Friday 18 September, 2015 – Khao Lak, Thailand

We had a day. Not the one we planned per se, but a day! I go up at 5.00am to do my blog and get ready for our 6.30am pick up to go to the floating markets. I was feeling a little tender in the tummy, and when Craig and I both had to get to the toilet quickly, we figured it must’ve been the very hot guinea fowl we had last night at Nahm. Anyway, we sorted ourselves out and popped downstairs to meet our tour guide. Now, I had a plan worked out:

– 6.30am depart for floating markets (advised 4 hour tour)
– 10.30am return to hotel, pack bags and check out
– 12.30pm arrive at teeth whitening appointment (advised 1hr treatment)
– 3.15pm be back at hotel for airport transfer

It didn’t work to my plan… We didn’t get to go The markets 😦 It turns out that it is more like a 7 hour tour, which would have meant we’d have to cancel the teeth and go back to our room to pack and check out, so unfortunately we passed on that one… our poor tour guide seemed quite upset. Instead our itinerary went like this:

– 6.30am pack bags, check out and store bags at hotel until 3.15pm transfer
– 7.00am jump on the BTS Skytrain ( which, by the way, is such a great system and basically right next to the W Hotel), and head to the Asoke area (Sukhumvit) where our teeth appointment was, and get some breakfast.

Breakfast we had at ‘CHU’ inside the Exchange Building, it was on a list of best breakfasts in Bangkok (what would we do without Google?!), and it was sooooo good – famous for its eggs bene and real hot chocolate… The only thing I wasn’t 100% sold on was that they are served on biscuits. For those of my readers who don’t know, biscuits are basically scones and very popular in America for breakfast (as in you’ll get them with you bacon and egg McMuffin instead of, well, a muffin).

After CHU, my tummy went crazy again, and we both had to do another mad dash for the bathroom. Thank goodness The Exchange is a corporate building and there were nice, free toilets inside (a lot of public toilets you must pay a fee to use – around 10 baht (50 cents NZD).

We went down the road to make sure we knew where our dentist was, and oh my god Asoke is such a busy area – the traffic moves so fast! I was packing myself every time we crossed a road… Those motorbikes and scooters just appear out of nowhere! Anyway, we thought we’d try for an earlier appointment but they couldn’t take us, so we decided to have a look around Asoke.

-10.00am after waiting with a crowd for the doors to open at 10, we went into Terminal 21 to look around. This is a eight level mall which is theme on an airport, so the levels are Rome (fashion and brand names), Tokyo (ladies’ fashion), London (men’s fashion), Istanbul (shoes, bags, accessories, gifts), San Francisco (food and bev), Hollywood (cinema, fitness and spa), Caribbean (supermarket), Paris (fashion brand names). We had a look around and went to H&M where I bought a couple of dresses, and then we decided our feet were sore and went to see if we could get a foot massage. They couldn’t take us for this, but they could do a 60 min Thai massage for 450 Baht (or $25 NDZ), so we were keen for that (and it would take us up to when we needed to go to the dentist).

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We put on our funny wee jam jams that they ask you to wear, and then lay down on the mattresses on the floor and they basically turned the lights out before proceeding with the most intense Thai massage! In the words of John Mellencamp, it hurts so good.

-12.30pm after walking back down to our dentist, we were ready for the action! Neither of us had our teeth looked at in a year or so, so we opted to get a cleaning as well. We were each led into our own cute wee room with a dentist with great English skills. They placed a cover over my face, which just left a hole for the mouth… It was a bit weird having never experienced it before, but it makes sense. Next, they covered me with a blankie, put the cover over my face again and started on the laser whitening – this takes an hour and they warn that it makes your bottom front teeth pretty sensitive.. It wasn’t until the last ten minutes and I was like ‘holy mother of God that hurts’. They look amazing – I love them! They are so sore though – you get random intense pangs… I’m not sure what causes it but dang it hurts!!

-2.15pm once we’d finished our teeth, we had to run in the rain as fast as we could to get back to the hotel. I was busting the whole time and my teeth were so sore, it was crazy! We made it though, and the driver was waiting for us 15 mins early, so we got out bags (including the dress and suit that the tailor dropped off) and off we went to the airport.

We’re on a white diet for 48 hours, so we went and got some McNuggets while we waited for our 6.15pm flight, which was soooo good because they still use “white meats” instead of breast. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s delicious hehe.

I was nervous the whole 1 hour flight… I think it was just freaking me out that a typhoon has hit Asia and I kept thinking about that Air Asia flight, but we made it fine. Then we had a 1.5 hour drive to Khao Lak and it was absolutely pouring down… So bad that the driver could hardly see where he was going, and there was lightning. So we got to the resort around 9.30pm and couldn’t really take it in as it was dark and raining. They took us to our villa and there was a leak in the bathroom so we had to wait for a new room, and by the time we got to bed I was so ready – tired and sore aching teeth.

I’ve woken up this morning and it’s not raining yet, so I’ve managed to have a look outside of our villa, and we’re off to breakfast.

Until tomorrow 🙂