Wednesday (3 June 2015)
The alarm screeched to life at 04:30. Ouch ! Last night we went to a Turkish restaurant for the last supper, the last supper on South African soil for a while, but I could still feel the effect of the overindulgence (not the booze, mind you) from the previous night. Time to get up, mind was willing, the body not. Then it dawned on me, this was the day I have been planning for twenty plus years, the official start of my year off work, gap year, sabbatical, call it what you like. With this realization I jumped out of bed with a spring in my step, suddenly feeling fresh eyed and bushy tailed, ready to face the new life.

We stayed with an old friend, not old as in elderly though… but old, if you catch my drift, for the last few days since we officially became homeless, but more about that later. Lood dropped us at the Sandton Gautrain station, about three kilometres from his home, at around 06H00 where we said our last goodbyes. We got to the airport before 06H30, our flight was scheduled for 09H30, so we had plenty of time to relax after checking in, and before boarding. We booked with Etihad which flies from OR Tambo Airport to Bangkok via Abu Dhabi. When we checked in at the airport we realised that the leg between OR Tambo and Abu Dhabi is operated by SAA in a code share agreement, thus had to check in at the SAA counter. We greeted the ground steward, handed over our documents and requested an aisle seat and the one next to it, far away from the bulkhead, the toilets and the galley, my normal order. The steward glared at me and said sternly “I am busy here sir” and with that proceeded to kap me an ignore (ignored me). A few minutes later she said with a slicing sarcasm in her voice “now what is it you were saying about seating ?”. I repeated my mantra and, despite her attitude, I got the exact seats I requested. After this initial irritation I must admit the actual flight was great.

We proceeded through immigration without incident and were looking for the Diners Card Lounge. I asked for directions at one of the stores and the assistant, looking quite troubled said “right next door sir”. Went next door and lo and behold, it was the Diners Restaurant, not what I was looking for, but Diners nevertheless. Thought I’d get information from the Information booth, but the lady was so distracted chatting to her friends gathered around her cubicle, that she sent me in the total opposite direction, just to get rid of me. Probably thought “ah, gotcha !”. We eventually found one of the lounges called the Shongololo Lounge, sat down, checked out the scene, and was not impressed. Somehow it just did not feel right, it was cold, small, furnishings were a bit ragged, food offered was limited etc. Decided to rather spend another few minutes to look for our favourite Bidvest Premier Lounge, found it settled down very comfortably, and enjoyed a lovely breakfast of all sorts of goodies.

The flight was quite uneventful and rather good, staff was attentive, helpful, friendly, wish SAA could do something about their check-in staff, the experience between the ground and air staff is chalk and cheese. Arrived in Abu Dhabi at 20H20 local time, and flew out to Bangkok at 21H30 on Etihad. The flight and food were pretty good, it was just that some of the staff seemed a bit, well, uncoordinated, not that it really bothered, but one did notice. I put it down to a crew that has probably never worked together as a team before. We had a really good sleep though.

Thursday (4 June 2015)
We arrived at Bangkok Airport at 07H10, local time. The queue to get through immigration was a long snaking snake that seemed to take forever to move along. We crawled along at a dead man’s pace and reached the front an hour and a half later. By the time we got to the baggage carousel ours were two of the few remaining baggage items still left on the conveyor belt and we sighed a collective sigh of relief. Not sure whether anybody have similar thoughts, but I always try and get to the carousel as quickly as possible to make sure I get my baggage on the first round. Who’s to keep anybody from taking your luggage and walking right out through Customs, especially when they can see there is nobody to claim the luggage ? Maybe there’s a case to be made (no pun intended) to have a chip boarding pass, linked to a chip attached to one’s case, to be scanned and linked up when one passes through Customs. Anyway, maybe I am just being overly pessimistic and not sure whether this is really a problem, it’s just that I know how lost a person feels when one’s baggage does not arrive on the carousel. This happened to me on a flight between Atlanta and New Orleans back in 2001 when my luggage was, fortunately not lost or stolen, just waylaid and arrived at my hotel the next day. Not fun, nor funny.

