Laurie's World

it’s July 10th here, sometimes having to check calendar and then typing the date helps me figure out what day it is. Otherwise I lose track. It was our first full day in Chumphon and we Didn’t do very much. There isn’t a whole bunch of things to do here exactly so we knew when we came that it was going to be serious downtime. The hotel is lovely and between the breakfast being good and the room and pool being very nice we are plenty happy. I did a load of laundry this morning (found the machines very close to the hotel-right behind in fact) for 20 baht! We do not have our own balcony here so we have laundry hanging all over the room drying, but that’s fine! We are going to be at Le meridian in Chiang Rai so unlikely to do laundry there 🤣🤣. We are the people who show up on points and don’t do much else!

We went for a walk mid day and ended up st the mall. At the mall was a Swenson’s. So we enjoyed ourselves some ice cream. Then for some reason we got pizza from the Pizza Hut 🙄. No idea why we did that. But the ice cream was amazing! I got a lava cake with ice cream. So delicious! I need to figure out how to make this dessert work at the restaurant!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are currently back at the awesome massage place getting a one hour 200 baht foot massage!! We were going to get a 2 hour body massage tonight but decided to save that for tomorrow. It’s only 350 baht. (FOR 2 hours!!) that’s only $11.75 btw.

Up and at it, sort of, an 8:45 pick up means no leisurely lollygagging this morning. The breakfast was the third day of amazingness! The owner’s name is Jane by the way. Although she keeps telling me her husband is the owner, she just works there! I feel like telling her “in my country, that means you own this place too!” But I don’t. today she told me “he does the thinking, I do the working”! Not sure what I think of this, but I guess everyone has different roles in a partnership. 🤔 I’ll tell you this, if and when I come back it will be because of Jane’s work, not her husband’s ‘thinking’!

The minivan shuttle cost 400 baht total and unlike past trips like this, we were essentially the only people in the vehicle. There were three other ladies he picked up roadside along the way that chattered and prattled on as they clearly knew each other. And my thought and comment to Troy was, “we just paid for this guy to pick up his 7 wives and take them to Chumphon for the day” 🤣🤣🤣. Ok, maybe they were his sisters??

First reviews of Chumpon: holy crow this place is big and busy and HOT! It’s a real town, not a sleepy beachside village like we’ve been staying in so far. So feels more like ChiangMai than anything else. Our hotel, the “A-Te Chumpon” is randomly placed in the middle of the working part of town clearly (rather than a touristy part). But it’s really a great place. The room is plenty large enough, (we got upgraded) clean, comfy and has all the creature comforts I like. (Kettle, robes and slippers), pool is spectacular, 7-11 down the block, a FARANG  bar (yes, that’s us ‘Farang’), and laundry very close and the very best part, we found a really amazing massage place around the block. So what else do I need for my three nights here. Pool, food, massage!

I had massaman curry for lunch at the Farang bar. I know I should have tried their Farang food 🙄 sure was good, even though I thought it was Tom Kha when it arrived. Very pale massanan but delicious. I was so full I could barely eat it all, but I persevered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pool is great here and quite needed as It’s sure hot hot hot! 86 degrees at 9:30AM 😓  💦

 

Today was the day for renting motorcycles! Sometimes I get lazy and just prefer to walk around or read books! But I know 100% of the time, if I go to the trouble to rent motorbikes I will be deliriously happy once I’m on the open road. Today was no exception! We rented bikes from the lady who is the owner/operator here at the Theatre Villa. I still feel a tiny bit bad that she paid for the taxi from the train station, so I’m fine paying 250 baht/day/bike rather than the 200 baht/day/bike we were quoted elsewhere. In addition to the repayment on my guilt, I also Much MUCH prefer renting from the hotel because then we are much Much less likely to have to give our passports in exchange for the bike. I really don’t like doing that! So today no problem. She gets us all set up very quickly and we are off! She also gives us some tips for places to go. Two Wats (temples) and a Cave. (Don’t worry mom, it’s totally safe 😘).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We head out after sun screening all those bodily bits that will now see the sun when stretched out on a bike. And the the sun is bright today! Yay🎉🎉

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We headed north and First stop Wat Bo Thong Lang. We found this temple with an amazing beach by a fishing village.

