Week 28 - 11 December 2015 to 17 December 2015 - Koh Samui, Thailand
Koh Samui, Thailand
Friday (11 December 2015)
I woke up early this morning having had an amazing sleep and I felt truly rested. Just after 07:00 I got up, Adri was left in my wake, and I brewed myself a strong one and started sipping that puppy with a faraway stare over the ocean far below. Today seemed set to become another glorious weather day, as yesterday, and the day before that, with the sun beating down already at this hour while a few puffy clouds were hanging around in the distance just in case they get called up for duty.
When Adri awoke from her slumber I made myself a second and handed Adri her first cup of coffee for the day. We stretched and jumped through a yoga session between 10:00 and 11:00 after which a breakfast of eggs, bacon, cheese, fried tomato, fried onions and toast followed which in turn was followed by a banana omelette. Now I was ready to face the laptop again.
After breakfast Adri suggested that we go to Mr. Pong for that long anticipated massage, but when we got to Mr. Pong, Mr. Pong was gone. He had probably gone out for lunch so we decided to return at some later date.
We got home and after checking the SA exchange rate I was shocked beyond belief, or was that beyond disbelief… what had happened to this thing we call the rand? Near worthless now, it seemed that it was around 15.40 to the dollar in the early morning trade, shooting up the charts to 15.85 during the day! Now I make a point of reading the world news every day, and I make a point of not reading the SA news every day. Reason, I am just so tired of bad news, corruption and further bad news, similar to the rest of the world I might add, but just too close to home. There is a song by Paul Simon called The Only Living Boy In New York with a line in there that goes "I get the news I need on the weather report". And so I get the SA news I need on the exchange rate app, so I knew something drastic must have happened back in the hood. I turned to bdlive.co.za and news24.co.za and got the whole story with one and then a secondary glance. Zuma firing Nene as Minster of Finance and appointing Desmond Van Rooyen in his place… Desmond van Rooyen who? Do you blame me for asking who, no-one had ever heard of him, well most people at least. I read somewhere that “So low is Desmond van Rooyen's political stature that people at Luthuli House call him "Shortie" when they forget his name.”
But I digress, the old political spin was of course put on the story that Nene was redeployed to a better and higher position. When are these politicians going to learn that they are dealing with intelligent voters in SA, do they really think that the people believe the dregs they dish up to their electorate? So, the real reason for Nene’s sacking essentially seems to come down to Zuma wanting money for his stukkie (girlfriend) at SAA for the SAA/Airbus deal, as well as the nuclear deal that was apparently agreed to but Nene refused them the money. Zuma of course denies all three accusations, the stukkie, the SAA/Airbus fiasco as well as the nuclear deal debacle. So now we have Zuma’s lackey, Van Rooyen, looking for that rubber stamp he should have been provided by now to stamp all the requests for money that started piling up on his huge desk in the last 24 hours.
Does anybody believe that it is possible to recall this Zuma man before he totally destroys our beautiful country? And how beautiful it is. I just happened to sort through some of my photos the other day and came across a few I took when I was in Cape Town towards the end of last year. Check them out, how could anyone want to bring harm to such an amazing country.
Adri decided that while I was working today, she will once again walk around the shops ogling stuff for purchase. I took her down to the Family Mart from where she made her shopping way towards the Chaweng Tesco, a couple of hundred meters up the road from there. She arranged a pickup at 17:00, and I should not be late.
Back at home it was hard to focus on the blog, my mind careening back and forth between the exchange rate and the blog, exchange rate and the blog… the blog finally won and was published, but only at round 20:00.
When I fetched Adri from the Family Mart she had bought some goodies which I have not yet encountered, some sort of a coconut rice delicacy. It seemed like they mix sticky rice, with some sort of a coconut pulp, mold that into a triangle which looks like a white samosa, which is then in turn wrapped in coconut leaf and steamed until perfection. Must admit, I quite enjoyed that little treat.