We were planning to ferry to Samui from Bangkok, with the ferry leaving at 21H30 and arriving on Samui at 11H30 the next day. When we arrived at Bangkok airport we were so incredibly tired after the flight, but more so from the rushing around of the past few weeks to get everything organized for our year away, that we decided to rather fly to Samui. But, first things first, we needed cash for coffee. Although I had a few Euros and Dollars on me which I could have exchanged, I needed to check whether my ATM card worked, as this is the card I would have to use during the next 12 months. I approached the ATM with caution, slipped the card into the slot, typed in the password and waited, with bated breath, which seemed like an eternity, before it requested the amount. I let out a huge sigh of relief when I felt the 10 000 baht cash in my hand, now we were in business.

The next most important thing, even more so than coffee, was to get hooked up to the Internet and get a phone number. The main mobile telephone operators, AIS, DTAC and Truemove are well represented at the airport. We analysed some of the packages that they advertised and decided on AIS. Got an AIS SIM for the Iphone and IPAD, the attendant installed it and voila, we were connected to the Internet, we had a phone number, life was good.

Now it was time for that coffee. We settled in at a convenient little coffee shop and started to plan the next part of our journey. The only airline that flies to Koh Samui from the Bangkok International Airport is Bangkok Air. There may be others that fly from the Bangkok Domestic Airport, but then one would have to traipse across town, which we did not have the energy for. Now that I was connected to the Internet, it was just a few clicks and I had us booked on the 15H35 flight. The last thing that needed to be sorted was accommodation. Although we booked an apartment for an initial two months, we were only booked to arrive on Friday, not Thursday. I SMS’d the lady who’s apartment we are renting and she almost immediately came back that it would be no problem checking in a day earlier. She had already arranged for the staff to prepare the apartment for handover at 17H00 that afternoon. Wow, what service.

It was now only around 12H00 and most airlines would not allow one to check in so long before the flight. We took our chances and were checked in without a problem and were sent on our way with a much needed ‘please remember sir, you can use the Bangkok Airways lounge in the domestic departure area’. We rested our weary bodies in the lounge, happy to be rid of the two heavy bags of luggage. At only about 20 Kg apiece, they were exactly 20 Kg apiece too heavy at this stage. We had something to eat and drink, whiled away the time, just happy not to be trundling through the city, on a very hot and humid day, to get to the ferry and waiting for hours…

We arrived on Koh Samui at 16H40, the heat and humidity hit us, and it was wonderful. The taxi delivered us to our apartment 40 minutes later and we were shown to our home for the next two months. No matter how many times one looks at the pictures of the apartment on the Internet and convinces oneself that it is really great, one still feels a bit of trepidation when shown the real thing. I have heard some horror stories of apartments that look nothing like their photos on the web. We were pleasantly surprised. In hindsight I think the apartment in real life exceeded our expectations. Although a smallish studio apartment at around 50 Sqm, which includes the balcony, it has an open spacious feel to it, well designed, well furnished, very comfortable indeed. Our landlord even made sure that we got new, very comfortable patio furniture, a coffee filter machine, things couldn’t really be better.

After unpacking we just had to get to the nearest beach and watch our first sunset. We walked down to the Plai Laem beach, which is about 100 metres from the apartment block, and watched an amazing sunset. While walking along the beach we came upon a little bungalow complex where we met Tommy the Irish. In his sixties, he’s been living in this little complex for the last 12 years, and he said ‘I watch this sunset every day, it’s never the same, one never tires of it’. Words of Irish wisdom. Further words of Irish wisdom spewed forth, when I commented that I was Toisty (Thirsty), Tommy pointed us to the closest pub/restaurant where we could get a cold beer, which turned out to be the Thai Garden Restaurant situated at most 80 metres down the road from our apartment. How convenient. Had a few cold ones and crashed…

