My Journey Through Thailand

Apparently, a tropical storm hit Vietnam a couple of days ago, so now the rain is being passed onto Thailand. It rained all day yesterday. Not that I am complaining; It forced me to work on my packing and allowed me to stay in all day watching movies (with my A/C on, of course). Today, moving day, the rain has let up a little. We have had some sprinkles here and there, but overall, it’s a nice cool breezy day…a day that I could LOVE if I didn’t have so much laundry to do. Ugh! I should have missed a little work last week to get it done in the nice washing machine on a hot sunny day…but no. I thought I would put it off until the weekend…the cool, rainy weekend…bad idea. So, now I am moving into my house with dirty clothes. Luckily, my Balot and I went and bought buckets and scrub brushes to wash my clothes with so I have those ready when I need them.

So, I didn’t get the cute little house on the corner with no walls. Instead, I am moving into a 4 story row house. Yes, I said 4 stories. It is huge. I won’t use the 1^st or 4^th floor very often though as they are filled with the landlords items. Instead, I mainly will inhabit the 2^nd (the loft area) and 3^rd floor. The loft is a great area because with the front “door” open and the ceiling fan on, you get a nice breeze. I was given two chairs by my Balot so I can sit out there and drink coffee in the mornings or read books in the afternoons. The 3^rd floor is where my bedroom is. The room itself is enclosed and windows screened so I don’t have to worry about bugs or mosquitoes. My Nayok bought me a bed, sheets, and a pillow for my room. So far, I have nowhere to put my clothes, so that is going to be an interesting experiment (although I bought many hangers today). People are going to flip out if they see them stacked on the floor around the edges of my room.

Outside of my room there is another large room with a bathroom (no shower) attached to it. This is what I am going to call my exercise room. I am going to buy a yoga mat and hopefully start doing some P90X in the near future. Other than that, it will be a room that will be a lot of fun to run and slide down in a pair of socks.

The 4^th floor is full of my landlords stuff, but there is a door that leads out to the roof. On a cool day, I could probably sit on the roof and feel the breeze flowing by. On a hot day, it is where I am going to be drying all of my clothes (once again, not sure how that is going to go down yet as I have nothing to hang my clothes on).

People have been super nice giving me a bed, blanket (I had a choice of light blue, dark blue, or leopard print), pillow, sheets, cups, broom, mop, and various cleaning supplies. I have purchased: 2 washing buckets, hangers, hanger clips (for socks and underwear), laundry basket, fan (I think I will buy another one, but they are expensive), and a fridge. I have spent a TON of money…I think it comes out to 5800 baht almost $200. That is about a month and a half of rent.

What do I still need to buy: racks to hang my clothes, shelves, hot plate, lamp, plates, bowls, pan, cooking utensils, dish towel, curtains, extension cords…and then I get to carry it all back to my place on my bike…sometimes, I really miss my car.

I’m super excited to spend my first night at my place tonight. It’s going to be strange having that big ‘ol house all to myself. OH wait…I forgot…the bathrooms. The one upstairs is a toilet only. There is one on the first floor, though, that is bath and shower…bucket shower, and both bathrooms are squat toilets. Guess I’ll be working out my leg muscles for the next two years.

Update: Last night, my bucket shower was heavenly. I felt so gross after carrying everything around, and attempting to set up things without A/C is no fun on a humid day. But, my shower felt amazing…until I got out and started sorting again only to realize I was going to need another shower before going to bed. Oh well. I slept well and only woke up once in the middle of the night to someone slamming their door while a very loud motorcycle drove by. I woke up at 6am to birds singing, people talking, and the sun glaring in through my window since I have no curtains. All in all, a good first night.

This weekend I am heading into BKK for a Thai Youth Theater meeting. I am leaving Thursday night and will be home Sunday afternoon. Next week is a 4 day week because it is the Queen’s birthday on Friday, but I will be headed to another volunteer’s site and be working an English Camp there on Saturday. We are going to be talking about geography and painting a world map – something we will be doing at my site in the future.

My bed with awesome sheets. The too small blanket is actually towel material

The front of my house. Hopefully you can get an idea
of how my front doors open...you can open them across the
entire front of the house. The 4 open window are my bedroom