Another morning at
Bophut, same breakfast looking out over the bay. We spent another
morning laying by the pool again before going to explore
another beach to the north on Mae Nam. I can describe it the best I can, but if you weren't in Nam you don't know what it's like, man. This was the beach I said previously was reputedly frequented by scummy backpackers but it's also supposed
to have the best beach. We set off walking after completing the
usual rituals of liberally dousing ourselves in sunblock and DEET.
Especially the latter, since I got two absolute peaches of bites the day before
on my forearm which made me look a little like Popeye (also go one on my bum which made me look like Beyonce. Imagine that: the love child of Beyonce and Popeye "Got me lookin' for spinach right now"). We passed a
few resorts and eventually decided to walk through one to get to the
beach. The beach was awful. No more than a couple metres across at
this point and lots of construction going on nearby on this first
stretch. However, once we got past that we were met with a wider
tract of sand with some very attractive and rustic looking beach
huts with very little development. We ate some food in a small cafe (they did a pretty good tom
yam goong) which was cheap. After this we headed further up the
beach, and became aware of some very ominous looking cloud heading
our way. It started raining almost instantaneously as if a switch had
been flicked, but we made it to a beach bar just in time and had a
beer as we watched the rain move out to see and over to Koh Phangan
that could be seen rising up from the sea in the distance. In all it
would actually have been a good place to spend some relaxing time,
very basic but peaceful. Not sure if there is enough here to keep us
occupied for more than a couple of nights, however.
Mae Nam Beach hut
Every baech bum should have one
The rain that almost caught us headed off to Koh Panghan
Oh God, not more of this bull
This buffalo was in a field we passed on the way back from Mae Nam
We headed back to the
main road to return to our hotel, spotting a captive water buffalo in a field as we went on our way. Once back, we relaxed whilst
watching telly.
It's worth mentioning
on TV channels you can get in these far away places. They had a good
selection of channels in English at our place, from the sublime BBCWorld to the ridiculous Fox News from the US. I've come to the
conclusion that BBC World is a pretty lousy source of news because
they tend to repeat the same stories and features several times
throughout the day, and a lot of their stories are nothing but fluff.
Things about (and these are genuine examples they had on whilst we
were here) how a school in Chinatown, NY is producing some really
good chess players or the fact that some zoo in Eastern Europe has
had two albino lion cubs born. It's not that you want to be brought
down by depressing stories, or even that the BBC doesn't cover them,
but they don't really give a huge amount of depth or analysis and
follow serious news up with utterly trivial items. A superior
alternative is actually Al Jazeera, wrongly maligned in some parts of
the western world as nothing less than the mouthpiece of Islamic
extremists, but this couldn't be further from the truth as they
broadcast high quality, informative and largely impartial news so
much better than the BBC. Still, at least the BBC isn't Fox News
which is news for morons who think Barack Obama is a socialist
infiltrator from al Qaeda.
Rant over with. We undertook our usual freshening up
routine followed by the dousing in DEET encore and were
about to head out when it started raining quite heavily so we sat this
out in our room, but decided that our need for alcohol was gnawing at
our very souls so we put up umbrellas and headed out to once again
sample the delights of Bophut, having a cocktail at somewhere on the
beach (literally, ending up with sand between toes as we drank) and
decided on a fairly posh restaurant in one of the classier hotels for
dinner, mainly because they had on a Thai music and dance show. The
food was excellent if pricey. This is another thing about this sort
of holiday. You kind of get used to paying a certain price for food
and if you come across somwhere like this restaurant which charges
more than double the going rate you kind of baulk at paying this. The
thing is the price difference is that between £2 at an earthier
place or £5 at this sort of classy place, so in no way expensive by
European standards so you need to keep a sense of proportion. I had a
musamen curry which was subtly spiced and tasted truly fantastic. We
ordered mixed drinks, Bacardi and Coke for Jane and gin and tonic for
me. I'm sure they had used lemonade rather than tonic water so I sent
it back and it was returned tasting definitely more bitter. The Thai
entertainment was colourful and added some (slightly tacky) local
ambience to the meal. We chatted to the restaurant manager/head chef
who was a German chap who had married a Thai girl he'd met when they
were both working in Dubai and complimented him on the wonderful
food. My kind of way to earn a living. Get up of a morning, start
cooking in your kitchen in tropical Thailand, meander around the
restaurant at night chatting to the custom, do beach stuff when you
get days off. Remind me again why I live in the UK.
Thai dancing over dinner
Gaudy but pleasant
It's a 15 minute walk back to our hotel.
We've got B1000 on us and need a beer on the way back.
It's dark and I'm wearing sunglasses.
HIT IT!
So tell me, Mr Pickles, you think your coalition government is doing a good job?
My mistake. Please accept my apologies, Mr Toad
We stopped off at some other bar on the beach where thought we spotted John Prescott out for a beer bet thenvrealsied it was actually a toad climbing over some of the rocks by the beach so I had to take a snap. We walked back along
the beach to our accommodation but discovered we'd overshot and
entered the next hotel along. Not really our fault as everywhere was
in pitch darkness even though it was relatively early, before 11. All
that was left was to return to our room and have a swift whiskey and
Coke as a nightcap
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