Friday (5 June 2015)
Woke up at 09H45. Before fully awake, through the haze in my head, I had a nagging thought that I was late for something. Maybe work, maybe a meeting… no, that cannot be… but something was bothering me. It was now 10h00 and this feeling would not abscond, then it dawned on me… scooter, they’re delivering the scooter at 10H00. I quickly jumped into some shorts, pulled on a T-shirt, slipped into my sandals and rushed down to the reception area where Linda was waiting for me. Signed the one page document for a month’s rental at the agreed price, handed over the 3 000 baht and I was handed the keys to a bright red Honda Click 125i scooter. Linda explained its operation and was off in a flash to meet her brother who would take her back to the office. The back-story to this delivery started a number of months back when I asked Patrick, a friend on Koh Samui and the brother of a long time friend (Tony) who now lives in the Philippines, whether he could recommend a good scooter rental company. Of course, he replied, he had a friend called Ian who will give me a good bike at a good price. I contacted Ian, agreed the price and agreed to be in contact closer to the time. A week ago I made contact again and agreed the delivery time. Perfect.

Now that we were mobile we just had to get out there. At first I was a bit hesitant, even a bit nervous, of taking our red Ferrari out on its maiden ride, but soon got into the swing of things. Man, it was a blast ! We went to the Big C supermarket to stock up with some stuff. We had to be careful not to buy too much remembering that we were on a scooter and not a car with a big boot for all the bounty. We ended up with the essentials like six big bottles of water, tea, coffee, sugar, coffee creamer, bread, cheese, milk, eggs, Coke, etc. Probably did buy too much but we comfortably got everything home in good order. Now we knew the limits of what was possible to carry on a scooter, and it can carry a fair amount of stuff. By the way, one often sees a whole Thai family on a scooter, father, mother, two larger kids, or three smaller kids, even a small dog at times.

Now it was time to connect us up to the wifi at the apartment. Free wifi is available throughout the apartment block and with a few clicks I had it set up on the two Ipads, two Iphones and two laptops. Next I connected the Apple TV to the TV, and wifi, which worked first time. Tested Netflix via Apple TV, worked first time. The English TV channels available in the apartment is a bit limited (about four channels, one being BBC News, the others quite useless) so Netflix, in my opinion, is essential. So glad I went through the pain to set it up back home. Next I tested the DSTV Now app and that worked fine, though the Supersport app refused to cooperate, no matter the amount of coercion I exercised. Anyway, that was no biggie as I only really require Supersport 1 for rugby which is also available on DSTV Now, so all good. Next I connected my external hard-drive to my laptop, which contains all my music (+- 650 CDs) and movies (+- 350 DVDs), activated Homesharing in Itunes, activated it also on Apple TV, and voila, now I can play all my music via the TV.

Friday evening we went to one of our favourite haunts from our previous trip to Samui, the Friday evening night market at Fisherman’s Village. It has changed somewhat from 18 months ago. There is now a new little shopping centre called The Wharf at the western end of Fisherman’s Village. The one side-street in that area that was previously heavily populated with stalls now barely makes an impression. It is at the eastern end though where the action now is, where previously this part was sparsely populated. We browsed among the hundreds of stalls, taking in the party atmosphere, and had a couple of Mai Thai cocktails. We bought supper, which consisted of Pad Thai (stir fried rice noodles with veggies and chicken), a pizza, a waffle and beers, from different stalls along the way. We sat down with our supper in an open area where there are chairs, tables, and a stage. On this stage were a man and his Thai wife, with a guitar and an amp, trying to revive CCR (Creedence Clearwater Revival), safe to say, they were not revived. Supper was great though.

