Nicely
Bang Saphan Yai
Having the car means that as we travel south we can stick with tiny coastal roads which take us through little fishing communities and co-co farms. One such is beautiful Bo Tang Long. We've picked Bang Saphan Yai as our next stop for no good reason other than it sounds cool.
When we get to the coastal "town" it turns out to be a couple of hut camps, a bungalow or 2 and a restaurant. The real town of bang Saphan being 10 minutes drive inland. To make life more interesting there's a Muslim festival happening and everything is booked so we back track up the coast and find..."Paradise"
The Coral hotel is flanked on 3 sides by coconut palms and on the other a gold sand beach. French owned it's spotless, has good food and a huge pool open 24/7. Ice cold beers at midnite in the shallow end under floodlit palms is obligatory.
I've just got out of the pool where I have been watching tiny birds with long curved bills, about the size of humming birds feeding from huge tropical flowers. Behind them I had an unbroken view of the ocean between the bar and ..........................the boxing ring!!.
Bank Holiday rush at Bang Saphan Yai
In the red corner!!!
Bit of an odd thing to find in such a lovely place it's use soon becomes clear.
This morning a 10 year old Chinese girl butted in front of me and hoovered up all the bacon on the brekky buffet. I'm going to watch her today in case she has any karate moves, if not it's 5 x 3 minute rounds tomorrow and I'm going to beat the living sh*t out of her.
Here come the storm
Stormy Weather
Torrential rain...We're sitting at the bar watching our "mixologist" at work. He's making a couple of bloody marys. After each ingredient he pops a long spoon into the glass, has a taste then back into the drink. More Worcester, a little slurp from the spoon, more celery salt, another lick, a tad of hot sauce a little taste, back into the glass, a slurp for luck then it's off to the table.
" mmmmmmm tastes great, I wonder what the magic ingredient is"
" That would be waiter phlegm".
We decided not to chance a cocktail and stick with the beer.
Dog the baby sitter
He wants us to follow him!!!
Kim is big into anthropomorphism. She would have it that dogs, cats and birds laugh, smile etc and that the dog in the picture above is "looking out for the little children".........
Should one of them suddenly float face down, rover would of course run into town, knock a public phone receiver off it's cradle with his nose, dial 911.....
Someone called Richie or Storm will answer the phone, listen intently and then shout
"It's Rover..............he wants us to follow him,...................
scramble the copter!!!"
When they arrive Rover will be standing, forepaws on the childs chest licking his face as the kid recovers consciousness.
"you're a hero Rover"
Actually the dog is calculating, ................how much of the first kid to stop moving can I eat, before the noisy thing with flashing lights shows up, or should I bury it in shallow sand and come back for it after dark?
In a previous life i used to sell insurance. One day the unheard of happened, someone walked into the office and said "i'd like to buy some life insurance please"
Now, the Brits as a race are probably less in touch with their own mortality than pretty much any other nation on earth ......."wanting" to voluntarily buy life insurance is virtually unheard of. Normally I and a crew of door knockers would go out and wait by a front door with stop watches. Our mission? To knock the door precisely 8 minutes befiore the start of Coronation Street or Eastenders.
We knew that most households would sign up to any bloody thing to get rid of you in time to find out who'd been porking Sharon, or whether Grant and/or Phil was gay, or if that Michelle who went off to America, came back with another face, got abducted by aliens, came back with another face actually murdered her cross dressing lesbian husband in the shower, or if it was the gay drug addict vicar ...and other stories of every day East End/Manchester folk.
Thunder bolts and lightning very very frightening
Any way this rube.........sorry, customer wants some life insurance and all is going swimmingly until he tells me his occupation. He's a high wire lines man, a bit like Glenn Campbell's Whitchitaw lines man only in Portsmouth. Sounds dangerous I thought. I could bung him down as electrician and no one would be any the wiser until the widow and 3 kids turn up expecting the mortgage to be paid off.....
