Ao Noi
I'm writing this in the little garden where we have breakfast, a photo of the view is below.
Between us and the beach is a single track access road. We maybe see 2 cars every 1.5 hours.
We have a security guy. By virtue of the fact he has a very large whistle clamped in his gob he has no front teeth. Every time he hears a car he awakes from his slumber on a plastic patio chair in the midlle of the track. He blasts on the whistle repeatedly until the road is clear.......
Maybe it's not just biting the whistle that cost him his pearlies!....
They serve coke here in heavy old fashioned bottles. Mine is empty. I am going to smash it on his pointy little f*cking head!
We've found a blues bar!! Great records until 9 pm when a guy starts playing slide guitar etc and he's not bad at all.
Phang Nga Bay
We're blessed here with fairly large breakers which pound the shore.
We watch as a young Chinese couple cavort in the surf, She is about the same body mass and shape as a cotton bud. Her back to the breakers she is walking up the beach when a wave catches her in the middle of the back! She is thrown (I think the technical term is) Arse over apex, arms and legs akimbo and lands in a heap on the sand.
Her husband grasps her around the waist and helps our sagging heroin to a perch on a small twig which emerges from the sand. She constantly taps her temple with a forefinger, presumably to dislodge a piece of grit or sand which has has become stuck in her nasal cavity and sags and flutters like a mayfly, drying her wings before her inaugural flight.
Nothing (we have learned) revives a Chinese maiden quite like a camera, and her husband approaches to take a photo of his beloved apple blossom as she twitters and shivers on her twig. The result is almost instant! She stands arms extended straught up, above her head she holds a diaphanous beach robe which, silk like, billows and sparkles in the afternoon sun and breeze, her legs are crossed one in front of the other as she stands like you have seen on a dozen or so vogue covers.
I am reminded of a friend, Dougy.
Dougy would stand at the bar of the Cowplain Social Club and down 6 or 7 pints of best on a Sunday afternoon.
I think Dougy must have shared some kind of skull arrangement with the Bull elephant seals you see on David Attenburough. They can make a noise that's audible for miles.
When Dougy would order a packet of crisps in the Cowplain Social Club, the bar maid in the Rose and Crown half a mile up the road would ask "Plain or Salt and Vinegar?"
Imagine therefore the delight of any slim young lady entering the club where Dougy was propping the bar.
"Far-canal" he would bellow.....
"I wouldn't mind hearing her sing"
"Why's that" we would chorus.
"Cos she's got legs like a far-kin linnet!"
Lovely pool
Pak Meng
We leave Krabi and head toward Pak Meng near Trang. We need to extend our visas as the plan is to spend the next month or so in the Trang Islands (tough life but some one has to do it).
We get to the local Immigration office and explain what we want to do.
"Oh no" says the sour faced little official,
"you need to go to Trang"
"Are you sure" we ask, we can't see there is an immigration office in Trang"
"You go Trang" she says in a tone that suggests
"Otherwise I will have you shot"
We drive half an hour up the road, stop for coffee and check the internet.
All wisdom suggests there's no immigration office in Trang.
We turn round, drive back, put our passports, passport photo copies, completed form TR7, two passport photos, 3,800 baht, semen sample, photograph (signed in triplicate) of us shaking hands with the pope (Ok I made the last two up) and we're out of there with our visias extended in 15 minutes.
Kim starts....."look, we were here earlier..........."
I elbow her, say "not now" and usher her out of the office.
In an alternate universe Kim still has her pulled across the counter where she is repeatedly pounding the snidey little bitch's face into the worktop.....
Jam island
Come with me to jam island In the marmalade sea
Where the teddy bears live
And it's a fine place to be
A-stumping about on the toasty crumb shore
Between the leeward currants
And the hot butter bore
In the eggy bread bunset
When the star-kles all light
We'll count hundreds and thousands
And wish each other.....
Good night.
The view from room 312........sometimes I miss my office in Eastleigh!
Anantara Soi An
We've hit the budget hard for 3 days in the Anantara resort. This is a photo (as is the above) from the balcony of our room. It still costs significantly less to stay here than it does in the Bath city centre Premier Inn + we get a breakfast, at an outdoor restaurant, with this view, which is just stunning.
Anantara Soi An
Last night, a tad knackered from a days travel we repaired to the amazing beach bar and ordered our customery Gin and Tonic and a Ricard with water to enjoy while watching the sun dip into the Andaman ocean.
The girl brings ......
two empty glasses,
two glasses of Ice,
a can of tonic,
a glass of water and two shot glasses one contains Gin, the other Ricard.
Nice place in the hotel for a little light refreshmant!
In the confusion I tip ricard, some clear liquid (which I think is water) and ice into a glass, I go to kneck the last of the clear water and gag!......It's Kim's gin!.
Too late to cover my crime I own up and we order more gin, problem now is my Ricard won't go cloudy despite the addition of actual water..... and ice.
"P'raps it's because I put Gin in it" I say.
Another Ricard ordered (having drunk my " 'Kin 'ard cocktail) and this won't go cloudy either. We google......"why won't my ricard go cloudy?" Age seems to be the most obvious answer. We check the bottle......
"solly" says the bar keep.........
he holds up a bottle of Ricard with a label they haven't used since WW2.
Keith Carrick
It is with inexpressable sadness that we hear in Soi An of the passing of our much loved Brother in Law and great friend Keith Carrick.
The news is all the harder as we can't be there to support Sally or her and Keith's families.
Our distance from home and all that means has never been more keenly and poignantly felt.
Keith was outrageously funny, hard working and the kind of man you could rely on 100% in a bind. The term "diamond geezer" could have been invented for him.
His passing leaves an un-fillable vacuum in our lives.
Of comfort is that Keith had a fascination for the mysteries and secrets of the world and that now he knows that last great unknown. We can picture him radiant in the knowledge.
Keith, you now know better than we do if it is possible; but if it is, we truly hope that we can meet again.
Until then.
Peace.
Just wow!
Off to work
Leaving Pak Meng
After 3 days at this wonderful resort it's time to head to Trang where we need to leave our car and organise boat transfers to the Trang islands.
We intend to take full advantage of the magnificent buffet offered here. Kim and I have long experience of buffets and have long practiced the "flat high value items" technique.
However the Chinese leave us for dead! They can strip a buffet faster than a plague of locusts.
They don't waste time dressing,families of them are at breakfast in their jim-jams, hair sticking up on end scratching under armpits,yawning, pulling pants out of bottom cracks (we make sure there's a family of French people next in line for fresh bread or fruit)
They have little regard for courses as they scoop up the entire supplies of bacon, doughnuts, soup, fruit and every variety of bread. The staff of the resort have learned the hard way not to stand still, ever since Ting Tong nodded off and all they found was the eraser fom her pencil and her name badge.
The staff have learned also not to replenish the food supplies until the Chinese have finished licking the varnish off of the tables, had a good look around to be sure there's nothing left not moving and departed carrying everything they couldn't swallow before bringing more food for the rest of us.
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