Saturday (6 June 2015)
Like every day thus far, we slept in again, had a good English breakfast, and packed our bags for a day at the beach. Well, a day at the beach is a bit of a stretch, as at the current heat and humidity it would not be possible. We left home at around 12H00 and scootered (I know… I know… it’s not a word for riding a scooter, but it should be) down to Choeng Mon beach, our favourite from the last trip. The beach is still beautiful, as we remember it, although the water seems a bit murky now with a number of yachts moored close to the beach. We had a couple of swims, a couple of tans, a couple of beers, and then went home, drained from the sun.

I e-mailed my new mobile number to Patrick. He phoned later in the afternoon and we arranged to meet him for a drink on Sunday at 17H00. It’s always fun to touch base with Patrick, so we were looking forward to that.

We had a late afternoon snooze and then went down to our local fresh produce market, just over a kilometre from our apartment, to obtain ingredients for the chicken Thai green curry that was on the menu for supper. We bought limes, lime leaves, veggies etc. and of course freshly pressed coconut milk, the chicken and green curry paste we had already bought the previous day at the Big C supermarket. Here we started realizing, not convinced yet though, that there were two prices at the market, one for locals and another for farangs (foreigners) like us. Asking the price of the coconut milk I was advised it was 60 Baht for one kilogram, yes kilogram, sold in a plastic bag. After returning to the stall to buy, another lady served us and the price now was 70 Baht, the farang price I assume. The increase in price does not make a helluva difference, but it just is not right. Anyway, we paid, got home and Adri prepared a most delicious Thai green curry, I can easily have this dish every day. We ate outside on the patio, listening to Boy Ge Mendes, soaking up the early evening air. Oh, and of course I watched the rugby, a little late here though as the first game started at 22H00 and the second one at 24H00, but it was well worth it.

At some point during the course of the day, it gradually dawned on me that the knot in the pit of my stomach, that has been there for a million years plus, or so it seemed, has quietly taken its leave. Somewhere over the last few days this knot, which sometimes felt as large as a monkey’s fist (nautical term, i.e. a knot to weight the end of a heaving line) dissolved into nothingness, zip, zero, nada, what a liberating realization.

Sunday (7 June 2015)
Sunday we took it easy at home, slept late, had a good ole English breakfast, read a bit, listened to some music, took an afternoon snooze, until it was time to meet Patrick. We scootered down to the Yada Bar at 17H00 and clocked in at 17H05, everything here is so convenient. The Yada Bar is situated right next to the Boat Bar where we, on our last trip, met Patrick and Phil, the local Jack Nicholson lookalike.

It was great to see Patrick again who introduced us to his girlfriend, Meme. Meme is from Thailand but working in Malaysia where the two met. We had a good old chinwag, caught up with news and reviews and made a date to go for supper the following Thursday evening. Patrick is flying out to Malaysia next Friday, where he is working as a teaching consultant, i.e. he teaches teachers to teach. Quite a mouthful, but that’s what he does and loving it. He will be back home in Koh Samui in October for a three month holiday, so we’re looking forward to that.

For a long time now Adri has wanted to do a TEFL/TESOL course, mostly out of curiosity, but never had the time to do so. TEFL stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language and TESOL for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. In other words, TEFL is teaching people English who don’t speak it at all, and TESOL is teaching people English who have some grasp of the language. Adri thought that this trip was a perfect opportunity do to such a course online. We set out a while ago to find such an online course but it truly is a minefield of so many fly-by-night companies, one has to be very careful on ones selection. We found a course via Groupon, for a very reasonable price, and signed up with Global Language Training. The reason I am telling you this is that Adri will officially start her course tomorrow, so we will soon enough find out whether we bought a dud or not.

Monday (8 June 2015)
Today we went to the onsite gym for the first time. Not large by any manner of means, but it has all the essentials for a decent workout, i.e. two treadmills, two exercise bicycles (one normal upright, one recumbent), one elliptical trainer, one multifunction home gym, a set of weights, abdominal sit-up bench etc. More than enough equipment to keep one busy if so required. We started with a 30 minute workout, which we will continue with throughout this week, next week we’ll bump it up to 45 minutes, and thereafter we’ll stick to one hour sessions.

