2 Aussie Nomads

There are a few things that you shouldn’t do in Thailand.

You don’t drink the water. You are specifically warned NOT to drink the water. I’m not sure whether the locals drink it, but all travel sites specially warn that it is not safe to drink. 

Not only is it not safe to drink, but you don’t even use it to brush your teeth – they give you bottled water for that. 

Unfortunately it is pretty easy to forget … you brush your teeth, run your toothbrush under the tap and pop it back in your mouth … and WHAM!

I can’t remember which end it all comes out of – poo or spew – but I recall that it is a swift and sure way to offset the damage done from overeating. That extra 2kg you put on is gone, just like that. BAM!

Nudity is also not allowed because the locals are quite strict and religious. I assume it is allowed in the privacy of your own bathroom, but not on the beach. 

They probably should extend that rule to people who are old enough to know better, but walk around the pool in their way-too-brief budgie smugglers and bikinis. 

If you are more than 5 years old, or weigh more than 100kg, cover it up because we don’t want to see it. 

Because you can’t un-see it!

You also probably don’t want to ignore the Tsunami evacuation route signs, because … well, because. Getting washed away by a Tsunami is not on my bucket list, especially when I don’t have my boogie board with me.

We started the day with a healthy breakfast. I’m still not sure why I had (or enjoyed) an omelette with a side of bacon and fish in orange sauce, but it was good. 

And fish is brain food, so I’ll make better decisions. 

Today is our second full day here at Khao Lak. Yesterday we found ourselves a couple of recliners and lazed by the pool for a few hours. 

Today I got a memo that MBW wanted to get a recliner on the beach. Now there are a couple of problems with that. 

Firstly, as beautiful as Thailand is, the beaches here are nothing compared to Surfers Paradise. We have the best beaches in the world on our doorstep, and I’m not sure that we realise – or appreciate it. 

But my bigger concern was Greenpeace. 

I don’t know if they are active here in Thailand, but I was genuinely concerned about waking up from a nap on my recliner and finding a bucket brigade trying to keep me cool, while their colleagues try to roll me back into the ocean. 

But then I realised that the people more at risk – the truly fat people – are the ones who also have poor judgement and lie on the beach in their way-too-brief swimwear.

We spent a lovely couple of hours at the beach, went for a dip in the ocean .. which was hotter than body temperature and really quire rough … before retreating to the pool again.

Another forecast of rain, yet another spectacular sunny day. Weather forecasting is obviously a black art practiced all over the world. 

Back to our room for a freshen up and to get dressed, and we went out for a walk. 

There were a coupe of places that MBW had marked in Google Earth that she wanted to look at, so off we went. It looked like we’d be walking some distance today, so joggers were the preferred footwear over thongs.

It was really hot today. At one point my phone’s weather app reported that it was 33 degrees that felt like 40, and it sure felt like 40.

We’d been out browsing through souvenir shops for about an hour and the heat and humidity was starting to get to us. 

Being the safety conscious and risk averse people that we are, we decided to take shelter in a gelato shop … for our own protection, of course.

I really don’t understand how any of these people make any money, or even survive. 

Every single store front is either a Cafe, massage establishment, or souvenir shop, with the occasional gelato shop or cannabis dispensary thrown in.

Most of the owners either sit outside or the heat and tout for business as you walk past, or they sit inside with the lights and air-conditioning off (to save money, I assume), then rush around turning on lights and fans when you enter. 

We found a 7-Eleven so MBW could buy some shampoo and conditioner (… and chips and chocolate and …) then we found a little (huge, actually) market and browsed for gifts for the grandies. 

Spoiler alert: the grandies get spoiled, while our kids get nothing.

MBW practised her negotiation skills and managed to get some good bargains … well I assume they were good bargains, but all of that smiling could have been translated to “stupid tourists”.

It really was seriously hot, so we made our way back to the Ramada to shelter in the cool of our room until it was time for our grand entrance at 4.00pm cocktails. 

We had a table booked for dinner at 6.15, so we got our usual table and discussed whether to risk the Thai menu again, or revert back to the Western menu. 

You will recall that I have previously spoken about the young women in Singapore who set up every photo of themselves to capture themselves with their best pouty, hair-flicky best. Well, they crazy followed us to Khao Lak. 

Sitting at our dinner table we had front row seats to a self-absorbed crazy woman who not only got her significant other to take dozens of photos of her in all sorts of poses on his phone, but he then gave her the device so she could critique them and tell him how to do better.

