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ubud, bali, day 2 | another sleepless night at Barong

04 May 2011 | By lissymeow

Woke up at 8am, and called front desk right away.

The whole conversation was well rehearsed in my head and sleep since I dreamt of the request for room change throughout the night; also had a dream that we stayed in the house full of cats, one of which was a ‘monster’ cat with blue stripes and blue stained teeth that sprayed out poisonous insects from the mouth.

The highlight of the conversation with the front desk was the need to change room to a quieter section of the hotel.

The hotel was fully booked, so he said that there was no room for change. I asked for recommended resolution as this cannot go on for another night. I sounded assertive and ready to issue the ultimatum that we will cancel the rest of the stay with no penalty, or they have to make other arrangement for us, period. This usually happened when I didn’t have enough sleep.

The staff checked and replied that there was one room due to be checked out later of the day and that we may check in to that room after the guest check out. He emphasized that the room was not better as our present room had been renovated recently. We will be able to view the room before deciding. There will be another guest checking in, so if we decided to switch the room, the new guest will take our present room instead.

We had to wait till later morning. Little did we realize that the supposedly relaxing holiday about to take a sharp turn and steer towards quite a dramatic scene.

I ordered for breakfast and headed to take a shower.

Breakfast was served at the porch.

The ‘Food Monster’ was only just awaken, so the appetite was just warming up. Mike had porridge, I had American breakfast. While having breakfast, I surfed online to check for alternative lodging while waiting to view Room #10. I wish I could say that I adore surprises and impromptu activities, but the truth is that I can only have very tiny amount of surprises in a longer time span. I do embrace the surprises though, what can I say, when it happened, I could only decide to resist in futile, or to embrace it fully and make the best out of the situation.

The problem with waiting for time, is that we seemed to have too much spare time to do nothing with; yet not enough time to do something, and not get interrupted.

I decided to take some more photos around the hotel with my new Alpha SLT-A55V.

The door opens into a pavement of stones.

At nearly 12pm, I called the front desk to check if we could expect to view the room soon, as I was concerned of the time constraint to check out should we not like the room. more »

Category: 2011/05-bali, ubud, travel Tags: bali, barong resort, holiday, indonesia, resort, trip, vacation Leave a Comment

aonang, krabi, day 11 | anniversary trip

08 Feb 2011 | By lissymeow

I am generally sensitive. One fo the sensitive body parts are my eyes. I catch eye infection easily and although less frequent to blow up into an emergency situation, but it happened several times before.

Whenever my eyes are exposed to contaminated or polluted environment, they react badly. I was having a tingling pain on one eye since the day before, and it gotten worse today.

We had a large pot of plant in the bathroom. Lookie, who’s here to peek while we use the bathroom!

We hadn’t been able to connect to internet since the day before. We used the common computer which are wired to the modem. I don’t particularly enjoy using public computer. I believe I am a mild germiphobe; and most keyboard and mouse are not regularly cleaned, so that doesn’t sit so well with me.

After using the computer, I walked to a side to clean my hands with sanitizer. I reckon it is a good habit, because you could not know what you have picked up, and eventually transfer to your system unknowingly. more »

Category: 2011 - krabi & phi phi, 2011/02-krabi, anniversary, travel Tags: aonang, holiday, krabi, thailand, travel Leave a Comment

aonang, krabi, day 10 | anniversary trip

07 Feb 2011 | By lissymeow

The first night that I didn’t sleep well. Mike decided he was fed up with the blood-sucking mozzies, so he wore his long-sleeved shirt to sleep. On regular nights, the mozzies would for ‘high grade blood’ – Mike has a different blood type as I and accordingly, his blood is regarded as fine delicacy to the mozzies, while mine would probably be low-grade junk food – and left me undisturbed.

Since my mozzie ‘shield’ was closed for business, the mozzies had no choice but to get the low-grade food – my blood.

We normally pace down the already very slow pace when approaching the last few days towards the end of the holiday. Mike suggested, or rather, insisted that I should go back for another massage. Sure, bring it on, I say!

So, briefly after breakfast, we went back to Massage Corner. I had the same massage as the day before while Mike decided to take on another challenge and ordered a full body salt scrub. See, Mike has never been a fan of massage, he is very ticklish so he doesn’t enjoy being touched all over.

The massage session was… noisy. The boy who took the bed beside mine, with a curtain separating us, made a lot of painful noises and communicated that to the masseur. I was trying to drift away to the dreamland here, Mr!

Alas, the painful session was over! More painful for me than for him, if you must know! more »

Category: 2011 - krabi & phi phi, 2011/02-krabi, anniversary, travel Tags: aonang, asia, holiday, krabi, thailand, travel One Comment

aonang, krabi, day 8 | anniversary trip

05 Feb 2011 | By lissymeow

I didn’t sleep well the night before. I dreamt that the laundry was stained during the wash, I guess I lacked faith and trust in people; or because I had my whole load of laundry ‘dyed’ into orange and red on the last trip to Phuket. It didn’t help when Mike got up many times in the middle of the night to drink water, and then go pee because of drinking too much water. I found out later that he couldn’t sleep due to the noises that the mosquitoes made and the constant mosquitoes bites. Strangely, I was left undisturbed until much later.

