Ko Samui, Thailand

Today we had what can probably be described as a typical expat type day, I guess. We slept in, read, gymmed, watched some news on tv, had breakfast, and then went shopping for a few things to make Musman curry tonight. On the way to the Big C supermarket, we stopped off at an apartment development down the road called Pacatas to check out its viability. Off-plan prices are sort of reasonable, but having been bitten once with an offshore off-plan development, I will be hard pressed to try it again. The developer seems well organized though. Even though development will only start second quarter 2014, they have built fully furnished one and two bedroom units adjacent to the sales office, which is situated right across the road from the development site. Before exposing ourselves to the rigours of shopping, we tanked up on some excellent coffee at Simply Delicious once again. By the way, their food does look simply delicious as well, we just haven’t had an opportunity to test-drive it. Once shopping was completed, isn’t it funny how one always end up with more in the trolley for what one went shopping for in the first place, we stopped off at Tesco for a few things we could not find at Big C. For a snack we found these wonderful peanuts with a covering flavored with coconut. You also get them flavored with chicken and seafood, nice. The main reason though we went to Tesco was to book a table at our favorite restaurant, Fi, which is situated right next to Tesco, for their Greek buffet on Friday night. We also stopped off at an English bookshop called Bookazine where I bought “The Nation Property Guide” newspaper. Strange, but neither Big C nor Tesco had any coconut milk, which come in one litre cartons as one would buy normal cows milk. No sweat, we stopped off at the Bophut fresh produce market and bought a litre of freshly pressed coconut milk. This trick Adri learned from her Thai cooking class with Natty, in fact Thai’s seem to cook only with freshly pressed coconut milk and seem to despise the carton, and heaven forbid, the tinned milk variety. Got home and Adri started preparing the Musman curry. She demanded gin and tonic and I settled for a big Heineken which soon morphed into a big Chang. I sat outside on the balcony, reading and listening to Glass Tiger, Supertramp, The Beat, Steve Forbert etc. I made email contact with the brother of a friend of mine (Tony) who now lives in the Philippines. His brother (Patrick) bought a place in Koh Samui a few years back and is now retired and living on the island, also in the Bophut area where we are staying. We will probably meet up and go for drinks on Saturday early evening. The Musman curry was a gastronomic delight. The doorbell rang and in walks Natty for a visit. She also brought tamarind sauce for us to take home, as we do not get that back home and need it for a couple of Thai dishes. Had a nice chat and we decided that we would go to the local barbecue buffet on Sunday evening, which is just down the way on the ring road. Looking forward to that. After Natty left we did a bit more reading but soon the sleep overtook us and we turned in. And so ends a typical expat type day, I guess.