We decided on the western menu again tonight, and I think we chose badly 😢. 

The food was OK, but we have had much better food, many times at other places and at other times. 

C’est la vie. It’s not like we needed to eat.

We’ve also noticed some tattoo joints around here, and we kicked around an idea about getting matching tattoos. This trip is partly post-retirement, partly MBW’s 60th birthday, and partly our 40th wedding anniversary, so we wondered about surprising the kids by coming home with some ink.

Do we get 2 halves of a love heart, or maybe something to recognise 40 years of marriage. 40 in Roman numerals is XL … which is also a reminder that my XL sized clothes are at risk of no longer fitting … so maybe we will scrap the tattoo idea after all.

And that’s about it for the day. More than 8000 steps which isn’t bad, but still feeling pretty relaxed.

Sleep, eat, swim, cocktails, eat, repeat.

We get to do it all over again tomorrow.

Ciao

#Thailand2024

Our first full day in Khao Lak. I slept the sleep of the dead, but woke early. It was dark – maybe around 6.00am.

I managed to go back to sleep for a short while and woke up with the daylight, maybe 30 minutes later. 6.30am in Khao Lak, but 9.30am in Brisbane.

MBW was still snoring sleeping, so I got up and read my book for a while. I’ve started rereading a Harry Bosch book, and once I’d started I needed to see how it ended (again).

There are a number of perks to staying here on this deal that we have. 8 nights in Khao Lak with the “all you can eat” buffet breakfast, plus lunch or dinner every day, plus 2 x 1 hour massages, and the scary airport transfer where 90km/h is the new 50km/h and you use a confusing system of turn signals.

MBW finally woke, showers were had, and we made our way to breakfast.

Now I don’t know about you, but I consider “all you can eat” to be a personal challenge … and I was going for a PB. That’s Personal Best.

We spent about an hour at breakfast, eating our way through the buffet and trying to figure it all out … wondering about some of the more unusual things on the buffet.

Like dumplings. I mean, I like dumplings, and I will often make them on Saturday nights when it’s my turn to cook … but for breakfast? 2 different kinds of shrimp dumplings, and one kind of pork.

And cheese and crackers. Pumpkin seeds. Fish in some unknown sauce.

Coffee. I know that one, so no confusion there.

It appears to me that the most common nationalities here are English (including Australian), Germans, and Thai. So they had everything to make each of those nationalities feel right at home.

The first order of business after eating our own body weight in breakfast food was to slip into our swimmers and go sit by the pool.

The forecast was for rain and thunderstorms, and my phone’s weather app was very helpful in advising me that the rain would stop shortly.

The water in the pool was absolutely stunning – crystal clear, just the right temperature … and – I can only assume – most people sleep in really late and don’t emerge until lunchtime, because the pool was mostly empty.

A few kids too, so I imagine that there was also some … nope, doesn’t matter. Best not to think about it. I’m sure that the chlorine will kill it.

After 3 hours at the pool we went back to our room, showered, changed, and got ready to go out for a walk.

We had promised ourselves that if we had a big breakfast, we wouldn’t need lunch … which is good in theory, but flawed in practice.

Our tiny little brains told us that it was lunchtime, and the place directly across the road from the Ramada is highly rated on the Intergoogle, so we thought we’d pop in and check out the menu.

So we ordered lunch – Pad Thai and Pineapple something-or-other that came in a half a pineapple.

It was really good … we didn’t need to eat, but it was still really good.

Next stop was a bit further up the road where we had heard that there was a place that can do your laundry cheap, and also do massages.

I’m not entirely sure that I understand the connection between laundry and massage, but … when in Rome.

We dropped off our laundry and went next door to the massage place – I’m not going to say “massage parlour” because that just sounds creepy – and I signed up for a neck and shoulder massage while MBW signed up for a pedicure.

Clearly biology is not something that the massage lady understands, because I was told to “take off shirt, take off shorts” and I wondered if maybe it was actually a massage parlour and I was about to get way more than I bargained for. Which incidentally I did (get more than I bargained for), but it was a full Thai massage that I got, rather than just neck and shoulders.

I’m not sure if there was something lost in translation, or whether this was just one of those “would you like fries with that” upsell moments and I nodded at the wrong time, but when she started to massage my feet I figured that I was getting the works. Not just neck and shoulders.

