Roy also took a walk to collect our laundry and hand in the next load, as well as to purchase our lunchtime “dinner” from the little roadside restaurant, which is fast becoming a favourite, given the delicious Thai food, which is freshly prepared while you wait. In fact, the food is so good, he returned again today, this time selecting a few different dishes, like pineapple fried rice, prawns in a tamarind sauce, stir-fried vegetables and Tom Yum soup, to name a few.
By late afternoon, though, we were both bored out of our minds, so Roy’s comment of: “I feel like something nice to eat”, resulted in us settling down in the comfy seats on the patio of the 9th Degree Restaurant and Wine Bar and enjoying an afternoon tea with a baked delight, all beautifully presented.
It’s fair to say, however, that neither of us are ready for life on land and this interlude has definitely been the acid test! While life in the apartment has been far better than trying to live onboard while on the hard, it’s just not our “cup of tea”! It hasn’t helped matters that the apartment is made for very small people, as everything is very low to the ground, including the sofa, the chairs and the bed; we feel like giants living here. Even the kitchen and bathroom countertops don’t even come as high as the top of Elaine’s thigh, so getting “in and out” or “on and off” everything is killing her knees and back, but her thigh muscles are certainly getting a really good workout. The toilet is the worst; albeit a western toilet, it is so low!
It also hasn’t helped that Thailand’s third wave started just before our arrival and, as the days have progressed, with the constant stream of new COVID-19 cases across the country, new lockdown measures have been introduced, as would be expected. However, this has scuttled our plans of whiling away our days at the resort pool, sipping cocktails, but all public pools are now closed or enjoying a sundowner at one of the bars, but all alcohol sales are band, except as a takeaway, but it’s band as part of in-dining too and, with so many of the restaurants now closed as well, it’s left slim pickings. Instead, we’re now counting the days until we’re splashed and can be back out at anchor to sail around, swim, snorkel, paddleboard, take walks on the beach, see the sunrises and sunsets, fall asleep under a magnificent starry sky and hopefully see some sea-life as well.
Lockdown obviously has not just presented an inconvenience for us, even the festivities and traditional ceremonies associated with the rice-planting season in Thailand, has been impacted; two unique royal ceremonies, the Royal Cultivating Ceremony and the Royal Ploughing Ceremony, which usually start in May to mark the official opening of the season and to underline the importance of farmers and the rice culture in Thai life, were cancelled due to the COVID-19 situation. Although, of course, all this pales into insignificance as people all around the world continue to loose their lives and livelihoods to this pandemic.
Back in our world, a movie was supposed to wrap up our day, but neither of us could keep our eyes open, not from doing anything strenuous during the day, but rather from sheer boredom. We weren’t even halfway through the performance, when we called it a day, so that was the end of that!
Today we woke to a video and a photograph, both of William; the former thanking us for the Happy Birthday message we’d sent him and the latter of his graduation from kindergarten. Where have the years gone! It just doesn’t seem that long ago that Elaine attended Capri’s kindergarten graduation ceremony!
To pass her day, Elaine completed her preparation work for our next website article and started cataloguing all our new photographs, as well as completed a number of general administration tasks. A chat to her sister in Ireland helped pass some of the time and preceded a light dinner, following which we watched the rest of our movie from last night.
Roy spent his day researching options available for possibly replacing Paw Paw’s house batteries with a lithium solution, something we had planned to undertake in Malaysia, as well as fumigated Paw Paw’s interior.
A perusal of Paw Paw this evening indicated that all the gelcoat work had been completed and what an excellent job they’ve done; the topsides look like new again. Also all the keelboats have been resealed, but additional drying time was still required.
