Doing it the Thai way

Oct 3

Our car and driver showed up 40 minutes early but we were ready so we were thankful to get an early start. We were going to Hua Hin to pick up our rental car that we will rent off and on during our three months here. It is about a three hour journey but we made it in record time. After signing all the paperwork, we went to our favorite duck soup eatery and had a cup of duck noodle soup before heading to the grocery store and to Starbucks to get some coffee for the house which costs more than double than at home; but hey, I’m from the NW and if we know one thing it is life is too short to drink bad coffee. Then we headed home about a 40 minute drive back toward Bangkok.

Our little Thai house

Our house in located on a family compound. Pa Cha An is the matriarch. Her son Noi and his adult daughter Ai and her son Hope all live there. Noi’s former wife helps out almost daily. Her name is Lin. On the weekend other family members come from Bangkok where they work. Nit is Noi’s brother and Tui is Noi’s sister. Timm is also Noi’s sister and her husband is Tum. They live in Phetchaburi which is where we live. They have two children Pair who is in her last year of university and her brother Pon who is developmentally disabled and in a wheelchair. Our place is located at the end of the

property, next to Noi’s house and the river.

The big family house

Lin greeted us at the gate and got the keys toPhetchaburi River. The house was hotter than blue blazes. Lin helped open the windows. Fortunately our bedrooms have AC but the rest of the house doesn’t. Unfortunately the house was built without any attic ventilation system so it heats up easily and doesn’t cool down very well. It seems much hotter here than in Bangkok (BKK). We put the food away then started unpacking. Family members clean the house while we are away so it is a blessing that we don’t have to clean before settling in. Our bed was made, another gift. Lin offered to prepare dinner for us and we accepted her offer. Our history here has been that Noi, Lin or Ai will show up unannounced with a meal which has been unsolicited by us. Since we rarely cook it is always appreciated. Sometimes the food is something that isn’t to our liking but we cannot speak Thai and our family doesn’t speak English so it is difficult to relate our preferences so we aren’t wasting food. It is amazing how much we can communicate with our limitations. Ron’s new Smartphone has a translation app and the speaker can speak into the phone and it will translate what has been said. We tried it a couple of times with mixed results.

We drove to the water business to get two five gallon bottles

refilled but they were closed. Lin had gotten six liters for us so we were set for the night. When we returned from trying to get water, we stopped by the big house and had a visit with Pa Cha An who is 91. She is blind but seems to be doing well. She talks up a storm in Thai and we chat back in English and neither of us has a clue as to what the other one has said. But the sense of love and respect is evident.

After dinner we retired to the AC and bedroom to watch a session of a TV serial that Ron had downloaded before we left home. By 9:00 he was asleep and I made it to 9:30 after shower.

Oct 4

Life in the Jet Lag Lane

Ron and I are finding it difficult to stay awake beyond 9:00. Then we wake up in the middle of the night and read for an hour or so and fall back asleep. Today I woke up the second time at 6:30 and decided to get up. I was puttering around the kitchen getting it set up for breakfast. I took the butter out of the frig and put it in the butter dish which I left out to soften and I filled the sugar bowl. I decided to make a singe cup of coffee since Ron wasn’t up yet so heated the water, put the cone, filter and coffee on the coffee cup and was filling the cone with hot water. Once I got it filled, I managed to hit the cone with the teakettle and spilled the entire thing all over the counter. I got coffee grinds and coffee everywhere: in the butter dish, in the sugar bowl, on the bottom of the fruit basket, on the bag of coffee I had just purchased, all over the counter, the louvered cabinet doors below the counter and the floor. It took me 20 friggin’ minutes to clean up. That will teach me to be more awake before trying to tackle complicated tasks! Just after I finished cleaning up Ron woke up and came into the kitchen. Without realizing it was Saturday we made our usual Saturday breakfast of eggs and toast although we had found croissants yesterday in Hua Hin so we had those for breakfast today. I made coffee in the coffee maker without any problems. We also scored some great jam from the same store in Hua Hin. Living in a small town in Thailand we really appreciate the little things in life.

Today it is 88 degrees but due to the humidity factor the weather station said it felt like 95. Let me tell you it is hot, damn hot! We have stayed in the bedroom almost the entire day. After a while I get a little stir crazy and go into the living room but I almost get nauseous due to the heat. I walked up to the big house and had a lovely visit with Pa Cha An with Tui’s help. Tui speaks more English than anyone else. She is a nurse practitioner in BKK and comes home on the weekends to be with her mom.

The house has a small leak in the roof that needs to be fixed and the resulting damage requires some re-painting. Tui arranged for the man who painted the big house some years ago to come and give us an estimate for doing the repair work. With the help of several people, a young girl who knows some English, and our Smartphone app, we were able to come to an understanding on how the work would be done and how much it would cost. We’re going to buy the gallon of paint needed, and the labor will be about $60. Not a bad deal by US pricing. Besides, getting up into the attic to fix the leak is NOT something Ron wants to do with all this heat. Ron said if they do a good job, he’ll ask for a quote to repaint the metal railing along the river.

Living in Thailand and daily differences

I often get asked what we do when we are here. Life is different and some of that has to do with daily living. I will try to highlight those differences as they come to mind. For starters Thai houses are not plumbed with hot water. They wash dishes, clothes and bathe in cold water. Noi who lives right next to us in a cider block house uses buckets of water to bathe. I can hear him pouring a bucketful over himself several times. We had a small appliance installed in our shower that warms water on demand. We have had to replace it once in the eight years we have been here.