We clearly hadn’t thought this through. Remember the all you can eat buffet breakfast, followed by a period of intense inactivity (sitting by the pool), followed by lunch that I didn’t need to eat?

Lying on my stomach on a hard massage table wasn’t exactly the comfortable start of a relaxing massage that I had anticipated. But we do what we have to do … lie there and think of England.

I have been pretty sore and tight, so it was a nice massage … until it stopped being nice and became more torture than fun.

She certainly found all of the sore spots in my back and shoulders, but when she climbed up on the table with me and drove her elbows into my back and shoulders with her whole body weight behind it, it started to become unpleasant.

And when she crouched down beside me and bent my head and neck over her knee while jamming her elbow into my neck, I wished that I’d checked our travel insurance first to know whether paraplegia at the hands of a crazy Thai masseuse is covered … because I was sure that’s where I was heading.

I think it was Friedrick Nietzsche that said “whatever doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger”, and I figured that if this didn’t kill me then I’d be really strong!

We checked out some of the little souvenir shops on the way back to the resort, and found a mini mart to buy some milk for evening coffee, then made it back to our room with no further incident or pain. Just a promise that our laundry would be returned to us at 9.00pm tomorrow night.

She probably wanted to see if I was still a functioning human being after that massage, or if she could keep our clothes.

The afternoon consisted of another period of intense inactivity … we had a nice rest in our air conditioned room to escape the heat and humidity.

4.00pm is drinks time, so we staggered back down to the pool bar and had a couple of cocktails and mocktails.

5.00pm we were back to our room to make ourselves beautiful for dinner.

Last night we made the mistake of sitting near a speaker blaring music, so conversation was mostly nonexistent or impossible. Tonight we requested a table at the far end of the restaurant and it was much better.

And what a view … watching the sunset over the water, something we never see in Brisbane.

They have two menus that we can choose from – a western menu and a local Thai menu. Last night we had western so tonight we went Thai … and it was a bit of a disappointment. Clearly Australian Thai food is very different to traditional Thai food.

Dinner consumed, belts loosened and we staggered our way back to our room for coffee.

And that’s about it. We did very little of value, other than eat (and eat, and eat …) and contribute to the Khao Lak economy through our $8.00 load of washing and our $17.00 massage.

Maybe we will do it all over again tomorrow …

I could get used to this.

Ciao

#Thailand2024

We had a bit of an epiphany yesterday, and like many epiphanies, it wasn’t a good one.

We had a closer look at the T&Cs of our 2 day MRT pass and discovered that “2 days” doesn’t appear to mean 48 hours, it means that day 1 ends at midnight of the first day that you used the card.

And we first used the cards at about 10.00pm on Sunday night, so day 1 was all of about 2 hours in duration.

And that means that our handy dandy unlimited MRT cards will probably not work when we need to head to the airport today to fly to Thailand.

C’est la vie.

We got up early – although we didn’t set any Olympic records – and we finalised our packing and went exploring Singapore again. Our flight is about 2.00pm, so we needed to be at the airport by 12.00 noon, so we needed to leave the hotel by 10.30am or so.

A search of the Intergoogle tells us that Raffles Hotel is about 500m away, and that there are a couple of good coffee shops and bakeries on the way.

And we do like coffee and pastries.

So off we went. Most of the shops in Singapore seem to open quite late, so it can be challenging to find a coffee shop that is open before 9.30 or 10.00am … which is kinda crazy because if I haven’t had coffee well before 10.00am, I can be rather unpleasant to be around.

But we found one and got our Java hit, then went walking.

We found an unusual shopping centre that was a building inside another building, which was interesting …

… then we found a bakery (French, I think), and their pastries looked amazing.

Only one guy in the line ahead of us, and somehow he managed to choose every single pastry that we wanted to get … and of course there were none of any of those left over for us 🙁

But that’s OK, because we still got something and it was still really good.

Onwards towards Raffles.

Raffles is the quintessential British upper class establishment where you can sip cocktails. It is an absolutely spectacular building that appears to take up a whole city block, and is clearly no place for riff raff Aussies like us.

In fact, while we were able to walk around and take some photos, we didn’t bother trying to get inside because we didn’t want to face the humiliation of being asked to leave.

So that was all we really wanted to achieve today, other than getting to the airport on time and not missing our flight.

Back to our TTHR to collect our stuff …

… and we were back to being subway ninjas.

