Day 17 - Boxing Day Rain Relief

We had a decent nights sleep & started the day with coffee & Christmas cake on the terrace. Jackie WhatsApp’d Chanika to let her know that the Similan Islands trip had been a great success & to enquire how she was getting on with arranging our onward travels on the 28th. All we wanted was a 1 hour 45 minute taxi ride back to Phuket bus terminal. It couldn’t be that difficult.

Minutes later Jackie’s phone rang & she tossed her phone to me to speak with Chanika. I had a confusing conversation with her, but I ultimately worked out that she had other plans that would save us time & money. She said would need to visit us again. Not a problem we would be by the pool all day.

Chanika arrived an hour later & sat crosslegged on the terrace floor in front of us as if we were a king & queen sitting on our thrones listening to one of our subjects. It felt a bit awkward. She wanted to see our bus tickets from Phuket to Hat Yai bus terminal. She was going to arrange for us to board the bus at Khok Kloi bus terminal instead of Phuket. This was would reduce our taxi ride to 1 hour, saving us about 1,200 baht & an extra 2 hour lie in. Perfect!

Chanika then went into a big long sob story about how she gets up at 4am every morning to make breakfast for the Thais & she only made 45 baht profit this morning, how her mum has cancer & her brother a bad foot, but they can’t afford the hospital fee, how her electricity was going to be cut off on the 27th December & so on & so on. It didn’t make sense when she drives around in a big top of the range 4x4. We humoured her until she ran out of things to say to try and make us feel sorry for her.

Our healthy lunch consisted of crisps, popcorn & a beer.

In the afternoon, we sat by the pool in the scorching sun (the hottest day yet) until we had a lovely 10 minute downpour to cool us down. We stayed out in the sun until 4.30pm, when rain set in for the remainder of the afternoon.

The rain continued until 8pm, when we went out for dinner with an umbrella. We returned to Thai Life, but went for the nearest thing we could get to a traditional Christmas dinner. Jackie ordered the Wiener schnitzel XXL, but the waitress now knowing Jackie’s sparrow like appetite suggested that they could do a smaller cheaper version for her, which she accepted. I ordered the cordon bleu chicken, but she didn’t recommend a smaller version for me! Both dinners were really delicious & we ate the lot.

To finish the evening we stopped in the Piranha Bar for a couple of strong Thai Piranha cocktails costing just 70 baht each. The bar owner also had his own sob story which he off loaded on to Jackie.

Song of the Day: Sunday Rain by Foo Fighters.
Kings And Queens by Thirty Seconds To Mars.Read more