Well, here I am back in sunny Thailand again. I expect to be here until the end of April, with a few trips to other places planned during my stay. Most notably to Laos in late February. It’s been 20 years since I was last there and this time I aim to take in the Capital city, plus a couple of other places I didn’t go last time. Obviously Cambodia is off the the agenda for the time being and I’m not sure if the border is open anyway.
I flew in with Turkish Airlines this time after a lovely Christmas with my daughters and new grand-daughter (Eeek!!). Pretty decent airline, the food was tasty and they had a good selection of films. Even the first leg of the journey from Dublin to Istanbul was full service on a wide bodied jet.
Sasipa met me at the airport, this time parked up in the drop off/pick up zone waiting for me. Not only don’t you get moved on rapidly, but it’s free as well. As it is in most countries except the UK! Immigration was a bit slow, some people had forgotten to fill out the new online arrival form and were sent back to fill it in, but I I had already completed it, so I breezed through and I was soon behind the wheel heading for central Bangkok.
Not very much to report from Bangkok, I was pleased to be remembered at Danika’s favourite bar near the Khao San road and I also headed back to Gardenia, which do the most amazing quality bed linen for wholesale Thai prices. I was sad to see that the Vietnamese Banh Mi place, one of the stalls in the new food alley frequented by Thai’s just across the road from the Siam centre, had closed. On the plus side the original food alley was open again after refurbishment, but sadly it was their closing day when we were there.
We looked around a couple of markets and enjoyed riding the canal boats as we always do. They are the definately the best way to get around in my opinion. We ate at a few usual haunts including ‘grandma’s’ and a nice place on the canal. I fired up my Muvmi app, which is like Grab or Uber, but for Tuk Tuk’s. It’s so useful and saves you getting ripped off by the Tuk Tuk guys.
I went to the Siam Pharmacy, which is a couple of stops along the BTS skytrain and just near the Bumrungrad international hospital. This pharmacy is huge, they sell just about any medicine known to man and have dozens of staff and pharmacists on hand to help and advise. The best thing is you don’t need a prescription. So if you run out of anything or just want to get a stash of Naproxen, antibiotics or whatever, you can.
All too soon, it was time to leave and by late morning we were heading to Pattaya for the new year.
Once checked in the Quba, our home from home in Pattaya, we headed out for a walk. As it’s new year they left a little design on our bed with roses and some fruit, which was nice of them. It is particularly chaotic here at the moment. Many people have come for the new year celebrations, so everywhere is extra busy. The hotels are full and the roads jammed. Maybe that doesn’t sound particularly appealing, but it’s still a riot of noises, smells, amazing food, live music, markets and general hustle and bustle and I like it. Before long I’ll be in rural Thailand so it’s great for a few days.
I wanted to have words with the Thai vendor in the night Bazaar who cheated my mother out of a couple of souvenir items she bought. but the concession wasn’t exactly where I remembered it being and I didn’t want to accost an innocent Thai seller so I had to let it go 🙁
I went to my favourite thin lek nam tok place to eat and it was indeed tasty, but not as good as I remember. I have it feeling though that it is my taste buds to blame rather than their recipe changing. Perhaps my palette will soon readjust to the Thai spices.
Nearby, one of the temples was doing a roaring trade and had a market selling food, clothes and various other goods going on inside the grounds. We walked past a woman sitting at a table eating dinner, she was wearing a back carrier that contained a very cute dog called Oscar. Saipa was immediately over to chat to her and try out the carrier herself!
The new years eve celebrations were manic. The beach was jammed packed with people as far as the eye could see in either direction. There was a superb firework display and some drone images in the sky too. A food market that stretched a kilometre or more along the edge of the beach was doing good business and we bought a few snacks as we threaded our way through the crowds.
I bought a few things and had a Thai massage, but my knee was bent around a little too much for its mobility these days, so I limped away a bit. (Just as well I bought a load of Naproxen in Bangkok) A visit to the Tokoyo facial finished off the treatments and again too soon it was time to say goodbye and head north.
