Day 8 - A Hornbill Party to say Goodbye

Woke up at silly o’clock again. So much for getting into a sensible sleep pattern!

At 8.00am, I sat out on the veranda with a coffee & realised that the tree in front of us were teeming with a party of at least 20 hornbills, including juveniles. My research on our hornbills identified them as Oriental Pied Hornbills.

After breakfast we showered, packed & checked out of Nitiporn Resort. Bizarrely, 2 lads from the resort were on us in a flash & insisted they transport all our bags the 40 metres down the path to Sabai Sabai Beach Bungalows next door. Making up for failing to pick us up on our arrival I suspect. Sabai Sabai is owned by a 40 something year old Englishman from Stanstead, named James & his (ex) Thai wife, Sarah.

After completing the formalities, James took us to our 2 bedroomed sea view cottage, which had cost us just £126 for five nights. There is a saying that you get what you pay for & this was certainly the case in this instance. Our cottage was a 2 storey wooden shack with a bedroom on each floor. A very steep internal staircase connected the two. The cottage had no air conditioning, just a fan, no fridge and bedding, which although smelt clean was badly stained. If that wasn’t bad enough, we couldn’t get WiFi in our cottage. We were really going back to basics and this is just about as basic as Jackie is prepared to go.

After dumping all our luggage, we headed out. We hadn’t left Sabai Sabai before we bumped into James’ mother who with her husband had been staying here for the last month & were staying for another 2 months. She chatted at us for about 20 minutes telling us that most of her stay had been in torrential rain & it had only turned nice a week ago. She also ranted about a boat that arrived on the beach, virtually outside her room, with a big digger & a pile of sand. Apparently they were digging a new reservoir somewhere behind Sabai Sabai.

Jackie & I then walked down town to the Buddhist Temple on the pier & up to & personal with a golden Buddha on the hill. After the statutory photo, we took refuge from the sun in our ‘authentic’ restaurant for a couple of cold Changs.

After stocking up on mosquito spray, we almost certainly will need it, we returned to Sabai Sabai, where we bumped into Jan & James sat on their veranda. Jan originates from Bury St. Edmunds & James from America. Jan & James have been living in Thailand for the last 2 years & Jan has been coming to Ko Phayam for the last 18 years. We had seen them out & about drinking in the bars & as expected they knew every resident farang & most of the island’s bar & restaurant staff. We chatted to them for about an hour before they had to leave to attend the birthday party of an alcoholic bar owner. They invited us to join them, but it was only 3pm so we said we would try & catch up with them later.

We chilled under the shade of a palm tree until 5pm, when as warned we were attacked by mosquitoes. It was horrendous & despite being slathered in 3 coats of mossie spray an hour later my legs were on fire. Jackie also was being bitten in our cottage, but to make matters far worse she discovered that we had no hot water & she had to have a cold ‘refreshing’ shower. I didn’t hear the end of this for the rest of the night!

At 6.30pm, we abandoned our new resort & sought solace down town. Our legs were as itchy as hell, so we took up residence at our usual table in ‘36’ & tried to numb the pain with ice cold Changs. We could hear the birthday party opposite, but neither of us were in the mood to deal with drunken ageing westerners.

About an hour later, the extreme itchiness of my legs had subsided sufficiently for me to concentrate & we ordered dinner. We had planned to take a day off from spice, so Jackie ordered summer vegetable rolls and french fries, whilst I ordered pasta carbonara. It came as 3 plates of generous portions of loveliness.

We returned to Sabai Sabai feeling much more relaxed, so we collected our iPads & did internet stuff in the bar area, with a cocktail to help us sleep! I had a ‘Mai Thai’ (when in Rome….) and Jackie had a ‘Boy From Devon’, not literally! We’d never heard of it either.

We went to bed that night with some trepidation.

Song of the Day: Mosquito Song by Queens of the Stone Age.Read more