Thailand – Page 4 – saskatoonie.com

November 27, 2021November 27, 2021

Karon Beach and Tailor

The view above is Rawai Beach at Nikitas Beach Restaurant

It was sunny this morning. We ate breakfast and took off to Karon beach. We stopped at the tailor shop and Gary tried on his pants and shirts. They fit perfect. Linda tried on her pants and jacket. They were also good. We had a brief discussion about COVID with the shop owner since there has been several cases in Patong Phuket which is only a 10 minute drive down the road. The reality is you can’t get rid of the covid virus. Anyhow we paid the tailor and left the clothing with him until after lunch. He had to make a small adjustment to Linda’s jacket by moving a button.

We walked along the beach to the south end and back which is close to 5 km. By the time we got back to our lounge chairs we were starving and thirsty. Gary ran across the street and bought 2 fruit smoothies for ฿100 and 2 bags of cookies for ฿60, that’s about $6 CAD for lunch. The cookies were delicious. Not sure what they are called or what is in them, a hint of cinnamon and some dark seeds, possibly black sesame seeds as they didn’t have a strong or distinctive flavour.

We hung out at the beach till after 4 and then headed for home. It was great to have a shower and get rid of all the salt and freshen up. We thought we’d try Kallot’s Restaurant tonight as they have parking. We went a couple of nights ago and they were closed. Well wouldn’t you know it we arrived and the darn place was closed again! Not sure what is going on. So we punched in Nikita’s Restaurant into Waze and drove to Rawai Beach for the first time. We’ve been there multiple times but always with Andrew or Grab. We managed fine and found a parking spot. We enjoyed a table overlooking the water. As we sat there, a small school of fish would jump out of the water with likely a large fish in pursuit underwater. It was really cool to watch. We enjoyed a couple of smoothies, passion fruit for Gary and mixed fruit for Linda. Think it was a combination of pineapple, banana and maybe some strawberries. Both really hit the spot after a hot day. We ordered some nachos and then each had a taco, Gary had a prawn taco and Linda had chicken. Both were really good. Gary’s taco has wasabi on it and really cleared his sinuses. When the owner came around to ask how everything was he mentioned how hot the wasabi was and she laughed and said all wasabi is hot, it clears your sinuses and likely keeps Covid away! Not so sure about the Covid claim but it definitely clears the sinuses. Our drive home was fine, we had a bit of an idea where we were going but almost messed up at one spot where we had to make a right turn. There are actually functioning traffic lights at that corner, the only one’s that we’ve seen with an actual stop light that people stop and wait for the light to change! It is a bad corner though so from a safety stand point that is likely a good thing.

We got home and enjoyed a couple of cold beer!

We made a coupe of GoPro videos while driving yesterday. The camera is propped on the dash. The first video going to the beach uses the GoPro Time Lapse function, the second video is displayed at double the normal speed.

Driving on the left is a challenge especially with such narrow streets. As you can see there are always obstacles in the way. Some of them are pedestrians!

November 24, 2021November 24, 2021

Grab food delivery

Grab food delivered from Nikita's

Life in Thailand is great. Especially when we know it’s winter in Canada. Our problem today is anxiety. We can see our time here in Thailand slipping away. We have 10 days left. Maybe time seems slower when you are freezing your ass off in Canada but here it’s zoom, zoom, zoom!

Andrew, was kind enough to drive us to the AIS Cellular kiosk in Phuket Town. Someplace we are too chicken to drive ourselves. Too many lanes of traffic, too fast, too many ghost riders, just too much. What are ghost riders you ask? They are scooters or motorcycles going against the flow of traffic. Today we saw at least 4 on the divided highway with traffic going 80 km/hr or more. They just scoot along on the left hand side for a short cut or whatever.

We did manage to extend our cellular packages which are basically an internet only plan. But, you can top off the account with extra money and it will allow you to make a voice call to someone for ฿1/minute on the AIS network or ฿1.5/minute if on a different network. We’re not sure. We each paid ฿1000 or $38 CAD for internet until April 1 and another ฿100 or $3.80 CAD for voice calls if needed. The whole thing started when we purchased a one month plan when we arrived in Phuket at the airport for ฿890 about $34 CAD. Since our flight home was cancelled and rebooking will keep us here until December 5, we needed extra airtime. It is essential for operating the Waze app that we use for navigation. Ok, back to the cellular plan, it is same same, which is a common term in Thailand. Your order two meals and say “same same”. Well, cellular packages are same same as Canada. Confusing!

