Our first full day in Khao Lak. I slept the sleep of the dead, but woke early. It was dark – maybe around 6.00am.
I managed to go back to sleep for a short while and woke up with the daylight, maybe 30 minutes later. 6.30am in Khao Lak, but 9.30am in Brisbane.
MBW was still snoring sleeping, so I got up and read my book for a while. I’ve started rereading a Harry Bosch book, and once I’d started I needed to see how it ended (again).
There are a number of perks to staying here on this deal that we have. 8 nights in Khao Lak with the “all you can eat” buffet breakfast, plus lunch or dinner every day, plus 2 x 1 hour massages, and the scary airport transfer where 90km/h is the new 50km/h and you use a confusing system of turn signals.
MBW finally woke, showers were had, and we made our way to breakfast.
Now I don’t know about you, but I consider “all you can eat” to be a personal challenge … and I was going for a PB. That’s Personal Best.
We spent about an hour at breakfast, eating our way through the buffet and trying to figure it all out … wondering about some of the more unusual things on the buffet.
Like dumplings. I mean, I like dumplings, and I will often make them on Saturday nights when it’s my turn to cook … but for breakfast? 2 different kinds of shrimp dumplings, and one kind of pork.
And cheese and crackers. Pumpkin seeds. Fish in some unknown sauce.
Coffee. I know that one, so no confusion there.
It appears to me that the most common nationalities here are English (including Australian), Germans, and Thai. So they had everything to make each of those nationalities feel right at home.
The first order of business after eating our own body weight in breakfast food was to slip into our swimmers and go sit by the pool.
The forecast was for rain and thunderstorms, and my phone’s weather app was very helpful in advising me that the rain would stop shortly.
The water in the pool was absolutely stunning – crystal clear, just the right temperature … and – I can only assume – most people sleep in really late and don’t emerge until lunchtime, because the pool was mostly empty.
A few kids too, so I imagine that there was also some … nope, doesn’t matter. Best not to think about it. I’m sure that the chlorine will kill it.
After 3 hours at the pool we went back to our room, showered, changed, and got ready to go out for a walk.
We had promised ourselves that if we had a big breakfast, we wouldn’t need lunch … which is good in theory, but flawed in practice.
Our tiny little brains told us that it was lunchtime, and the place directly across the road from the Ramada is highly rated on the Intergoogle, so we thought we’d pop in and check out the menu.
So we ordered lunch – Pad Thai and Pineapple something-or-other that came in a half a pineapple.
It was really good … we didn’t need to eat, but it was still really good.
Next stop was a bit further up the road where we had heard that there was a place that can do your laundry cheap, and also do massages.
I’m not entirely sure that I understand the connection between laundry and massage, but … when in Rome.
We dropped off our laundry and went next door to the massage place – I’m not going to say “massage parlour” because that just sounds creepy – and I signed up for a neck and shoulder massage while MBW signed up for a pedicure.
Clearly biology is not something that the massage lady understands, because I was told to “take off shirt, take off shorts” and I wondered if maybe it was actually a massage parlour and I was about to get way more than I bargained for. Which incidentally I did (get more than I bargained for), but it was a full Thai massage that I got, rather than just neck and shoulders.
I’m not sure if there was something lost in translation, or whether this was just one of those “would you like fries with that” upsell moments and I nodded at the wrong time, but when she started to massage my feet I figured that I was getting the works. Not just neck and shoulders.
We clearly hadn’t thought this through. Remember the all you can eat buffet breakfast, followed by a period of intense inactivity (sitting by the pool), followed by lunch that I didn’t need to eat?
Lying on my stomach on a hard massage table wasn’t exactly the comfortable start of a relaxing massage that I had anticipated. But we do what we have to do … lie there and think of England.
I have been pretty sore and tight, so it was a nice massage … until it stopped being nice and became more torture than fun.
She certainly found all of the sore spots in my back and shoulders, but when she climbed up on the table with me and drove her elbows into my back and shoulders with her whole body weight behind it, it started to become unpleasant.
And when she crouched down beside me and bent my head and neck over her knee while jamming her elbow into my neck, I wished that I’d checked our travel insurance first to know whether paraplegia at the hands of a crazy Thai masseuse is covered … because I was sure that’s where I was heading.
I think it was Friedrick Nietzsche that said “whatever doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger”, and I figured that if this didn’t kill me then I’d be really strong!
We checked out some of the little souvenir shops on the way back to the resort, and found a mini mart to buy some milk for evening coffee, then made it back to our room with no further incident or pain. Just a promise that our laundry would be returned to us at 9.00pm tomorrow night.
She probably wanted to see if I was still a functioning human being after that massage, or if she could keep our clothes.
The afternoon consisted of another period of intense inactivity … we had a nice rest in our air conditioned room to escape the heat and humidity.
4.00pm is drinks time, so we staggered back down to the pool bar and had a couple of cocktails and mocktails.
5.00pm we were back to our room to make ourselves beautiful for dinner.
Last night we made the mistake of sitting near a speaker blaring music, so conversation was mostly nonexistent or impossible. Tonight we requested a table at the far end of the restaurant and it was much better.
And what a view … watching the sunset over the water, something we never see in Brisbane.
They have two menus that we can choose from – a western menu and a local Thai menu. Last night we had western so tonight we went Thai … and it was a bit of a disappointment. Clearly Australian Thai food is very different to traditional Thai food.
Dinner consumed, belts loosened and we staggered our way back to our room for coffee.
And that’s about it. We did very little of value, other than eat (and eat, and eat …) and contribute to the Khao Lak economy through our $8.00 load of washing and our $17.00 massage.
Maybe we will do it all over again tomorrow …
I could get used to this.
Ciao
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