We saw a couple of live bands including one of my favourites at the Rock Factory (earplugs required). Normally it’s Thai women who have western boyfriends, but as these Thai musicians are so cool, the men have western girlfriends, whom Sasipa and I chatted to for a while.
The drive went smoothly although the amount of traffic going the other way, as people headed home to Bangkok from the provinces, impacted us once or twice. Most notably at the start of the climb up through the edge of the Ta Phrya national park, not too far from the Cambodian border. Here the road narrows to single carriageway in each direction and we had to wait 25 minutes or so while they let thousands of cars heading the other way use both sides of the road to try and clear the backlog at the top.
We arrived in Buriram at dusk and checked into the GT residences hotel. I really recommend this place if you are ever over this way. It’s only about 550 baht (£12) a night for a huge comfortable room with king size bed, sofa, fridge, bathroom etc etc. There is plenty of parking and indeed I would have stayed here before, but their entry on Booking .com says they have no parking. I discovered by chance that this is far from the case. They have some of their race cars parked there too, hence the GT name and theme at the hotel.
We met Sasipa’s son and daughter in law for dinner at Ma Maison. Unlike the name suggests the food is Thai, although they certainly have a selection of nice wine too. There is also a live band upstairs. The food is excellent and apart from some Thai favourites like Tom Yum Goong (a spicy seafood soup with prawns) and Pad Thai, we had some salmon sashimi with wasabi and some very rare finely sliced beef with a fresh zingy dressing and also some crispy pork. Yummy!
Sasipa left early to go and clean the house. She insists it’s not fit for me to see it until she has cleaned, as she has been away for a week. So I have a leisurely cup of tea and do some shopping. I enquire at a couple of cinema’s to ask if they have the latest Avatar film in English, but to my slight surprise they are in Thai only. Quite often they are in English with Thai subtitles or a least some showings are. Indeed the last Avatar film I saw in Ipoh, Malaysia was in English with Malay subtitles. I did some shopping instead and then headed to Mel’s bar/restaurant for lunch. It was nice to catch up with him and we chatted for a good hour.
Arriving at Sasipa’s I wondered if Cafe and Kiki, who were just puppies when I last saw them, would remember me. No problem at all, they were delighted to see me as were the other dogs who have already remembered me several times. Not so with the two new ones, who barked their heads off and still are three days later!!
A tour around the house to see what disasters have befallen it in my absence followed and a list of things to repair or sort out was made. I had to rehang the bathroom door, which was held on by a piece of string and unblock two sinks. I repaired the kettle and fixed and resewed the zip on one of the big sofa cushions that you sit on. Yes there is now a real sofa! Somewhere comfortable to sit instead of a wooden bench. It feels much more homely just for that. The rail that the gate runs on is clogged with grass and weeds, so I also cleared that so it now runs smoothly on its rails again. I also had to redo the mesh along its 5 meter length as the previous lot was destroyed by the dogs when on escape manoeuvres. This time I have gone for steel mesh!
It’s been great to catch up with friends like John and Steve and some of the family. Having a beer with my friend John, he complains about being woken up at the crack of dawn this last while by a 4×4 driving past laden down with large speakers with the heavily amplified driver apparently calling out ‘good morning’ as he cruises by. John cannot quite bring himself to believe that a Thai person would drive by calling out good morning at several hundred watts just for him, especially as Steve lives nearby and has not made a similar claim. Mind you he is Australian so I suppose it would be G’day for him.
The mystery is soon cleared up. It is election time here and ‘number one’ is one of the choices. In Thai this is ‘booe nueng’. With Thai pronunciation and a startled Englishman this sounded like ‘good morning’ to John! For balance 😉 I should say that there is also a number two (booe sawng).
An old family friend of Sasipa’s died so we went along to one of the three pre-funeral evening gatherings with a lot of monks chanting for a long time. followed by lots of food and beer.
I bought a small halogen oven as Sasipa returned an unwanted item to the shop and they took the value of it off of the price of the oven, so it was a good deal.