We walked the beach in Karon, about 5.2 Km total distance. It is like walking barefoot on soft snow but without the cold. The tide was a bit higher and the sand seemed to have no bottom. Definitely a good way to warm up! There was lots of sunshine so we were thoroughly greased with banana boat sun screen.

Isn’t it amazing to watch the clouds above the beach in the video below?

It was after 5 pm by the time we got back, showered, guzzled several bottles of water and decided we were not in the mood to go anywhere. Time for Grab food delivery. Linda tried to order with her phone, and her account has been de-activated. This likely still has something to do with Gary and Linda having the same credit card number, and some how Grab has identified that two different accounts have used the same number. So, back to using Gary’s phone to order food until we can get this straightened out with Grab.

The food arrived in about 30 minutes, hot and fresh. One order of pineapple rice with chicken and one order with prawns. FYI, that included 5 Canadian sized large prawns. Totally delicious!

November 23, 2021November 23, 2021

Walk then Massage

We enjoyed some natural shade today

Today we decided we needed to get a bit more active as we’ve spent several days on a beach lounge! Before heading out we had a bit of fruit and a couple cups of coffee. Had a quick chat with Gary’s Mom, Rita, and also called Al and Bev.

There was some sun first thing this morning but by the time we drove to Karon beach it was overcast again. Don’t let that fool you though, it was still hot and plenty humid. We walked down the beach and back altogether just over 5 km. We were plenty sweaty even with the overcast sky, we’d have roasted if it was sunny!

See the time lapse video beach walk below.

There was an upscale ice cream shop right by where we parked so we decided to treat ourselves. Two scoops of ice cream in a cup was ฿150 or $5.75 CAD. Linda had one scoop espresso almond and one scoop tiramisu; Gary had one scoop passion fruit and one chocolate almond. The shop was highly air conditioned so between that and the ice cream we cooled off after our walk. As good as it was, we’re not sure we’ll go back.

We headed home and had a quick shower and then drove to Herb Massage as we had booked a 90 minute massage at 3:40. As the massage place is next door to the Family Mart we popped in to pick up a few supplies, instant coffee, sparkling water, some croissants and a few beer. Since we had driven, it was a great time to stock up and not have to carry it all the way home. It took another shower to try and clean off all the massage oil! Our skin is so soft from the warm moist air and the sunscreen and massage oil just adds to it. We know our skin will start drying out and flaking off the minute we get on the plane.

Today was Taco Tuesday at Mexican Plus. Gary had one chicken and one fish taco in hard shells, Linda had 2 chicken tacos in soft shells. Gary also ordered a mango smoothie and Linda had a pineapple coconut smoothie. Our tacos were great however our drinks, while very tasty, never arrived until after we finished our tacos. Not sure what was going on tonight but service wasn’t as good as previous visits. Total price was ฿450 around $17.25 CAD. As you likely noticed, no beer. We can’t handle even one beer and drive safely in Thailand.

Yes, we actually drove to the restaurant tonight as it is a fair walk. We lucked out and found parking on a tiny side street by the restaurant. Streets here are narrow and parking for vehicles is difficult to find particularly if you don’t want someone taking the side of your rental vehicle off! Getting back on the main drag took some fortitude to pull out and literally drive in front of oncoming traffic. Not ideal, but scooters do slow down for cars. We did okay getting through the busy restaurant area arriving home safely. The locals say traffic is down due to COVID, if that’s the case we’d hate to be driving here at its peak.

November 22, 2021November 22, 2021

Som Tum at Karon

Karon Beach and Som Tum Salad for lunch

It was another day in paradise and not much new to share! Things were pretty uneventful today. We enjoyed a call with Andrea, Charlotte and Amelia and later with Mark while we had our usual breakfast of fruit.

