Day 14—No Hot Water & Don Lee's Chinese Food

Today will be the fourth day without sun.  It hasn’t been crazy storming, but the sun just doesn’t make an appearance and it is still hot.  I am one who really likes the sun (even if I don’t necessarily handle the heat very well).  We also woke up to the water coming out of the faucet in a trickle again. That meant no hot water--again.  We had planned on going to an expat mixer, but without water for a shower, the prospects seemed dubious, because even without the sun, the humidity and consequent sweating are always a problem.  Plus, swimming does a number on my hair, and I don’t want to present myself as a sweaty, frizzy haired person to new people.  

Emma and I spent too much of the day playing with a virtual makeover program, and laughing ourselves silly, sweating all the while. 

Beautiful before picture.  This is where Emma wishes she was instead of Panama.  Poor deprived child.  

--Insert imaginary pictures of makeovers here, since we all refuse to post the actual makeover pictures. (But trust me, they are funny! We all look like male cross dressers!)

It was one of those ridiculous do-nothing days that are so great on vacation, (But not so great when writing a blog).  So around 5 p.m., when we had to make a decision about whether or not to go to the mixer,  we all were hot, and wrung out, and still no hot water in sight. So we decided not to go. 

Oh well…but, we also decided to try the local Chinese food, Don Lee.  We had heard it was not good, but no one was willing to cook, and we were sick of everything we had already tried, so Don Lee it was.  I studied the menu online, wrote down exactly what we wanted, and then we sent Sean to do our dirty work.  He said that he ordered without a problem (I wrote our order in Spanish for him), and they gave him one of those light up devices to tell him when the order would be ready.  In the meantime, he went to check out the other grocery store, El Machetazo.  He reported that it is the nicest of the three grocery stores and that we had been missing out.  (I have since had a chance to check it out myself, and it is WONDERFUL! I love this grocery store…more later).   So here is what we ordered from Don Lee:

BBQ pork.  The cucumber salad in the middle is a lot like Thai  cucumber salad.

The is BBQ pork fried rice.  But as you can see, they keep all of the components separate.

This is chicken.  All the dishes tasted great. Different, but great. 

After dinner, I sat on the terrace, and watched the fishing boats head to see for a night of fishing.  These guys have such amazing balance on these boats, and they all help one another. It's almost like watching a fishing boat ballet.  It is one of my favorite things about staying in this villa, watching them perform this ritual every evening.  

After such a lazy day with no real sunshine, and not much in the way of entertainment, we decided we needed a change of scenery.  So we decided that tomorrow, we would go to city and stay at the apartment for a couple of days.