Thailand Report, Day Errr, Unsure.
Well it's Friday the 12th of July today, which means I think there's been about 5 days since my last update. I'm not going to remember everything we've done probably, but I'll try and list everything I can recall so that we can remember it later.
First of all my laptop seems to be working alright now - not sure what its problem was, certainly some sort of hardware error, so why it works now I'm not 100% sure. I expect that in the next month or two it'll just give up the ghost and not work at all. But it's working now so I might as well make the most of it by writing!
So things that we've done:
We went down to the Fisherman's Village on one day, had a look around. I'd be lying if I said the kids enjoyed it though, they were mostly hot and bothered and unsure why we were walking around. They got annoyed that they had to keep taking their shoes on and off going into the shops too. Given it was the middle of the day it was pretty quite though, not that many shops open, none of the markets going etc. We found a restaurant that was open and sat down for some lunch, Beth started to complain about having a sore ear too.
In fact people being sick has been a bit of a problem, especially poor Joseph. He's been crook the whole time he's been here, even today 9 days later he's still got a very nasty cough. But at least he perked up yesterday for his Birthday. Anyway yes I'm getting ahead of myself.
Yesterday was Joseph's 7th Birthday! He was thankfully starting to feeling a bit better yesterday. Sarah and I got up bit early and blew up balloons for him and hung them up. He had a good little birthday, he got a Casio Baby-G watch which he seems to love. Then Adrian and I went for a walk to hire ourselves a car. Where we're staying is great, but the fact we always have to spend 300-500 Baht to get somewhere, then the same to get back, starts to get expensive quickly. Seeing as we were going out to the Tiger Zoo and that it was quite a long distance, we decided to hire a car. That was a fun thing, the car hire place was closed, we spoke to two "security" guards next door who then spent 30 minutes on the phone, off the phone, on the phone again etc. I gave up and walked back to the house, but Adrian stuck it out and eventually came back an hour or so later with a big car, enough to fit 4 adults and 4 children.
So then off we went for a drive to the local Tiger Zoo and Aquarium. My god what a nightmare. The Aquarium STUNK to high heaven, in an effort to combat that they'd put in about 50 of those Glade scent things. You can imagine how lovely that made the place, now it stunk with a vague scent of flowers too. The aquarimums weren't that bad really, lots of fish in clean water. Not much else for them though, no plants or things like that really. But the Tiger bit. Ugh. I wish we'd read reviews before we went, we could have realised. The tigers, leopards and other exotic cats were kept in tiny cages. They were full of tiger shit too, I'd be surprised if anyone had been anywhere near the cages to clean/maintain them in a month, if not longer. The cats looked bored, angry, hot and annoyed. It was horrible, so depressing. I wish we hadn't gone and hadn't given them money, at least we got Beth/Theo in for free even though they weren't quite under the "1m and under is free" requirement.
After that we found a small cafe called "Vitamin Sea" where we had a lovely little lunch from a French man who was telling us all about being French in Thailand etc. Beth made friends with the local dogs, at one stage patting about 4 at a time. She loved it.
Then we came home and just had dinner, had a little Birthday cake for Joseph and went to bed, tired as!
Other things:
We've been down to the Thongson Beach resort a few times for a swim/drink. The walk to get down has been getting better and better, the first time we went down it was just these stairs with a sheer drop either side. The last few days workers have slowly been installing a handrail on each side, so now it's much safer for the first bit. The last bit to get to the beach itself is still a bit dodgy with a dirt path circling around a large hole, but it's not too bad.
Sarah and I went out for dinner the other night which was nice. We went down to Fishermans Village again and walked along the beach, ended up at Cactus Bunglows for a drink, the same place we stayed at 12 years ago when we first visited Thailand. It was a bit fancier in the bar area, but otherwise looked pretty much the same. From there we walked back into Fishermans itself and found a nice place for dinner. So fancy that they only served small Changs, not large ones!
A couple of nights later we all (sans Mattie/Matt/Anna) went into Chaweng Beach for dinner. Found a nice place with some very colourful lit-up tents and sat on the beach to eat our dinner. One of those beach vendors came by selling flashing light things, so we bought Beth a Unicorn that lights up and a Theo got a spinning ball that spins around and lights up. Sadly it also sings the most annoying Thai song in the world in that horrible electronic noise that toys like that make.
I'm sure I'm missing a few other things, but we haven't done anything huge, mostly just shopping/relaxing etc. Tomorrow (Theo's 4th Birthday) we are going on a Snorkeling Trip which should be good fun! Today we're still deciding on what we're going to do, I think we'll go into Chaweng and do a bit of shopping. I'm trying to find a Chang Terry Toweling hat, though I don't like my chances.
Tim