Unexpectedly, our unlimited 2 day MRT passes still worked, so either:

• They really do work for 48 hours, or
• We completely misread and misunderstood the rules, or
• They assume that if you buy a 2 day pass that you won’t try to use it on day 3.

Who knows?

Changi airport is like a city. I’m sure that there is a movie theatre in there, and possibly a hotel where you can sleep the night. It is a seriously impressive and well run airport.

There are 4 terminals, and the MRT drops you at T2 while we needed to get to T4 … so onto a bus …

Not only is Singapore incredibly clean and tidy, but the people are so polite. A man got off the shuttle bus ahead of me and I inadvertently stepped in front of his wife/significant other as I was trying to get 2 suitcases off the bus.

He turned around and I figured he was about to tell me to get out of the way … but no, he helped me with my luggage!

Anyhow, luggage checked in with the assistance of a very friendly and helpful airport person (take note, Australia!) and we grabbed a bite of lunch and went through customs and immigration.

Singapore to Thailand is only a 2 hour flight, so we went to the gate, topped off our water bottles from the free chilled water taps, and our flight took off on time.

Take note, Australia!

The Jetstar flight was only about half full, so we got to stretch out.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again … Thailand knows how to do hospitality.

The process through the airport was quick and easy. Our stay at the Ramada included a transfer from the airport to the hotel (about 1.5 hours drive north of the airport), and they were waiting for us and ready to go.

The trip was … interesting. Our driver didn’t speak English, and he either didn’t understand speed signs, or the rules don’t apply here.

He sat on 90km/h all the way from Phuket Airport to Khao Lak, regardless of the posted speed limit signs … even through a township that had a 50km/h posted limit.

And he had some kind of code using his indicators to tell everyone that he was passing another vehicle even though we stayed in our own lane. And when he touched the brakes, he also put on his hazard lights.

Interesting.

Anyhow we got to the Ramada at Khao Lak, checked in and were taken to our room with enough time to get down to free flow drinks at the pool bar from 4.00pm to 5.00pm.

Our room is nice, the weather is spectacular, and I can’t think of anything I’d rather than be doing than sitting by the pool.

I could get used to this.

Ciao

#Thailand2024

Today is our big day in Singapore. We are only here in Singapore for one full day, so we need to make the most of it.

We booked a 3 hour walking (eating) foodie tour for the morning, and then have the afternoon free.

But first, some logistical matters to address.

We already bought our 2 day MRT pass, but we need to get a SIM card and breakfast. And figure out how to get from our hotel to Chinatown for the tour.

So we needed to get our bearings.

We had coffee in our teeny tiny hotel room to start the day right. And when I say teeny tiny room, believe me because I’m not kidding.

The bed was probably queen sized, and there was enough space for a chair either side between the bed and the wall. Twice that much at the foot end of the bed, but most of that was taken up with a mini fridge, cupboard and desk. And then there was a teeny tiny bathroom off to the side.

$200 per night was what we paid.

Anyhow, at least we had a comfy bed to sleep in …

Coffee consumed, and we went in search of breakfast. We did a quick walk around the block to see what there was to see.

We found a hawker centre (I’ll explain that later) – or a food court – with all manner of takeaway food places in it, and we saw the word ”bakery” … and you cant go wrong with a bakery for breakfast … can you?

We bought this sugar scroll thing that was about the size of a dinner plate and 10mm thick made of puff pastry. It was pretty tasteless, but stopped us from starving.

Not that there is any risk of starving in Singapore … although I’m having trouble with the concept of eating hot noodles for breakfast, which seems to be the standard food for all meals.

We found a 7-Eleven down the street and bought a SGD$12.00 (about AUD$14.00) SIM card, and hopped on the nearest MRT to get to Chinatown by 9.30am.

Once we had hooked up with our tour group and our guide, we were off to get the history of Singapore, learn about the food scene here, and eat.

There were only 6 of us on the tour – a couple of Chinese girls (early to mid 20s) who never said a peep the whole time, an American couple from Long Beach California (late 20s), and MBW and myself.

Here is fun fact … only Tourists call this area Chinatown. The locals call it something else that literally translates to “buffalo cart water”.

So back in the day, hawkers were street food vendors that pushed their carts around the streets of Singapore. They were supposed to be licensed, but most were not, so when the inspectors came around most of them scattered.

So the government created hawker centres where all of the food vendors could open a stall in a controlled environment … and that is where we went.

