Once Again To The Surf Kitchen,

just before Soi 6 on Jomtien Beach road,

my turn to strike the pose,

not to many people today but we were a bit early,

lots of nice quite tables looking over the beach but still maintaining privacy for the diners, behind Diana is a new addition, we are not quite sure what it is going to be yet, maybe an ice cream parlour,

Diana as lovely as ever,

and a view across the road to the sea,

if you want to find the Surf Kitchen look out for the 7-11 at the start of Soi 6,

on the other corner is Kodak Express, the restaurant is next to that,

another view of the restaurant,

we come here once a week or so, over the past few months we have stopped for breakfast at just about every restaurant on the Jomtien beach front, for Diana this one has the nicest spaghetti boulanges, so this is why we come back, the prawn cocktail is pretty good too, with 2 ice coffees 288 baht,

my turn to be in the picture,

as it was December the first, time to start on the Christmas decorations,

silver start on the top, must start the diet again!

lots of tinsel and small presents,

let there be light! it is a universal truth, put 3 rows/sets/strings of Christmas lights away that were all working, next year one set will not work at all, one set the blue and green ones will work the red and yellow ones will not, one set will be fine, also the extension lead you had for the outside set that you put away with the lights for next year will have disappeared!

then to the food stalls,

chicken feet soup for us, still 30 baht each,

this is a new stall that has just opened up it was not here last week,

but behind it still lots of empty spaces, it is now where near as full as it was just a few months ago,

once upon a time, there were so many people buying food here every space was taken,

then bugs for Diana later,

whilst they were being cooked I had another look at the stall next door, a few dried things and fresh vegetables,

and by the side of it fresh things to be cooked, frogs, small birds, fish cutlets mussels, squid, shellfish, various cuts of meat and a few things I could not identify, funny thing is where I used to work the butchers shop nearly opposite was shut down by the council, he did not have enough space or money to have a cold room for different meats, one for chicken, one for lamb, one for beef, etc, so instead of having a local reasonably priced local butcher all of the folks had to go to a super market and pay up 3, yes 3 times as much for the same food, good job the UK health inspectors are not out here, the whole place would be closed in a day!

by now the bugs were ready, so one more stop,

to the boiled sweet corn stand, bugs for Diana, sweet corn for me, then home feet up and watch a few DVD's

this is the message we received when we played the new Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Temple Of Doom DVD, all BBC and some film companies seem to limit the out put of their DVD's, it appears high output is on them, just that if you have a HD DVD player that will upgrade the DVD you are not allowed to see it, on an old DVD, made say 2 or 3 years ago, we see close if not full HD as we use the correct cables, but BBC and some film companies like this one, Paramount, will not let you see the high output, in other words if you want to watch HD you must pay for the companies exorbitantly priced HD disc's even if you have a high output DVD disc already,

the good news is that so far all of the History channel and Nat Geo DVD's that we have all play in HD as the output is not restricted, this was a fascinating program, Cleopatra, the most famous suicide in the world, or was it murder? born from an incestuous relationship (her father and mother were brother and sister) when 18 she was married to her 12 year old brother, who was later found dead (read murdered), what is interesting to note is that there was not a single witness to the event, in fact the first record of her suicide was not written of for 100 years after her death, then by a historian and a story teller, until then no written record at all, even then both writer and story teller mentioned they thought it could be murder, Pat Brown a cold case criminal profiler takes a look and very thought provoking it was to,

Indiana Jones, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, all action, all adventure, a boys own hero if ever there was one, great stuff, even if the story line has more gaps than you can shake a stick at,

and the same with this one, The Temple Of Doom, but I loved the tribute at the start of the movie to some of the old 1930's film musicals, then it was time for bed.