March 12, 2017

Another boring day on the highway south, not even a Wat to view, that is until we tried to find our accommodation for the night!

However, before we headed to the Thana Apartment Hotel we stopped at Mini C market for lunch. Next door to the mini-C was a coffee place. We stopped in there for a fruit smoothie and Ralf went next door to the mini-C to buy sandwiches. An older Thai man started chatting to us. He asked where we were from and then stumped us by saying “Canada, there are too many foreigners being let in to Canada”. We looked at each other and wondered where he was getting that information from, but Ralf said that we actually need immigrants because people like us are not having many children. The Thai man said he had heard there were too many Chinese and possibly problems with Islamic people. We agreed that there were a lot of Chinese that had created a high real estate market in B.C.   He told us Thailand had problems with Russians and Germans – gangsters he called them, especially in Phuket and Pattaya – the big beach resort areas. He told us that the government finally had a plan in place to stop the corruption – a 20 year plan. He appeared to be quite pleased with the Plan. However, he said he didn’t like all the industry, it was creating bad weather.

He told us to be very careful on our bicycles as the drivers can be a little crazy in Thailand. We have felt quite safe here after the insanity of Vietnam!

We said our farewells and headed back into the heat to find our apartment/hotel for the night. It was getting really hot about 40 degrees.

According to Bookings.com, Maps.Me and Google, the Thana Apartment Hotel was supposed to be 2 kms east of the Tesco in Bo Win. We are at least 8 kms outside of Bo Win in a tiny little village in the middle of nowhere.

We made the turns according to Maps.Me, passed the Tesco Lotus cycled two more kilometres and came across a grubby motel – no it was actually a grubby apartment block. Fortunately not the Thana we were looking for. Ralf asked a guy at a scooter decal place if he knew where the Thana was located – he checked on his phone and couldn’t find it. We cycled a little bit further – we stopped at a ladies hair salon. It would appear that all the people who work in hair salons are really helpful. At first she directed us down the road, but wasn’t 100% sure how far it was before we should make the left turn, but was pointing to the right. I asked her if she could telephone the place for me. The client who was in the middle of getting her hair washed spoke better English and came over to help as well. Eventually, we got better directions and it was going to be another 3 kilometres, she drew me a little map. When you get to the traffic light go straight ahead, then it is on the left, again pointing to the right. She wrote the phone number on the map, just in case we needed to call again and told me if we couldn\’t find it to come back and she would help us.

It was almost 5 kilometres to the traffic light, then we got to a Y shaped intersection. We asked again for someone to call. Make the right turn here and go 3 kilometres it is on your left. Yeah we found it, however, another communication problem. The older lady at the apartment/hotel didn’t speak English, she phoned someone and gave me the phone. The person said wait five minutes and hung up. Apparently, I was speaking to the cleaning staff and they needed five more minutes to clean the room!

It is a nice clean room, with a fridge and air-conditioning. We even managed to get a load of laundry done, 30 baht ($1.15) for the washing machine – cheapest yet.

Sourcing dinner was interesting. We asked if we could get hot water, as we have noodles, at first the older lady said yes then she said no – food was a long way away! I guess they figured we would want western food and a proper restaurant. There are two Thai restaurants near here she said. Two stalls that served food. The first one the lady was fast asleep in her hammock, the second one had pictures of the food offered. We like pictures we can point and say one of those please, with a smile! We ordered the (Som Tum) green papaya salad for two. Straight away they asked how many chilli’s – one we responded quickly and we all laughed. Ralf had eaten this papaya salad at a restaurant a couple of nights a go and it was so spicy – his eyes watered! As we were eating the salad they asked if it was o.k. not too hot. It was spicy, but really good. Unfortunately we were eating outside and there were lots of little flies around, really annoying.

Great idea for a light-shade and Christmas decoration combination, Ralf want\’s to try this for next Christmas! 

We needed more food, I ordered the same again and some fried fish balls on a stick and Ralf ordered a hot noodle dish with mystery meat and pork sausage, we had that to go. We were the VIP’s from Canada. It was very entertaining for everyone. Dinner cost about $7.50 including two beers and a tip.  I guess they don\’t get a tip very often, as they were very pleased.   The custom is to leave the coins as the tip.  The tip would have been 9 Thai baht, I am not telling you the equivalent in Cdn $.

While we were waiting for our second order of food Ralf had a wander around the property and took some photos.

The little dog was not that keen on him taking photos of the sunflowers.

As most of you know we have this game “spotting windmills”. One would think that you wouldn’t spot very many windmills in south-east Asia. Ralf has spotted 13 already in Thailand – I spotted 3 today. That means Ralf is ahead of me by 18 to 5 in South-East Asia! Who would have thought that windmills would be so popular.

The moon was an orange colour tonight.

Tomorrow should be interesting as we are not exactly sure where we are! We are not going to be on the highway that’s for sure.