Week 4 – The Delicious Hotel (a slow week)

Hello, everyone, from rainy Patong!

Well, it’s not always rainy, but we did have a couple of days where it rained through the day, which is more than we’ve been used to. Up until last week rain was pretty much a night thing (and it still does rain pretty much every night). Not complaining though – it breaks the heat a bit and certainly doesn’t last all day!

It’s been a slow week, and yet I got behind in my blogging! I only got the zipline adventure post published yesterday, and am way late writing this. I can’t really remember what happened when even though I’m keeping notes. And it’s sort of confusing trying to remember because, honestly, the days are starting to blend together now. I have to find another way to organize my posts rather than by week, maybe by date? Any suggestions?

Anyway! Enough whining, I’ll just write what I write 🙂

We didn’t do much this week; we chose not to go on any adventure or big outing because my birthday was coming (This post – week 4 – is the week of Oct 30 to Nov 5. I really have to find another way to organize). And we’d be doing more stuff (and by “doing more stuff”, I mean “spending more money”) for my birthday, so we decided to be more stay-at-home.

And since we were staying at home, you’d think we would’ve been getting more work done, right? Yeah. Not exactly. It’s been a weird week. Great, and fun, but not as productive as we like.

But Wayne did finally get his hair cut! He grew it out for a year because I asked him to (isn’t he awesome? He doesn’t like long hair, but I do). But it’s too long, and well beyond my cutting capabilities…I usually cut his hair, but it was at a weird stage in length. So one morning we went to a hairdresser up the road and…ta da! He’s much happier, and I love it 🙂 She did a great job!

We explored a bit more this week. One surprise we found was an outdoor gym! Actually, we’re not sure if it’s more of an art display because it’s pretty, and shiny, and looks pretty unused. Wayne tried a few of the machines and they don’t give much of a workout, but I guess maybe they’re for cardio? Who knows. Anyway, it’s on Nanai Road, and we’ve passed it multiple times when walking, just never noticed it before. Isn’t it weird how you see what you get used to seeing?

We also wandered down some streets we hadn’t been on before. Patong has some main roads that connect, and loads of little wander-y streets in between that maze around but don’t meet any other main street. We found this cute area of colorful buildings just off a road we’ve been on dozens of times.

During our explorations, we also found the Wang Kee Oan waterfall! It’s sort of tiny, and the public building for it is closed due to Covid, but it was pretty 🙂 and has a nice sitting area with benches.

We noticed lots of electrical work being done; they use bamboo ladders, which is neat. The wires here are a tangle, I don’t know how they fix anything, and sometimes they’re sagging so much they brace them up!

We also saw a big lizard floating on a piece of styrofoam down one of the canals (s/he was at least 2 1/2 feet long!)

The canals are full of stagnant water, and a murky brown, puddle-color. Once, we saw a Thai bathing in a canal. There are so many homeless Thai around, you often see them ducking into windows or openings to get into the abandoned buildings where they’re living. Covid has been so hard on so many people here.

And so many Thai live in rough, derelict housing with shabby tin roofs. There is such a difference between the “haves” and the “have-nots”.

Speaking of the “haves'” at least the old male tourists can get home-delivered Viagra and Cialis!

On an “up” note, we finally managed to find a veggie street food vendor (her cart had the “veg” flags flying on it)! We were as excited as little kids! We loaded up on her food. She has amazing variety, and it’s all vegan, and very, very tasty. The spring roll sauce is to die for!!

We went back the next day and found she would be gone for a week, so we stocked up on 3 days of meals to bring home. Thank god for a fridge!

It’s weird how the things we’re so frantic about in North America aren’t even a consideration here. We both remember the good old days of sitting on the floor of the car, or lying loose on a mattress in the back of a van and even (gasp) riding in the back of an open pick-up! We’re definitely more helicopter parents than the Thai people! But you never see babies or dogs fall off, so it can’t be too bad?!

For our date day we had a massage at Massage by Ked (again, because why mess with an incredibly good thing?) and went to a new-to-us Indian Restaurant called Badsha Indian Food.

The owner of Badsha was friendly, but a bit pushy, constantly trying to upsell. That’s sort of par for the course in a lot of places around here but we’re still not used to it, and it’s hard not to feel bad for them…we were the first customers of the night (two more came before we finished, but he definitely wasn’t busy) and you know it’s rough with Covid.

The good news is, he understood “vegan” and was willing to veganize pretty much anything. The tandoori rotis were maybe the best we’ve ever had anywhere…very fluffy and soft but still charred in spots. We also had yellow dal, which was too runny for our tastes (but the leftovers thickened nicely and the flavour matured overnight, so it was better the next day). We also had aloo jeera which had a beautiful rich flavour and thick gravy, but the potatoes were a bit undercooked. 

Across the road from the Badsha were a group of ladyboys holding signs and calling customers in for a show. They’re gorgeous (and taller than me, in their heels!) and incredibly graceful (again, more so than me, but that’s not hard).

In lieu of the usual sunset photo, we thought we’d shake things up and share a photo of some bags of mayo to make you smile 🙂 Because…mayo in a bag? (I know, you can get squeeze tubes and restaurants get mayo bags, but we’ve never seen it before, and you can’t seem to get it in jars). Lots of liquid condiments are in bags. Yet, we’ve only found Heinz ketchup in glass bottles here!

Okay, that was a lie. Here’s this weeks sunset photo from the back balcony. The sky went from a dull grey to a truly eerie bright yellow to this brilliant red within 10 minutes; what a show!

Hope you’ve had a wonderful week! Don’t forget to subscribe (box to the right) so you don’t miss a post!