Day 76, Year 4: The Twelfth Day of Christmas
Date: Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Weather: Another Beautiful, Sunny Day
Location: Ao Po Grand Marina, Phuket Island, Thailand
Today is the twelfth day after Christmas and the day that I would normally take down the decorations. But that didn’t happen today. We worked all day on various boat jobs-me doing laundry, Mark sewing various boat accessories, cleaning our grill inside and out, putting up tarps for shade and rain protection, and on and on. By late afternoon, it was time for me to put another coat of varnish on the Dorade boxes. These went down to the main cabin table to dry for the night and that is when I realized
that I couldn’t take down the garland on the compression post as it was right next to the freshly varnished Dorade boxes. Little pieces of artificial garland in the varnish would not look good, so we will just leave the decorations up and let Sam help us take them down when he arrives.
Robert on Shirena called again today and said that they are headed to this marina tomorrow morning. So we are going to see our friends sooner than we thought. Evidently their dinghy motor died so they are coming in to search for a new one. They also have Tina’s daughter and Robert’s daughter onboard and both of them fly back to Australia on Thursday. So this is a good place with easy access to the airport. Robert’s son is also onboard, but he doesn’t leave until the 12th. We are looking forward
to seeing Robert and Tina again and meeting some of their family.
Windbird is almost ready for Heather, Jed, and Sam. I hesitate to say that we are ready for a two year-old, but I think we are. We have a few more jobs tomorrow and on Thursday we will do the fresh food provisioning. On Friday they will arrive and boat work will cease and the fun will begin. We love it when we have friends and family visit as that is when we get to take a vacation from our long-term vacation. World cruising is like a vacation that never ends, but there are always jobs to be
done. When friends and family visit, it is a great excuse to ignore any jobs that need to be done and just have fun. So that is what we are planning to do once Heather, Jed, and Sam arrive.
At lunch time today, we took the time to walk up to the marina office and on down the dirt road to a small open-air restaurant run by a Muslim couple from the village. It is the only option for eating out here other than the Chandara Resort and it had come highly recommended. It is just a concrete slab with a corrugated tin roof over it and a few tables and chairs plus the kitchen. Beautiful little birds in cages surround the restaurant and their songs compete with the television offering the
equivalent of Thai CNN. The food was great and the price was even better. We had lunch and both had a soft drink and the total cost was less than $4 US for both of us. Can’t beat that!
