July 5th, 2015
Did we get “rained out”?
This is the question we asked ourselves around 4pm yesterday. I say “No” as in my opinion it only counts as a rainout if we had to alter our plans to accomdate/avoid getting wet. We however were doing exactly what we had planned to do, which was sit on our butts in Utopia until we felt the calling to move our butts to the massage place. We managed to get ourselves up and off the patio by noon and made our way over to Utopia. Our view…
We had settled in and ordered up some “loaded fries” AKA poutine, by 12:30.
The menu touts them as “almost Canadian”. Hahahahahahahaha yes, ok. They had bacon, some onions (TBD whether they were an actual stand alone ingredient or part of the gravy) cheese and of course gravy. Quite tasty if not a little on the cold side (as cold as food gets here) This was due to the fact that one second we are sitting there on the bamboo patio enjoying the view waiting for our fries, and the next second there is a monsoon blowing in and the whole thing got drenched.
Even the Chinese and Koreans took their cells phones and moved 😉
The food could not be walked out to the patio in this situation, so it sat on a counter in the main part of the restaurant until we got the comon sense/courage to dart from the patio to the main structure. So we settled into some very comfy couches inside, enjoyed our poutine and waited for it to blow over.
It came and went, we stayed put and ate our way through the menu and the afternoon. 2 bottles of water, poutine, pizza, spring rolls and a mango chicken sandwich later it was 6:30 and we thought we could muster enough energy to find our massage place. In all fairness we did have a very long conversation with Rob, canadian owner, not of the building, but of the restaurant. It’s complicated to “own” things here as an expat, so he leases the building/land and he owns/runs the restaurant out of it. Ironically, the building owner is also a canadian from, get this, the same town in Canada, London. They did not know each other prior to doing business here. Small world! He shared with us some of the pitfalls of being in business here. Wow it’s a struggle….not sure why he is still here flogging away at it, other than he is financially invested for some number of years at least. Sounds like a gigantic head ache to me…..
I was so engrossed in my food, I forgot to take the requisite photos. Oops! Rob is putting two new pizzas on the menu in the next couple days, so hopefully we will be able to go back (if we can find time in our BUSY schedule) to test them out for him 😇 we will consider it our duty as fellow Canadians to give him our honest opinion.
So to answer the question about whether this counts as a rain out, I definitely vote no, bcz we did exactly what we planned, nothing but chillin’. No change or alteration in the plan, other than moving couches…..the temp dropped a little which was welcome relief, and the humidity was bumped up (which I can do without).
We did indeed find our massage place and requested “head and back” massage knowing full well this means a body massage. Not gonna lie, felt great, but Pretty sure if I hadn’t done my best to tense up my chest cavity at certain times the girl may have crushed my rib cage. I have no idea how they are so freaking strong, they can’t be more than 95pounds soaking wet, but they are like sumo wrestlers when they get someone on the mat. Also pretty sure suffocation is the worst way to go in the end, as that is how close I came to being pillow snuffed. I try to keep my head to the side but she wanted me face down so my neck was straight and she could do her thing. Plus I may or may not have gotten a sunburn on my back a week or so ago in Chiang Mai and now am suffering through the dreaded peel phase. The shirt they put me in would have taken a layer of my skin either way it was so scratchy, but needless to say the back rub speeded up the shedding of my crocodile skin by several days. Seriously though, I felt like a new gal after that, it was as always a great use of 50,000 kip! And my back feels wonderful. The mattress in our room is the usual “firm” that we encounter here in SE Asia, so a back rub (or two) will always fix that right up.
Saw some additional information about sugar this morning. Starting to think I should be eating more refined sugar, with all the health benefits plus the good I would be doing for the environment!😳
Update on the shampoo question. I just HAD to see what was in there. I have no idea what the labeling actually means, this looks like manageable Grey shampoo to me, so maybe I should be using it!
We are starting to feel the squeeze that always comes in the last few days of vacation, the looming presence of reality coming back. I miss my kids and my friends and my bed, but the thought of leaving all this behind is tough…….I did make a new friend here though, named him Bert. Not sure if I can take him with us when we leave….he seems like he would make a good pet.