We went for supper at the Silver Beach Resort restaurant, one of the restaurants we earmarked during the course of the week. It was now pitch dark and we slogged along the coast for about eight kilometers to reach our gastronomic destination. I remembered the head waiter on the day waxing lyrical about the pad thai, their house specialty, so that was what made it to my table. Adri had the penang curry which was just past a comfortable spicy with just the right amount of bite to it. All in all it was a wonderful supper, outside on the wooden deck, overlooking Silver Beach, what a wonderful evening it turned out to be.
Saturday (12 December 2015)
The day started off slowly and continued slowly throughout the day. I must admit that I did not have a good night’s sleep with the rand exchange rate free falling and all. Checking the rate on opening my eyes I noticed that it was now stuck at a sickeningly 15.89 to the dollar. I needed some comic relief. I came across the following antidote by the comedian Nick Helm which put a slight smile to my face “I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” Then there was another one by Ross Noble “How come Miss Universe is only won by people from Earth?”
We had a great full Monty breakfast and continued the slow day in the pool and on the daybed until the sun hid its rays behind the mountain while a cool breeze moved the hot air somewhere else. At around 16:30 we biked off to Chaweng Noi beach, or little Chaweng beach, which occupies space just south of Chaweng beach proper. The first beach pub we got to was just closing as we stumbled in at 17:00. We moved our weary and by now dehydrated bodies further along the beach and came upon a lovely little pub which looked very inviting with its bright colours and what not. It also just happened to be happy hour… so we had a happy hour.
While sitting there contemplating life at a slow pace in line with the rest of the day, we noticed an extended party of non identifiable nationality, sitting at a table on the beach furiously writing away on pieces of paper. We at first thought they were playing some game but later realized that they were bickering about the amount that each had to pay, making copious calculations on these pieces of paper. I thought it a bit strange, rather odd, but at least it seemed that they had come to some agreement by the time we left an hour later.
We walked further south along the beach, what a lovely little beach this turned out to be. We got to a pretty fancy resort where they were preparing for a buffet evening on the beach with a stage set for a band to perform a little later. We waltzed around the tables, heavily laden with the food and beverages on offer, and was wondering whether we could partake if we paid the required baht, it truly looked impressive. We asked one of the attendants who confirmed that it was a private party, so sorry, but no amount of baht would get us in. On my querying, with a smile, whether anyone would notice if we partook in the offerings, he smiled back at me and just shrugged. I would of course never do that, but heck, that setup looked soooo tempting.
We were planning on having supper at home but it was getting sort of late and Adri decided to give herself off from cooking the moment I merely murmured the possibility of stopping off at the Black Duck Pub. Well, it was Saturday and time for their special of that cheeseburger in paradise, with Adri wanting a Thai dish but relented at the last minute to opt once again for the grilled lamb chops. Man, the food and the ice cold beers there never disappoint. A familiar face at the bar greeted us, we greeted back, but could not immediately place the face. Then Adri remembered that it was the owner of The Shakespear Pub where we have been a few times before. One could not wonder why he was out with his mates on a Saturday night while his pub was probably pretty busy. I am sure his wife would have been ****** with him that evening for shirking his responsibilities, but he was having such a grand old time, it probably was worth it getting home to a peeved off wife, a classic case of FTC (.... The Consequences).
We got home at a decent hour, watched a bit of television, read a bit and were soon somewhere else.
Sunday (13 December 2015)
Today was one of our rest days from yoga so had coffee in bed while gobbling up some news. Yes, the rand was still at an embarrassing 15.89 to the dollar but then I read the following good news: “After 20 years of fraught meetings, including the past two weeks spent in an exhibition hall on the outskirts of Paris, negotiators from nearly 200 countries signed on to a legal agreement on Saturday evening that set ambitious goals to limit temperature rises and to hold governments to account for reaching those targets.”
Wow, this was great news indeed, I truly did not, in my wildest dreams, anticipate this agreement after so many failures in the past. Finally we can try and bring climate change under control .
Adri looked devastated. Our water in the villa had dried up, not sure whether it had anything to do with climate change but she made her voice heard at reception and the friendly chap came along and had us switched on in no time.