After gym we showered, breakfasted and then went shopping at Makro, mostly for booze. We bought gin (Gilbeys), a case of tonic (Schweppes) and five litres of dry white box wine from Australia (Castle creek). I still had some beers in the fridge that I bought from 7/11 last week, don’t know why they were still there. We also stocked up on chips, chicken, milk, oats, veggies, fruit, water, etc. We weren’t quite sure whether we required a Makro card, like back home, but proceeded to shop anyway. We did ask though but we could not get a conclusive answer due to the language barrier thing. When our trolley was sufficiently loaded we apprehensively approached the checkout counter. The first thing the checkout attendant asked after he rang up everything was “card please sir”. We’re screwed, I thought, but what he actually meant was whether we were paying by credit card, but that’s where the catch, if one can call it that, came in. Seems like only Citybank credit cards are accepted, if you don’t have one of those you need to pay cash. OK, so we’re still screwed, didn’t have enough cash on me. He saw the anguish on my face and said “no problem sir, the ATM is right outside the shop”.

Got home, dropped everything and nursed a gin, lime and tonic to recover from my frayed nerves… yea right. After that we took a leisurely walk down to the beach to watch the sunset, <b>as per the photos below. Got to bed quite late as I was busy setting up Skype with an unlimited plan, which means we can now call landlines in most countries for free via Skype (including South Africa), also cell phones in a few countries, one being Thailand (not South Africa though). Not bad.

Tuesday (9 June 2015)
Today was a very relaxing day. Slept in this morning, again, and forced our bodies into the gym for a bit of a workout. After gym we had a late brunch of bacon, eggs, cheese, toast, jam etc. After such a brunch one needs a snooze, so we snoozed.

I was in need of a haircut so I asked at the front desk where the nearest hair salon was. The lady did not understand my English so I tried my English sign language. I grabbed and lifted my hair with my left hand, using my index and middle fingers of my right hand to make a scissors like motion across my forehead and I also heard a “snip snip snip” sound coming from my mouth. The lady immediately grasped what I required (see, I told you my English sign language is better than my English) and drew me a map from the apartment to the hair dresser, probably about 150 metres away, no map required. We found the place without a problem, no queue, no booking, sat down and had a great haircut for 200 Baht. Even had my hair gelled. The hairdresser, like all Thais, was very friendly, courteous and accommodating, and did a fine job. I will be back.

Got home, showered, Gin and Tonic, had supper, watched a movie, read… slept.

As I said, today was a very relaxing day…

Wednesday (10 June 2015)
We stayed up quite late last night so I struggled to wake up from my slumber this morning. After coffee on the patio, reading news and e-mails, and watching the world wake up around us, we did the normal gym session, breakfast, shower thing. By now it was around 12H00 and Adri started with her TEFL and I did some blog writing, which was way behind at this stage.

The weather has been pretty kind to us. The daytime temperature varies between 29 and 31 degrees Celcius with high humidity, and during the night it may come down to the early twenties. The first few days here were very hot, even for the locals, but after the weekend it cooled down a bit, more towards the 29 degree level. What we learned during the first few really hot days was to just accept the heat, don’t fight it, go with the flow, put on the fan, put on the aircon, just enjoy the heat.

Normally the mornings are nice and fresh so we do not use a fan or aircon. During the hottest part of the day we will leave the door and sliding door open, as there is normally a nice enough breeze that cools you down. If not, we close all the doors and relish some time with the aircon. When we go to bed we put on the fan which keeps us cool throughout the night. So, we have by now pretty much acclimatised to the tropical weather and we are so thankful to have escaped the onset of winter back home.

