Busy days – 2

After a lively week in Pattaya, I’ve driven up to the north east of Thailand to Sasipa’s house, which couldn’t be more different. From den of iniquity to rural tranquillity in 6 hours.

The drive over to Pattaya, which is south and slightly east of Bangkok is not too far from Kanchanaburi at around 4 hours, although you do have to drive straight through the middle of Bangkok to get there.

Fortunately there is an elevated expressway, so that we were able to drive above almost the entirety of Bangkok, therefore avoiding the traffic, but perhaps missing out on some of the sights and sounds.

There is road building everywhere I look, just like there was last time I was here. There are elevated sections being put in to avoid roundabouts/intersections or bypass towns and the widening of long stretches of ordinary roads into dual carriageways, even in the middle of nowhere. Personally I find it refreshing to see this hive of activity. My experience of the UK on recent visits has been the opposite, with road space and mobility actually being reduced.

Pattaya was its usual crazy self, but despite that, I love it there. It’s really buzzing and there is always much to do and see. Packed with a variety of markets, some open until the small hours, together with all the wonderful street food, its easy to pass the day and evening just wandering around, taking it all in. Even if it does sometimes gets a bit tiresome being asked if you want a massage 50 times a day!

An Australian friend of a friend recommended a visa/residence permit/travel agents etc shop, run by a chain smoking overworked Thai lady called Lucky. I’m not sure about Lucky as a moniker, as she constantly complained about too much work, too many foreigners in trouble she had to help out and insisting that tomorrow she’d get around to visiting the doctors.

None the less she said she could get me a bank account and good to her word, for a small fee, she did exactly that. She did all the paperwork, of which there was a great deal, then stuck me on the back of a motorcycle taxi, who whisked me off to a branch of the Bangkok bank only a couple of kilometres away. Once there I was greeted at the entrance and taken upstairs to the new accounts desk. Only one person was ahead of me and soon I was sat in front of an efficient Thai lady who breezed through all the paperwork, set the banking app up on my phone for me and printed off my new bank card and pass book. Yippee, I did it. Thank you Lucky!

I did have to leave my passport overnight for immigration to approve a residence permit and rubber stamp my application, but it was returned the next morning without a hitch.

People pay for a lot of things here using QR codes and now I can too. I can also avoid the 220 baht (£5) charge levied on every cash withdrawal made using a foreign card.

I only meant to stay 2 nights in Pattaya, but just like last time I ended up extending my stay several times. It’s true that there are a ridiculous number of foreigners here and it caters for that, at least in the centre. In fact some restaurants don’t even have a menu in the Thai language. I had to actually explain to Sasipa what was on the menu in one place we ate at, despite it being her own country!

Getting around is easy by Songthaew, which literally means 2 benches, You just flag one down and hop on. It stops to pick up anyone who flags it down and stops to let you off when you ring the bell. It only costs 10 baht for any distance.

There are several different routes, most are on a continuous loop around the city and you never need to wait more than about one minute for one to come along. Even so I’ve still managed to rack up 18000+ steps every day I’ve been here, so the massages have come in handy.

My favourite noodle place is still here, unlike the one in Bangkok which has disappeared and I have refined my Thai further, so that I can be more precise about the type of noodles and soup that I want. I used to just say ‘Waiteeo Moo’ and hope I got the version I wanted. Now I say ‘Moo thin leyk nam tok’ and get exactly what I want to eat (These are both just phonetic for my own use by the way).

I can speak a lot more Thai now, having spent about 80 hours learning over the last 8 months or so, through a Thaipod101 online course, but it’s still really difficult. A slight intonation can completely change the meaning of a word as it’s a tonal language and as for reading it, that is another level. For a start there are 36 consonants and 24 vowels. To further complicate matters, the vowels can go to the left, right, above or below a consonant. The consonants themselves can be low, middle or high class and that will effect the vowels and the tone that you use to pronounce the word. Tones are either low, mid, high, rising or falling. Oh and there are no spaces between the words either! My name in Thai is คอลิน, although there is more than one way to write it, this is the way I use.