We were late heading off to the beach today. We lathered up in sun screen and headed to Karon beach around 11 am. We got to our rental car to find the birds had thrown seeds and what looked like banana peels all over the car and pooped on the side and front window. We stopped at the entrance of the villas where there was a hose and started cleaning it off. Marisa, the owner, saw us and called one of the “boys” as they call them to come and help us. He arrived with pail and sponge and scrubbed everything down. He even had wheel cleaner and wondered if we wanted our wheels cleaned. We said as long as we had clean windows we were good to go! Seems they love washing cars, these guys are the friendliest and most cordial young men you could ever ask to meet!

We are getting to know the road to Karon Beach and there are fewer occasions of the windshield wipers turning on instead of the signal light!! Linda watches the map and keeps telling Gary when the turns are coming up and reminding him to use his right hand to turn on the signal light! We parked by the little restaurant today and grabbed a couple of smoothies, we both tried a combination of passion fruit and mango today. It was really tasty. The owner was happy to see us and made sure to tell us she had fresh spring rolls today. We told her we’d see her later.

Karon beach was great today, quiet and the surf was calmer. We enjoyed our time there. The guy renting the beach beds is so appreciative of the business and we had a bit of a chat when we left. His English is ok but we had a bit of a struggle a few times with what he was trying to tell us. We did understand when he wished us 100 years of good things! We told him we wished him the same.

We did stop and have spring rolls and Som Tum, green papaya salad. Gary took a video of the gal making the salad. Today’s version was spicier than the other day but very tasty. When we left she asked if we’d be back again tomorrow and to be sure to come back. She also told us when we come back to pull in down the little street and park in a covered spot. Not sure if there is a cost though and the street was basically empty so parking isn’t an issue. The car is warm when we get in but it does cool down quickly once the a/c cuts in so not sure if there is much to be gained by parking under the roof cover.

A quick drive and we were back at our villa to get out of our salty bathing suits and shower. Then we headed down to the service station for some gas. Linda googled a Toyota Vios, the car we have rented, to see what the fuel capacity is. Google told us 42 litres so we told the gas attendant 20 L of fuel which was ฿637 or $24.45 CAD which is $1.23 per litre CAD. We even got a free 1.5 L of bottled water with our fuel purchase! The car was almost full after that so not sure how accurate Google was on fuel capacity. We checked with the attendant if we could park in their lot as the large fruit stand is right across the street. No problem, so we parked and ran across and bought enough fruit for the next three days or so. We actually picked a few “greener” mangos as the last few we’ve had have been pretty ripe and slightly banged up. These are blemish free and look great. The guy kept saying to us that they weren’t good for tomorrow and we said that’s ok!

We got home and washed up all the fruit and got it put away. We really appreciate our little fridge, it is crammed to the brim with water, fruit, yogurt and beer. When we were all done we enjoyed a couple of beer and ordered two chicken wraps from the Little Persian Restaurant where we have eaten a number of times.

We were shocked at the size of the wraps, we could have shared one order. Both wraps cost us just over $8 CAD, we could never purchase that much food for that price at home. Luckily just after Gary got back to our room from the lobby where the food gets delivered, the skies opened up and it poured buckets for about 15 minutes. It’s stopped for now but it won’t be a surprise if it rains more overnight.

The picture of the beach below was taken when we first got there this morning. The dark looking clouds were on the North side of the beach. While we had a few dark clouds pass overhead a few times it was always plenty warm enough to lay on the beach or bob around in the water.

November 21, 2021November 21, 2021

Patong Beach

Patong Beach is like the Waikiki of Thailand

This morning was overcast following last night’s rain. We were a bit slow getting organized. A phone call to Linda’s Mom, June, was the first thing we did this morning. We had a really good visit with her while we had our breakfast. The 13 hour time difference can make it a challenge to connect sometimes.

We packed up our bathing suits and beach stuff as the weather did start to improve just before we headed out. We drove back to Karon Beach and went back to the Island Creations tailor that we’d talked to yesterday. When we walked in the shop he said “oh, you came back, you are honest!” We’d told him we’d come back but don’t think he believed us. We ended up ordering a couple shirts for Gary and a jacket for Linda. Prices for the shirts were fair and the jacket price was really good. We couldn’t buy the fabric at home for what he is charging. Linda also picked up a bathing suit for $20 CAD from the adjoining shop that the tailor’s wife operates. It hasn’t reopened yet but he opened the door and uncovered the rack of bathing suits so Linda could browse.

