Our Weekend Away

Well, I have now spent three days surrounded by Chris's work colleagues - they are lovely lovely people but I have never in all my life seen a group of people that can eat so much!! AND they are still thin.....it's not fair you know....not fair at all!!!

Anyway, 30 double decker bus loads of us left from in front of Chris's office building last Friday morning to go to Pranburi which about a three hour drive from Bangkok. We had just taken our seats when Roong, one of the girls from Chris's department, handed us both a very large bag that was completely stuffed full of Thai snacks. Now, I love Thai food but some of the snacks are just bizarre and there were two things that had me scratching my head in a 'but why would you want to eat that' kind of way - the first was Teriyaki flavour crisps....'that doesn't sound so bad' I hear you say....well, the crisps were not actually flavoured....the crisps were plain and you poured the Teriyaki sauce over the top of them....hmm.....soggy crisps anyone?? The second was fish sticks.....these are not like crisps with fish flavour these are bits of really stinky fish that have been flattened (Steamrollered perhaps) and then cut into stips. They might be delicious.....to be honest I've not tried them.....I have never been able to get past the smell!! There was also a snack made from green peas and one from fried Yam - We kept all our snacks and gave them to Moon when we got back (her wee face lit up and she's been munching her way through them ever since!!). We stopped in Hua Hin for lunch at a fantastic seafood restaurant next to the beach where we had all kinds of yummy fish things and we managed to completely astound the Thai's at our table who were gobsmacked to learn that we liked spicy food!!

The resort we were staying at, Evason Hideaway Resort, was absolutely stunning and the room we had was about a two min walk from the beach, the pool, the restaurant and the bar (One thing that did make us chortle was the fact that the resort had two bars and two restaurants - the bars were called The Bar and The Other Bar....I kid you not and I bet that you can now guess what the restaurants were called....yep....The Restaurant and The Other Restaurant!!). We got checked in and then went and sat by the pool and had a couple of drinks (well, it would have been rude not to!!!) till it was time to get back onto our bus to be taken to another seafood restaurant by the sea. The food was just amazing and there was tons of it!! I caused much amusement at our table cause I had to be shown how to get into my crab (I wasn't very good at it and did manage to ping a bit of shell off my plate but I don't think anyone noticed!!) but it was well worth it - the meat inside was so tender and succulent that my mouth is watering at the moment just thinking about it!! Then we headed back to our hotel where we collapsed in our room and opened a bottle of wine that we had brought with us.

We had the whole of Saturday to ourselves so after breakfast we went for a walk along the beach, then sat by the pool reading, then had some lunch, then did some exploring around the resort till it was time to go to that evenings planned activity......I know....hard life eh!!! Now, I have to say that I was really not sure what to expect - I had been told that some of the staff from the firm would be providing the evenings entertainment so it was with some fear and trepidation that I got on the bus that was taking us to the event. There is no way on this earth that I would want to get up on stage in front of my bosses and over 1,000 colleagues and sing and dance but that's exactly what they did and they were fantastic!!! There were four dance acts (A mixture of traditional Thai and modern dancing), a fashion show and an absolutely hilarious show which featured a game of ping pong. It was very clever - there were about four guys on stage dressed completely in black (Including balaclava.....they must have been boiling!!) and the back of the stage was covered in black fabric then two guys came on both wearing tracksuits but the legs of the tracksuits dangled free. One of the guys dressed in black had a pingpong ball on the end of a stick so it looked like it was moving from one player to the other and the other guys moved the legs of the tracksuits so it looked like the players were flying through the air to get the shots. It was very very funny to watch!! We had a great night although I still have absolutely no idea what the hell we were eating.....the menu was, very helpfully, written in Thai and we had no Thai's at our table to translate it for us. Dishes and dishes of food just kept arriving at the table (I think there were about 10 courses) all of which featured unspecified meat substances!!

We had decided on Saturday that, if we could, we would try and get up in time to watch the sun rise over the sea and I am very pleased to say that we did indeed manage to get up!! So at the ungodly hour of 5.30am the alarm went off and the two of us dragged ourselves out of bed and went to watch the sunrise - OMG it was spectacular and very romantic!!! We then grabbed some breakfast and decided that the only really sensible thing to do was to go back to bed!! We then packed up our stuff, grabbed some lunch and then piled back onto the bus and back to Bangkok where we were greeted by two very excited Splats!!