Here are a couple more fun facts … 90% of the food in Singapore is imported and they have little to no agriculture here. According to our tour guide, the only thing that grows in Singapore is people.

Next fun fact is that 80% of the population live in public housing, and most of it is pretty … ordinary.

I’m not going to try and explain everything we ate, except to say that if I’d bothered to learn how to use chopsticks before we left home, the whole experience would have been so much better.

The other important lesson about doing a food tour in Singapore when you can’t confidently use chopsticks, is to wear dark clothes … to minimise the splatter from eating noodles.

Sigh 🙁

After the very first dish we ate, I already looked like I should have worn a bib, or perhaps a garbage bag with holes cut in it for my head and arms.

I’m not going to bore you with all the details, but we ate lots of different dishes, had coffee, and had a fabulous time learning about the food and culture of Singapore.

You will recall that MBW broke her foot at Easter 2023, so walking is either a bit uncomfortable for her, or downright painful.

After hiking all over Chinatown for 3 hours in the tropical heat, we headed back to our teeny tiny hotel room (TTHR) for a rest and some air conditioning.

One of the other things that we were keen to look at in Singapore is the Gardens by the bay (GBTB). It’s a bit like the Brisbane botanical gardens, except on steroids. And you have to pay to go in … like SGD$59.00 each to look at some flowers. That’s about AUD$68 each. Each.

Now, to be fair, MBW was keen to go, but I needed some convincing.

When we were in New York in 2018 we earned our stripes as subway ninjas. And I have to tell you that we still have it.

The Singapore subway is astonishing. Every line is coded, and every station has an identifier that makes sense. Bencoolen Station (next to our hotel) is station DT21 (where DT = Downtown line). Chinatown is DT19, so it is two stops closer to the city.

Some of the tracks are 6 or 7 levels underground. Don’t even get me started on the fact that they are cheap, driverless (as in fully automated with no staff on-board), and you never need to wait more than 4 or 5 minutes for a train to come.

And clean – I reckon you could eat off the floor in those subways.

So we did the subway ninja thing and hopped trains, changed platforms, and found ourselves at the GBTB station. We walked about 500m from the station to the gardens’ and bought our tickets for the Flower dome including a Monet exhibition, and the Cloud Forest.

Both exhibitions were absolutely amazing.

The flower dome was this enormous, air conditioned dome that must have covered half an acre in land size, and had gardens from many countries of the world represented, including Australia. Walking through the Australian garden was seriously just like walking through the bush at home.

You can become so absorbed in the gardens that you can easily spend a couple of hours – or more – wandering around, following paths, and looking at the extensive exhibits or stunning gardens.

The photos simply don’t do it justice.

We then went through the Cloud forest, which is another fully enclosed rainforest complete with a 35m high waterfall. You wind your way through the exhibit and can easily lose an hour or more just wandering around and looking at the plants.

One of the things that we found really funny (and annoying) is that young Singapore ladies behave as though they are rock stars … they are constantly taking photos of each other … but not just a happy snap, a fully orchestrated “look back over the shoulder with pouting lips and a perfectly timed hair flick” to get just the right effect.

And – oddly – they seem to think it’s OK to block off the path and stop people walking through while they get the perfect shot.

By the time we had finished the gardens it was getting late – maybe 6.30pm and we needed to get dinner and get back to our TTHR.

One of the places that we ate at on the tour was kinda on the way home, so we did the subway thing again and navigated ourselves back to the hawker centre and queued up to order dinner.

This particular lady who runs this shop has 9 Michelin badges … a concept I don’t entirely understand, but has something to do with getting awards for food quality, cleanliness and hygiene. And the food was amazing.

SGD$9.00 for two bowls of food that were so delicious …

Back home to our TTHR by about 8.00pm to get our bags packed and ready to head off to Khao Lak Thailand tomorrow. We have a 2.00pm flight, so we have to be at the airport by 12.00noon, so we need to be on the MRT heading to Changi Airport by 10.30am.

That will give us a few hours in the morning to have a poke around and see what there is to see. It seems that Raffles Hotel is only about 500m away, so that will be a fun way to fill the morning … but you will hear about that tomorrow.

It’s been a great day, but a BIG day. We walked more than 19,000 steps and had a fantastic day in the city learning about Singapore food and culture. And seeing the gardens, and riding the subway.

Ciao

#Thailand2024