We thought yesterday was a lazy day… today, we barely left the reservation. During the morning, I caught up on posts and Eron laid in the hammock and read.

By the time we were truly up and about, it was already lunchtime. So, we reluctantly threw on some clothes and headed up the road from the resort. Just as we reached the main drag, we saw a scooter with a man and a woman on it wobbling to a stop in front of a fruit stand on the opposite side of the street. We watched them trying to converse with the vendor for a few minutes before the guy spotted us and yelled, “Hey, you speak English?” in a heavy Caribbean accent. Our immediate thought was, they REALLY must be lost to be asking us for directions. Whereupon, he asked us for directions to Long Beach. Well, it was one of the about five places we knew the directions to. So, they were in luck. They managed to get all the way across the road without getting killed and wobbled on down the road towards our resort. We were giving about even odds on whether they actually make it the 350 metres to the beach or we would later find the remains of their scooter of the side the road.

There happens to be a roadside restaurant at the very intersection we were standing at, and they seemed to specialize in BBQ’ed chicken. So, what the heck, we’d give them a try.

Roadside BBQ chicken place.

Largish thatched-roof part of BBQ place.

On the way back to the resort, we spotted what appeared at first glance to be a roadside bar. It was a bar of sorts; a roadside gas bar for the scooters. They were selling gasoline in 750 ml liquor bottles for 91 Baht each.

Gasoline for sale in 750 ml glass bottles.

We made a quick stop at our bungalow to change into swimsuits, grabbed our chairs, and headed down to the beach. By the way, we found the wobbly-scooter couple safely ensconced on loungers on the beach. A few exhausting hours of lounging at the water’s edge later, and we were ready for siesta-time… I wasn’t kidding about being lazy today.

For dinner, we never even made it out of the resort. Our first morning here, we tried out their breakfast menu and were thoroughly under-whelmed; the choices were very limited, the quality lacking, and the prices quite high (about 20-25% higher than surrounding restaurants). So, we had been leery of trying the resort’s restaurant for lunch or dinner. This evening we chose to give it a try; if only to be able to say we gave them a chance. Well, to say the least, we were more than pleasantly surprised! The food was generally well prepared, the presentation was above average, and the Pad Thai and Curry dishes had more complexity of flavours since anything else we have had since Chiang Mai. The only exception was the Shrimp Spring Rolls; the oil they used was too hot so while the outside of the rolls were crispy and brown, the shrimp inside was just barely cooked. The only other downside to this dining experience was that while the restaurant appeared to be equipped with ceiling fans, they were, “No working”, and they didn’t have any portable units. The air was particularly thick this evening and there was no breeze of any kind – so, we sweltered our way through an otherwise enjoyable meal.

After dinner, we retired to our bungalow. Eron went inside to read in air-conditioned comfort while she left me to sweat outside on the veranda with my cigar ;-(

So, I had to make the best of it – up onto the hammock with just our portable travel-fan to blow air against my fevered brow… we were roughing it; we only brought one travel-fan. There I was; watching the occasional flashes of dry-lightening in the distance, slowly melting into the hammock, puffing contentedly on a cigar, and contemplating… ‘cuz I hear that’s kinda what you do in these circumstances. I contemplated nature… or my navel… or the nature of my navel and how one’s expanding middle-aged navel becomes harder to see, never mind contemplate. Oh right, nature… I was contemplating nature. All those folks who keep waxing poetic about the peaceful quiet of nature… well, they sure ain’t never been here. At this resort, nature is anything but quiet. There’s the near constant whirl of the crickets, frogs croaking-out for mates, finches tweeting, other feathered buddies calling out, and then there’s our little friend; “Frenchie” (short for, “Excuse my French”) – the “Tourette’s-Bird” who, came sundown, serenades us nightly with sporadic choruses of, “Focque Ewe”, “Focque Ewe”, “Focque Ewe”. If he would’ve added, “Anglais” after each, I could’ve closed my eyes and imagined we were visiting Quebec…. 😉