The pig goes oot oot

One of Hannah's pet interests is finding out what noises animals make in other countries. You should try it some time, the results will often surprise you. This fact was brought to the fore the other day in Kindergarten when teaching the kids the classic song "Old MacDonald". Although the kids cannot understand the words (and so far can only sing the Ee I Ee I Oh part) they CAN make some excellent animal noises and thus it was discovered that in Thailand:
The dog says "hung hung"
The duck says "gawp gawp"
The pig says "oot oot"
Chickens say "kataw kataw"

I am hopefully going to figure out some more sweet animal noises this week. Need to get some sort of animal flashcards going on. Then I can teach the kids the English names and myself the Thai sounds!

Also notable... in Thailand trains say "choo cha choo cha POOT POOT" rather than "chugga chugga choo choo" We make a train to go from one station to another in our colour groups so I get to hear this fairly often!

This week is "Sport Day" (an inaccurate name as it lasts all week) on the Matayom (highschool) side of the school. As with any celebration or festival in Thailand this:
1. is a giant production
2. includes some form of pyrotechnics
3. exhibits some lack of organization
In Canada, when you go to see fireworks they are generally lit far from where the crowd is standing. There is some kind of organization to prevent you from getting your face blown off. Usually in Canada, fireworks involve some kind of aerial display of sparks. Fireworks are also regulated. In Thailand none of these things are likely to be the case. They often light fireworks right next to you (in fact we hear that there are some celebrations where they actually shoot Roman Candles at people). The fireworks do not always include any aerial display, and seem to be more like bombs...
Today for sports day they seemed to be filling coconut shells with what we assume was dynamite. These explosions were terrifying (sending kindergarten children diving to the floor and screaming even though they
were across the road in another building) and sent shrapnel raining from the sky onto the students below.
Another highlight of sport day opening ceremonies -the flaming baton twirlers. Unfortunately these poor kids had apparently missed a couple of practices, and weren't quite up to the challenge of keeping a flaming baton away from their bodies... ouch. 
All-in-all, a magnificent opening ceremony for Sport Day.

*No children were actually harmed in the making of this blog post*

Also, a note to our faithful readers. Just to keep you informed, we have now broken our record for most family members on a motorbike. The previous record was four, we have smashed it by seeing a family of six all crowded on one bike. Another family of four was also seen with the addition of a chicken, hardly record breaking but hilarious nonetheless...

T'was the day before Christmas

and we saw through the fog, every creature was busy -even the soi dogs.
The stages were being decorated with the utmost of care,
in hopes that the President of the Obejaw soon would be there.
The children ran wild as is usual here,
For them to suddenly get struck with nerves was the teachers' biggest fear.

I in Reindeer antlers and Shane in a Christmas cap
were wishing we could take a hard-earned Christmas nap.

Yes, yesterday was our big Christmas eve spectacular at school. Each campus had a seperate show, sharing one Santa (who may have developed heat stroke during the event) to hand out small gifts and candy. Shane's side (Matayom or highschool) had a Rockin Around the Christmas Tree song and dance followed by "T'was the night before Christmas". Hannah's side had a KG1-KG2 nativity scene and song, a Prathom1-3 Rudolph sing-along and a Prathom 4-6 Jingle Bell Rock.

Everyone worked really hard to get everything ready on time and Shane's show even had to restart as the guest of honour, the president of the temple schools arrived! Both shows went off without any problems (despite the fears of all of us teachers!) and were super adorable. The kids were amazing and we are so proud of all of them!

Here are some pictures from the Christmas show... video to follow when we have better internet connection! (Hopefully this week!)

 My little KG1 angels! lol

"baby Jesus" in his manger...

Some of my students hanging out on our Christmas/New Years party day at school!

Handing out presents... Sweatiest santa ever lol.

Adorable...

Our little tiny Christmas tree!

Nicknames & Kids

Hello all,

well it is nearly the end of month two here in Thailand and as teachers we have been realizing that this blog is bereft of any mention of the kids we are teaching, so we thought we would add a little information about the little darlings.

First of all, kids here in Thailand are referred to by foreigners by their "Nicknames". These are names, that are designed to help out the farang of the world who when trying to pronounce Thai names can become so terribly lost. Quite a helpful gesture really...

