No change to the breakfast schedule, we got out table back this morning.

A walk south on the beach to where the sand finishes and the hill starts. A little fish market is set up on the footpath, a woman is scaling fish, little children clinging to her. It looks like a local market, no falang (foreigner) would probably buy the fish though it’s just come out of the sea.

The pool beckons, the routine is focused on relaxation now, the swelling in my feet and ankles from fast and busy travelling is now gone. The water is just the right temperature.

Lunch at Sweet for me, TMM won’t leave the pool, but a watermelon shake and a Thai dish with chicken, rice, veggies and fish sauce (tiny spicy) wins me over. Wal the owner drops in and says a quick hello.

Then back to the Banthai to psych myself up for the visit to the dentist in an hours time.

Nice surprise, I found a way through to the street at the back where the Sea Smile the dentist is, easy I think, but I walk past the one I was meant to be in and go to the wrong surgery don’t I , so I have to walk back past all the same massage shops with the lady boys and short skirt big breasted masseuses ( I think they have another name!) grabbing my arm and offering exotic services. I find the right place, I’m about 100 metres out, I fill in a wad of paperwork, and wait. My nerves are eased a little when I’m called, I’m ushed into a room with 3 young women in gloves, surgical gowns, masks and from what I can see they look like they are still in high school. The checkup goes well, my head is tilted back hard, about three fingers pull my lips in different directions and she starts up the grinding machinery, its not just the fluids spraying out of my mouth from their machinery onto my nose that causes their protective glasses to slide down my nose, its the sweat off my forehead from wondering if this elfin juvenile can do the job. Anyway, it all works out well, teeth are cleaned, descaled, polished and I’m suitably impressed, they are very competent, very professional, its impressively modern and clean. I walk back to the Banthai Hotel feeling pleased, this cost 1500 baht ($60), in Dubbo the bit that the health fund didn’t pay would add up to about $300.

TMM decides to leave the pool and go shopping, I don’t know how he finds the stamina for it, must be the McLeod genes, he’s progressed into a world class shopper, maybe not yet near the class of his Aunty The Navigator but getting there. Today he beat down the price of some clothes with a shop keeper who was deaf and dumb – now that I would have liked to see!

Dinner we decide is at the highly rated Soi No. 6 in the street behind Bangla Road, so we have to negotiate Soi Bangla again. When we get to the restaurant there is a line up, the place is small, is chock a block and we’re about 7th and 8th in the line. The line builds behind us. after about 20 minutes we get a table, TMM orders a pork garlic veggie stirfry with rice, I get a mussaman pork and we also get a shrimp dish. TMM starts to sweat, his sweat starts to sweat, there is a moderate amount of spice in his dish, I taste it and its beautiful, its a little more spicy than my mussaman dish. The shrimp dish is so good. All washed down with Singha beer, cost 600 baht ($24).

A walk along the beach to finish the day. Its high tide, the air is warm with a cooling breeze blowing off the sea. End of the 3rd last day of the trip

Ciao – Pauolo