Royal Cliff Hotel

Even though we didn't really need a Rotary makeup we chose to go to the meeting last night held at the Royal Cliff Beach Resort. To call this stunning. cliff hugging hotel spectacular is to understate it. I can't get the link to work but you can go to www.royalcliff.com and just watch as one stunning shot after another reveals this splendid hotel. Or, here are a few photos Hans took.

And now I want to weep. It's affordable! We paid more for lesser places in Norway. *sigh* But, the pool here is bigger!

But about last night. We joined the other Rotarians just after 6:00 p.m. in the ante room overlooking the ocean where we had a glass of wine and nibblies and ordered our dinner from the menu. Dinner was surprisingly inexpensive considering the hotel - only about $10 each.

The owner of the hotel is a Rotarian and consequently, they have a Rotary Room as seen below. It`s available to the RC free of charge, and they can use it for committee meetings, board meetings, etc. whenever they want. It's rarely used for anything else but I suppose if all other meeting rooms are booked and this one were free, it would be available.



Hans and I were invited to sit at the head table, though their set up is just like ours: no real head table, but the President sits at the round table closest to the podium since he's up and down all the time. Unfortunately, we are down to only 2 banners and we need one for Bob Morris' club on Monday, and for Bangkok on Wednesday. Instead, we gave President Jan one of our DVDs of Canada and promised to mail him a banner when we get home.

It's a bit tricky getting to this resort since it's definitely off the beaten path and we had to negotiate with the taxi to even take us there. Near the end of the meeting Hans asked Brendan if there might be someone driving back towards Jomtien who could give us a ride. Turns out President Jan offered to take us but asked if we could wait about 20 minutes after the meeting. No problem.

Jan was talking with Helmut, the president nominee, when he suddenly said, "But I promised to drive Hans and Lolita home." "Join us!" said Helmut. "We'd love to," we replied.

And so ended one of the most delightful post-Rotary meetings we've ever attended. At 10:30 pm and 4 bottles of wine later, we all reluctantly pushed ourselves away from the table to head home.

There's definitely a lot of good to be said for evening meetings.