We have been told that these nicknames are chosen sometimes because of a trait of the child (for instance a small child may be nicknamed Lek or Noi which both mean small), because of something the parents like (for instance Paytong -a Thai form of bocce ball), a short form of the actual name, something that the parents think will be fortunate for the kids, because the word sounds good or even more spiritual reasons. Sometimes they choose thai words, other times they choose English words, and sometimes the English words strike us as funny... not because there is anything wrong with the Nickname Bank but only because it is generally different from what we are used to calling each other back home! So, here are some of the nicknames of kids in our classes...

Bank, Bong, Bomb, Arm, Manow (means lemon), Filmy, Tankwa (means cucumber -being cool-headed is extremely valuable in Thai culture), Pee, Poo (in the same class and one after another on the attendance list), God, First, Best, Mail, Guy, Pet (means duck), and many others... These caused us a smile when we arrived at school.

Another common occurance in Thailand... well actually apparently just at our school, is kids throwing up out the window. Not so much on Shane's matayom (high school) side, but in the Kindergarten and Prathom (grade school) classes this happens on basically a weekly basis. Here is an actual conversation that occurred between Hannah and another teacher here:
Hannah: "so... do kids like, throw up a lot in your class?"
Other teacher: "No... why?"
Hannah: "Oh, I guess it's just my kids then. They throw up all the time."
Same goes for nose bleeds and any other messy incidences... straight out the window.

Another thing that Hannah has had to get used to here in Thailand is the limited resources. For instance, the activity book we have to use includes MANY pages of cutting and pasting things... However, we do not have a full class set of scissors (only around 15) or squeezy glue bottles. At the beginning of the semester Hannah was handed a bottle of white glue. One with a screw top. It didn't even have a stick to get the glue out. The common practice with this is to walk around the classroom allowing each child to stick their fingers in the jar and get some glue... as you can imagine this results in utter chaos. Hannah has now graduated to cutting open old water bottles and finding stick-like objects to hold and spread the glue.

Another thing we're having to get used to is the practice of selling dangerous firecrackers to children. These are sold at the morning market that occurs on the school grounds just before school begins. Some charming man sits out there selling these improvised explosives to the highschool kids, who spend their day merrily throwing them off the top of the building to land in the courtyard below. One such blast knocked Shane's and most of of his class's hearing out for most of an afternoon. THese are not those little black cats that you throw at the ground with a pop, these things may be made out of TNT and have a boom loud enough that you feel it in your chest. They don't light up, they just make noise... and now if you are caught with one you are headed straight to the Thai disciplinarian at the school.

If we haven't mentioned the Thai disciplinarian before... his name makes kids tremble in their seats. He went around to the parents' houses at the beginning of his time at school and asked if he could hit their children. They agreed, and so he does, with a bamboo rod. These aren't your old-fashioned slaps on the wrist either, this guy gets his whole body into the swing. We try not to get kids in trouble with him.

Sorry no pictures tonight, we're working on compiling a collage of soi dogs...

Long Weekend in Paradise

Wow, these Thais sure do love their holidays! This weekend was another long weekend in a row, this time we had Friday off for Constitution day. Our friends suggested that we head down south to the beach and we were more than happy to agree! After a long bus ride followed by a ride in a songtao (basically a pickup truck with two benches in the back) a long wait for the ferry and a speedboat ride over to the island of Koh Mak, we arrived in paradise.

Koh Mak is a small island near the more popular destination of Koh Chang. It is home to more beachside resorts than convenience stores and as such has a fairly small resident population and a healthy dose of tourists. It is a quiet beachside getaway, unlike its nearby neighbour Koh Chang which is renowned for its nightlife! We decided on Koh Mak because we felt like we could all use a little R&R.

Arriving in Koh Mak was like arriving in exactly what we pictured Thailand to be like. Turquoise blue water (so clear that in some of our pictures it LOOKS like we're standing on a beach when really we're in the water!) white sand and coconut palms everywhere. We spent the remainder of the day of our arrival checking out the area around our resort and figuring out where we could get some good snorkeling in on Saturday! We had a relaxing evening, some dinner and drinks and then went out for a nighttime walk on the beach where we found one of the most interesting things on Koh Mak -bioluminescent plankton! When water is disturbed near these little guys they give off a bioluminescent liquid which apparently is designed to attract other predators that will eat whatever is trying to eat the plankton! This results in really cool effects when you move your hand or feet through the water. We managed to get one of these little guys on film -not an easy feat as they seemed to be a little camera shy!

