July 2nd, 2015
Yip, they got me today….sort of
I think I have officially overcome my challenges with photos this year and have now gone back and inserted photos where I said I would, plus inserted a blog entry that didn’t get uploaded before we left CM. So scroll back and check it out if you like (Mom-you know you will!)
Slept like a baby last night once I got down to it. Stayed up a little on the late side blogging, then started chatting with the kids, so it was close to 1:30am before I shut ‘er down for the night. That’s late for me, so I didn’t wake until 8:30 this morning. (Also very late for me). Started the day with a breakfast provided by the hotel. I rememeber the breakfast here from last year. I dunno, breakfasts are tough in my opinion. How do you make eggs and toast exciting? You just can’t really. This hotel offers a choice of crepe or egg, along with fruit juice, toast, coffee and fruit. The crepe was WAY better than I remembered. Or maybe I am just tired of fried eggs! The juice was pineapple, pretty good, freshly squeezed you could tell due to all the pulp, the coffe was battery acid, but that is expected now. There was a little two sectioned tray thing with mysterious condiments in it. At first I thought it was jam, but I gave it the sniff test, and it wasn’t jam. And I have NO idea what the other thing was….so I left it. The fruit was 2/3 good. I like pineapple and banana, but I intensely dislike papaya, so had to leave that behind.
A couple cups of battery acid later, I was ready to face the day. Now I have been saying quite openly that I am not concerned about the heat on this vacation. I have been heard saying ” once you get past 90F, it’s all the same, there is no difference between 93 and 98″ etc etc well let me just say 100 is hot, and it was at least 100 today. That is stinking hot, and I noticed it. It is distinctly hotter here than in Chiang Mai, and if possible, maybe more humid?
But despite the wall of heat, I decided to head out and check out a hotel I was considering moving to. Found it, it looks basically the same as we have here, and I really like where we are, so decided to just go ahead and book 6 additional nights here and be done with it. Once that was accomplished, I collected my walking partner and we headed off to find a world famous sandwich for lunch.
Oh YA!! There it is, chicken and avocado….15,000 kip ($1.80 USD)
Troy had a few more things in his, bacon and cheese and ham, so it was 25,000 kip ($3 usd)
We had fruit shakes which were 10,000 kip each. ($1.25) Troy went with his classic lemon (which is actually lime-but they call it lemon) and I went out on a branch and had a mango/dragonfruit combo. I really REALLY liked it. Might have a new favourite!
There is Vancy, making our sandwiches.
Thank goodness for the covered area to eat our lunch….Vancy asked me what sauces I wanted on my sandwich, did I want mayonnaise? Did I want sweet chili sauce? I looked at her jar of mayonnaise and thought about the heat, and looked around at what others were doing, and Mom you might not want to read this bcz I know how you feel about mayonnaise that sits out, let alone sits out in 100 degree days, but I went for it. I said yip, put it all on there, load it up. I don’t rememeber what we did about this three years ago when we were here. Maybe I said no mayo, I don’t know. But I ate the sandwich almost 6 hours ago and I feel fine. So I think it’s ok. I’ll let you know, pretty sure I might go back for another sandwich for supper 😳
Now have a look at this poor guy! Guessing he had a scooter accident. We see this all the time over here is SE Asia. I guess it’s why folks think WE might be a tiny bit crazy for riding here. But we are smart about it, very careful and took a 30 hour course at home….so this won’t ever be me…
I can tell you, this dude is in a world of hurt. I said to Troy, “can you imagine how much the heat and sweat would sting on all that open road rash?” He was like “I can’t even imagine having the road rash, never mind the sweating part.” It would be excruciating. But I do know he will love his sandwich…..and Troy is pretty sure he loved me taking his picture 😉hahahahaha
So some perspective, our 2 sandwiches, and two fruit shakes costs 60,000 kip which is about $7.40 USD, so pretty decent lunch all in all. We were full and happy. After our lunch we decided to do a walk about…a very normal activity for us after a meal, also a regular part of our routine is to stop and get ice cream. 🍦So usually we spend somewhere between 10 and 40 baht (30 cents-$1.30) each on ice cream. About 45 minutes into our walk, we saw an “ice cream vendor” walking down the street with her cart, so we decided to go ahead and get some ice cream. We picked a couple items and Troy handed over some money. We are still kind of in the 50,000 kip bill stage due to the bank machine at the airport. So Troy handed her 2×50,000 as we do the math and see “70” as our total, still not converting this in our heads though as she has only given us 2×10,000 back in change and we are thinking it should be 30,000. So she takes the 2×10,000 back and gives us a 20,000. We go round and round on the math a couple times, with a lot of pointing etc as she clearly doesn’t speak a WORD of English and we take another 10,000 literally out of her hands then she realizes her error, laughs and laughs and we laugh and laugh as we wander off. Then I do the real math and realize we just spent more than $8.50 on two ice cream sandwiches. 😳😳 that was more than our lunch cost!!! Clearly special prices for tourists, wondering if maybe the signage actually came from Thailand and was meant to be baht. The prices were exactly what we would have paid in thailand, Troy’s magnum is always 40 baht and my cone is 25 or 30. And that is what it said on sign, 40 and 30 NOT 40,000 and 30,000. Aw jeez….I’m glad we stuck it out for the right change…..