Washing dishes means using cold water or heating water on the stove to add to the cold when we have plates or pots that require it. The kitchen sink is small so I usually rinse the dishes first. Then I put a few inches of water in the sink with dish soap. If we ate something that had a lot of oil in it I will heat some water on the stove to add to the dishwater in order to get things clean. I will sometimes need to wash everything first and stack items on the counter then rinse, because there isn’t enough room in the sink to rinse the dishes as I go or the water gets too cold to do the job. There is no dishwasher, no washing machine or dryer. We used wash our clothes by hand then discovered a laundry up in the little village about eight blocks away. Later Ai and Lin asked to do our laundry. They were hand washing our laundry then Lin who lives off the property brought her small washing machine here so they use that now. Given the culture we do not pay them for this service but when we leave we give them a thank you card and money.

We rarely cook as our kitchen is small with a two burner stove top that will only hold one normal size pot and one small pot for example. Due to the heat and no AC in the main part of the house it is usually too hot to cook anything other than something simple like scrambled eggs. There is no oven, but we have a small toaster oven. Many Thai homes have an outside kitchen that is completely separate from the house. I think this operation will give you a clue as to why we don’t cook very often. Also, it is so inexpensive to go out to eat here or to pick up something from a cart that we often take this option. Tonight we had chicken we had picked up at the local grocery store and made a salad to go with it. It was too hot to eat anything else. I am hopeful that I will shed another few pounds with this heat. One of the challenges is finding food that we are familiar with. When we go out to eat most restaurants in Phetchaburi do not have English menus. But we usually find a way to order what we want…. but sometimes are surprised.

We do not drink tap water anywhere in Thailand. In the house  we use a cooler we brought from Sri Lanka when we moved in here at the end of 2006. We have two five gallon bottles and go to a nearby water business to have the bottles filled. When we use up one bottle we go and get it refilled so we always have water on hand. Given the heat we try to stay well hydrated by drinking a lot of water.

We have been in Thailand five days and have had three massages. Ron said we are falling behind. In Phetchaburi an hour long foot massage cost about $6. A foot massage in Thailand includes your feet, legs up to your mid thigh and shoulders usually. In Bangkok we went to a very fancy place that cost twice the price. There is a real range when it comes to massage salons. Some have technicians who are well trained and others are clueless. Some have soft lighting in a quiet room and others have florescence lighting and you sit is full view of passersby. When we were here last winter we couldn’t get an appointment in our usual place in BKK so tried the place two doors down. It turned out to offer massage or sex. One man came in speaking English and he was requesting the woman he had been with before. He said ‘she had dark hair’. Well that would include everyone in Asia, wouldn’t it? That was a first for us so we are more careful now. We prefer the places with better trained staff. The adage of ‘you get what you pay for’ holds true in most cases.

Another difference is our internet access. Here we use a pocket wifi system that requires some set up by Ron. Because we pay by the usage we do not have 24 hours access. Since it has been so hot here, Ron usually sets us up after breakfast in order to do our email.

At home I used a housekeeper to clean the house. Here we do it. Our house is a two bedroom house with a living/dining room, kitchen and sitting area which is basically one large room. There is a full sized large bathroom with a shower and a small bathroom with a toilet and sink. There is a shower wand but no designated area for a shower. The room is the shower. This is very typical in Southeast Asia. We never use it because you have to take many things out of there to prevent them from getting wet if you shower. All the floors are tile except the two bedrooms which have wood floors. The floors need to be swept daily and mopped frequently because all the windows and doors are left open throughout the day. Even though we have screens, we still get a lot of dust, etc. We go barefoot inside the house.

The biggest adjustment to being here is food. We love Thai food. But at times we want something else. It is difficult to find food that we are familiar with. It is always a treat to find a something where we recognize the label. We love dark chocolate and usually eat one or two pieces daily. Finding good chocolate is not easy and we have only been able to find it in two places, one of them is in Hua Hin 40 minutes from here. Yesterday I was thankful to find iceberg lettuce, something I never eat at home but finding any lettuce here is a gift. I don’t know what it costs at home but a small head was $4.00 here. I tried buying coffee here and never found any that passed the taste test so I am glad to find a Starbucks in Hua Hin.

We have one eatery we like here that serves stir fry and noodle soups but it closes around 4:30 or 5:00 so we only have lunch there. We have a place down the road from where we live and she closes at 4:30 also. She has a gas burner, a wok and she works under a thatched roof in a structure with no sides. Birds fly about, trying to get crumbs to eat. Once a bird hopped into her food case. OY!  We can also drive down the road and during the week there is this place that is open for about two hours. Three or four people staff it. There are about 8-10 choices. Each ‘entrée’ is in a large bowl. We point to what we want and the staff puts several large spoonfuls of the item in a small plastic bag that is sealed with a rubber band. This is very cheap eating but by no means gourmet. Grocery shopping is difficult. In order to find items we are familiar with we need to go to the largest store here called Big C. It is similar to a Fred Meyer Store in the Portland area where you can buy food, clothing, electronics, household and hardware items. In the US there is such excess so you will find many brands of orange juice for example and many types such as no pulp to lots of pulp with or with calcium, etc. No so here. I was thrilled to find something beside Smuckers jam on Friday and scored an imported Spanish jam that is quite good. There is a good fruit stand here but I haven’t found a similar vegetable stand. Big C does have lettuce, carrots and red bell peppers so I can make a salad. At home we eat salad almost every day.

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