Saturday was snorkeling day and we set off at 9 in the morning with Steve, the island's resident hippie farang dive instructor. His employee Anuk -a colourful dutch hippie, took us out to the dive spots and we dove in to a whole new world. There were all different kinds of fish, big fish, little fish, colourful fish etc. They were swimming around by the thousands on top of rocky outcrops covered in coral and beautiful sea worms (look like neon coloured christmas trees). We could have sat and watched fish all day... but sadly eventually we had to head back to the resort. Equally sadly, we do not yet have an underwater camera, that may have to be someone's Christmas present since it looks like it is something that will really come in handy out here!

We spent the rest of our weekend in paradise relaxing on the beach and enjoying our new favourite treat -coconut fruit shakes. We also got to taste some of the delicious fruits of the ocean -freshly caught prawns by the kilogram! We weren't aware that you had to order ahead so we had to take a half a kilo between the bunch of us and eat them as an appetizer, and they were delicious! We dipped them into a chili lime sauce and spent the walk between the seafood place and the swiss restaurant (where we had dinner) licking our fingers. Yes, that is not a typo... there is a Swiss restaurant on Koh Mak. A Swiss man recently moved there with his Thai wife and they have opened up a little restaurant on top of a hill serving absolutely delicious Swiss, European and Thai food. We shared a plate of Jager Schnitzel and a tomato salad and then Shane and Harry split a spaghetti bolognese for dessert while the girls shared some fried bananas and iced cream. Then it was off to play in the plankton again (less spectacular the second night) before bed and catching the ferry home early the next morning... :(

At home we could travel for around 7 hours and go to Ottawa, Michigan or possibly nearly to Sault Ste Marie. Here in Thailand we travelled for around 7 hours and ended up in Paradise. We wish that we could bring everybody over to share this with us!!!!


The boat ride on the way in... other islands near Koh Mak!

The water was so clear! This is a picture of some tiny fish right off the pier.

 In this picture Shane's feet are actually under water but it is so clear you can hardly tell!

 A fishing boat. They use the lights to attract the fish at night.

 Our first snorkeling spot of the day. This island is surrounded by rock formations and coral reefs and tons of beautiful fish!

 The pier down to the beach where we had lunch :)

 Beautiful swing... so peaceful!

 Delicious delicious prawns!

 Beautiful emerald beetle :)

 Melly Thai Clissmas :) Shane with the coconut santa

 Hannah pointing at a huge crab!

 Morning beach walk :)

The inside of our little bungalow.

Kanchanaburi for the King's Birthday

What a busy couple of weeks! There have been two long weekends in a row. Yes, that's right, on December 6 we got Monday off for the King's Birthday and then on December 10 we got Friday off for Constitution day (more on that in the next post). As a result we have been travelling up a storm! For the King's Birthday we decided to check out Kanchanaburi, the province home to the famous River Kwai Bridge.

We were told by friends that Kanchanaburi is a quiet little town, perfect for a relaxing weekend, but this was not the case on the weekend of the "War is Over River Kwai Bridge Festival" and the King's Birthday! Our first night's stay in a guesthouse called Sugar Cane Two was sadly an epic failure (if you feel that the main purpose of a hotel room is to sleep) due to the SUPER LOUD music blasting from the River Kwai Bridge festival. However, there is no time for napping when you have exploring to do! We rented motorcycles again and headed out to Erawan Falls, a famous 7-level waterfall with a beautiful trail following the river up into the jungle to the top of the canyon (and head of the falls). Since it was the King's Birthday weekend, admission to the park was free and a LOT of tourists (Thai and farang) were taking advantage of the opportunity for a little relaxing by the river. Luckily, tourists like relaxation -not an hour and a half hike uphill into the jungle, so the top of the waterfall had many fewer people than the bottom. We found a secluded spot that looked nice and after a little jungle bushwhacking we were swimming in the beautiful blue waters of a river in the middle of the jungle. However, this is no ordinary river! This river is full of tiny little fish that just LOVE to nibble the dead skin off your feet and legs. It sounds weird, and at first it really was! It is a feeling somewhere between a tiny pinch and a scrape... but eventually we got used to it and sat in the river for some relaxing fish pedicures! Unfortunately we have not yet been able to aquire a waterproof camera so for pictures of these little fish actually at work you may have to try google, but here are some pictures of the river and other sights in Kanchanaburi!

