Our Third Week in Thailand – The Delicious Hotel

Hello again from gorgeous Patong Beach, Thailand!

We’ve now been in Thailand for 3 weeks! It’s hard to believe that, it feels as if we’ve been here for months! 

We’re starting to feel much more comfortable here (although we’re still about as touristy as it gets when it comes to standing out! Especially when Wayne’s in full-on tourist garb with his flowery shirt, baseball cap and backpack…all he needs is socks and sandals (which I won’t let him do).  Here’s the shirt I’m talking about:

Table of Contents

• Where We’ve Been
• The Delicious Hotel
• Our Daily Routine(ish)
• Shopping 
• Beach Runs
• Eating (because we have to, and we love food!)
• Work Day
• Date Day
• Excursion Day
• Other Cute Stuff That Makes Us Smile!
• Last Thoughts for This Week:
• Conclusion

Where We’ve Been

Last week we left the Lantern Resort Patong (read about that week here) and moved to the Delicious Hotel. 

We’ve been trying to vary our environment (where we’re living). Our first week here we sort of eased into this new culture and environment by staying at the Diamond Cliff, which is on the end of Patong Beach and just on the outskirts of town. On the actual resort property, we only saw other tourists and Thai staff. When we left the property, we saw some tourists on the beach (but not many, as restrictions were tighter then), and Thai taxi drivers along with some local street vendors and workers.

When we moved for our second week in Thailand we went to the Lantern Patong, which was right in Patong Beach and just across from party-central Bangla Road. While we lived there we saw a lot of tourists, and a lot more local Thai people working and moving around in general, jogging and walking on the streets on their way to and from work or shopping or whatever.

Now for our third week, we’ve moved back away from the beach into more of a local and ex-pat area. We’re still close enough to easily reach the beach (it’s a 20-minute walk) or some of the restaurants we’ve been eating at (around a 10-minute walk), but there’s definitely a different vibe to this area.

Although there are a lot of hotels here, and pretty much all of them have rooms for rent, Nanai Road itself is busy with locals and what appear to be long-term tourists, or (more likely) ex-pats. There are many Thais living in the area and on Nanai Road itself, and the convenience stores and groceries are full of locals shopping. 

There’s a little road right across the street from us that we can see from our balcony. There are quite a few Thais living in the houses there, and a few dogs and cats. And lots of toddler-aged children! One day this week we saw a balloon fight, I don’t know if it was a birthday or not but it was too cute…here’s a short video of it:

The Delicious Hotel

The Delicious Hotel is lovely! It’s run by a Thai woman, Pang, and her husband…they took it over October 1st and are very, very busy. There’s a very blue pool, and there’s a small community kitchen with a toaster oven, microwave, dishes and utensils we can use (score!). It’s cute, sort of motel style: we climb stairs to walk down a long outdoor hall until we reach our door. 

We’ve got one room, with a private bath and balcony. The bathroom has an “American” toilet (which is great! We haven’t encountered an Asian squat toilet yet, but we’ll let you know when we do). It’s got a “bum gun,” as all the bathrooms we’ve been in so far have (our first was the Qatar Airport).

There’s no bathtub; rather it’s a shower-room. The floor is sunk down a couple of inches from the rest of the apartment, and there’s a drain in the corner, so the whole floor can get wet; you just put the bath mat outside the bathroom door. 

It’s very easy to keep the bathroom clean! After a shower, we just use the hose to spray the soapy water towards the drain, then use the bum gun to spray wherever the shower hose won’t reach. The floor dries incredibly quickly (we thought it would take forever). And it feels so spacious when you’re showering! I love this style of bathroom 🙂 Although it’s hard to get a good photo of it.

The apartment has a lot of desk space, which is awesome, and lots of “closed” storage which we love because it looks so much neater than having all your stuff in plain sight.

The only notable thing to mention about this apartment is the mattress. We knew before coming that typical Asian mattresses tend to be super-firm. The previous resort/hotels we stayed with had lovely, wide, perfectly-soft mattresses. The one at the Delicious…not so much!

It’s not that it has *no* give. It does have a very, very slight give. 

It’s more that it has no bounce at all. So if you sit down on it hard (and by “hard” I mean, sit on it as you would normally sit), you basically bump into it and it sort of jars up your body into your jaw, which can cause you to bite your lip or ram your jaws together. Just sayin’. 

