Same - Same, but Different!

OK first of all - I know a few of you had tried to leave comments on my previous posts but were unable to unless you had a certain type of email account - that problem is now fixed due to Jess, my blogger expert who is teaching me all the ropes of this blog thing. So if anyone wants to leave comments it should work now - but if it doesn't please let me know.

So it’s Monday and we are no longer in paradise – vacation is over and we are back in Bangkok! We got our airfreight shipment over the weekend – this is the first 450 lbs of our stuff. Quite exciting – Joe got two bags of his coffee and I got a gallon jug of my hair gel so life is good! I’m not sure what we were most excited about – our own towels, a bath rug, our own bedding with sheets that FIT our bed even if they just barely fit, or perhaps it’s the normal size trashcans. Actually, I think we are both voting for the trashcans. We spent most of the weekend putting things away while today I started making a list of the things we still need to buy – magazine rack, media tower, laundry storage cart, kitchen cart, surge protector, 220V toaster oven, 220V crock pot, shoe stand, small chair mat and trash cans – yes, more trash cans. One can never have enough trashcans. We have way too many rooms in this place of ours. I need two more small trashcans – one to put by my vanity area in our bedroom and one for the guest bath. Today the embassy showed up with our lazy boy recliner for our bedroom and our shoe storage bench for the entryway only it is not nearly large enough for all our shoes. Yes, we are going native – no more shoes in the apartment. I now know why Asian’s don’t wear shoes in the house – they track dirt all throughout the house and it takes forever to mop the floors clean in this apartment. And speaking of going native – so Joe told me last night that I have definitely gone native with the whole not working thing. So in our airfreight shipment was my iHome, which is an alarm clock docking station for your iPod. We were busy setting it up and I decided to set it up on our dresser away from our bed, as our nightstands are pretty small so there isn’t enough room. I get it all set up and then I had Joe set the alarm for what time he wanted to get up in the morning for work. The clock came with a remote control. Joe was all concerned about whether he could turn the alarm off with the remote. I didn’t think he could at first so he was like I’ll just use my little cheapie travel alarm clock. Of course I looked at him like he was crazy and then he said to me, “You have totally gone native with the not working thing. Do you honestly think that I want to be forced out of bed RIGHT AWAY to shut off an alarm?” Hahahaha – we both got a good laugh out of that and then studied the remote a little more and it does control the alarm function!

So obviously there are some things over here that are different. Most places here, even the nicest, do not come with dishwashers or garbage disposals and laundry machines are outside on the balcony. I also learned this weekend that we are very lucky we are in the apartment building we are in because the other apartment buildings have an issue with the bathrooms and the kitchens smelling of sewage. I am most thankful for our building now, as we do not have that problem. So we have four bathrooms in our apartment – this includes the one in the maid’s quarters that has a squat toilet. We were told to be sure to flush each toilet at least once a week otherwise bugs will come up the pipes and out the drains in our bathrooms. Lovely. Don’t have that problem in the US that I know of!

They have this saying here, “Same – same, but different.” The Thai’s say this ALL the time. At first I did not quite understand it and would just kind of laugh it off. I now understand. I use this saying when describing my experimentation with cooking western foods. If you want to make something for dinner at home it takes a while to find all the ingredients – if you can, that is. Once you find them you may say to yourself, “Hmmm it doesn’t quite look the same as it does back home.” Then you make it and it doesn’t quite taste the same either, so you can now say it is, “Same – same, but different.” Now I get it. We’ve had a few failed attempts at recreating recipes we used back home. Anything involving beef is out the window at this point. We went to a Marriott Resort last week and ordered a cheeseburger and it was the nastiest burger I have ever had – the meat had NO fat in it at all and it was dry and chewy and had a disgusting flavor. So I am done with beef. Chicken and Pork both taste fine here though. The seafood is okay but often tastes fishy. It all depends on what you get though. It is rare that you can find a dish here that does not have some form of seafood in it. And usually they try to make it taste fishy on purpose by adding fish sauce to it! YECK!

So the rain is getting increasingly worse here. Everyone tells us that while this is the rainy season the worst is yet to come. Apparently August and September is truly when the Monsoon rains begin. And here I thought they already had – I mean doesn’t rain flooding the streets up just past your ankles in a matter of seconds count as a Monsoon? Apparently not! According to a friend that traveled here during the Monsoon season it will get up to your knees. So something to look forward to – rain flooding the streets up to my knees – don’t see that every day! I have noticed some patterns with the rain though. At first it would rain every afternoon around 2 or 3pm and the rain would only last 30 to 60 minutes, but usually only 30 minutes. Like I said it would be flooded up to your ankles or so within a matter of seconds. It dries up quite quickly though once it stops. You can always tell when it is coming, as soon as you say to yourself, “Wow, it’s not so hot out anymore, I might actually feel a little breeze,” that is when you should get inside QUICKLY. Now it has taken to raining in the evening after dark. The rains last a LOT longer and they are getting heavier by the day. Last night Joe and I got stuck in the rain. We had gone out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant about a 10 to 15 minute walk from our apartment. Within about two minutes of our departure from the restaurant all the street vendors started packing up and leaving quite quickly – that is another sign of what is to come. I am not sure if they just have this innate sense of when the rain is coming or what but they just know. Anyhow, within seconds of seeing that, it starts to sprinkle and we quickly pulled out the umbrellas and started walking quickly to the apartment. Then it got to the point where it was just pelting down so hard and so fast that we decided we also needed the ponchos. So we put them on and trek through the pouring rain with our ponchos and umbrellas. By the time we got to the apartment, the rain was up to my ankles, my sandals were completely saturated and from the knees down we were both drenched.

So something funny for you – here in Thailand everything a man says has to end in krap and a woman everything ends in ka. So to say hello, Joe would say, “Sawadikrap” and I would say, “Sawadikah.” To say Thank you, Joe would say, “Kapunkrap” and I would say, “Kapunkah.” Apparently it is common for a man to say Kapunkah or Sawadikah and when they do, the Thai’s assume that man is what they call a “Lady Boy” so apparently there are a lot of Thai’s walking around thinking Joe is a lady boy now because he is ALWAYS getting it wrong!

Oh and here is another funny that I don’t think I’ve shared with you all yet. Or did I? I forget – sorry if it is a repeat. So, one day on the way to the pool there was this conference of some sort going on in the auditorium on the 8th floor. As Joe and I were walking out onto the terrace to go up the stairs to the pool this British woman came running after us yelling, “Farangs Farangs!!!” So Farang in Thai means Foreigner. Imagine if we went down the streets of DC yelling after someone not from the US, “Foreigners, Foreigners!!!” We’d be sued if not killed first!

OK that’s about all for tonight. It’s nearly dinner time and I need to go the grocery store to get a few items.