Pasta-Rice-Curry Party

While Linda went to lounge at the pool and walk on the beach I went and did a course inspection in the morning and then a press conference in the afternoon. The course inspection was pretty uneventful though about three or four miles of it was on the beach area where the Tsunami hit the hardest. This is low tourist season on the island 'cause it's technically their winter, so there were few people out in their hut/shops. In the afternoon they held the press conference at the Dusit Laguna Resort where a very cute and sweet Naoko Takahashi, gold medal marathon winner at the Sydney Olypics talked about her involvement in the Phuket race. Apparently the japanese won't travel to Phuket because anyplace that has had many deaths is considered bad luck. It's true that countries hit by the tsunami received a lot of monetary support to reconstruct damaged buildings, but only 50% of tourists have come back to the island so the real people suffering from all of this are the common workers that live off of tourism. Naoko Takahashi brought about one hundred Japanese runners to the race plus a handful of journalists and two television crews. She's hoping to bring more next year and show her country that all the "evil spirits" have left.
At six o'clock that evening we went to the pasta-rice-.curry party. It was held at our hotel which made it even better. I didn't eat pasta, but plenty of rice and a really good chicken dish. There was a great dessert spread too and everything was in bite size pieces so we indulged there too. Yum.
Our wake up call was to be at 3.30 am so we skidadled on out of there right after we were finished eating.