Fireworks over the bridge! Wow do they have a big explosion sound to go with them! 

On the left hand side of this picture you can see some big versions of the little fish that were nibbling on our feet! This is closer to the bottom of the falls.

Our swimming spot! All it takes is one bunch of people and others will come. Luckily we had the place to ourselves for about an hour and a half of uninterupted swimming first!

The bridge over the River Kwai. Accompanied by one of the worst museums we have EVER seen... Luckily it had one redeeming staff member (see next picture)

A giant iguana that hangs around the River Kwai bridge museum! Even though the museum was terrible we did get to see this guy, the sleepiest lizard I have ever seen! There was also luckily another museum further into town which had some really interesting information on Thailand's involvement in WWII and the bridge over the River Kwai.

This Trip is B-A-N-A-N-A-S

Last week, our friends asked us if we would like to go with a group of people to the Monkey Festival in Lop Buri. How can you say no to a question like that? Our only response other than, "of course" was "there is a festival for monkeys?".

Yes, there is a whole festival dedicated to monkeys here in Thailand. Some genius Thai businessman discovered that if you encourage monkeys to hang around your city, you will very quickly see an increase in foreign tourists who think monkeys are adorable and hilarious. Since this was such a sucess they have a festival every year to thank the monkeys for the prosperity that their town enjoys. They tell the story of Hanuman the monkey god and feed the monkeys a giant monkey buffet.

However, even when monkeys are offered a giant buffet of fruit, vegetables and other monkey delectables, there is one thing monkeys like even more. Vendors had set up tents at the edge of the ruins where the festival is held to sell drinks and such to the festival goers. Monkeys, as it turns out, prefer pepsi to dragon fruit. They monkeys were skulking around casting dangerous looks at anybody who decided to have a drink and if one was silly enough to doubt the monkeys' seriousness they would leap from the ground onto you. It was smarter just to put down the beverage. Shane was monkey mugged in this way carrying a nearly empty water bottle around, the monkey looked at him, looked at the water, and made a threatening step forward. Shane is no idiot so he dropped the water bottle and stepped back.
(Picture below is from a palace/temple ruins in Lop Buri)

 Another sweet Lop Buri surprise was the performance staged in another set of ruins the night before the monkey festival. We were walking around looking for a place to eat when we chanced upon the area and were drawn in by the music, lights and crowds. Inside a performance of what can only be described as people-puppetry was going on. This traditional form of Thai dance features one person as the "puppet" who is attached to strings or poles, marionette-style.  The dancers at this performance were incredible and we stayed to watch for quite a while. They also had some high-school aged children performing and playing who were quite good given their respective ages.

 Monkey drinking out of a small water feature... this picture was taken while we were having breakfast at a little cafe.

 The monkey food pyramid!!!

 Mommy & Me -monkey style.

 Monkey to the right enjoying a coke and the monkeys in the foreground are enjoying a delicious Thai iced tea (milky and sweet, really delicious!).

 Sunflower fields! You can see the mountain where the temple was located in the background.

Lop Buri is not only the home of the monkeys, it is also home to other attractions like the sunflower fields and various temples and such. On Saturday we explored some beautiful temple ruins (sooo peaceful in busy, noisy Thailand) and on Sunday we rented mopeds and hit the open road for a tour of the area, stopping to take in Sunflower fields, a temple on the mountain and a somewhat disappointing lake. The views were beautiful, the driving was fun (except in those crazy traffic circles! yikes!) and all in all an excellent adventure was had by all.
Monkey video -An overview of monkeys in Lop Buri!

Shane also got a chance this weekend to try out Sepak takraw. Youtube this for more information! It is basically a form of volleyball played with the feet and is really wild to watch. We stumbled upon a team practicing at night and after they took a break they allowed Shane and a friend to give it a go on the courts.

