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blogs -
About Thailand
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| Here we are in the photographic wonderland of Koh Phangan Thailand, a place where everywhere your eye turns is a fabulous colour filled moment, and now my Panasonic Lumix digital pocket camera no longer functions. I believe it's the old "grain of sand" under the zoom toggle situation, which has probably contributed greatly to camera sales throughout the sandy parts of this planet.
I took it completely apart, put it back together after many hours of denying frustration, and it worked exactly the same, which is to say.. that it still didn't work...the operation was a success but the patient has definitely died.
We're going to order the new Canon A10 waterproof camera as soon as it's available from Bangkok (we've been told end of May), and then we'll be able to take you out snorkeling with us to our favorite reef, and we'll be grabbing more shots of those incredible sunsets and moments, like a family of 5 on a motorscooter, or the unbelievable insect life that abounds here. A saffron robed monk taking five with a Marleboro light, a gap-toothed smile, a three legged dog, young Thai girls on cell phones driving their scooters, families out fishing in the falling tide... and so on and so on.. | | | The Canon A10 arrived the other day... 12megapixs.. so far so good waterproof... | ...underwater self portrait...
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blogs -
About Thailand
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 Back in Vancouver it seemed that not a minute went by that a police siren wasn't screaming its head off, day or night. And with the generous abundance of Dunkin' Donuts dotting the landscape there were always a few men and women in blue within hailing distance. It begs the question: are we Canucks a lawless bunch of cutthroats and thieves and jaywalkers? Are we all just waiting for that unguarded moment when the long arm of the law is washing cruller crumbs off his or her taser-fingers in the privacy of the DD washroom so that we can go out and perpetrate some heinous crime such as smoking a cigarette within 6 meters of a public doorway? Or brazenly driving around on the thoroughfares with a burnt-out light on the rear license plate? I bring this up because I only recalled the seeming overabundance of flatfoots by way of contrast: here they don't have any donut shops, and hence, I guess, they basically don't seem to have much in the way of law enforcement. Picture this: a motorbike, all 125 roaring cc's of it, putts by in perfect nonchalance under the scorching Thailand sun with not one, not two, but FIVE people aboard. Mom, Dad, the toddler, the pre-schooler, and mother-in-law bringing up the rear. And not a helmet in sight. OK, so there I was, casually driving down Hastings with my wife, little Jimmy (he got his first tooth last week!), Sally (starts kindergarten in the fall) and Gladys (visiting from Chilliwack 'coz she likes to spend a bit of time with the grandkids), and heck, we were only going 30 kliks on the old happy honda on account of the, well, the Gross Vehicle Weight, and of course we weren't wearing helmets, because they restrict the passage of wind through our hair, for one thing. Next thing I know there's a friggin' S.W.A.T. team all over us, they're slappin the old bracelets on Granny 'coz she's got that mouth on her, and I'm looking at ten to ninety in the Big House, unless Harper and the boys manage to get that capital punishment thingy back on the books in which case I'm toast. But here in Thailand, even if we did drive through the rare helmet check roadblock (because they actually are compulsory here) all I have to do is get Granny to show them the helmet, the one helmet, that's tied on the back and we sail through while all the farangs line up to pay their 200 baht fines. "But Officer! I thought helmets were optional here! I've never seen the locals wearing them!" This in fact did happen to Ea once, and since then we both wear them at all times, which makes us a rare sight on the roads of Koh Phangan. And driving on the wrong side of the road? Well, it was only for a little ways, because we're going into that store right there, and we could see the oncoming traffic perfectly well, what's the big deal? And stopping at a stop sign? Well, I slowed down, didn't I ? There was nobody coming. Lighten up!
Now try this: go into a seveneleven and buy a coupla' brewskies, yes, please, open, kop khun kop, and then go out and sit on the sidewalk in front and suck them back while watching entire clans bike by, one clan per mo-ped. First of all, you're thinking "beer at a seveneleven?" Yeah, or Sang Som rum, or something sort of spelled like Remy Martin, but more like Beny Morton, or wine that's not french. Or coolers that don't inform as to what exactly has been cooled for your beveraging pleasure. Out front of the store. Grab yourself a seat and knock yourself out. So what if it's 3 o'clock in the morning? What, is there some law against it? Apparently not.