This being another pretty lazy day, we watched some television, then listened to the music of Belinda Carlisle, Crowded House and Cutting Crew while we were lazing on the daybed reading. I was presented with an article on house sitting. Quite a number of years ago I read about the concept of house Sitting which sounded like quite a cool idea. Many people that go on holiday want someone in their homes for security purposes and also to take care of it, as well as take care of their animals where applicable. At the time I read two books of people that did just that, the first was Finding The Gypsy In Me by Teresa Roberts and Home Sweet Anywhere by Lynne Martin. This concept has been slumbering in the back of my mind but was brought to the fore when I stumbled upon this article today. It sounded like a fun way to see the world.
I started checking out a few of the web sites that bring home owners and sitters together and there are some wonderful opportunities/assignments all around the world. Some of these are for a few days, some a week, others a month, and sometimes for a number of months. So, for merely living in the house, you stay rent free, everything included except food, pretty cool hey?
Seems like it was a water crisis day today. We were outside when our neighbour jumped on her bike and biked off to reception, there was apparently water spurting out of a pipe just below our unit. As she was alerting the complex’s management I went to check out the damage. I found that a t-piece of some sort had come loose, re-attached it and voila, all was good.
Jenny had been visiting David now for about a month and the time had arrived for her to bid us all farewell. We were invited to their villa at 18:00 for a few parting drinks, good conversation and of course snackies which consisted of peanuts, cashew nuts, chips, cocktail pork sausages, olives, and much more. Man, what a treat. For drinks we opted for beers and then some, Smirnoff Ice and a lovely SA red wine that made a very quick appearance before disappearing, never to return. We had a wonderful evening and as we were leaving we invited her for breakfast in the morning, we had to see her just one last time.
Monday (14 December 2015)
I went to bed last night with an exchange rate nightmare still freshly embedded in my mind, but woke up to a dream. Checking the exchange rate app I noticed that it had improved radically to somewhere around 15.24 to the dollar. Not great, but I was expecting it to fly in the opposite direction through the 16 level with afterburners burning. Once again, I knew that something dramatic had to have happened in SA for this to occur and once again turned to bdlive.co.za and news24.co.za to get the story. And would you believe, my big boss of many years, Pravin Gordhan, was reappointed as the Minister of Finance. It was with great relief that I jumped out of bed without a moan today to make coffee, a giant spring in my step. If there is one person in SA that I would trust to sort this **** out it is him, I have the utmost confidence in him. I am just not sure whether this Zuma man has now finally gone one step too far for anyone to sort out the **** he had caused. Methinks it is time for him to bow out gracefully, or at least as gracefully as is possible.
Early morning I biked off for a few items at Makro which were on the breakfast menu this morning. Even the bike seemed to have an extra spring in its step after the exchange rate news, or maybe it was just me with the throttle thingy. I got to Makro and as I loaded up the eggs I was amazed at how much havoc I could wreak within a split second, it was quite extraordinary actually. As I placed the punnet containing 15 eggs in the trolley, about six of them went straight through the trolleys fence, or defence, and splattered onto the floor in a yolky mess, or mass. Man, that was mucho impressive. I fetched another trolley from the trolley park, sidled it up alongside the accident scene and transferred all my future belongings into the new van. The old van was left to deal with its own mess. When I took down another punnet of eggs from the rack, more carefully this time, I noticed that the little plastic makeshift clips that are supposed to hold the bottom and cover together were not engaging properly. OK, I could not take all the credit for the mess.
At 09:30 Jenny clocked in for a breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, cheese friend onions, a fresh baguette, orange juice, she declined the beer on offer, just a tad too early she mused. We had a wonderful breakfast, had a tumble in the pool and chatted away until after midday when David phoned and questioned whether he was getting lunch. Adri had prepared a baguette with all the same trappings we had for breakfast, man, I was sad to see that thing leave the house, it looked awesome, as David would confirm later. It was a great pity to see Jenny go but she will hopefully be back in April, so we’re really looking forward to that.
After Jenny left I buckled down to do some admin. Our house back in SA in Woodmead was rented out until end January 2016 to Darren, our neighbour, where he and his family is staying while extending and remodelling their home across the road. I made contact with a few estate agents in the area that I have dealt with before, who had all taken a tour of the house and taken pictures previously, so that was all sorted before we left SA. The ones I contacted were keen to have the property on their books so we trust that they will get us a decent and reliable tenant for 1 February 2016.
