Multi-headed snake

One reader was impressed by the multi-headed snake statue in the Nong Khai post. The pictures do not do it justice. The snake is about 90 feet tall. I'll add another picture. Remember you can click on the pictures to get a better look. For instance in picture 2 there is actually a guy on the lower left of the picture. It gives the size of these things some perspective.

fences

Look at some of the fences I see in my travels. Nothing is wasted. Not even a stick. Notice the pieces of motobike tires used to make the gate hinges. Udon Thani, Issan, Thailand.

Nong Khai Thailand

Nong Khai is on the Mekong River and a tourist site in Thailand. The first week of October there is a festival there that has something to do with balls of light that show up each year over the river. No explanation for them. I have been there a few times but once we visited a park there with huge statues. I show some pictures here.

This morning, for breakfast, I had something called "pat priku aut". It is rice with a stir fry pork, pepper and onion on top. Wow was this hot! But hot is nothing to Thais. Outside my window on the street is a big pepper bush that has peppers that will burn your face off. The lady in the food shop across the street comes over and picks a few peppers every morning. I can just reach out my window and get them. When I need to make a food order at the shop, I just open my window and order across the street. Within minutes my order is ready to be picked up. I use her plates and bring them back later. Thai fried rice costs me 30 baht or about $1. I'm pretty sure she over charges me because I am a foreigner. Udon Thani, Thailand, Issan

My friend Min

Just a quick video of mylittle friend Min doing a dance. Udon Thani, Thailand

For those seeking "Retirement" Visa in Thailand

I now have 2 visas in my passport. One is a Non-immigrant "O" visa good for 3 months and now I have the coveted "Retirement" Visa good for 1 year. They run consecutive and are good for 15 months. I wanted to mention this for those that are seeking the "Retirement" visa for one reason. If you REALLY want to uncomplicate things get a consultant. I know it is an additional expense but it is worth the peace of mind. I'll run it down real quick. First, there is a long laundry list of items you must get together in order to get the "Retirement" visa. Here are a few. 1. You have to have a current non-immigrant "O" visa, 2. you have to have pictures of yourself like passport photos that are 4cm X6cm in size. 3. you must be 50 years old, 4. you have to prove you have either sufficient monthly income (65,000b) or have money in a Thai bank (800,000b) for 3 months before your visa renewal and it must have come from a bank outside of Thailand. 5. you have to have your passport and have copies of every page which should be signed by you. 6. You must have copies of the information about your residence. You must have a form filled out by your landlord and copies of his/her ID card. 7. 1900b for the visa fee. If all this is not enough you also need to go to your embassy to get a certification of your income if you are depending on the monthly income route for money.

It is a mess. The best advice is to use the consultant. I used Roong from Squires Consultants (089-2507619). She is the best. One thing I liked about her is that if you had a question and she did not know the answer she just phoned the immigration office and got the answer while you sat there. She has great contacts both at the Thai immigration and at (in my case) the US embassy. When it came to the day I was to go to the immigration office to see the immigration officer, I went to her office, she loaded me into her car, and she drove me to the immigration office in Nong Khai (about 50 kilometers one way). She had an appointment. We did not wait in a que. We sat down directly, did our business, and left. We had pleasant conversation all the way there and back. It was VERY painless. Her charges are reasonable. I can say the fee for the trip to the Immigration Office was 1000b. What was great was that she did all the talking and of course with her help we had more than enough paper work to satisfy the officer we met. I was told later that the officer we met was one of the tougher ones to deal with but we had no trouble at all and he offered, as I left, to help me with any other issues I had in the future.

washing machines

Washing machines here are mostly designed after Japanese machines. Some are build here but many come directly from Japan. Some are fully automatic. Put the clothes in with soap and wait awhile for the job to be done. Others (most) like the one pictured are far from automatic. The way they work is this: 1, fill them with water from a garden hose. 2. put the clothes and soap in for the wash cycle. 3 take the water out and fill again for the rinse or rinse the clothes in a tub on the side. 4. put the clothes into the spinner next to the washing tub and spin the water out. 5. Put the clothes into the solar dry cycle. (That is, hang clothes to dry.) There are almost never driers used here. In addition, there is no agitator in the washing machine. Rather there are jets of water that push the clothes around in the washing machine tub. The jets go clockwise for a few seconds, wait, then reverse direction for a few seconds. This particular washing machine pictured was the cheapest available at the store. About $100.

