A big breakfast and a painful massage

This morning I work early and decided to move my still damp washing from the bathroom to the balcony and then went back to sleep. When I finally got up around 8-30 I found it was raining and had to move them again.

I then had my first breakfast at the Hilton. The breakfast restuarant covers some 3 areas so it’s a bit more spread out than in Bangkok where everything was together at one end of the room. It is also several times the size.

There’s a counter just for getting fresh squeezed juices and a separate one for bread and toast in the first area.

In the middle there’s a chef cooking omelettes, together with the usual assortment of other eggs, bacon, sausages, tomatoes etc.

The third area has a long table with salads at one end and Japanese dishes at the other. There’s a small table with cereals and another long one with fresh fruit plus 3 smaller ones with water, juices and kids meals. Not going to starve here. There seems to be more choices than at the Dusit, eg There’s fresh dragon fruit and bananas, and some fruit salads and compotes also available in the fruit area as well as the usual pineapple and 3 melons.

Since it was still raining I spent the rest of the morning reading in my room until Jeff called in about 11-30. I then realised I needed to get my laundry in somewhere so I did that and then wandered up to some shops and bought a cotton top.

I skipped lunch and headed for the pool where I had a swim and then sat on the lounge and read for a while. I then went to the Sofitel to meet up with the others and did more of the same.

On the way back I had a 2 hour Thai massage. I’ve had lots of painful sports massages over the last few years but usually I had them because I was already sore with some injury or potential injury. However today I wasn’t actually feeling too bad until he started working on my calves. Like most of my muscles, even when they aren’t injured, they are tight. He started working on the top inside calf muscle and it was just excruciating and it went on and on. …..Then he did the other leg. They are still quite tender an hour or so later after a shower but hopefully much looser than before it started. The rest of the massage was by comparison quite painless. Dodgy Dave – this is not a challenge.

Tonight we ate at a seafood place at the end of a pier. After Fish cakes and fried prawns for entrée, we shared a fisherman’s basket with crab, prawns, squid, mussels and cockles, pineapple rice, noodles, vegetables, barramundi and omelette. 2 rounds of drinks again (pineapple daiquiri and a margarita for me) and the bill was $20 each including tip. It’s been a great day with no pressure to do anything or be anywhere at a particular time.