That done, I needed to take a break and catch up on further news from SA, Pravin was scheduled to give a press conference on his first day back on the job. I watched a clip of the press conference and Pravin was of course on song as we all know him, with a mix of joviality, sternness and kakking (********) out a journalist for reporting rumours as truth, and quite rightly so. I believe that press freedom is non-negotiable, but one cannot report on rumours just because it is a juicy story, sells newspapers and pay the bonus, journalists have to make sure of their facts before print.
I was horrified with the professionalism, or shall I say, the unprofessionalism of the SABC (SA Broadcasting Corporation). With such a critically important press briefing and announcements, they not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times, lost the newsfeed for minutes at a time, no apology, no nothing, seemingly just business as usual. And this is what our taxes are used for ?
Subsequently I started reading some of the news feeds and found the following “The Presidency said in a media statement issued late last night: 'I have received many representations to reconsider my decision. As a democratic government, we emphasise the importance of listening to the people and to respond to their views.’” No Zuma, you did not listen to the people, you, and you alone made a bad decision. If you had listened to the people you would never have made such a dastardly mistake in the first place. And once again we are expected to fall for this spin...
By the way, I watched another clip of Zuma giving a talk to a gathering of business people a few days ago. He spoke some mumbo jumbo that only he could understand about ”there is no river that cut the African continent in half, or in a quarter”, not sure what that was all about. But then, probably wanting to show how great a continent Africa is, he came with this clanger “All continents put together will fit into Africa”. How utterly embarrassing! I was left speechless... .... .... .... Cry the beloved country, cry…
OK, now my spleen is clean.
And now on to more enjoyable stuff. December for me is synonymous with Nestle Quality Street sweets. If you have never tried these before, do yourself a favour. David advised that he’s seen them on Samui and gave me exact directions within Big C where they will be lying in wait for my arrival. And by the way, Tesco stocks them as well, he said, but his memory was a bit fuzzy as to its exact location. So, off we biked to find my Christmas folly. Because Tesco is on the way we stopped off there for a search but we came up empty handed. Then off to Big C, confidently following the precise Google Map type directions we received, and again, niggy nix, nada. This will be the first time in decades that I will be without my Quality Street fix during the Christmas period. I will get over it... perhaps.
I got home not overly depressed, we found a lot of other sweeties that could eat away at my sweet tooth, so I was pretty happy with our eventual purchases. After supper we watched a bit of television, read for a while and said good night after I checked the exchange rate, now it had just broken down through the 15 mark. A good sleep was forecast.
Tuesday (15 December 2015)
After our normal morning routine and moving into mid afternoon we went for a swim with gin and tonic in hand, trying to sooth the mind. While swimming we were further soothed by the music of Steve Winwood with songs like Higher Love, Valerie and of course that great Arc Of A Diver, another one of my all-time favourite songs. Winwood kept good company during his career and played in bands such as The Spencer Davis Group, Traffic and Blind Faith with greats such as Eric Clapton and Jim Capaldi, before going solo.
Later in the afternoon we went to the little local Air Asia shop on the ring road, opposite the Chaweng Tesco, to check some prices. Now I normally check and book airline tickets on the internet, but I used that as a smokescreen to enquire whether we could check our baggage in at Koh Samui through Penang in Malaysia, and directly on to Jakarta in Indonesia. We anticipate flying to Penang with Firefly and then on to Jakarta with Air Asia and if the baggage thing does not work out we would have to do the immigration thing in Penang. There is one thing you should know about the Koh Samui airport, it belongs to Bangkok Air so they control the pricing and thus keep out their low cost competitors such as Air Asia. The only other airlines that I know of that fly from here are Silk Air and Firefly which do not pose any particular threat to their monopoly. I have flown Bangkok Air many times and they really are a very good airline, but this monopolistic behavior of theirs is hard to stomach, hence my trying not to use them where possible.
