane, herded onto a room with rows and rows of plastic chairs. We were swarmed with staff all suited up that came and checked our documents, then we went through the health check document station. Then through a pre-check for immigration, then through immigration. On the way from immigration to the baggage area, we stopped and bought SIM cards ($33.50 CAD for one month of unlimited data). We picked up our luggage and exited the airport. Well, sorta exited. We were each sent to a station where they prepared the test kit, we made sure our name and info was correct on the test vial. They hand you the kit and escort you out to the testing area The covid test was set up outside the airport. We should have taken some pictures but we were too tired. The test stations look like small biohazard stations. Each is a full plexiglass air conditioned booth where the worker has long gloves that are attached to the building and that’s how they reach you to do the swab. Looks kinda like the Jettsons!! We got swabbed deep, and once wasn’t enough, both sides. Gary’s eyes watered. The sweet gal doing the test was so concerned. She said are you ok? He smiled, answering not really. Thankfully that part is done for now and only a faint memory. Our next covid swab is on our 6th day in Thailand. We can hardly wait. At that point, assuming we are negative, we are free to go anywhere in Thailand. Let’s hope one Astra Zeneca and 2 Moderna shots will keep us safe. Yes, we have had 3 covid vaccine jabs and still managed to travel 40 hours from home.

We walked a few more feet out of the airport and our prepaid car and driver was waiting. An hour later and a few wrong turns and we were at the Lady Naya Villas. We were definitely over dressed. Long pants, long sleeves, elastic air travel stockings to the knees. The reception area is like any tropical location, it’s located in an open air but covered area. We presented all of our documents to the reception. We had missed printing the receipt for our covid tests, so we brought the info up on Gary’s phone. All done, we headed to our room. Our meals were on the table covered in saran wrap, Chicken with cashew nut and rice. A few minutes later we had two large Chang beer. Life is good. No matter how tired we are, if Thailand is the end result, we will soon forget the killer trip.

We have a beautiful KING bed, after a good night sleep we got up to a sunny and warm Monday morning, It’s November 1, 2021 here. We did lose one day crossing the international date line.

Our Breakfast was exceptional, Linda had pancakes with fruit and Gary had a fruit platter. Oh how we have missed the tropical fruits!!

We chatted on WhatsApp with our kids and after 3 coffee each we are good for a few hours. We’ve spend a bit of time trying to sort out our stuff so things are organized and we know where stuff is. Think we’ll head out for walk and explore a bit soon. At least we’ve got the sunscreen ready to go!

If you made it this far, we promise more pictures and videos with less text in future updates.