So we’ve learned to sit cautiously on the mattress. 

But sleep-wise, it’s surprisingly comfortable! I’m a back sleeper and adjusted very well. Wayne’s a stomach/side sleeper and has no issues. Yay for that … we were a bit worried after sitting on it!

Anyway, we’re settling in nicely, especially since we know we’ll be staying here for a month rather than just the week we’ve stayed at the other places. 

Our Daily Routine(ish)

We’re trying to get a bit of a routine in place, but it’s sort of hard when it’s so nice outdoors every day and you keep thinking of things you could be doing and places you could be going! We have to keep reminding ourselves that this *isn’t* a vacation, we don’t need to rush; this is how our life is right now, so we don’t have to feel like everything has to happen at once. Mind you, that’s a good way to feel all the time wherever we are: Stop rushing and worrying about missing something, just enjoy this moment!

It’s sort of amazing to think that this could be our life from now on! Of course, a lot depends on our finances, as it always does. And on the visa and travel requirements of any countries we want to visit (thank you, Covid). Right now, medical insurance requirements are very heavy, and costs around 20% of our planned expenses, which is pretty hefty. Hopefully that’ll drop a bit in future, but who knows.

Shopping

Anyway, we’re getting into a bit of a routine. We have to go shopping, and we’ve found a couple of stores which have good prices and are a bit closer than the grocery store we’d been going to (the Big C Extra, at the Jungceylon Mall). The Makro is really close to us and has a lot of fruit and veggies (also a *lot* of meat. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much meat in so many varieties and cuts in one place. And vendors buy it by the bags!) But not being meat-eaters, we go for the fruit.

We also found the Supercheap! I love the Supercheap! It smells sort of …off…when you go in (the reviews all warn of that) but it’s actually really clean and has so much stuff! And the prices are better than anywhere we’ve found yet, and it’s always packed with local people shopping.

The Supercheap is sort of like a Walmart except loads cheaper. There’s everything from fresh food, to packaged, to bulk (like these barrels of rice). 

There’s household stuff which you can buy in singles (on the first floor) or by the case (up on the second floor). And appliances. And religious supplies, such as incense and prepackaged offerings for shrines. They have a lot of everything, not just a lot of some things; seriously, the variety is crazy. If you can’t find it, likely you can’t get it, we figure.

But we’ll still be shopping at the Big C for our packaged vegan stuff because it’s the best place for the most variety of vegan processed food.

Beach Runs

Besides shopping, we try to get to the beach at least a couple of times a week because, hey, we’re in Patong Beach, Thailand!  And because of this:

One time when we went this week it smelled really fishy, which is odd. Looking down, we realized the beach was covered in lengths of teensy-tiny white (dead) fish which must have rolled in with the tide. Sort of reminded me of the capelin roll back in Newfoundland, although not as dramatic.

And for anyone out there who doesn’t know what a capelin roll is, here’s a video:

Eating (because we have to, and we love food!)

We’re eating in a bit more now, especially since we have the use of a microwave. We’re buying little frozen meals at the Big C like rice and tofu, or macaroni, they’re only 25 B (~ $1 CAD), which you can’t beat! They’re surprisingly tasty 🙂

We buy mangos, which are around 10 B each (~ $0.40)

We’ve also bought meals using the app Grab to refrigerate and eat at home, like tofu panang, sweet & sour tofu with veg, and tofu & noodles with veg. Yummers!

You have to be careful using the Grab app! There’s no chance to check over an order…if you press that button, it’s done! We accidentally sent our first order to a nearby massage parlour (google map had that as our location). We messaged our driver and sorted it out 🙂

Of course, we’re still eating out a bit! There’s a local Thai restaurant just across the street where we can get a full meal of stir-fried veg and rice or Pad Thai for 60 B (~ $2.25). 

We had our funniest experience there totally botching the Thai language when we forgot our language card (a card we’ve laminated which explains that we’re vegan, and what we eat), which we usually carry everywhere. Also, of course, we couldn’t get google translate to work, and we were both totally blanking out on any words we’ve learned! Luckily, the owner/waiter had a great sense of humor, and sat down laughing with (or at!) us until we straightened it out.

