January 11,

Awoke and watched some really dark clouds roll in, but the weather app showed only 5% chance of rain… foiled again! Murmur, murmur 😠. As we got around for our Javas and breakfast of leftover chicken pineapple stir-fried rice with eggs; a piece of toast; and a yogurt – it began to rain, of course. So much for best laid plans.

Morning turned to afternoon with the rain on again, off again. There were no workers today to entertain us… just rain and the ever-changing, ominous clouds. We had a watermelon salad I made for lunch. It had watermelon, a dill pickle chopped, blue cheese, sesame dressing, our homemade curry powder, and S&P. It turned out pretty good.

Now afternoon gave way to early evening. The rain had been stopped for a couple of hours, so we decided to chance it and went out and about. We got on our Little Honda and set course for Dark Chocolate Shop. The owners were a passionate French man and his (Thai?) wife. He had quite a variety of 70% and the same in 80%, and he let us try different ones. We like the 70% best – with a Ginger and another with a Masala flavoring. We bought a bar of each of those flavors. It cost us 240 Baht total ($6.91). Jeff did ask if he had good restaurant recommendations. He told us of one – Sabienglae Restaurant, and then a few others. Chocolate in hand we loaded up and set off to find Sabienglae Restaurant.

We found it and turned around to park with the other scooters. We went into the restaurant, making sure they would take credit card first, since our cash – on hand supply – is low now. They did so we sat and ordered: Shrimp Tempura Appetizer; Thai Curry with Grilled Fish and Thai Herb; Thai Draft Curry with Fish; and X2 steamed rice. I had a Watermelon Slush and Jeff had X2 Coconut Shake. Excellent meal! The restaurant is on the east coast of Ko Samui Island – right off the beach. Finished we paid the total price of 1,150 Baht ($33.11).

We left and went back to our place and watched a movie.

      January 12,

The workers are back today. The sky is still cloudy, but not as ominous (even-though the weather app showed 35-70% chance of rain today. It was raining when I woke up! What do you know!! 😂 We got around and had our Javas and breakfast of Muesli, yogurt and milk. We watched the workers – they are pouring concrete today.

At 1245, we went to lunch at the local place we discovered the other day. It's across from a 7-Eleven. It is so local – I can not find a written name of the place and Google has no name listed for the building. One sign does say is is Isaan Food. We had one chicken, one pork, one sticky rice, and one papaya (we said “little” spicy this time, not medium) salad with a Coke & a water. We enjoyed the grilled chicken and pork a lot more than the grilled catfish from couple of days ago. Finished we paid the bill – 200 Baht ($5.76).

We got back on our Little Honda and went to the 7-Eleven right across the street. We picked up the stuff we needed. We were going to go to the 24 Super Cheap store, but the sky was looking to unload. We headed back to our place, but stopped at a local fruit/veg stand first. We bought a mango, limes, cucumbers, tomatoes, and an onion. We also got a little ½ cup serving of chocolate ice cream. This cost us 153 Baht ($4.41). Back at our place we unloaded, and were just settling in when one of our Lazada deliveries showed up! That was good timing!! It was the BP cuff. So Jeff went and got some AAA batteries. It worked and my BP is great without having had any medicine since Vietnam!

The rest of the afternoon we watched the workers, I blogged, and Jeff read. Supper time we had a huge carrot, and a cucumber, crackers and cheese. Sunset did not happen due to the clouds. Then we talked with my mother and later with our church back home.