Within our complex, there are some apartments who’s owners stay here fulltime, and some apartments are rented out by their owners, like ours. Most of the apartments are probably, not sure, owned by Europeans and Russians, or at least the ones containing the fulltime residents. There seems to be quite a variety of nationalities present here.

Thursday (11 June 2015)
This morning we got up sensibly early, did our gym routine, donned our beach attire, packed our beach toolbox and set off to Choeng Mon beach for some much needed vitamin D. They say you can’t get the right amount of vitamin D into your body from food, but only via exposing your skin to sunlight or by taking vitamin D supplements. Now I’m not one for taking tablets, so that only leaves the alternative of exposing myself… to the sun’s rays that is.

When we go to Choeng Mon, we normally drive along the main road until we get to the Crystal Restaurant. We pass alongside the restaurant, drive along a little dirt road (50 metres or so) and end up at the… Crystal Restaurant, right on the beach. This family has quite a large property that stretches from the main road to the beach with a restaurant at each end. Today we parked at the back of the restaurant where there is a haphazard array of tools, chickens, workshops, dogs, people, broken scooters etc. which we successfully navigated through to reach the back door of the restaurant. We got used to entering this way on our last trip, so it felt comfortably familiar. Just before entering we passed by the whole family having breakfast together, some rushing to and fro from the restaurant to serve the customers. We walked through the restaurant, down a few cement steps to the beach where I noticed that the same crack was still visible in the one step. Some things never change. We plonked ourselves down on the restaurant’s sun beds which you can use for free if you patronise the facility. During high or peak season, one has to get a bed early in the morning, else all are taken, but now we had a wild choice.

A while later we went for a swim. It was low tide so we had to walk in quite a way to get decent water coverage on our bodies, when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a dog swimming towards us from the northern side of the bay. Now I have seen many dogs swimming in the sea, playing with their owners, chasing after a ball or a frisbee. No, not this dog, this dog went out for a swim all on its own, passing us by without even a sideways glance, fully focussed on the task at hand. He passed another group of swimmers, also without a sideways glance, and then eventually ended up on the beach, shook himself dry, and continued on his merry way. In retrospect, it seems like he wanted to get from the one end of the rounded bay to the other, decided the walk was too long, and proceeded to take a more direct route via the water. Cool.

Last Sunday we arranged to go for supper with Patrick and Meme and met up with them at 17H30 at the B.R. Sea Beach Club for a sundowner, before going to our chosen restaurant. This is a newish classy establishment located on the beach in the Bangrak area, I estimate just over two kilometres from our apartment, probably less. It was happy hour so you get two drinks for the price of one. Happy hours are ubiquitous on Koh Samui, some lasting an hour, some lasting many hours, most bars have them. We all settled on beers so we ordered four. We received the four beers in an exemplary near frozen state when I mentioned to the gathering that I once ordered two beers at a happy hour back home, meaning one paid beer and one free beer. They delivered four beers, the two I had ordered and the two free ones. Of course I did not have a problem with this, I explained, and we all had a good chuckle about it. Before the chuckle even faded, we received another four beers, déjà vu. Once again I did not have a problem with this, neither did Patrick.

After we were tanked up it was time for supper. On our scooters, we picked up the ghost road that links Bangrak to Chaweng and emerged on the Chaweng road that connects to the ring road. I have read and heard a few stories as to how the ghost road got its name, but the one I copied in below from the Big Buddha Beach web site was the most entertaining.