The second place recommended ended up being the temple we walked to when we stayed in Ban Krut 🤣🤣but we rode up on our bikes this time! WAY FASTER🤣🤣

The rain clouds come out in force when we were at Wat Tang Sai and we decided to head south to try and outrun it! We mostly did, other than the wind that came with the storm. It was gale force winds off the ocean they seemingly came out of nowhere. Our path took us predominantly along the ocean until we got back to BangSaphon. So the sand whipping off the beach was a little painful and got stuck all over me (sunscreen had me pretty greased up), and my brain working overtime to try and figure out what gave me more control over bike fighting the side wind? Fast vs slow(er). Ended up somewhere in the middle. Grateful when we got to turn off and go inland a bit. We stopped at 7-11 to duck for shelter just as rain drops started. Waited it out for 30 minutes maybe, then headed out to Khao Ma Rong Cave.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very big cave! No chance of getting stranded here mom. Despite the sprinkle of rain. Also not another soul in sight! Plenty of bats 🦇 though 🤣🤣

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time to head ‘home’! Although we decided to take the road less traveled in general, I applaud Troy for choosing a road even MORE less traveled!! 🤣🤣 believe it or not, these ‘roads’ show up in google maps and Troy we able to track us the whole way. No chance of getting lost….do you see him heading out on the right there!??

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We got back to hotel around 5:45pm and decided to eat here! If breakfast any indicator, the supper should be delicious! It did not disappoint!! We feasted! Thai omelette, fried chicken, shrimp fried rice, shrimp and veggies! Very happy tummies and we have our plan set to head to Chumphon tomorrow. Mini van coming at 8:45am. Will cost 200 baht/person but will take us right to our hotel. Sounds good to me!

 

 

I’ve either lost track of days, or messed up the dates (or both)🤣🤣

 

Our first full day in BangSaphon was Sunday I think 🤔. We didn’t do too much other than had a fantastic breakfast, then went to sit on the beach and listen to audible books! I had my suit on, so after a couple hours, thought I should take a dip in the ocean, that led me to think I should go for a walk on the beach! I talked Troy into joining me, which was a good thing because we ended up walking 3 miles up the beach. I guess it was actually ‘down’ since it was south. Then we had to walk three miles back! Exhausted we were….showered then crashed…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other than breakfast and the cute hotel doggies, I don’t even have any pictures! Everywhere we go there are dogs, and some even want belly rubs!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ttfn

Well! I feel better! And I’ve decided we should move on! I like it here but am not willing to pay those crazy prices to stay in at the BanGrood Arcadia. The sun is UP today and noticeably hotter.  Lovin’ me  more salad today!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The breakfast room is buzzing today with more people and all the fans going. We noticed that there are SO many flies here in Ban Krut. It’s really annoying there are millions on full big flies and little ones I would call noseeums at home. No idea what they are, or WHY But I’m done with it. Bug spray doesn’t deter them either. So I sit by a fan not because of the heat, but bcz it blows the flies away, it at least some of them! The view is spectacular in the sun with blue skies ❤

 

Our plan is to take the train to our next destination. BangSaphon. We feel confident in this plan now based on previous experience. So we check out of hotel and put our stuff with the porter as train does not come until 2:45pm (and we know will be late at that!). We have time for a massage! Off we go to find a massage. Third place we try is the charm as the first two can’t take 2 people. Troy and i Had an awesome foot massage and then we stopped at 7-11 again for some of that coffee! Ok, troy had pop and a magnum and I had the coffee and chicken on a stick from the lady across the street from the 7-11. This managed to get me a loyal sidekick in one of the many many dogs roaming this town. I shared a bit and the sweet girl had very good manners but when I tossed the bag she gazed at it for a while in the garbage can, then bailed on me🤣🤣

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The train was GET THIS! 3 baht each! So for 6baht, we were on our way. That’s 20 cents for the two of us. A taxi would have been 800 baht. That’s just shy of $27. I am shocked at the affordability of the train. And grateful for it!! The ride was very short. Like about 20 minutes! I had contacted the hotel (Theatre Villa) in Bangsaphan as they offer pick up from train station. So I was expecting them when we arrived. There was no one waiting that was obvious To us like when we arrived in Ban Krut. Then a guy said some stuff To us and indicated he was with Theatre Villa. So this seemed like progress. We got into his car and he took us out on the highway. This hotel is way further out of town than we usually stay at. Plus this car is sounding like it might never get there, but we are committed now!

Sure enough we arrive ‘somewhere’ after 15 minutes or so, way in the middle of nowhere down a lot of sketchy little roads with gigantic potholes. Troy was watching on his GPS map on his phone and assures me that its our hotel. And then it gets awkward. He wants money. But taxi was supposed to be free???? The lady running the hotel says her driver is at train station looking for us. Uh oh. She graciously agrees to pay the taxi driver. And says everything is ok. She’s really nice about it. Bad day for her guy to be late!

