Kata Beach
September 11
I was able to get up early today and go for a job along the beach. I don't know why I kid myself into thinking that if I sleep in, I'll exercise later in the afternoon. So there I was with a handful of other joggers on the beach. It was nothing big just a little jog in the heat and humidity but just enough to be more than ready to stop once you hit the other side of the beach and up the drive to the villas.
Jon is feeling better today - a little but now my throat is feeling a little raw and sore. Figures. We laid low, napped and later in the afternoon hit the coffee shop while our room was cleaned then to dinner. We've been here long enough to find a "favorite" spot. It's a new place, with 20 percent off and all you can eat salad bar. It's our one square meal a day. By the way it is virtually impossible to find fresh produce for sale so we make the most of the salad bar. The restaurant is awesome - great (cheap) food nice staff that recognize us now as regulars since it's still the low season. After dinner we go to the Starbucks knock off around the corner for a chocolate frappe which I totally got Jon hooked on which comes with 15 minutes free internet service. After our internet time we hit the minimart which is also where we have our laundry done (seven baht per kilogram) for a jug of water for the next day before heading home. I guess you could say we have a routine. The owner of the minimart is so nice. The first time I went to pick up our clothes I just took a few hundred baht and then picked out some things I wanted to buy at the grocery not taking into account how much the laundry tab would be until I got to the register and realized I didn't have enough money. That man was going to let me take all the items I was going to put back and said I could pay him back later - even though he had never met me before and didn't know if I was going to ever come back, let alone stay in town.
I didn't take the items but I did come back later that night with Jon and bought the left behind items along with some postcards. So now we have our locally owned mini marts that we can patronize and only go to the 7-eleven for fat free yogurt.
We also decided for sure to go with the deluxe room. The night we found our new home we hemmed and hawed over the prices and our budget and decided that the right thing to do would be to go for the perfectly acceptable, cheaper room rather than the nicer more expensive room. When we checked in late the next morning the same gal was working the desk and she said that she "talked to the manager" and if we returned they would offer a deeper discount since it was our first time to the Kata Delight Villas - one of their selling points was that they had a lot of return customers. What this meant for us was that for one hundred baht more we could have the deluxe,more updated room with the even better view - we took their offer happily.
