Written 11/10/2008
I am finally starting to get settled. I have a lovely apartment with air-con (a BIG plus in these parts) with cable TV that has one or two American channels and every now and then, M-net series and super sport! It has a fridge and a shower bath, which is unusual as most places just have a flexible showerhead and the tiles of your bathroom make up your shower. It is nicely sized and has a pool and a cleaning service. There is a Laundromat just down the way and a supermarket about ten-minute’s drive away. I have become accustomed to the ‘motor-taxi’ service, a guy on a scooter that drives you around. An American girl, Ella, who works at my school, has made friends with Sak, a motor-taxi driver who is too delighted to have business and charges us less than the hiring charge for scooters. I called him this morning to take me to ‘Big C’ the local supermarket which has absolutely everything. He actually parked his bike and came in with me to the super market and went shopping with me! He pushed my trolley round and I tried to tell him not to worry because I needed a lot of things but my extremely limited (non-existent) Thai encouraged me to rather not argue and let him figure this out for himself. I bought some basics, a kettle, toaster, a wash-up bowl (finding dishwashing liquid was quiet a mission), cutlery (sold in packs on forks and spoons, you buy knives separately – apparently it’s considered very bad luck to give a knife as a gift here), juice, cereal, cheese, bread etc. all for a little over what one would pay for a kettle back home. Transportation, phone money and accommodation are my main expense here at the moment.
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