From there we drove on to Patong Beach. It actually was busier than we expected. It is a gorgeous beach but far more crowded than we wanted. We walked down the beach and looked around.

We thought we’d have a fruit smoothie but they wanted ฿150 which is considerably more than we’ve been paying. We finally decided to drive back to Karon beach. We grabbed 2 passion fruit smoothies for ฿50 each from the little restaurant where we ate yesterday. It was so dead we quickly changed into our swimsuits in the car and then went down to the beach. It was so quiet and peaceful! Our 2 beach beds were all on their own, it was very nice. We spent our time reading and swimming. Think Gary snuck in a nap too!

Before we left we chatted with the guy that looks after the beach beds and umbrellas. He said he was born in Karon and lived here his whole life. He said ” I don’t think tourism will get back to normal here until 2023″. He then thanked us for giving him the business today. We changed out of our wet suits in the car and went to the little restaurant for supper. We did ask what the restaurant name was, that caused a bit of a discussion amongst them and they finally explained that they only recently opened and don’t have a name yet! We enjoyed generous servings of cashew chicken and shared an order of rice and 2 bottles of water. We were stuffed and then the owner appeared with a plate of watermelon, papaya and pineapple and a big smile. Supper, including tip was ฿400 about $15.50 CAD.

We headed back home before it got too dark. Streets were much busier and we really need to find some window cleaner as the glare and haze on the windshield from the sun or headlights is not great for driving. Maybe the ocean spray is building up too! The first few days saw the wipers getting turned on at every corner. The wiper control on this car is where we would expect the signal light lever on all vehicles in Canada. Today the wipers only came on once, it got bumped. Haha Remember we are driving on left side of the road and the gear shift is on the left. We arrived home safely, showered and enjoyed an icy cold beer!

November 21, 2021November 21, 2021

A day at Karon Beach

Black clouds do not relay the hot temperatures!

From our villa we drove to Karon Viewpoint. The viewpoint has a great view of Kata and Karon beaches from the mountain lookout. Then we continued on to Karon Beach. The traffic wasn’t bad, just on the wrong side of the road for 2 Canucks. It takes both of us driving – Linda watches the map and road for hazards and Gary keeps us between the two lines and is constantly scanning the road for other vehicles and particularly motorbikes. We had one motorbike pass us on the wrong side which is rather unnerving. We’ve tried to stick to the more quiet roads but those are very twisty with tons of tight corners and switchbacks so you really have to be on your toes!

We arrived at Karon beach okay! There was plenty of parking. This part of the island is much quieter than the area we are in. It is way more of a tourist area and with no tourists the majority of shops, restaurants and hotels are still closed. Many of the hotels are looking a little run down – almost two years of sun, rain and salty air have taken their toll on the paint. No one is going to do a ton of maintenance when they have no income! We parked and walked back to a side street that sported a big sign “We are Open.” It was a walking street, lined with shops and restaurants. We found a lonely tailor shop that was open and we chatted with the owner for a while. He said we were the first customers to be in his shop in almost two years. He was desperate for a sale and “some luck.” We exchanged What’s App contact info and he was in touch with us all day hoping we would come back and order a shirt! We actually were in search of food and all the restaurants down the street were closed, one only opens in the evening. We finally found a small little restaurant around the corner that was tucked under a roof. The owner was excited to think we’d stop for lunch, we inquired what was on the menu and asked about Som Tum. Gary asked if they had a washroom and there was a major discussion that no they didn’t but she took him back around to the walking street where we just were and to a small drugstore that let him use the washroom. When we got back to the little restaurant she was already shredding the green papaya for the Som Tum! We ended up ordering one Som Tum, one chicken Pad Thai and a couple bottles of water. The food was amazing, some of the best we’ve had. She also had large bags of roasted cashews that she sold for ฿ 200 each and we bought two bags. She and her husband were so excited with our purchases and that we told them it was delicious and she brought us two large bananas as a parting gift when we were ready to go. Where else can you get a gift for dining in a restaurant? Think we’ll stop there again. The portions were generous and the food was amazing for such a tiny place. The whole washroom problem was a result of flooding down the street caused by the heavy rain overnight.

