.. and a place of gems

Thursday 2nd

Nothing was organised today so I had a lazy start. I finished off my book, then watched a film - Charlie Wilson's War (or similar) with Tom Hanks. It was after 12 before I emerged.

Our last 2 group members arrived today - Peter and his non-golfing work mate and I had a chat to them round the pool while they were waiting for their rooms to become available. I had some fruit for lunch and then rang the Gems Gallery for a car.

I knew what I wanted but hadn't seen any in Bangkok, so once I arrived I went straight to the silver earrings section. They had no separate Topaz earrings at all on display and only a couple of sets in Topaz. I decided I'd give up. They showed me the white gold and to be honest there wasn't any there either, even if I'd wanted to pay that sort of price. He then took me to the loose stones counter. I couldn't see any point in that but then the supervisor returned.

She had a big tray of earrings with the top 3 or 4 rows in Topaz. There were 2 types of longer ones and I bought the cheaper of these since it had an oval stone rather than 4 smaller round ones. I was pleased since I have bought jewellery every trip so far and it looked like this would break the chain.

I got dropped off at the Outlet Malls/Lotus centre on Sukumvit Road. They have built a second stage for the outlets which now has a dedicated golf shop. There was another golf shop across the road as well. I saw the driver and wedge I'd bought in Australia in the last 6 months and both were around the price I paid or possibly a bit more. I then headed to Lotus and had Pad Thai upstairs in the food hall. I was expecting to take a motor cycle back to the hotel so didn't want anything bulky, so skipped the drinks and so forth in the store itself. I did buy a long tee-shirt or a short dress (50-50 which it is) which I can wear round the pool.

There was suddenly a drumming on the roof and a heavy shower had arrived. The car park quickly collected puddles of an inch or so deep. I decide to have an ice cream while waiting for it to clear. In the end I took a baht bus back to the hotel. I thought a motor bike on wet roads may not be the safest choice.

The guys were at Le Katai so I joined them for a chat and then popped back to my room to fixed up a web page. When I got back several of them had already left for the British pub for dinner, so I joined those that stayed and had a mis-named Chicken Cordon Bleu (menu had Kiev) which was quite nice. I didn't have a very late night.