My First Full Day In Pattaya,

started with a walk to the money exchange,

the rate was 10% better here than at the airport, then a further walk to TukCom, 

I made my way past the temple, 

it is huge,

also I passed some of the shops that sell goods for small offerings at home, 

and these can be bought for merit and donated to the monks in the temple, 

a few stalls not yet open,

but the mobile ones were, 

into TukCom and here is the same lady I see every year, she loads up some sort of gismo that means I have Internet 24/7, just under 2,000 baht, and that included a new telephone,

coming out of the store one of Diana's favorite stalls still here, Dunking Donuts!

back out and to some of the stalls, 

past one of the flower stalls, 

and a mobile one, 

selling fish, 

in all shapes and sizes, 

this is the stall I was buying from, 

some bananas, grapes and tangerines to keep in my room if I get a tad peckish, 

next a Bolt taxi to the Surf Kitchen on Jomtien Beach,

for breakfast, Diana and myself have eaten here so often when we lived in Thailand, 

and here is my breakfast, a healthy prawn salad, 

I was joined by Vic & Joy,

after breakfast we made our way along Beach Road,

a festival is planned looking at this installation, 

we made our way on to Dongtan Beach Road, 

Joy choose this beach franchise for us to sit at, 

opposite dredgers were removing sand from the sea be to make the beach wider, 

and there was the freshly dredged sand being loaded on to a barge to take it ashore, 

and then regular as clockwork, the doughnut man arrived,

his usual happy self, 

as we were paying our bill after a relaxing day on the beach, there was a fearful noise,

a huge husky or malamute dog was crunching ice cubes like there was no tomorrow! we jumped onto a baht bus and I alighted at my hotel for a freshen up, then out for a Bolt taxi, but there was a problem with my cunning plan,

the heavens had opened up, 

and because of that instead of the usual 2 to 3 minutes for a cab it was more like 25! but eventually,

I arrived at Hemingway's for my evening meal,

it all looked very nice,

a quick peruse through the menu and decision made, Wagyu beef stew and dumplings, the dumplings were not as nice as the ones Diana makes, but were nice neither the less, 

I was joined by Vic & Joy,

there was my meal, huge, I really could not eat it all, 

Vic was struggling with the fish & chips as well,

after our meal we went for a walk, 

walking through Tree Town, 

so many neon lights,

over the different roads in the area,

we settled on one bar for a few games of pool, 

before making a move for Dang's, we had a few in there before making a move for our hotels, and so off to bed.

Namibia, Up Early,

to catch the sunrise,

at the Quiver Tree Forest and Giants Playground, 

they are both iconic natural attractions located in southern Namibia, the Quiver Tree Forest (Kokerboomwoud), is near the city of Keetmanshoop on the Gariganus Farm,

there is a dense concentration of about 250 native quiver trees (Aloidendron dichotomum), 

declared a national monument in 1955, some of the largest trees reach up to 9 meters in height and are up to 300 years old, on the same farm there is the Giant’s Playground, 

it features stacked boulders of massive dark dolerite rocks that look as though they were haphazardly stacked like giant building blocks or Jenga pieces by a mythical giant, hence the name, the area was formed by a magma intrusion, around 180 million years ago, during the breakup of the supercontinent Pangea, molten magma pushed upward through cracks in the Earth's crust and cooled underground to form a dense layer of dolerite, following that over millions of years, the softer surrounding sedimentary rocks eroded away, leaving the hard dolerite exposed and cracked into blocks, wind, water, and desert heat then polished and weathered the rocks into their current shapes,

time to head back to the main buildings on the farm, 

where we were greeted by a sun halo, I have only ever seen one of these before, it is a bright, circular ring of light that appears around the Sun when sunlight interacts with tiny ice crystals suspended in the upper atmosphere, it is caused by high-altitude clouds, they typically form when thin, wispy cirrus or cirrostratus clouds drift high up (around 20,000 feet or more), and contain hexagonal ice crystals, literally millions of microscopic ice crystals shaped like six-sided hexagonal prisms, which produces a prism effect, as sunlight passes through these crystals, the ice acts like a prism—bending (refracting) and reflecting the light, normally at an angle of 22° which is the most common, amazing!

also common here wild love birds, 

who are attracted by the bird feeders the owner puts out for them,

but what is not so common is that the owner has taken an abandoned meerkat and nursed it back to good health,

next back in the cruiser, 

the countryside speed past, 

we were soon at a hide, overlooking a water hole in the distance, 

visited by a flock of ostriches, 

also horses and game arrived, but I took the photographs of them on my bigger camera, so that will be a treat for me when we return from Thailand mid December,

we past a few abandoned houses,

from a abandoned mining town we will visit tomorrow, 

but first, 

to the coast, 

driving towards our hotel for the night,

the sea front houses looking very impressive, 

and here is our hotel, 

grand views of the ocean,

and here we all are, from left to right Andrew, Seyhan, Helen, Helen (Andrews wife), Sal and Wilk, it was bitterly cold that evening, 

this house has an amazing front garden, 

as we made our way down into town, 

passing the Ministry of Fisheries, 

looking across, 

and back, 

we made it into town, I was so cold I went straight to the restaurant, 

Will kindly took my pocket camera and photographed the towns church, 

I was inside getting warm,

I was soon joined by Hosia,

along with everyone else, 

on to our starters and main courses,

all of which were huge,

as were the desserts, 

my crème brûlée almost the size of a dinner plate! after which we went back to the hotel for a good night's sleep.