Chicken Loom

Yikes! Sorry about the long delay between posts this time... it has been pretty crazy around here.

One of us (Shane) got quite ill with some sort of food poisoning (but with the help of lots of bedrest and antibiotics is now feeling much better) which made for somewhat less adventuring on our part. It was also the first week back to school for the primary classes and was therefore very busy with lesson planning and such.

Junior kindergarten is, as expected, completely adorable. The kids refer to Hannah as "Teacha Na", an oversight which is in the process of being corrected. One trait of Thai speakers is the tendency to put the emphasis on the last syllable... something which we are trying (and failing) to not aquire! For example: copY this off the board or simply when saying Hannah's name "hanNAH". Currently in Kindergarten and grade two we are learning the rooms of the house, you know, your usual bed loom, bath loom, living loom and chicken loom... We are trying our best to pronounce kitchen with the utmost clarity (and actually at this point we are winning!).

This past weekend was the Thai festival of Loy Krathong, a beautiful festival where Thais apologize and give thanks to the river gods for all of their sins of the past year and float krathongs down the river with lit candles to symbolize wiping the slate clean. The longer your candle burns, the more luck you will recieve in the coming year. We were unable to make it to one of the bigger river festivals because of Shane's food poisoning but luckily our condo complex had a smaller version of the festivities so we didn't miss out entirely.

We have also moved into our new apartment! Apart from some minor hiccups while we get all the logistics sorted out we are really loving the new place. Pictures will come once we have everything settled and maybe some decorating done!

Debauchery and Weekend Adventures

Another exciting weekend in Thailand! This weekend we ventured down to the MBK centre to check out what a mall in Thailand looks like. Parts of it are very similar to a mall back home, and then there are floors that have more in common with the market we visited last weekend with huge crowds of shoppers, narrow aisles and cheap knock-offs of brand-name goods. After some shopping we decided to head to the Bangkok Arts and Cultural Centre where we were told that if we stuck around until six thirty there would be free food, wine and entertainment to celebrate the opening of a really wild art exhibit of crocheted trees! Very reminiscent of The Lorax...

The wine and food were excellent, the entertainment... well we'll let him speak for himself. Here are a few clips of the musical entertainment we saw on Saturday night...

After the performance we went to an open-air food court near the Victory Monument in Bangkok and had some Kau man gai (rice with steamed chicken and a delicious ginger-chili sauce) and a couple of drinks (supplied of course by the local 7-11). Not feeling quite ready to head home yet, we started brainstorming about what we should do to close out our Saturday night... Since we had a friend with us who will not be in Thailand long we thought that we should try to get the most experience out of Bangkok possible, and therefore the only logical choice was to visit Soi Cowboy, Bangkok's seedy red-light district. One can easily imagine what goes on in Soi Cowboy, so we will leave it up to you... if you can't imagine I am sure that Google has a great deal of pertinent information. Needless to say, we didn't stay long. After feeling like we'd had our fill of the underbelly of Bangkok it was off to bed... after a short encounter with a crazy cab driver (drove much too fast and laughed when we asked him to cha cha ... slow down). Another interesting weekend in the land of smiles.

Our School

Our school is wayyyy out in the country in a rural town called Sam Khok. It is very different from some of the other schools our company works in (for example the Sacred Heart Bangkok which is 11 floors with an olympic sized swimming pool on the fourth floor ) and is therefore very different from schools we are used to back home. Here is one of the classrooms. Notice that the windows do not have any glass in them (therefore no air conditioning) and instead just have wooden shutters. This can make things pretty noisy if the band is practicing outside!

 

 The picture above is the courtyard outside the Ideal office. Some of the kids hang out here between classes (or during classes when they decide to show up late) or for lunch. There are several stray dogs who hang around this area hoping to get treats from the students!

The picture below is one of the ground floor open air classrooms. These classrooms don't have windows of any kind, let's hope it doesn't rain!

This is the beautiful temple beside our school. Inside there are peacocks, flowers, fruit and of course monks. We are told that one of the monks can tell your future! One of our co-workers wants us to go and ask if we can have our future foretold.

This is a picture of Hannah's school under water. We will have to post a picture this week since we are finally opening the school on Monday (at least that was the hope last week)!

Mixing business with pleasure...