Anyway, having asked and received the price between Penang and Jakarta, I posed the baggage question to the ladies behind the counter. The both of them seriously thought that only Air Asia flew from Samui, they were not aware that Firefly operated from here, or any other airline for that matter. After a number of frantic phone calls the baggage answer I received was not satisfactory, I will have to do further research.
From there we buzzed off to Tops for a few exotic items which we unfortunately could not find, pity. In instances like this we would still normally walk out of there with a swagger due to the load of groceries we have managed to accumulate, none which we came for, but not this time though. For once we somehow contained our shopping urges and walked out of there with only one item, a canister of salt at 7.5 baht. I was so proud of us.
On our way home, close to where we live, a dog alongside the road barked as we rode past. Adri leaned forward and asked “What did you say?” I was not sure what to make of that…
Apart from some further admin I did this morning I have not worked much during the last few days, probably due to this Zuma thing. So while I started compiling a few sentences on the blog Adri busied herself with the preparation of a boere (farmers) curry and rice. It was not long before I realized something was amiss, no music, so I woke Stevie Nicks up and she belted out Bella Donna as well as the other goodies on the album of the same name. Think About It, After The Glitter Fades, Edge of Seventeen, Leather and Lace with Don Henley from the Eagles, Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around with one of my other favourites, Tom Petty. This last song reminded me of an interview I saw with Stevie Nicks who had only the highest praise for Tom Petty mentioning that he was such a lovely guy. In an unrelated interview with Tom Petty, the author of his biography asked him whether he and Stevie were a couple, co-workers or friends, pushing him on the question saying to him, after he told me they weren’t a couple, “You sure sound like a couple.” Tom looked at me and said, “We had our times.” Anyway, this is one brilliant album.
After a wonderful kerrie en rys (curry and rice) we watched an episode of House Hunters International. This couple was searching for an apartment in central Paris and found one, a two bedroom one bathroom, and not very big by any stretch of the imagination at around 85 sqm, and the price, a cool 1.35 million dollars. At the current rand exchange rate that apartment would cost in excess of 20 million rand, 235 000 rand per sqm. That was insane. No matter how much I love Paris, and I do, what they got for the price was just shocking.
After my shock we had a cup of tea which calmed me down somewhat so we continued reading for at least 15 minutes before I gave up trying to force my eyes to stay awake. Just before I gave up though I had a quick look at the rand exchange rate, it was just below the 15 mark, so that was as good as any bedtime story that I could dream up.
Wednesday (16 December 2015)
I woke up this morning with my finger on the pulse of the exchange rate app, triggering it to update. Thankfully, still under 15 to the dollar. There is crude comfort in that but it is at least below 15.
I read the US Republican presidential hopefuls’ debate hosted by CNN. Yes read. As I do not have access to CNN I could not watch it live so I followed it “live” on the interet via The Guardian which had a blog type update every minute or three. I was less than underwhelmed, having not expected much in the first place. Afterwards I watched some of the comments roll in from around the world and the one from “Not_a_shirker” caught my eye, which read “Watching that video is actually quite painful. A collection of narcissistic, jingoistic, poorly informed arseholes arguing like 4 years olds over an ice cream.”
After that painful experience Adri proclaimed at around 11:00 that she was ready to start breakfast, but I protested, I wanted my dose of yoga first. We rolled out the mats and did our by now usual one hour session. We were just finishing our corpse pose when David knocked on the door with a hoe gaan dit ou perd. He had more news, not bad, not good, just news. The apartment that we would have gotten in the first place for December was now once again available so we’ll be moving into that in a day or two. David’s rib that is “just a little broken” is feeling much better although he said that he sneezed this morning and it felt like somebody stabbed him in the back with a smoldering red hot dagger. Ouch.
From the glorious weather we have been having over the last week I can safely say that the rainy season seem to be officially over. During the last two months we have had quite a lot of rain, showers lasting anything from 15 minutes to a few hours, but afterwards the sun would always make its appearance, it’s not that it is overcast for days on end… never. We really enjoyed the rainy season though.