I have an attack of conscience and ring the underwriters. Sure enough the premium will go up by 25%
"Why's that" says my dupe.....Client
"Well you work at height, the underwriter says if you fall you'll hit the ground with quite a bump"
"Actually," he says. "I work with 50,000 volt wires, if I fall, I'll hit the ground as a fine white powder"
Why mention this? About 11.30am we have an electrical storm, there's an explosion and all the power goes out. We do what all public spirited Brits would do and rush to the bar to drink beer before the refrigeration fails and of course to watch the repairs.
The linesman show up with admirable speed, an orange Thai electric truck complete with cherry picker buckets up the beach road orange lights flashing. Four faces peer out through the windshield, one look at the wiring which resembles a plate of spaghetti, they execute a 3 point turn and disapear in a cloud of sand. We stand and cheer.
Bo Tong Lang Bay
Come back Mrs Leung, All is forgiven
Laundry or in fact anything, rarely goes straightforwardly in Thailand. Even Mrs Leung is not infallible. Amongst our washing I was delighted to find a very skimpy pair of lace black panties, at 40 baht per kilo I'd estimate they have cost us 0:00000001 of a baht.........To my distress Kim insists on taking them back. When Kim shows them to Mrs Leung, dangling them from 1 finger saying "not mine" Mrs Lueng cackles delightedly, it sounds like the last two Oak leaves on a tree being rasped together by an October breeze, or an Australian fielder sand papering a cricket ball.
We're doing the whole 6 months here with what would pass as hand baggage on most airlines, consequently we're becoming skilled at spotting Laundry signs. One such we spot on the outskirts of Bang Saphan. We load up our washing and turn off the road in front of the house. No one around, we knock, a lady emerges clutching a fork and large plate of fried rice.
"Laundry" we say in our best Thai Accents.
"Nyoi, Nyoi, Nyoi" she shouts animatedly, while pointing to every point of the compass, I don't mean the usual 4 here, I mean all the others in between all while babbling away.
Now don't get me wrong, were it not for the fact that many of these sweet people make the effort to learn English we would hardly be able to converse at all. This lady has unfortunately made as much effort to learn English as we have Thai. She may as well be talking duck.
However, such is the power of her non verbal communication skills that it is clear this lady wishes to impart that "This is not a laundry"
I have to say her story would hold a lot more water were it not for the fact that she is standing in front of 25+ 10 metre long washing lines, each of which is crammed with every kind of clothing and linen imaginable...... In addition, at the road side is a sign, it is in the shape of an arrow, approximately 2 metres high by 3 long, the point is skant inches above our lady's head arrowing directly at her door, the arrow is red, written on it in neon yellow letters is the word LAUNDRY.
It's pointless to argue and we manage to find a bar (with no laundry sign!), who will do our washing.
"it'll be ready tomnorrow at 5"
We're not really surprised when tomorrow at 5 turns up and it's not ready as the rain has been torrential since tomorrow (today that is) at 10am.
"it'll be ready tomorrow at 9:30"
"It has to be as we need to leave"
"No pwobem!!"
Next morning all's washed but not dry as it's pissed down most of the night.
"You no pay" say's our laundress,
"of course we'll pay" we say.
Hang on, there's a shirt and a rather fetching bikini top missing (both mine) Our laundress is distraught, she jumps onto her moped and rides to her sister in law, who does the actual work.
She comes back
"No have!!" she cries.
Nothing will do but we must go to her in laws house and search it from top to bottom, laundry, kids bedrooms, lounge........No sign....It's only a matter of time before she insists we start digging up dead relatives in case dear old Aunty Ting has a sparkly bikini top amongst her grave goods.
By this point the laundress is offering us 1-2000 bhat (about 50 years average wage) and sobbing on Kim's shoulder.
I absent mindedly prod what i take to be a bag of boots in the trunk of the car,
"Kim!" I hiss,
"I think that maybe".........
"Shut the bloody boot" whispers Kim
"It's ok, these things happen, don't worry about it, we prise the tear sodden lady from around kims knees, get in the car and drive. To our credit we didn't take the money.
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