My Salad

Now. I like salad. Here salad is not that popular but it can be bought at the market for 75 cents or so. It comes in a small plastic bag. The salad dressing (some flavored mayonnaise) is in a bag in the bag. There is usually some lettuce, tomato, water crest, kernel corn, red beans, shredded carrot and one half a boileded egg. The ingredients can vary. One place I go always includes one red bean. Just one. They are very predictable.

coffee anyone?

In Thailand regular comsumers do NOT brew their own coffee. Maybe it is the expense of the coffee maker but almost all coffee is instant. I have been brewing coffee but it is expensive and much harder to find ground coffee. The coffee that Suda has been making me lately is 3 in 1. A single packet contains the coffee, sugar and creamer. It is hard to mess that up. Hot water and one packet, stir and done.

gasoline?

For maximum convinence do not go to the gas station with your motorbike. There are plenty of the roadside shops that have bottles of gas for sale for 20b (60 cents). This bottle can last a few days in a motorbike. These are glass bottles. As the price of gas goes up they simply put less in the bottle.

Gone Fishin'

I saw a lady fishing one day. She was fishing with a net in a muddy ditch. The fish are tiny. They really don't look that tasty either.

Thai wedding

I went to a Thai wedding awhile back. Here are some pictures. Notice the strings tied around the wrists of the bride and groom. Those are tied on by individuals for good luck. I got to dance with the sister of the groom and later got our picture taken together.

Lumber yard

There is really not much wood used in construction here except for really old buildings or the "pole" type structures. You can get poles and grass mats to make a shop for instance. See these pictures taken last year as we got materials to build the food shop we had. It is gone now. The materials shown on the vehicle cost about $16.

Thai Massage anyone?

Thai Massage at this shop across the street from my former food shop. This shop is in fact closed now. Businesses come and go quickly. Another business moved in there yesterday. I am not sure what they will be doing. The signs say Thai massage 100 baht for 1 hour. That's somewhere between $2.80 and $3.

Today I begin a new career

I have been investigating a teaching job here in Thailand. By Thai standards I can make vast amounts of money. Well, a lot. I have been talking with a company here that places teachers. Some of the pay schemes I have seen are 20 hours a week at 20,000b per month. That's around $600USD. As the dollar weakens the pay goes up. To this end I have begun an online course called TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). The class costs $295USD and lasts about 4 weeks. A new unit of instruction is sent to me everyday (if I want it that way) and I complete a work sheet and send it back to an online tutor that grades and comments. At the end I get a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Certification. I completed my first unit today. I wish I were back in Japan. I know that this could be quite lucrative there.

Smallest Gecko I have seen

Geckos are everywhere. They are inside the house but you don't see them much. They leave little presents on the walls that look like a grey kernel of wheat in the hull. What is nice is that they keep the mosquitos at bay. These things are extremely fast. Yesterday I put my hand on the wall ouside my house and a gecko jumped onto my hand. He seemed comfortable there and stayed with me for awhile. I finally put him on a plant outside.

Bull in the streets

Just a couple of pictures of a bull that wanders the streets. I have NEVER seen anyone with the bull. No one appears to own it or care for it. It is tame and basically ignores people, cars and trucks. It goes where it wants to and no one tells it otherwise.

