Life is good!

Jan 23 Thursday 

Life is good. Our most incredible weather continues. Each morning I don my wool sweater and make breakfast. At night we sleep under our duvet instead of AC. Who would have thought it was possible? We have been coming to Thailand since 2003 and have never experienced anything like this. Our friend Pear said the cold snap lasted seven days last year. We will hope for more this year but cannot complain.

Our pace is quite relaxed. We sleep until we wake up, usually around 7:00. The rooster next door must be elderly given the strength of his crowing that starts at 4:30. He is joined by numerous tropical birds who sing even louder. We fall back asleep to such sounds. Breakfast is juice, granola, banana with milk for Ron and juice for me who cannot digest dairy. We have Starbucks and I was getting low so we went to Hua Hin (HH) yesterday, the only Starbucks we have seen outside of Bangkok (BKK). HH is about an hour away. I about fell over when I go the receipt, almost $100 for three pounds! Ouch, oh well it is only money! Besides life is too short for bad coffee.

Because it has been so cold, Noi, our family neighbor has brought us hot coffee the past two days. I would imagine it is instant and he brought it NY regular (cream and sugar). It was a very sweet gesture. Then last evening after we had stopped to pick up some to go dinner, Noi showed up with pad Thai for us. Keep in mind that Noi speaks no English and we speak no Thai. He wanted us to have some good Thai food. Little does he know we have good Thai food daily as we take all our meals except breakfast most days at carts or restaurants. There is a place down the street where you can go in the afternoon and point to various pots containing prepared food. A woman will fill small plastic bag with what you point to and close it with a rubber band. I point to the next dish we want and the process is repeated. Yesterday I got cauliflower, pumpkin, green curry with chicken and green beans with pork all for $2.60 for four dishes. It is embarrassing to eat for so little.

Today we ate at one of our favorite places. We had two bottles of water, two noodle soups with pork and chicken, Chinese broccoli stir fried and the bill was 180 baht (32 baht to the dollar) and Ron left 20 baht on the table. Tipping is not common here, particularly in these small establishments. One of the staff stared at it with a questioning look. Another staff member came up, picked up the money and tried to give it to me. I gestured that it was for her and the other one who had served us. It made me wonder how much they make daily. Not counting the owner I counted seven staff at this small noodle ‘restaurant’. These types of restaurants are quite common in Thailand and often have more staff than customers.

Ron has been performing maintenance on the house since we arrived. He usually works for an hour and I have been cleaning. The floors need sweeping at least every other day and today I managed to mop all but the bedrooms. I have also been inventorying all that is here so we don’t have to try and remember what is here when we are packing to travel here. I couldn’t remember if we had a coffee grinder so brought ground coffee. Good thing I did as there is no grinder here. We priced one yesterday when we were in HH which is much bigger than our town and also has a large tourist and expat population. The grinder was $100 so I decided to wait. We couldn’t find one in the store here.

After working we usually go into town for lunch or to run errands. Some days we drive to Cha Am or HH for a change of scenery or to get a massage. In the evening we play cards, or Scrabble. Last night we watched a DVD that froze up during the climax of the film. Must have bee a pirated copy which is about all that we can find here. We also read. There are no English newspapers here although we subscribe to the NY Times and can get it on line. So far we have enjoyed the slower pace.