We had breakfast at the on site restaurant.

Blue Village is very nicely decorate with a jungle-ly feel, except that the mosquitoes are unbelievably plenty.

After breakfast, Mike read his book, while I played game. I hardly read for this trip, as I was very distracted and intrigued by the new gadget – android phone – that Mike bought for me just days before the trip!

It was kind of ‘accident’ that we bumped into this part of the island. We walked along the pavement and long stretch of restaurants and resorts.

We decided to lunch at the Thai Thai Restaurant located at Golden Beach Resort. This became our favorite restaurant on Krabi.

The Thai food was authentic and Mike loved their clear soup Tom Yum Goong, prepared just the way it should. We were also pleased with other dishes.

It could be quite warm in afternoon, so I would suggest that you find seats that are shaded by the large umbrella.

It’s a stretch of interestingness. There is an open-concept massage place – but a classier one, not the one that we were brought to the day before – and a board explaining on massage points.

When we walked further in, we reached where we were brought to the day before! I didn’t recognize it at first as we came from another way, a really rocky path. This part of the beach is lined with a long stretch of very affordable massage services.

It wasn’t the distance that tire me, it was always the heat that is unbearable to me. Mike ordered a mini tuk tuk to bring us back to the Blue Village. It’s very cheap to ride on the mini tuk tuk, it cost us THB40 for the two of us.

It was always welcoming to return to Blue Village. The staff at the front desk are always ready to serve with a bright smile.

We did the usual nothingness, and I was waiting for the promised cleaned laundry which never came. Mike went to the front desk to check and finally got back one bag. We checked through but found that some clothes were missing, Mike went back to inquire, and got back the remaining – not after a long wait.

We wanted to go back to Thai Thai Restaurant for dinner. A Sweden couple just checked into Blue Village, so we shared some information that we had gathered about the surrounding. They took the same shuttle with us to the shopping area and we parted ways.

While walking towards Thai Thai, we bumped into Mike’s old classmate on the street! What a small world! By the time we came back to Aonang from Phi Phi, there were more Asians – we were amongst the few Asians on the island when we first arrived – and we reckoned that most Asian Chinese started their travel plans only after the 2nd day of Lunar New Year, hence the sudden influx of Asians.

While having our dinner, we saw a few people lighting up the lantern and up to the air. It is like a good luck and wishing lantern, whereby people write their wishes on the lantern, and let it up.

After dinner, we shopped around the shopping area for a bit and bought some carved ornaments – 1 small wooden carved cat which is placed on top of my iMac now; one happy carved cat that is slight larger than the first; and a beautiful carved owl. We nearly bought a large standing cat but I stopped Mike. We could buy that when we have our own place, for now, we should stop stuffing the limited space at home.

When back in the hotel, Mike was researching on new laptop while I uploaded photos up to Facebook via the phone.

I was tired.

References:

+ Blue Village

+ Thai Thai Restaurant

+ Golden Beach Resort

Category: 2011 - krabi & phi phi, 2011/02-krabi, anniversary, travel Tags: anniversary, anniversary trip, asia, holiday, krabi, thailand, travel, trip, vacation Leave a Comment

aonang, krabi, day 7 | anniversary trip

04 Feb 2011 | By lissymeow

We had breakfast at the hotel. We were given the menu but we could only choose from limited selection.

The door to the jungle hut couldn’t shut properly, so Mike had to lock me in from outside. It was warm outside, so I wanted to stay in the air-conditioned hut and surf the internet.

We agreed to find me some massage treatments, so after the research on the Tripadvisor – which I find so helpful, I downloaded the tripadvisor app onto my android phone – we decided to take the complimentary shuttle service provided by Blue Village to Sunset Massage.

It was quite a distance, and we were brought to an open space massage ground! Sure, you will probably see the real sunset there, since it’s facing the beach and probably where the sun sets. I read that the massage place was air-conditioned, and I remembered seeing the signboard – that said ‘the best massage in town’ when Mike was checking on the exchange rate as we had used up more cash unexpectedly because Chunut House only accepts cash, and it didn’t look anything like that! We told the driver to turn around, and return to where we came from.

‘Sunset Massage’ is actually located at Sunset Hotel, but I reckon it is not as well-known as we thought it should be. We found the place, tipped the driver. Mike paid the THB350 for my hour-long aromatherapy massage and left. The massage was fine, but not great.

Mike return to collect me at Sunset Massage after his lunch at Wanna’s Place.

We bought some fruits from a mobile fruit stall – the old couple sell fruits off their truck. We found out later that we could get much cheaper fruits from across the street.

I read of ‘Massage Corner‘ too, and saw the signboard while we were heading back to Blue Village. I decided to go take a look in case I decided to have more massages in the following days. The massage ‘corner’ is really a corner tucked away from the main street – hidden gem.

We packed some soiled clothes and left them at the front desk for laundry service.

Dinner was a walk-see-feel right choice at Aining Restaurant. The food was reasonably good. The heavy dinner gave me gastric problem later and a backache followed – might or might not be related to overeating.

References: