After a long, restful sleep we woke up to another beautiful day. I spent the first few minutes of the morning looking out over the ocean (above). We had a huge breakfast again and then got ready to hit the beach! First we went and did some shopping because Hiroshi needed some new flip-flops. I also wanted to get some postcards. We just went to the stores that were right outside the hotel. Hiroshi got some good flip-flops, but I wasn't happy with the postcards - they were a bit damp and grimy from being in the open air all the time. So I decided to just get them from the hotel later. I even bargained the price of the flip-flops down. Neither the owner nor I was too into bargaining so it was half-hearted, but I did get the price down by about US$2.
After shopping, we went and got towels at the beach desk and asked the attendant to set up chairs and an umbrella for us. While talking to him, he said that right then was a good time to swim if we wanted to because the tide was coming in so the undertow wasn't as bad. So we went into the water and jumped around in the waves for a while. I didn't want to be in the direct sun for too long (bad burn memories from last time we were on that beach!) so I went back to the lounge chairs and sat under the umbrella watching and listening to the waves. It was sooo relaxing! Hiroshi had fun jumping around in the water and I just enjoyed the view - which was great because there were only about 5 other people on the whole beach!
We wandered back to our room, and met the cleaning man. I was suprised because it is usually women who are maids. He was bringing our ice bucket and fruit for us. The fruit for the day was 'shampoo' in Thai. It looked like a red bell pepper without the green top. The man didn't speak English very well so he didn't have the English name for the fruit. It was really good though. It was kind of a mix between an apple and an Asian pear. Nice and light and refreshing.
I wandered down to the hotel gift shop to get some postcards and ended up buying some gifts for my parents... which I can't explain otherwise I'll ruin the surprise. I bargained with the shop lady and ended up with a 20% discount. There were some really beautiful things in the store. I'm sure all of them were way over-priced compared to what I would pay to go into town and get them, but I just couldn't be bothered leaving the hotel! And even if they were over-priced, they were still good value in my opinion - especially with my bargained discount!
After relaxing a bit more in our room we headed down to dinner. Tonight was the Thai buffet. We switched from mango smoothies to coconut shakes tonight. The buffet had two huge ice sculptures! One of a swan and one of a fish. The appetizers were really good, and so were the desserts, but the main dishes were only so-so. While eating we were searching for new animals and insects and found a huge green thing on the wall. Kind of like a praying mantis but it had a flat body and normal front legs. Toward the end of dinner I took a big drink of my coconut shake and it was just too much - too sweet after so much food. I ended up feeling ill - like a kid after eating too much Hallowe'en candy so we went back up to the room and I had a little lay down.
I ended up falling asleep for about 5 hours! Eventually I woke up around 2am and Hiroshi was still awake so we grabbed the bottle of champagne (from duty free), got two champagne glasses (which came with the mini-bar!) and headed out on the balcony. The night was clear so we got to watch the stars while we laid on the lounge chairs and sipped away. It was so nice and romantic! After about an hour the mosquitos were bugging us again (despite not having any lights on) and it was starting to rain a bit. We pulled out the mosquito coil and sat in the wicker chair area to finish off the champagne. Eventually we went inside and went to bed. All of a sudden there was a huge rattling and pinging - a storm had come in and the rain was boucning off the roof of our bathroom (it was an opaque sky light so the rain made a sound hitting the plastic). Then there was this giant BOOM! and the power went out! It came back on right away (I assume the hotel has a generator) Didn't matter to us though, because we were all snuggled in bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment