Some Sights of Thailand

The Novotel Suvarnabhumi Airport Hotel at the Bangkok Airport was a very convenient place to stay when we wanted to break up our long travel a little bit. The view from our hotel room looked out to the nice courtyard, but we did not really have time to enjoy it. The only thing we managed to do at this hotel besides sleeping was to have breakfast. For a buffet breakfast, the selection was okay, but nothing too impressive. I was particularly surprised by the lack of selection of fruits. There were only a few items, such as cantaloupe, apple, and watermelon, but nothing too exotic. For a tropical place, this was quite disappointing.

The food court at one of the Tesco Lotus shopping center. It has lots of delicious food that Samantha and I can eat, but Gary hasn’t found it very attractive. A lot of Chinese BBQ items, noodles, etc., but surprisingly, not a lot of Thai curries. I wonder why. Gary promised that once he gets more used to Thailand, he will eat here with us sometimes. It’s a promise still to be fulfilled.

View from one of the condos along Canal Road in Chiang Mai where a lot of the new condos are located. A lot of these condos are close to the mountains and the views are very beautiful. They are also more peaceful. Unfortunately, most of these condos are empty and not many people live in them. Most are owned by foreigners. Besides being too far from Samantha’s school, this is another reason why we did not choose these condos.

This is a view taken from the school campusThe white houses in the back belong to Premburi (or Greenburi), the real estate development owned by the school PTIS (Prem Tinsulanonda International School). We will be living in that development, where we can just walk to school via the back road. Can’t wait to move in there. They are currently working on the contract, without a firm move-in date. The funny thing is that they asked for a permanent address, which we did not have. We sold our house in the U.S. to move to Thailand! Pansuvan explained that they needed an oversea address to put on the contract, so we ended up giving them my brother’s address. It’s just easier to comply with something than arguing why they would need one.

The school campus is quite pretty, and quite large. Here is the view taken from the school cafeteria overlooking the school buildings across from the lake.

“Beauty Chilly in Garden” sign, whatever that means. We just found it amusing as we drove by on our way to the Sriphat medical center.

This is the Meechok Plaza where one of the Rimping Supermarket is located. The Rimping supermarkets are very popular with expats here, and the prices are unsurprisingly higher than other places.

This is the main pool in the Spa Resort, where we are staying. There is a second pool right next to the Spa restaurant. However, one day Samantha and Gary went swimming there and came back quickly, telling me that the other pool was quite dirty.

People carry all kinds of stuff here. Samantha particularly liked this one.

Rice paddy fields, a common sight outside the Chiang Mai city center.

Samantha really wants me to share with you this little black caterpillar with white fuzzy hair. She found it on the school campus. After some research on the internet, the name of this caterpillar seems to be Eupterotidae Apona.

Live show at the Makro supermarket. We had no idea what it was about, but it was very loud and well attended. They sang “Happy Birthday” song (in English), and gave out cakes to people. There were quite a few hill tribe girls in the audience, whom seemed to be special invitees. The Thais love to be entertained, and we see live shows everywhere.

Buddha statues and temples are every where in Thailand! We were driving along a country back road and kept coming across these statues and ornate temples!

You will get a fine if you do one of these things inside your car!

You can develop some serious arm muscles if you go shopping every day at a busy center. When the parking lot gets busy and the normal spots are taken, then cars will start lining up perpendicular to other cars. If you are lucky enough to be blocked by these cars, then get ready for some exercise!

Paradise Found?

It has been 4 days since we’ve settled into our new environment here in the resort. It is a very beautiful place, full of trees, streams, and views. So is this the paradise that we’ve been looking for?

Not quite. To begin with, the 1-bedroom townhouse we are renting is far from ideal. We wanted to rent a 2-bedroom but they didn’t have anything available for this time. So we thought it would be okay for just a month. Well, to begin with, the resort is quite far away from anything. It is very close to the International School (PTIS) that Samantha is going to, which was the main reason why we wanted to rent a place in the resort to check it out. Mr. Li actually came here to visit when he was in Chiang Mai last time to check it out for us. When we asked what he thought of the place, he just said, “It’s very quiet.” Well, we thought that was not too bad. It actually is a great place if you want to get away from it all! It’s great for meditating and inner-searching. However, our minds are currently not on a vacation mood and we are thinking about making it work for the long term. Very quickly, Gary and I both came to the same conclusion that it would not be practical. Besides being remote, the 1-bedrooms have other issues: the stairs to the bedroom are very slippery. I slipped once the very first night, no bones broken but a few bruises. The kitchen is extremely small and difficult to cook with. The kitchen sink doesn’t drain because somehow they use this flex-pipe thing instead of proper plumbing. There are gaps in the doors and screens so bugs are welcome visitors. The hot water runs out pretty quickly so luke warm showers are the best you can hope for, which I guess is not a problem for Thailand. Since we are up in the mountain, there are more mosquitoes and more rain. For whatever reason, I am very popular with mosquitoes and my entire body is decorated with mosquito bites. Sammy gets a few and Gary gets the least. It has been raining here almost every day for a little while and then it clears up. The property manager Robin has been very nice. He’s getting some of these issues fixed. Just today, someone came to fix the kitchen sink pipe so that I am looking forward to a fast draining sink tomorrow morning.

Samantha has been enjoying the place though. When I asked her today if she were happy, she said yes. Here is her list of reasons to be happy: oil massage (which we had yesterday), fruit smoothies (which she had several), deserts (we had a very good raw zen chocolate the first night, and a not so great raw goji bar today), and swimming pool.

Even though we have a lot more time on our hands at the moment, I’ve found it difficult to relax. There are still so many loose ends to tie up, such as closing some U.S. accounts, arranging for money transfer etc., and most of all, our shipment through FedEx is still stuck in Customs in the Bangkok airport. Somehow they thought we were importing some medical instruments (probably related to the biofeedback monitor in the box) and wanted a personal Tax ID and medical license for import. The FedEx agent we talked to in Thailand was not very helpful. I emailed them some more information. They were supposed to call us today but didn’t. Let’s see what happens tomorrow.

There has been a bright spot today though. We rented a car from the airport! We paid 800 Baht (about $26) to have a driver take us to the airport to pick up the car. Car rentals in Thailand are quite expensive. For the cheapest Honda Brio, we paid 16,050 Baht ($516) for a one-month rental, which also includes auto insurance. We’ve been told over and over that if you have the money, you should buy a car and then sell it when you want to leave or get another model. Cars don’t depreciate much here. Well, that’s our plan and we think that we are going to buy a Honda Brio, a small and cheap car perfect for getting around the city. We are doing a one-month rental to see how we like it. So far so good.

Amazingly, we did not get lost at all and found our way back from the airport to the resort with Google Map. I was quite worried about the iPhone running out of power before we got back but the battery did not run out until shortly after we’d reached the resort. We all felt that this was a major achievement of the day! From tomorrow on, we are no longer bound to the Resort. Tomorrow, we are going to go out and explore!