Well we set of yesterday morning in the hire car to do a bit of exploring in the vacinity of the school and our new house. I have purchased a smart phone with all the satellite navigation technology so we were pretty confident that we could manage to get around. The hired Perudoa Myvi was performing nicely, it was a beautiful day to rival Bahrain in terms of temperature and sunniness and all was well. We arrived at the school location as planned and began to explore the area. We popped into the big Aeon superstore only to discover that it is more than a superstore but it is also a large shopping mall with lots of nice shops. We found a couple of supermarkets so should be able to get all we need within a mile or so of the house.
All was going swimmingly until we realised that my phone had not been charging from the socket and the battery was almost completely flat. My emergency charger doofery thing was in my laptop bag .... in the hotel. No satellite navigation!!!!! OK not to worry, I'll just buy a map and use the old fashioned technology. Sheila is, by her own admission, somewhat lacking in the old map reading department but I was confident we could manage. I am an extremely tolerant chap as you all know. OK let's buy a map. Alas, it is not as easy as you might expect to make purchase of such an item because it seems there is no call for them nowadays. Garages and stores were found and checked without success. I knew how to get back to the Aeon mall so we tried one last try there. Bingo a map was located. We set off back into "traffic city" for the hotel. We plugged the phone into the charger in the hope of accumulation enough joules or energy to help if we got stuck.
Well you will be pleased to know that we DID get stuck. We did however broaden our cultural horizons significantly with some sojourns into uncharted territory. We did however manage to get a little closer to our destination but we just knew that the last bit would be a nightmare because the road system around the hotel is bizarre to say the least. It works OK for taxi drivers who know what they are doing but you have to go round the hotel TWICE to get on the road southwards! Hopelessly lost and unable to get near the hotel we switch on the sat nav in the vain hope that the nice lady in there would be able to muster up the energy to get us home. It was the sweetest sound I have heard in a long time when I heard "in 500 metres turn left". Would she last the pace though. It said that we were 12 minutes form our destination and I managed to make a wrong turn and then it said 17 minutes. Surely it was never going to last. What seemed like an eternity later the nice lady said "you destination is .....". I am sure she was about to say "ahead on the left" because we were right at the hotel. She had made it and boy were we pleased. What a trip.
It transpired that the phone I bought was at fault and so I now have a nice new one from the nice man in the nice Samsung shop. And I have moved the fully charged emergency charger to a more useful location!!!
Undaunted we are going to look at a golf club near the house today. Wish us luck!
David
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