Work Day

We try to dedicate a couple of days a week to work and errands, where we don’t eat out or explore or anything, since when we go out, the day is as good as gone. Right now this involves work on the blog, Facebook and Youtube as well as our work as Lifebook Leaders. We also try to do our planning for date day and excursions during these days, since that can take a fair bit of time on the computer. 

Wayne has been doing the laundry, both by hand and by bringing it to some machines. There are coin-operated washing machines outside in front of many buildings serving as laundromats; there’s one just across the street from us. They run around 30 B per load, ~ $1.10. We dry it at home by hanging it, as do most of our neighbours. There are also launderers (?) everywhere who will do your laundry for 50 B/kg, they hang it to dry as well and fold it up for you.

Date Day

We had a wonderful date day this week! We had a Thai massage at Massage by Ked. Now, a Thai massage is supposed to be a deep, hard massage where the masseuse uses their knees, elbows, and their whole bodies. And they did! At one point, my masseuse was literally balancing on top of me as she worked on my back!

But I think they’re easier on women…my massage was deep and good, but certainly never hurt. Wayne said he was at the point of crying in pain a couple of times and honestly expected to be bruised the next day (he wasn’t). 

But we both agreed, as soon as our masseuses finished and left our curtained alcove…it was AMAZING. We’re planning on returning pretty much every week if we can. We were astounded at how good we felt afterwards.

And the cost? 150 B (just shy of $6) each for a 60-minute massage. Yeah, Baby!

For our date night meal, we went to a different restaurant, Phuketurk. At first, we weren’t too happy with the noise (it was large and very echo-y, and played music a bit too loud for us) but then the food came out and ohmygod it was good. I had my first tofu panang with rice, and it was totally, utterly delicious. I have to try to make it when we return to Ontario next summer. Wayne had stir-fried kale with tofu and rice, and it was also very, very nice. And they were both extremely large dishes at only 60B (~$2.25) each! We could easily have split a dish!

For our dessert, we shared a mango sticky rice. Again, it was incredibly good (mind you, we haven’t had a bad one yet!) and incredibly large! It was also too expensive at 150 B (just under $6) but we had it anyway. And enjoyed it 🙂 Because life is about finding balance, and we’re working at that.

After supper, we walked to the beach and sat awhile. It started to thunder and lightning pretty bad, so we didn’t stay too long.

Excursion Day

We’re trying to get out once every week or so on an excursion. Our last was a half-day guided tour to the Big Buddha, Wat Chalong, Old Town Phuket, and Khao Rang (Monkey Hill). You can read about it here if you missed it. This week, we had an exciting excursion that pushed our boundaries and took physical courage for us both! I’ll publish that on Wednesday…you can subscribe to our newsletter if you want to be sure you don’t miss it!

Other Cute Stuff That Makes Us Smile!

Things we come across pretty regularly in Patong!

Sidewalks, not designed for the Elderly, Infirm, or Pedestrians in General:

Not that we’re complaining, we’re just glad when there are sidewalks! Many, many areas just have a painted strip we assume you’re meant to walk in, although they’re used for parking more often than not. And you have to go around them into traffic.

The Interesting Flavors of Potato Chips:

All in a Day’s Work:

Some Things Just Have to be Seen:

This one really made us laugh! Usually, children ride either on the seat in front of the parent or stand in the cart on the side, hanging on for dear life. This is ingenious!

Last Thoughts for This Week:

This week, it’s rained more in the daytime than it has since we arrived in Thailand, although it still hasn’t rained for more than a few hours straight. Since we’ve been here, it’s often/usually rained at some time through the night, but the days have been dry except for this week. When it does rain, though, it’s remarkable. It’s heavy, it’s noisy, it’s vast. Here’s a short video of a post-sunset storm:

And here’s a photo taken from our back balcony right around sunset:

Conclusion

That’s it for the week! We hope you’re loving your life as much as we’re loving ours…and if not, maybe it’s time to make a change! It definitely doesn’t need to be as dramatic as moving across the world, but you should definitely always be trying to move towards happiness in your everyday life.

How about starting a weekly (or even monthly) date night with your sweetie (or yourself, if you’re single or just want to spoil yourself)?

Drop a comment to let us know how you plan to move create more happiness in your life! 🙂