Not everyday can be speedboats and monkeys. Today we’re going to tone it down, relax and do domestic chores. Every so often you have to stop and smell the roses, or in our case, the plumeria. Today, again, we’re having breakfast at the hotel, now that we know how good and reasonable it is. As yesterday, part of our breakfast is dinner. Spicy basil chicken with vegetables and fried rice. Yum! Not unlike leftovers. Maybe it is.
When we flew into Krabi our driver for the 30 minute taxi ride to Ao Nang provided the QR code for his WhatsApp info. He strongly encouraged us to contact him for a ride back, which we call to arrange. We check in for our flight and head out for exercise. It’s steep here, so getting our steps and credit for exercise is easy. Given that they drive on the left (other) side of the road we have to stay conscious of which side we’re on, as we hike up and down.
Along the way we notice the variety of flowers. Plumeria, certainly, but also bougainvillea, what we call Mexican Violette, plumbago, and many others. They certainly thrive in the sun, rain, and humidity. The hotel dog, who seems to be about 15% fleas by weight, is simultaneously curious as to whether we’ll pet her (we won’t) or try to chase her off (we won’t do that either). We keep a respectful distance from each other.
Post-exercise we clean up and get the hotel voucher for a coming city printed, along with our boarding passes for tomorrow. Back at the room we do laundry. This doesn’t involve smacking our clothes against a rock by a stream, but it’s not much more advanced. We do have some wonderful ‘soap sheets’, 32 to the small snap-close plastic travel case. A couple of those in a basin of warm water and we’re off to the races. The drying? That’s another matter. Do we put the clothes outside in the warmth of the occasional sun, where it’s really humid and periodically rainy? Or do we hang it inside, where it’s cool but (slightly) dryer due to the A/C? We do some of each.
The free shuttle into town goes at 3, 5 and 7, so we head down at 5 o’clock. Just as we’re climbing down from the back of the pickup’s covered bed it starts to sprinkle. We cling to the walls for some semblance of protection, willing the rain to stop. It doesn’t. We make our way down the street towards our destination, a bar with a nice cover and a good view of the water. With just one more open stretch to go before we’re ‘home free’ the sky opens up. We make a quick dash for it.
Finally under cover we try to dry off as the blowing wind spits more rain at us, frustrating our efforts. A martini and Negroni help, or at least cause us not to care. We have our drinks, shelter, and a place to sit, what more could we want? Oh, and we have a meteorologically-necessitated wet tee-shirt contest, what with the sad, drenched tourists making their way back to their rooms.
Thankfully the rain doesn’t last long, and we soon have (mostly) blue sky and the makings of a beautiful sunset. We finish our drinks and walk the significant distance to the south end of the beach. Before us is pretty much just spectacular nature. Retracing our steps, we find our target restaurant for dinner. Scott has spicy garlic chicken sautée with vegetables and Karen has Fettucini carbonara. They’re both good.
After dinner we head up hill, looking for what Apple Maps assures us is the Ao Nang Night Market. Along the way the way buskers try to lure us into their restaurant for dinner, or into their fine tailoring shop to buy a suit. We rebuff all comers. The night market is (of course) not the night market, but it’s interesting.
On our way back we stop into the first, real supermarket we’ve seen. It’s fascinating, and they have dried prunes, two attributes that always works for tourist of that certain age. We do buy the prunes and some salted cashew nuts. We don’t buy the freeze-dried durian (you’re welcome). All hotels we’ve encountered require a deposit against the possibility of a guest either smoking or eating durian in the room. We expect that by the end of the trip we’ll understand.
Photos
コメント