So new hotel is right on the beach and our room has great view. We went for a walk on the beach after settling in and met another couple from Germany with a super cute terrier. After chat chat about dogs, they told us about a beach bar that has an English singer on Saturday nights at 8pm. And that we should go if we want. Long story short, we went. We were early in fact (6:30) and had snacks, water and lemon shake while waiting and enjoying the view. The guy came around 8, didn’t start playing until 8:25, sounded like an old drunk karaoking on his grandchild’s microphone that he got for Christmas. So we parted 1.5 songs and then headed home! Maybe our bar is too high for events like this, or we just aren’t starved enough for English yet. 🤣🤣🤣

The weather is significantly better today! Woot!!!! We had a leisurely morning, buffet breakfast was pretty good! We had the usual toast, eggs and acceptable Thai food (fried rice and pad see ewe) but I’ve started to get into the salad bar! Especially when they have my favourite corn! Not typical breakfast food in any form or fashion but good nonetheless! 🤣🤣

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we decided to head out for a walk. Not entirely sure where yet but ended up at Wat Tang Sai Temple. Wat Tang Sai is a magnificent temple which was built in 1996 to mark King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s 50th year of reign. It has 9 pagodas to represent His Majesty The King Rama IX and it can be seen sitting on top of Thong Chai Mountain just up from the Big Golden Buddha overlooking Baan Grood Beach. WE WALKED ALL THE WAY UP THERE!

All in all a perfect walk, it was quite warm, but there was some cloud cover. I had sleeveless tank on, so couldn’t go in but Troy was covered so he did go in. He says it was the biggest temple we’ve ever been to!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After we made our way back to town and stopped at the 7-11. I discovered I can get Thai iced coffee from the dispenser back by the slurpee machine 🤣🤣. So for 27 baht, I got myself a gigantic cup. Extremely refreshing. We passed some “art”?? On the walk back. Looks a lot like recycling old junk, but I am trying to keep an open mind. 😉

We headed back to hotel with the plan of some pool time. This really hit the spot until about an hour later, when I started feeling weird. So we went back to room, I took a shower and called it a night (despite only being 5:00pm).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ttfn

Apologies for the lapse in posts!

We got to Ban Krut just fine! The train was also indeed just fine. Quite fast aside from being late of course! Seats were ok, we got some at least and let’s be honest, you can’t beat that price! There were loads of ladies going up and down the aisle selling food, drinks and snacks! We got ourselves a drink in a bag 🤣🤣. Troy had iced tea and I did iced coffee of course! 10 baht each! Lots of things I didn’t recognize, so passed on all that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The person in the brown shirt from the BanGrood Arcadia was right there waiting for us as promised when the train pulled in, it was raining and continued  to rain all evening. We did make a dash down the street at some point for food. We WAY overate! But it was so delicious! I got Tom Kha Gai and thai omelette again. Troy had fried chicken (wings) and a noodle dish! All very good!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The hotel is right across the street from the beach, but our room is way at the back of the resort. So it’s a hike to get to the front for breakfast or the pool etc. but the price difference for the rooms was significant, so it is what it is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also could only get two nights here in the cheap room. So we either have to move to a $80/night room or move on after two nights. We will see…

There were a lot of dogs in Prachuap and there are just as many here! Not sure if I mentioned the dogs in Prachuap but they are everywhere! And no collars and clearly riddled with fleas. They typically don’t look hungry and apparently they get to roam free and just go home at night in their own?? They don’t seem too concerned about where they hang out either as the middle of the road seems to be a favoured spot!

There are a few smart(er) ones that seek shelter from rain however!

 

quick update for those who need to know 😉

we are checking out in about 1 hour, catching a tuk tuk to the train station (80-100 baht) by 12:30pm **well worth it!! Then the plan is to catch the 1:30pm chicken train (my words not theirs) to Ban Krut. I simply can’t NOT try the 50 cent train vs the $10 train. I will certainly let you know how it goes 🤣🤣

yikez! Not much to report today. Sleeping well! Eating well! Getting lots of walks! I get to FaceTime Jackie every morning over coffee with an exceptional view ❤