The choice of live music is huge as well. One of my favourite places is Wonderful 1 (I’m less keen on Wonderful 2). The guitarist is really excellent and plays some great solos and you don’t get hassled there either. There’s a good reggae bar, called Trench Town that I like, being in a bit of a reggae music phase at the moment, but I really haven’t even scratched the surface of what is available.

There are hundreds if not thousands of bars, clubs, shows, restaurants, street food vendors and massage shops as well as many historical and cultural things to do. You could eat and drink at a different place every day for years. There are a few places that do Sunday roasts, so I might see if they are planning to offer a traditional Christmas dinner, as I have rented an apartment in Pattaya for Christmas. I love Thai food, but I’m not sure I want Pad Thai for my Christmas dinner.

I bought a safe at Big C & Homepro in Pattaya, a large supermarket and home ware chain as Sasipa’s house isn’t really very secure and I get fed up lugging around anything of value with me when we go out, just in case.

They also had a useful image on the floor, so you can check the size of the bin bag you need. I don’t know about you, but faced with them all at the supermarket, I sometime think is it the 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 litre bags I need, especially when I have various different sized bins.

Something else that amused me was the completely different approach to the customer here. In the west signs are plastered everywhere warning you that if you do much more than look askance at a member of staff, let alone dare to complain, then you are likely to be in trouble. Here the customer is still respected as you can see from the sign.

Sasipa has rounded up all the chickens and evicted some from the house that moved in while we travelled around Thailand and now they are all corralled under the grain store. She can never bring herself to kill any for the pot, which is why there are so many. In the end she gave nearly all of them to her Aunt, who came around to take them away, leaving her two enormous sacks of rice in return as Sasipa wouldn’t take any money for them. It’s a lot quieter now at dawn!

We just have to take the sacks to the rice equivalent of a miller as the sacks are full of straw coloured dried rice, pre ‘milling’.

The dogs were delighted to see me after the couple of seconds it took them to stop growling and remember my smell. Sadly there is one less dog than before and the cow has gone too, off to the great green pasture in the sky.

It is rice harvesting season at the moment here in the north east and you have to be careful driving down any smaller roads as you often find the rice drying on a big blue tarpaulin stretched half way across the road.

I have been paraded around the local villages and shops and welcomed back by everyone, who all appear to remember me. I think the odd neighbour or two didn’t believe Sasipa when she said I would come back again in November, so she and I were happy to prove them wrong. Apparently they’re just jealous. After all I am the only falang (foreigner) in the village!

I was at a local shop buying a few plumbing and electrical items, when the most dilapidated car I have ever seen turned up. For a start it had no bonnet or doors and it beat, hands down, the clapped out old Citroen 2cv’s that we used to see on the road during family holidays to France, when I was a kid. I don’t know if they have MOT’s in Thailand, but I suspect not judging by this car.

I’ve been enjoying the food here, which is quite spicy. The region is Isaan and the people are the same ethnicity as those from Laos. It is here that the super spicy Som Tum (Papaya salad) hails from as does Laab Moo, a really tasty, hot and spicy pork mince dish served with refreshing pieces of raw Thai cabbage and cucumber. Sasipa and her daughter wanted to eat some European food, so I made some spaghetti which went down very well I’m pleased to say. I’m going to cook jerk chicken later this week, fingers crossed they like it too. I did bring a few herbs and spices with me as I found I couldn’t get them here.

It’s slightly cooler here than Pattaya or Bangkok, but only by a couple of degrees and that’s mainly at night. It’s still in the early 30’s during the day and the 20’s at night. There is a bit of a cold snap here although it’s mostly up around the golden triangle/Chiang Mai area. One national park in the far north reported a ‘shocking’ night time temperature of only 11 degrees centigrade. As a Thai person would probably reach for the nearest winter coat at anything under 20 degrees, it is unusually cold. No doubt it will be back in the upper 30’s very soon.

I installed the safe, bolting it to the floor and I’m very pleased with the result. Other than that I’ve got a longish list of things to fix or do in the house, which is great as I like to stay busy and I’ve just repaired another motorbike.

The one I fixed up last time, Sasipa’s son is using and he’s left us his old bike in its place. It was overheating with no lights or indicators and dodgy brakes, but it’s all good now. Anyway, I’m off to go and buy some doors…