I went for a quick swim while Adri prepared a breakfast of omelette with savoury mince, accompanied by slices of baguette dripping with melted cheese. Hmm… After breakfast I continued reading until my conscience and good sense finally ganged up on me and confined me to the chair, the one with the laptop attached to it.
During the course of the afternoon I brought all the Apple devices up to date with IOS 9.2. Is it my imagination or is Adri’s Ipad 2 just a little bit more responsive? As I was updating the devices I also updated all the apps that required such. My Iphone rebelled against that, Excel said “no can do”, not enough storage space. The culprit which gave rise to this situation was of course the 7.1 GB of photos stored on there. Having made sure that all the photos were indeed on my laptop I deleted all from my Iphone. While I was on a roll, a camera roll, I made sure that all Adri’s photos were also backed up to her laptop and wiped all her Iphone photos as well, she had had the same space issue as me before.
I have noticed that the exchange rate fiasco in SA also reached the headlines of CNN today, herewith the introduction:
‘Mayhem is the only word that can describe President Jacob Zuma's shock reversal of the appointment of almost-finance minister David van Rooyen. Markets welcomed the move to the well-known and trusted Pravin Gordhan, the former minister of finance, and the local currency jumped for joy in the minutes following the announcement. As much as the nomination of Gordhan is to be welcomed, it poses a number of serious questions about Zuma's fitness to hold office.”
If you care to read the full article, I have included the link below, makes for some interesting reading.
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/16/afric a/jacob-zuma-south-africa-president-con versation/index.html
Thursday (17 December 2015)
Today was our official move-day but David advised that we could stay on until Saturday as the owner of our villa will only be arriving on Sunday. So after the second cup of boeretroos (coffee or farmer’s comfort) we enticed some muesli into a bowl after which the milk followed willingly. While having breakfast we decided, due to the postponement of our move, to go in search of Mr. Pong for our long awaited massages that we had promised ourselves for a while now.
We arrived at the premises of the elusive Mr. Pong, but not so elusive today, he was in and willing to help with all our muscle related spasms. Adri was first up and his lady assistant assisted her to get comfortable after which Mr. Pong started massaging muscles. I was not sure what to make of Adri’s agonizing, fear inducing screams from time to time, actually most of the time. The longer it went on, the scarier it became, and the more scared I became, I was now no more looking forward to this means of spending my time or my baht. This was a torture chamber at best, but two hours later Adri got up from there, shook out a few rattles and crackles, looking seemingly unaffected by all this, but now it was my turn.
It started off gently, then it intensified and it ended up getting quite violent. At one point he was about to break my arm and just before it snapped he released his grip. I heard a lot of cracking from joints and I was temporarily relieved to hear that some of those sounds were coming from Mr. Pong due to the effort he was putting in trying to hurt me. I generally do not like showing pain but I was now reconsidering that strategy, maybe if he saw the pain etched on my face he would end this madness. Tried that, didn’t work. He was relentless and just when I started to become numb and therefore feeling no more pain, he declared that the session was over. I must have passed out along the way because my two hour torture session felt like half of that. Man, that was eina (sore) but it felt great.
We got home and we both were sore. At first I felt pain in my calves, then it moved to my thighs, then marched up and into my back and then still further into my shoulders and neck. Thankfully it stopped just before it reached my brain.
After our massage massacre, I quite frankly do not know where Adri found the energy, or the will for that matter, to put together an amazing supper of roasted pork loin, sweet potato all mashed up, coleslaw, complete with a bowl of chips. Not sure, but methinks we are eating too much, we need to get to a weigh-in station soon just to verify.
During the day I noticed that the rand exchange rate was flirting with the 15 dollar mark and under my breath I cursed Zuma… again. Then at 22:40 I checked again and the rand had rocketed to 15.24 to the dollar. Zuma, wat het jy nou weer aangevang (what have you done this time).
After our ordeal today I was immensely tired, I cannot fully describe it, but when it came close to bedtime my brain could not process any command other than “go to bed”, followed by “go to bed”. The pain in my various body parts was all pervasive and by the time I did go to bed I felt like a stiff. I fell asleep before my head made contact with that pillow, I know that because I do not remember it.