But don't smoke any wacky terbacky in the open, and don't say anything nasty about the Royal Family, because that WILL get you a whole pack of trouble, and I'm not sure, but I think there's no cafeteria in the jail, and definitely no swedish high density foam mattresses either. Hot showers? Yeah, right!
And by the way, the men in blue here are actually the men in brown. I saw one once.
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blogs -
About Thailand
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 | Since we landed here (mid January '09) on Koh Phangan, this small beautiful island in the gulf of Thailand, we've had plenty of opportunity to study the little creatures called "geckos".
I was first introduced to geckos when I traveled around Hawaii some years ago, and also while in Mexico. They are the diminutive members of the reptile family, who would eat all the bugs that might have been flying through or trying to set up house within your abode. Their likeness is on t-shirts, baseball caps, beach towels, key chains, beer bottle openers and tropical batik sarongs. Gieco Insurance company even starred a talking gecko to sell their insurance. They're pretty damned popular little fellas, and we thought we pretty much knew all there was to know about geckos.
| | After landing on this island, I discovered how thin our assumed knowledge of geckos really was.
When we moved into our first house here on Koh Phangan, we discovered that each room in the house had at least one or two of the familiar little gecko guys busily chirping and working at keeping the house free of insects...good lads! During the first night in our new house, we heard an animal call that sounded like a cross between f*ck you and uh-oh followed by a sad moan, repeated a few times, but by the time we tried to locate it, it would be silent. We were truly intrigued. Late afternoon on the following day, Ted heard the uh-oh sound coming from under the eaves of the house. We discovered a very large lizard-like eye watching us from a 1 inch crack where the roof meets the wall. The eye filled the crack and swiveled to follow our movements. I raced for my camera and took a picture and we pondered the relative size of this mystery eyeball. The eyeball was truly massive relative to the little house geckos. I went online sleuthing for Thailand lizard info, and for a crazy second, I thought that perhaps a water monitor lizard had somehow set up house in our roof. Water monitors are pretty damn big and apparently they can give a nasty bite...do they climb?..nah, it couldn't be...could it? Let's be rational for a second...a water monitor lizard lives near water not in our roof? Right? But our house is not to too far from the water...ummm..that's totally silly...it's not a water monitor lizard! |  | We decided that its head was at least the size of a racket ball and our imaginations vaguely filled in the rest of the body, and that was all we could deduce about our uh-oh eaves animal that we assumed was a lizard. More online research suggested a Madagascar Lizard, but we're not on Madagascar so cancel that thought. We wanted to solve the mystery, but we put it on the back burner while we absorbed the fantastic sonic and visual assault of data that was pretty much a regular day on Koh Phangan.
| Every night we'd hear the uh-oh call from both near and far. Finally, on the day when Ted was test driving our new hammock, he quietly called me out to see a real in the flesh uh-oh lizard that had squeezed out from the crack in the eaves and was taking five in the open air. This was the owner of the eyeball, and he was about 12ish inches long, and his head was indeed about the size of a racket ball. Having grabbed my camera on the way out, I got some pictures. The first of an ongoing collection. | So now, we figure we've got it down. The uh-oh lizards are the big guys that live in our roof and in the surrounding coconut palms and yell uh-oh followed by the sad moan, and the geckos are the little pale guys that live in the house who make the chirping sound and eat the bugs. The following month, we moved into a quieter, more remote house in the jungle, and our education about geckos was taken to the next level. We were told by the house's previous occupant, that there was a rather large gecko that lived behind the fridge. We were picturing a fatter, slightly larger version of the nice pale little house geckos. Perfect, glad to have him in our kitchen Rather large" was quite the understatement. The first time I saw our "kitchen gecko" he scared the crap out of me. He was SERIOUSLY "rather large". He scurried across the wall and out through an impossibly small opening and I realized that he was terrified of me. From tip to tail he probably measures about 16 inches, and to him, I guess I must look as SERIOUSLY "rather large" as he does to me. But wait a second, if he's a gecko then what the hell are those cute little chirping guys that live in the house and all over Hawaii and Mexico? |  | I looked it up in the dictionary which gave a great description that applies to both the uh-ohs and the wee chirpers and omitted any helpful mention of size. So now the quest became one of defining what exactly is a gecko. We queried online, queried the locals and long time expat residents, and they all agreed that the uh-ohs were geckos, and the little guys that chirp were called "house lizards". Exactly opposite to what we thought. What we thought were geckos aren't geckos, and what we thought weren't geckos are geckos.
| The jungle house has revealed that an incredible variety of colouration, sizes, and politics exist within the world of the little house lizard. In this new house the pale little chirpers are the minority and stay in the bedroom. The green or grey or grey/blue guys make up the majority, and fight for domination of the deck ceiling near the overhead light. In the bathroom I saw one that was incredible tiny, perhaps an inch tip to tail. Maybe he's just a baby? And, they're not the perfectly peaceful creatures within their relative species that we first assumed. They seem to greatly notice their differences and police their turf based on size and colour.