Today I repaired a wall and rehung the back gate as one of the aunt’s buffalos decided to headbutt it, cracking the wall and busting the bolts holding the gate to the wall. Luckily I had some steel left over from a job last year, so I only had to buy a couple of bolts to fix it. Otherwise the dogs escape, which is alright during the day, but not at night and the cows or buffalo try to come in.
It’s Sasipa’s birthday and so some family are coming over for dinner. Sasipa says she would like some roast potatoes, as she enjoyed them so much when I made the Christmas dinner in 2024. So I will be doing some cooking and can try out this new halogen oven (PS sadly it’s not that good I discovered!)
Potatoes aren’t eaten that much here and especially roast potatoes as most people don’t have an oven, at least out in the sticks they don’t. She also wants the jerk chicken I make, so I’m in chef mode. Her son is preparing and cooking the prawns, except for a plateful which he prepares raw as a type of sashimi, with an excellent dipping sauce. A great time was had by all.
‘Booe Nueng’ aka ‘Good Morning’ dropped round today with the, apparently, standard bribe to vote for them. Bunging Sasipa 800 baht, which is a not inconsiderable amount for a Thai. Sadly I am not allowed to vote so I missed out. I wonder whether the others will also be round with the cash. Funny that no one here considers it corrupt at all, although I think receiving the cash doesn’t mean that you have to vote for them! Update – ‘Booe sawng’ popped round this morning with 300€ baht, a bit under the going rate I think. 🙂
A few relatives are ill, with cancer unfortunately, but at least they are all old. Sasipa’s brother came up from Bangkok to see them and stayed the night, so we had a beer or two together. Apart from having a small taxi firm, he also sells clothes in one of the Bangkok markets. This was a useful bit of information as it helped in deducing why there were suddenly a few discarded sets of mannequin legs in a corner of the garden, which I came across after he went back home!
It is children’s day in Thailand and so I went to the shops to buy lots of snacks and then Sasipa and I went to the local infants school to distribute them. The children aged 2-4 were excited to see us and queued up in a line to collect their snacks one by one from me. The teachers were happy too and invited us to eat with them, while keen to try out speaking English. The difference to Europe is very marked. No fortress schools here, at least not in rural areas and there were cows strolling across the playground from time to time too. The teachers kindly gave them something to eat so they stopped in the parking area and tucked in.
‘Booe nueng’ has won the election and ‘booe sawng’ are ‘licking their wounds’. It’s actually pretty brutal as the payments they make can run into millions of Baht. This is money they often borrow, so it is doubly painful if they don’t win.
My current job is building an enclosure for the dogs (10 of them!) This means the chickens don’t get assassinated by one of them on a regular basis and they have a nice area with trees and shade that stretches from the back of the house to the front. They, hopefully, won’t be able to escape when we aren’t there and risk the neighbourhood poisoner who lives not far away. Kaio (green) was recently poisoned, but Sasipa managed to save him with various medicines and treatments, but sadly she doesn’t always win. I finished the enclosure and some of the dogs look at me reproachfully from the other side of the fence, especially Kiki, who used to be called Kymer, but rather like German shepherds after WW1 became Alsatians(until 1977). He had to have his name changed after the skirmishes with Cambodia. Other dogs love it and one has decided a plant pot is their new chill out spot and another likes to sit in the ‘swimming pool’.
We drove up to see Sasipa’s father today, about 120km away in the direction of Roi Et, as she heard from relatives that he isn’t well. He seemed alright, but a bit forgetful. In fact Sasipa has only seen him twice in 50+ years, prior to this visit as he abandoned them all before she was even born and those two times were by chance. It seems he had quite a hard life and is quite thin and frail now, so Sasipa wanted to make her peace while she still could.
Well that’s a wrap on my first couple of weeks back in Thailand. It’s been quite busy and a little bit cool on the temperature front here in the north east. There is a slight nip in the wind, even though it’s around 27 degrees during the day, it can drop to 14 or 15 at night. Normal service will be resumed in a few days according to the weather app, with temperatures back up to 32+ in the day and 20 at night. It is mid winter though, so can’t complain. In a couple of months time it will be 40 during the day and 25 at night.
