We might be on holidays, but that doesn’t mean that domestic duties don’t need to be attended to. Most mornings our routine is much the same. Anthony gets up to make breakfast for everyone while the rest have cuddles and tickles in bed and the TV usually goes on so we can watch the news (surfing and shark sightings figure prominently but surprisingly volcanic activity barely gets a mention). Once breakfast is done we get ourselves ready for whatever the day will bring, tidy the room and head downstairs.
Our first outing for today was to a local laundromat. For a resort of this size it seems odd to us that they do not have self-service laundry facilities. There is of course a laundry service available but, with 4 of us, the cost is prohibitive. So off we headed …
The laundromat was literally only 5 minutes down the road. It provided both self-service and drop-off options. We weighed our washing (it is paid by the pound) and after working out that it would cost around $40 we took the self-service option. A lovely Vietnamese lady ran the laundry and although we managed to converse with her in broken English this was not true for everyone – more on that in a minute.
Megan and Anthony loaded two machines (even while away we do a darks and a lights load), got a million quarters from the change machine (ok, so it wasn’t really a million) and set the machines to go. Being old hands at this laundromat business, the four of us sat down to while away the time by reading our books.
The relative peace was broken by the arrival of a rather prim lady with a South African accent. Over the next 5 minutes we couldn’t help but listen in as she and the proprietor became increasingly exasperated with each other as the new customer clearly had no idea what she was doing … Anthony even had to step in to explain to her how the change machine worked (actually Anthony explained while Hamish used the change machine).
The argy-bargy between the two ladies went on for several more minutes before the proprietor exclaimed something along the lines of, “Haven’t you ever done laundry before?”, to which came the reply, “Not me! I have a housekeeper!” We were sympathetic to her plight, but only a little bit and had to stifle our sniggers. With all said and done we couldn’t work out why she didn’t just use the drop-off service – money was clearly not an issue.
Once the laundry was washed, dried and folded we headed back to the resort via the bikini shop. Lovely Miss Amelia (with a little coercion from Megan) had decided it might be time to get a proper bikini. This proved to be quite a lengthy process, with Hamish getting bored in no time at all. Anthony reflected that when he became a father to a beautiful little baby girl, he never imagined that one day he would be searching racks of bikinis to find the right combination and even get called in to the change room to provide feedback on the choices once they were on!
After all the tooing and froing, Amelia decided not to decide, although the favourite she settled on was put away just in case (she decided later in the day not to get a bikini after all).
The rest of the day was spent in or beside the pool with all four of us swimming at various times. Megan eventually headed up to the room while Amelia, Hamish and Anthony headed out to the beach for a swim in the Pacific Ocean. Not sure if it was just that we had become to used to the water in the pool but we all found the sea way more salty than we remembered from Australian beaches.
After showers we went out for dinner at a restaurant by the beach. Yummy meals, cocktails for Megan and Hamish and a gentle warm breeze left us all relaxed. We’ll have to come home eventually to work to pay the bills, but one could get used to this life.