The variety in house lizards and geckos sizes is perfectly accommodated by the variety in the sizes of insects that are part of everyday living. The small guys eat their size relative bugs, leaving the bigger flies and flying beetles, and bigger still monster sized flying beetles for the geckos. At night we sit on our deck and duck as the occasional disposable-lighter-sized bug zooms by and smashes into the walls a few times before finally landing successfully on the ceiling or the wall. No sooner have they touched down, than the house lizards size them up as do-able or not, or the geckos creep into the picture and the house lizards take a step back to watch their bigger relatives expertly grab a snack.
Some of these insects are so large that only "Gerhart", the massive gecko that lives behind our fridge, can tackle them. Sometimes, when we see a particularly large flying dumb beetle, a jade beetle, or especially one of those "darth vader" beetles with pincer fangs flies into our kitchen, we close the door and listen for the racket that signifies that Gerhart was successful. Gerhart is becoming used to us being around and is a little less shy, and we discovered that he has a girlfriend (Gizelle) who also lives behind the fridge and she's about 3/4's his size. | We queried online, queried the locals and long time expat residents, and they all agreed that the uh-ohs were geckos, and the little guys that chirp were called "house lizards". Exactly opposite to what we thought. What we thought were geckos aren't geckos, and what we thought weren't geckos are geckos. | We set up the camera in the kitchen a few nights ago and filmed him hunting and eating. While filming, a darth vader flew in and Gerhart gave us a great show ending in a crunchy gourmet gecko meal. Gotta love your fridge gecko! I really don't like those pincer fanged fellows.
The night after a rain storm, the ceiling of our deck becomes a festival of bug life, and the geckos and house lizards go on a serious prowl and feeding frenzy. You can literally watch their bellies expanding, and marvel at their technique. When the geckos make a successful bite at a bug, fly, moth, or beetle, it's like a hockey game and we yell "score!", perhaps thats not very buddhist but I'm glad that they make Gerhart, and the others, happy and fat. | In the meanwhile, I'm going to throw all the technical knit picking terminology out the window and just call them all geckos, big and small. "House Lizard" just doesn't do it for me. There's no style or romance in it, whereas "gecko" is a handle that paints a picture, with further definitions supplied by size, from miniscule to massive... So, what is a gecko? As far as I'm concerned, if it's got adhesive feet, is lizard-like, and eats bugs, it's a gecko. 
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About Thailand
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 | We know what it costs to live in Canada, and what with the dismal financial climate that truly is affecting the whole planet it's obvious that the most pain is probably being experienced in those places where consumerism is a way of life. | Most people in the "developed" countries are hunkering down and trying to maintain whatever levels of comfort they can manage, while having, of necessity to cut down on some of the frills, and hoping against hope that the new normal is only temporary. And hoping they'll remain in the shrinking minority that have livelihoods essential enough to keep the pay envelopes coming. But to some of us this meltdown of confidence in the world of money was long overdue, and some of us were lucky enough to read the writing on the wall before it was too late. Some of us, just by the skin of our teeth. | Before we packed it all in and headed off to Southeast Asia we did some research on the net to determine what it would cost; not to live it up like sultans, but just to live well, eat well and have the proverbial roof over the heads. One blogger maintained that two people could live in Thailand for something like $880 a month. I suspect that was USD, which would translate rough to $1125 CAD. OK, let's see how far we can get on around eleven hun a month: In Thai funds we're talking around 31,500 bahts for food, accommodation, transportation, and sundries that include such things as toiletries, cleaning supplies, suntan lotion (a necessity, trust me!) and the odd medicine to take care of some of the hazards of tropical living. |