I suppose  it is time to move on before i become a permanent fixture here in Prachuap. I had such a nice long conversation with Lek yesterday ( I hope I didn’t interfere with her work too much 😉). So get this! She’s 49, has 3 children, ages 21, 23 and 27. It is such a coincidence! She does however have 5 grandchildren. THAT I DO NOT!! We showed each other photos and of course oooh’d and ahhhh’d. She even made all the right noises when I showed her a picture of Nichol. 🤣🤣

Anyway, the show must go on! I’ve more adventures to have and if I don’t go now, I might not get to my sweet ChiangMai. We had the best of intentions to rent motorbikes today and sightsee a little. I even told my Mom this when we FaceTimed this morning, but now it’s honesty time. I did none of that….. I did take a load of laundry over to washer. And we went on a nice walk to the train station to scope out the plan for tomorrow. But otherwise it was a lazy day. We did discover that we could pay 15 baht for a train ride to Ban Krut, or we could pay 300 baht. Soooooo, I’m up for the 15 baht adventure just to see the difference. We did the 300 baht ride to get from Hua Hin to Prachuap. 15 baht is 50 cents vs 300 baht ($10). I get it will be ‘no frills’ but it’s 90 minutes. Pray for me people, pray for us! The downside (or one of the downsides🤣🤣) is that we can not buy the train tickets in advance. So we are going to roll the dice and just show up at 1pm tomorrow and hope we get on. Worst case, we don’t get on and then either catch some later train or find a car and driver! (Which will definitely cost more than both the train options added together).

On the way back from train station, we stopped at the 7-11. Presumably for water, but a sale rack caught our eye. We joke a lot about the peculiar flavours of potato chips here including some corn and rice products (think crisps, bugles, puffed rings, “waffle” style crunchy things). We were feeling snacky so picked up the following:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am going to rank them in the following order. #1 Sweet basil, #2 Icy lemon #99 Melon Bingau. (Don’t Judge – we are trying new things!!) We also stopped at the cookie lady that we saw on day #1 here and got more of my favourite pineapple jam cookies and peanuts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We will probably go to LaMoon again tonight and then rest up for our big journey tomorrow. The new hotel is supposed to pick us up at the train station so that is a nice touch. After 10 years coming here, I’ve finally figured out this idea of contacting the hotel and asking for a ride!

We definitely like it here. So much in fact we are staying two more days for a total of 5 nights! This town is right about my speed. The street along the beach that we are staying on at the Sun Beach Hotel is very quiet, the next street over has a little more hustle and bustle, then the third street over is clearly where the industry is. On our road, there’s some good food (discovered wind finally today…more on that later), I get my laundry done on the next street for 20 baht for a load, and there’s massage and some more food. Then everything else on the third street over including plenty of traffic, coffee stands and the 7-11.

There is a middle aged guy (like my age I guess) and his Asian wife and two kids staying here, we’ve seen the dad and the kids in the pool every day. He’s an American and they live in Sumatra. Anyway, they were packing up to move on to Bangkok. He told me they’d been here for 23 days. My first question was “where hand you been eating?” I ask this because I’ve been consistently underwhelmed by the food here. We walk all over the place and have yet to find a decent restaurant. (night one and two were market food nights!). He gave me some tips and then they went on their way. So at lunch time, we headed in the general direction he waved me towards. We found a quiet little place on our street that faced the ocean and had these fantastic plates of food!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rejuvenated by this, we decided to walk off our food comas and headed back toward the monkey mountain. We did NOT make that climb again, but chose to walk around the base  of the hill/mountain. Certainly had more monkey encounters and enjoyed the view.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stopped periodically for water and Cafe Yen (thai iced coffee 😉) and were back at hotel by 3pm. We hop ourselves right into the pool although I was shade seeking at this point! I’ve had lots of fun in the sun by now and can benefit from a break!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suppertime had us out in search of a couple highly rated places that Troy had seen on the internet. As we have learned here, “opening hours” are often either just a suggestion, a best case scenario or possibly just a complete and total guess. The wienershnitzel place just randomly closed on July 1 for 4 days, the pie place that was supposed to open “in July” was still shuttered and neither of the pizza places had any information or hours of operation on them 🙄. Good lord, how do these people make a living???  We settled on Lamoon. It was clean, modern and had a decent offering on the menu. So why not??  I ordered Tom Kha Gai and a thai pork omelette. Troy had cheese fries (worth a try??) and chicken with cashew nut. All absolutely delicious. Oh ya, a mango shake! Too delicious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As is our custom now, after a meal we walk it off!  So we carried on about town (AKA to the 7-11 for a magnum). Home by 8 and as always looking forward to another day in paradise tomorrow ☀!