Karon beach was very impressive. It is several kilometres long and has a stronger surf than the other beaches. There were very few people on the beach and it was very quiet. We walked to the one end of the beach and looked around and then headed back to where we’d parked and grabbed our beach stuff from the car. We rented an umbrella and two beach beds. We watched a guy surfing for part of the afternoon.

Around 4 pm we packed up and headed back to our villa, we wanted to beat the majority of the traffic. Evenings some of the roads are crazy! We cooled off with a couple of beer when we got back and showered off all the sunscreen and sand. We hiked up the hill and went to Mexican Plus for nachos, guacamole and chicken tacos. Thankfully today was sunny for the most part however around 11 pm it started to thunder like mad and poured rain again. Life in the tropics!

November 18, 2021November 18, 2021

Phanaeng Curry

It rained all night. Not a light rain but a tropical downpour. It’s still rainy season in Phuket, but only because it’s still raining. It should be sunny. We sat around all morning and talked to Gary’s mom and later to Gary’s sister, Barb, via Skype. We have a calling plan on Skype that costs about $32 CAD per year and allows us to make unlimited voice calls to any phone in USA and Canada. The latest switch to this great deal is that we need to use a VPN now to call the USA or Canada or else we get the ”you can not make this call from your calling area”. Excuse me, my calling area is not Thailand! Skype (aka Microsoft) has now got greedy and tracks our IP address thus limiting our calling options. Therefore we use Express VPN to give us a Toronto IP address. This is not an advertisement for Express VPN, but it allows us to safely bank, pay bills and surf the web from any location in the world. Unfortunately we have been unable to watch Amazon Prime Video with our VPN. So, we can’t watch the new season 4 of Yellowstone. Apparently if we log into Amazon Prime Video we must use second factor authentication which means receiving a SMS (text message) code on our Canadian cell phone. We are not using our Canadian cellphone numbers here due to the obvious ridiculous high cost of international roaming. We’ll watch Yellowstone season 4 when we get home.

So, back to the rain here, nothing like the recent rainfall in BC but its unrelenting. The rain did let up for a bit so we went for a walk and picked up a pineapple from a small fruit stand for ฿30 ($1.20 CAD), and a few Croissants for ฿16 each ($ 0.64 CAD). We stopped at the Little Persian restaurant and had very light lunch for ฿220 ($8.50 CAD) We kind of got got stuck at the restaurant because of more tropical rain. We finally took a Grab ride back to the villas. It’s good to get out of our room for a bit and it also gives the staff here an opportunity to get our room cleaned! As soon as they see us leave they usually hustle over to clean. The staff here have been awesome.

Here’s a quick unedited video of our villa where we are staying. Gary shot this the night we arrived, October 31, 2021

While at the restaurant we did talk to one patron sitting across from us, a young man from Brittany, France. After he left, the guy sitting at the only other table started chatting with us, big surprise, a Canuck. Surprisingly, he is originally from Quebec and has lived in Thailand for 11 years. He does livestream “Twitch” videos for his money. FYI. Twitch is an online streaming platform like YouTube, just so you know!

We finally got back to our villa after 4 pm, so it was time to think about what to order for supper. We settled on Highway Curry and Indian Food. We ordered 2 Phanaeng Curry (aka penang curry) with chicken and 2 steamed rice. We ordered it medium spicy. Note to self, medium spicy in Thailand is HOT. It cost us ฿364 about $14 CAD including tip and delivery. We topped it off with Tiger beer from the fridge, previously from the Family Mart up the hill. For dessert we tried to limit the fire within with a serving of strawberry yogurt.The Phanaeng Curry is likely the hottest thing we have eaten – EVER!

We are hoping for some sun tomorrow but honestly anything we get here short of a tsunami is better than home. We have made good use of our Kindle e-readers the last few days.

November 16, 2021November 16, 2021

Sun Today

We went to Nai Harn beach and had a good time. It did sprinkle a bit of rain while we were there. We decided to just go in the water and get wet. With no sun, the water was cool but not unbearable. There’s getting to be many more people here. There was probably 3 times as many people at the beach today compared to the last time we were there. The Russian tourists are now arriving in Phuket. We did not take many pictures, just the banana tree at the local store nearby. Below is a video in the surf. Sorry to hear about the bad weather back in Canada.

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.