Horrible Hangovers!

Sunday 17 September

We didn’t get up with our usual bounce this morning - I felt slightly off balance – a bit dizzy and spinny - but Colin had a major headache and his stomach felt wobbly ! Could it have been the red wine last night? or the mixture of drinks? or just the amount we drank? – all in celebration of the ‘Oileys’ arrival!!!

I managed a swim, only about thirty lengths today, and as we set out for breakfast, we met Ray, who had just woken up, and was having his early morning swim – about 09.45. To his credit, he thought it was about 06.00! He too was feeling under the weather – but put it down to traveling (Ray is hardly ever affected by drinks). Breakfast was a really poor meal today, I didn’t eat or drink anything and Colin only managed a few cornflakes and half a slice of dry toast – a long way from his marathon ten courses we are used to him consuming.

After blogging, we joined Jean and Ray round the pool for a swim and relaxation. Later Juz and Dave arrived – Dave had also been feeling poorly this morning (it seems the girls came off best from last night’s celebrations) and as they had missed breakfast, were on their way to Coffee Junction. We all decided to join them, enjoying shakes, beers, coffees and sprite, along with a couple of portions of nachos supreme (I wonder who ordered those?) and some prawn toasties (which turned out to be like prawn cocktail on toast), with fries. It definitely supplemented our breakfast till we eat again this evening.

After this we felt in need of a stroll and wandered through to the far end of the village to explore for bars - Yoga Bar (only open Monday to Friday) and Hemmingways (this looks as if it could be worth a try, but the restaurant attached is vegetarian) and restaurants – could only find one other which served mainly snack style meals, some Thai, but mostly burgers and the like – probably not for us - apart from two hotels (one of which is the English ex-pats residence which we made enquiries about when looking for somewhere to stay on Koh Samui - looks very posh – but as it was twice the price of Smile, we decided to spend the difference on more drinks and food. Dave and Juz found another property shop which looked quite interesting and they may return there tomorrow. I visited the bookshop again and bought the follow up book to the one I purchased the other day (at least I hope it is) and on offering 1000 bahts, a small child of about 3 years old, snatched the change from her Dad(?) and tried to run off in the back of the shop (was this going to be a very expensive volume?). Luckily Dad (?) caught her and managed to wrest the money from her tightly clenched fists and handed it over. The blurb on the back cover of the new book, seems to show the same characters are involved as in the book I am reading now, but there is a picture of another book in the series (is it a trilogy?) and the book I am reading is not mentioned?!? – very strange. So I will have to hurry up and get some reading hours in to find out if I need to explore more bookshops for a middle tome.

Back at Smile, (Juz and Dave went back to their hotel for a dip in their jacuzzi) three of us stretched out again beside the pool, some to read and others to snooze, although Colin retired to the bungalow, on the pretext of looking for football news, but in fact to try and sleep off the remains of his hangover. The weather had become very hot and sunny again during the day, although not with the same high humidity we had had earlier in the week. During the afternoon, it clouded over – high hazy clouds, which filtered the sun and therefore moderated the heat somewhat – and made it very pleasant. We were still around the pool at 18.00 when Colin eventually joined us for a last dip before cocktails and dinner (hair of the dog and all that).

We started in the Beatles Bar for our first couple of rounds of cocktails (there was lots of footy on the television screens at most of the other bars tonight), and then after Juz and Dave arrived, we transferred to the Happy Elephant Bar for whiskey sours and Blue Hawaiis. After lots of deliberation as to where to go for dinner – fusion, Thai, curry, fish – we ended up at Mr Tandooris again – as he offered three, if not four of the options. Juz again ordered her hot meat dhansak and aloo paratha – I think she is going to have to set up a mail order service for this when she gets home! Jean tried barracuda (good), Ray had barbequed tiger prawns (delicious), Colin had another white snapper, this time with garlic, lemon and pepper sauce (red snapper was off the menu – but white was good) and I had chicken saag and aloo gobi (this is the best aloo gobi too, so perhaps we can add this to Juz’s mail order). Dave had chicken fried rice and dipped into Juz’s curry. Accompanied by wine, water and Sprite for beverages. (I had had a couple of bloody Mary’s in the Beatles Bar which went straight to my head – so I was on the water, and Colin was still a bit fragile from his hangover, so after a couple of cocktails returned to Sprite – the rest were brave enough to continue their alcoholic intake.)

On the way home, the ‘important’ football matches were in full swing, Fulham vs Tottenham had just fifteen minutes to play while Man United vs Arsenal were only twenty or so minutes into their game. Ray decided to stop at the Frog and Gecko to see the end of the Fulham match (ended in a nil-nil draw), but Colin, though an avid supporter of Arsenal, could not stand the pace for another hour or so of oohs and aahs – especially as his team has been performing poorly so far in the League this season - so returned home with the rest of us. More nightcaps on the balcony for the drinkers. Just as Juz and Dave were leaving it began to rain (and we know what rain can be like here) so they borrowed an umbrella (two are supplied to each bungalow) and set off quickly hoping to avoid another drenching. In fact the rain stopped not long after – just a short shower – so they should have got back to the hotel reasonably dry. The rest of us retired soon after, although I understand Ray went for a swim before going to bed.

We have been here in Koh Samui now for three weeks, and we have adapted to the lifestyle very easily. We are talking of taking some trips around the island, fishing, etc, and probably need to get back into training again for our trekking experience to come. We have read in the newspapers that there has been extremely heavy rains in Northern Thailand and all this excess water is making its way slowly down to Bangkok – which has been put on flood alert for the 8 and 9 October – we are due to arrive on the 2nd and travel north on the 7th! Are we going to need rafts even earlier than we thought!! Then today there are reports of bombs in Southern Thailand by some extreme faction – it will nearly be the rainy season by the time we reach the south of the country at the end of October, so let’s hope they will have gone away by then!