 

Once upon a time there was a fairly popular bar set on Big Buddha Beach called the Beach Pub. Now this bar was run by Sem and Tuk and was located where the Secret Garden bar is today. One night Sem had to go to Chaweng to do something for his sister, and having stayed there until 3 in the morning , started the short trip back by motorbike to Big Buddha beach from Anchor House Chaweng. There was not much traffic in those days so the ride was normally uneventful and straightforward. Or so he thought, as just as he got to the wide open section where you can see the airport, Sem saw a figure in the road ahead of him, walking in the same direction towards the Temple at Bangrak. Now in those days the road was sandy and one had to be careful of losing your motorbike tyres in the deep sand which prevailed at certain points on the road, so Sem had to slow right down and come up behind the lady, and wait for her to move aside and let him pass. As Sem grew closer he saw that she was an old lady and had a “Khacheu” on her head with food and offerings to take to the Monks at the temple. Now a “Khacheu” was a round tray which one placed on one’s head, but had not been used for many years by the local people , and it was the first time Sem had seen one. Now when Sem was behind her he was already wondering why this old lady was going to the Temple at such an early hour (5 o’clock would have been more like it) and why she had this thing on her head that hadn’t been seen for 50 years or more, when she suddenly turned and stood aside to let him pass………Now what Sem saw was a massive grim smile with red betel nut juice all over her teeth, and big black rings around her eyes and a face covered in powder. This apparition, as Sem is sure it was, gave our poor lad one hell of a scare, and you could hear him screaming a mile away over the roar of his motorbike engine as he fled the scene. He tore back to his room at the Beach Pub and told Dah his wife what had happened, and they huddled together in their room with the door firmly locked until the following morning. The next day at the bar the story was recounted several times, as indeed it was for several years afterwards, and people would often ask Sem to recount the story again….”Hey Sem !, Tell us the story of the Ghost Road”…… And that, my friends, is how the Ghost Road got its name, which is still with us today. By the way if you should like to ask Sem about this story, you can find him at the Panya Restaurant at Choengmon beach, where he still lives with Dah, and his lovely children, Bus and Bol. Tuk is still at the Beach Pub at the Secret Garden.

Fact or fiction, you decide…

Emerging from the ghost road, we turned left onto the Chaweng road and continued for about 100 metres where Patrick stopped next to the Black Duck Sport Bar Restaurant, our venue for supper. Every day they have different food specials, Thursdays happen to be steak night, which we all settled on, of course only after the mandatory beer was absorbed into the old beer hold. You are served a piece of steak (Australian), mash potato, coleslaw, and a glass of wine for 350 Baht. The steak, although not too generous a portion, was simply delicious, the best I have had in many a year. Because I have had so many bad experiences with so many really bad steaks at home over the last few years I mostly refrain from eating steaks in restaurants. So it was with some trepidation that I placed my order, but this steak I will surely have again. I just have to mention that my absolute worst steak ever was probably, during a business trip to Cape Town, at a restaurant called La Romantica in Stellenbosch. It was essentially a lump of sinew with some fat and all things bad, topped with a tasteless sauce. Run… run fast and far.

While at the Black Duck Sport Bar Restaurant, I noticed that they had a very different take on happy hour, which they call “beat the clock”. In essence, the earlier you start drinking, the cheaper the drinks are (beers/gin/vodka). It works like this. If you order between 16H00 and 16H30, a beer will cost you 45 Baht, between 16H30 and 17H00, 50 Baht, between 17H00 and 17H30, 55 Baht and finally between 17H30 and 18H00, 60 Baht. So their message is clear, start drinking early and quickly, and you can drink cheaply. I can hear a collective murmur of approvals out there.

After a really delicious supper the end was apparently not yet in sight. We saddled up the scooters and drove down Chaweng road, feeling a bit euphoric, not just from the drinks, supper and good company, but from the warm tropical evening air in your face and the feeling of freedom that comes with it. Man, that felt so good. We continued quite a way down Chaweng road and stopped off at the Bamboo Bar, an old haunt of Patrick. The bar, obviously constructed of bamboo, serves all cocktails at 99 Baht, so always happy hour ! We were introduced to Lisa, the owner, who promptly dished out roasted peanuts and the requested cocktails. After a couple of cocktails Meme was keen to try another cocktail at another bar, but when we got to the scooters her eyes seemed to be all glazed over, poor thing, I could see the babalaas (hangover) in those eyes. We decided to call it a night… a great night.

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