Dogs rule

Dogs rule in Thailand. Overall they are the worst example of an animal on the planet. They are usually very dirty and most are all scarred up from battles with other dogs. A great percentage have hideous wounds from encounters with vehicles. Sometimes eyes are missing and most dogs limp some how. Tails can be broken and ears lopped over where they should not. But... Dogs go where they want and have the right in the road. There are exceptions and those are the dogs that people keep in the yard, inside the fence. There are a lot of cats. They are rarely seen but the majority of them have shortened tails. I think that is mostly because a dog has bitten it off. So generally cats stay out of sight. In the two months I have been here, I have seen one dog on a leash. Dogs are in the streets everwhere. They will sleep in the street. Cars must watch out for them and drive around them. Having said all that, Thais love their dogs. They have plenty of them. Most homes have 2 or 3. I saw one home that had about 20. The people that lived nearby called that guy crazy. When I used to walk by his house (I don't anymore) one of his dogs might bark and it set them all off. It sounded like a visit to the kennel where I used to board my dog when I went on vacation (in the USA). Some people ask me "Don't they eat them?". The answer is, "No." If you mention eating a dog most Thais make a face. They are sickened by the thought. It has been reported to me in a place not far from here called Sakornakon that they do in fact eat dogs. When our dog Tony is bad I threaten to send him there.

Met some water buffalo

I saw the biggest water buffalo yesterday as I was walking along the road. The Thais raise these for food. They are sold just like cattle. I think time was when they were used to help plow the paddies but not any more. Now they have these cool tractors. I'll have to get a pic of one of them some time.

This water buffalo looked like a VW on legs coming down the road. The pic here does not do it justice. I saw a pile of dung that it left on the road that would have surely stopped a motorbike.

Click on the picture to get a better view.

The water situation

First. Don't drink the water. Even the Thais drink only bottled water. The drinking water can come in liter sized bottles or smaller or they buy bulk with some big bottles of filtered water that are really about 20 liters I would guess. These bottles of water run about 36 cents if you have a bottle to turn in. The deposit on the bottle can be $3. Plastic is expensive here. More on that another time. Water from the tap LOOKS clean. It is used for washing clothes, showering, washing dishes and the dog and watering the plants. The main problem with the tap is water pressure. They do have some water towers around but I have had many complaints from different people that they have no water pressure at all during certain days and times of day. My visa consultant, Roong (more on her later), had a beautiful and expensive house in a new development. She moved out not long after moving in because water was not available most of the time. She did have a water tank but the public feed to the tank had no water pressure so she had to pay someone to come in every other day to fill her tank at a cost of about $6. So what about the tank. The way that people over come the water pressure problem is to have a tank that holds about 50 or 100 gallons of water (they come in many sizes) and a water pump attached to it. The pump detects bad pressure and kicks on to supplement water pressure. If there is not sufficient water in the public feed line the water is drawn from the tank. When you are not otherwise using water the slow/low pressure fills the tank up again. In my tank at my new house the tank has the same mechanism you find in the toilet tank in the USA to detect water in the tank and shut off the public water feed. (The old floating ball in the tank). What do they do out in the country? In the country the old way is to use a huge clay jar. I think it must hold 200 gallons. When it rains, rain water is directed from the roof into this jar for later use. When the rain stops there is a cover placed on the top of the jar. When water is needed it is dipped out of the jar. To shower you splash yourself with the water from a bucket with a shallow bowl. It is primitive but it works. Have to keep that jar covered or it will fill with bugs and mosquitoes.

Tony Tony the ugly dog

Suda has been complaining that I do not give Tony equal face time with Leo so I must put up some pictures of Tony. Suda bought Tony about 1 year ago for about $15 at the market. She loves him dearly. He does have hair but it is real short, white and course. He is very smart and fearless around much larger dogs. Mostly Tony does not have confrontations, rather he makes friends. He travels around with Suda (in the car) and has his covey of friends every place she visits. He is very confident with himself and independent until it comes to dinner. He loves it when we buy him little boxes of sweetened milk.

Litter bugs

I remember being here 40 years ago. Everyone just threw their trash out the nearest window. If it landed on a neighbor's roof or in their yard... Oh. Well. Things have gotten better. There are people paid to clean the streets. But generally people are still litter bugs. I have been trying to teach those around me to put trash into a trash receptacle and now they do as long as they are around me. It is common practice, however, to use your neighbor's vacant lot to dispose of trash, yard clippings, and construction debris. I went for a walk today. It would be a beautiful walk if there was no trash there! Plastic it the major culprit. Thais love their plastic bags. Time was when they used banana leaves to wrapup the food they sell. Banana leaves break down and disappear. Plastic however...