The price range for accommodation is large, and dependent on certain factors, such as high or low seasonal rates, location vis a vis beaches or special tourist attractions, and amenities provided. For instance, a beach bungalow can be as low as 250 bahts a day ($9) ,but there'll be no hot showers. A slightly more upscale bungalow resort would be more in the 1000 baht range ($35). Or it can be 1500THB a day if there's a swimming pool. Pool=add500! There are places that for sure are more pricey than that, but we ignored these in our research because the eleven hun probably wouldn't get you past the first three days, and as soon as you walk out the door you're living in exactly the same paradise as the backpacker staying at the Nantakarn Bungalows for 250 baht a day! As for the hot shower thing, the water coming out of my tap is already practically scalding for the first couple of minutes, because in their infinite wisdom they've run the pipes from the well about a half a kilometer along the surface of the ground to our house.And swimming pool? They've got one at the "Y" back home, what are ya, crazy? |  | Drinking water has to be purchased, as even the locals don't drink either the well or the "government" water, for whatever reason. There is a service that delivers water in 40-litre re-usable plastic bottles (deposit 100 baht+15 to 20 baht/bottle). Figure on a bottle every 5 days for two people, so 90 to 120 baht ($3.15 to $4.20) a month. You can also buy small bottles of water at any corner store, but a 500ml bottle is 10 to 15 baht, so in an emergency it's okay, but otherwise not very cost effective. |
If you like Thai food, you're in luck, because it's cheap, delicious (aroon- mak-mak!) and available everywhere from the street vendors to the resort frou-frou restaurants. In our favourite street market a meal of Pad Thai, Thai spring rolls, fried chicken that makes KFC look and taste like Alpo, and fruit shakes (the Thai version of a slurpee, but made fresh with real fruit, not Strontium 90 and chemical dyes like the youth of northamerica are downing by the tanker-load), and all for 200 baht for two ($7). The same-same in a tourist trap restaurant might be about double that, and not any better tasting, maybe not even as good. At the same market we splurged once and had crab, prawns, pad thai, curry and a couple of quarts of Singha beer, all for under 400 baht! And that's with a tip, which is not really expected, and not 20%! If you don't care for Thai food, bring lots of cash, because everything is available, I suppose, (I've seen Mexican, Italian, Japanese, and even Bangers and Mash, Cheeseburgers and French Fries) but the prices are not much different for these foods than where you came from. And anyway, if you don't like Thai food, what're you doin' here anyway? Jeeze! | 
| If you've rented a house, you'll want to cook at least some of your own meals, and the markets are teeming with fruit and vegetables, half of which I couldn't begin to tell you what they even are! But Thailand can grow just about anything, so one can find what one needs to womp up some serious good eatin'. If you don't know how to cook Thai-style, they have cooking schools that are inexpensive, or go online and download some recipes. A lot of Thai cooking is very simple because it's mostly that stuff you shake out of the bottles (soy sauce, fish sauce, vinegar) and the little things you chop up and throw first into the wok (garlic, ginger, galangal) that make it authentic. And coconut milk; you can't swing a dead water monitor lizard without hitting a coconut tree, so it's a cheap staple. |
| I suppose I could break it down and tell you the prices of the individual foodstuffs, but I don't feel like it right now (this place appeals to the lazy in me!), so instead I'll just say in general that two people can eat well in the street markets for, say, 400 baht a day(12,000 baht a month) or about half that if you do all the cooking (and shopping, and washing up, and putting out the garbage...). A roof over one's head can cost as little as 5000 baht a month even in the high season, and transportation (in our case, a scooter-slash-motocross bike of 125 cc) can cost 2500 baht a month plus gas at 25 baht a liter which can reasonably be estimated at less than 1000 baht a month. The sundries are only a little cheaper than back home, so soap for dishes, clothes and bodies might set you back another 1000 baht, and all other things should be considered luxuries anyway (but if you really wanna know, smokes are 60 baht a pack and beer is 30 baht a quart bottle in a store - or 34 baht if you want it cold - wine is no cheaper, and perhaps more expensive than we're used to, and hard stuff that anyone civilized would pour into themselves is pricey). | | Add that up, and if you had as much money to spend as, say, a BC welfare cheque, you could do it here. 16,620 baht for two, or about $581.70, would cover the day-to-day expenses if you lived like a monk (and a nun), that is, an ascetic monk (so you'll have to be a bit sneaky about the nun), but visas and visa runs cost money, as does air fare, insurance, cell phones and computer connectivity, all of which don't enjoy any real price break over here, and I'll leave that to you to figure out, because there's a bug crawling on my calculator that I'd rather not disturb, and besides, didn't I say I'm lazy? |  |
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