Khao Lak, Thailand August 2018: ANZ's Falcon on duty

Saturday 25^th August 2018.

Rudely awoken this morning by a text message from the bank. Apparently, questionable activity has been detected on my account. Great! An hour and a half later, it’s all sorted, I won’t be responsible for the charges, my card has been cancelled and the process started to issue a replacement. It’s strange. The card lives in my drawer at home, never leaves the house and I only brought it on this trip as a back-up. It’s in an RFID wallet and hasn’t been used here. It's justified to me though, the reason why I opened a new account specifically for online shopping. The card is cancelled and if it had been my main card to access internet banking and the like, that's gone, so no access to money! Also, it's going to take up to 14 days for the money to be reimbursed.

Breakfast was spent chatting with Karen and Andy, aka the wedding crashers.They've got some good stories and have been very busy, having spent the day before at an elephant rehab centre where they helped tend to the elephants bathing and feeding. Maybe next time for us. I had a list of activities in case we felt energetic, but no, didn't happen and I'm not bothered. We needed a rest.

Arranged a late check out for tomorrow, 1pm and booked shuttle to go to Bang Niang markets.

Take a mid-morning swim, and it's time for lunch before we know it. Order fish and chips at Infinity Bar. It’s supposed to be dory but turns out to be basa, my most hated fish, gotta be the most disgusting, jelly textured fish! I don't often complain, but I really can't eat this. I get the fresh Vietnamese spring rolls instead, made with smoked salmon. I've had them before and they were good. Apparently Chef says they were out of dory so he used the ‘local’ dory! Grrr! The ‘local’ sea bass is beautiful, why don’t the use that??

Time for a bit of reading before it’s time to catch the shuttle to the markets, could have gone to sleep! Relaxation mode is really kicking in! Lots of people keen to go to the markets, it's such a nice day for it. Walk up and down, it’s hot and tiring. Trevor gets a Hard Rock Café Khao Lak t-shirt, 350 THB. How could he not? He's got one from just about everywhere else that he's seen one! Other than that, bit of a waste of time. Same old, same old. I guess if you've never been to a market in Asia before, you might be tempted to buy heaps, but the vendors here are not interested in haggling that much. I don't know if this is how it always is or if it's because it's the wet season and tourist numbers are lower than in peak times. The big winners are the food and drink vendors. We stopped in 2 different places for a drink, because it was hot and because we were bored! The 2nd one, Toilet Bar, was close to the front of the market and had some good music playing. But don't let the name fool you, there was no toilet! They're down the back somewhere and cost 10 baht.