Shopping Day

My camera had stopped working partway through the golf round on Wednesday. Very annoying with the timing of the failure, but not completely unexpected. It's been making a funny noise ever since it was repaired under warranty last November. As they took 8 weeks I was reluctant to send it back straight away, especially with a trip planned over the holidays and by the time I did put it in, they then refused to fix the new problem under warranty. It still seemed to work perfectly until this. I have been able to get pics from some of the others in our group.

I'd look up a Panasonic service centre on the net and this was the first port of call on the shopping expedition with Marie and TVL. It was a short stop as they said they sent their repairs the Bangkok. The next stop was the Gems Gallery again. Marie bought some diamond/white gold earrings and I bought a silver/sapphire pair. The real surprise was Trevor who bought 4 pairs for various female relatives and a gold chain for himself.

From there we headed to the Lotus centre where the others bought a few things but my own buys were limited to nibblies for the get together that evening. We then got a taxi to check out the golfshops we'd seen on the way to the games earlier in the week. We obviously hadn't noticed them all because the first wasn't that far away and could have easily been walked. I bought some cheap second hand balls so if I lost them it was 50c in the water and not $3.We then walked the rest of the way seeing 3 others (much further away) but not buying anything much.

We met up with the others back at the hotel and a number of them had been to the outlet mall next to the other Lotus centre. They had bought golf shoes, shirts etc, which they said were quite cheap.

At 6 we gathered in the captain's room for drinks and snacks and he announced the draw for the next day, and the running score after the first rounds. With 1 round to go he was taking bets on the first and last places. I was 7 strokes ahead of the next best and was an unbackable favourite at 12 to 1 on.

We then had dinner across the road and Marie and I decided to visit the Outlet mall. However, we didn't realise it closed at 10 when most other shops stayed open till 11, and only had 15 minutes shopping. I did manage to get a golf ball retriever on the offchance that (1) I might hit a ball into a lake on Friday and (2) I'd be able to see it in the dirty water. As it turned out 1 occured but 2 didn't so it is still unchristened. We seemed to come back a different way they we went, travelling down a little lane with lots of speed humps. I suspect it was the driver's revenge for beating him down on price.

The night shots of the beach and the hills from the Star buck's balcony in the airconditioned shipping mall, and shots from the hotel of the roofs were taking by TVL. The street and beach scenes were from Jim.