Thus far we have established that Thailand is a beautiful place, full of lots of crazy and exciting things. However, one of the hardest things to get used to is the squat toilet. We have differing strategies on how to approach this bathroom beast, with Hannah's being to develop a bladder of steel for fear of slips, trips and falls.

Those of you who have had the chance to trip out to Asia before have probably encountered one of these before, but for those that haven't let us explain. The toilet shaped thing on the right hand side is indeed a toilet, but instead of sitting down as you would on a Western comode, you put your feet on the two grooved footprints and squat, like camping. The problem arises from the fact that the whole thing is made of porcelain and therefore slippery as an eel wearing a banana peel. You best be careful to avoid a fall into the business end of this porcelain potty... The pleasures of the squat toilet compound with the B.Y.O.T.P. theme (bring your own toilet paper) and the bucket on the side, used to help gravity wash away any traces of your visit and to keep the porcelain nice and slick for the next sucker.
Traditionally, the left hand was used, along with the water in the basin beside the toilet, to clean one's self (some bathrooms have now upgraded to the aforementioned ass blaster) and hence all eating was done with the right. Thais have now generally shifted towards eating with fork and spoon, but no notice on whether the other traditional practise prevails. 
Apparently it's not so bad once you get used to it... yup, that's what we tell ourselves every morning in the cold shower too haha.

Shane Nearly Kills a Guy...

What a busy first weekend in Thailand! On Friday night the company that owns and manages our apartment complex held a " Your Dreamland 2010 Party" for all their "foreign" guests. It was basically a photo op for them so they can sell condos and apartments using our shiny white faces... However, said photo op came with free food, booze and traditional Thai dancers... and the traditional Thai pastime of Karaoke.

Although cheesy and slightly strange (as is everything about where we live... more on that another time) this provided an excellent opportunity for us to get to know some of the other local farang. The Dreamland party finished at ten and we all took the party elsewhere... to the sidewalk by the 7-11 to be exact!

Yes, not only can you buy beer at the 7-11 in Thailand, but the clerks actually have bottle openers behind the counter, just in case you want to drink while you browse the fine selection of merchandise. They obligingly opened our beverage and we went outside to the sidewalk where we hung around with a crowd of folks before deciding what to do. We ended up going to sit on some benches outside by the Arc de Triomphe where Hannah got eaten alive by mosquitoes (and Shane got ZERO bites) before deciding to head to "The Clink" a local bar. The bar was a bit of a bust but the night overall was a great success as we met some new friends and got a chance to check out the local area.

The next morning we met up with our new friends to head down to the Chatuchak weekend market. This is the biggest market in Thailand with between 5000-15000 vendors (depending on your Internet research lol) and where around 30 million baht per day are spent on cheap knockoff goods (say hello to my new fake Lacoste wallet), pets, appliances, electronics.... basically anything you could ever want can be found at the Chatuchak weekend market. It is a wildly crowded place full of locals, tourists, and the occasional palm reader wearing all black with a sword strapped across his back. We spent several hours shopping and being generally overwhelmed by everything and came out with a small number of purchases.

After a quick bite to eat we started to head out but were waylaid by the sweet melodious sounds of a Thai guitar player singing various English alternative covers. We sat down and had a couple beers while listening before heading home.

And as for Shane almost killing a guy, have we mentioned the madness that is Thai motorcyclists? Let's just say, next time you see a movie with a wild motorcycle stunt in it, the stuntman is probably somebody's Thai grandma out for a Sunday drive... These guys have no concept of rules or regulations on the road, a fact which Shane learned when he almost killed a motorcyclist opening the door of our cab. Trying to exit the cab (on the curb side I might add) Shane had barely cracked the door when it was hit at full speed by a flying Thai motorcyclist who then performed a stylish quick dismount from his bike before getting up, shaking his wrist and glaring at Shane, and then continuing on his way... just another day on the outskirts of Bangkok. Needless to say, we have now learned to LOOK BEHIND before opening any door of the vehicle. Just because you are on the sidewalk, doesn't mean you're safe.

Our Temporary Apartment

So this is the new digs until our new digs are ready... Fairly similar to a Canadian bachelor apartment except for a couple of slight noticeable differences... First of all, there is no proper kitchen. We are making do with a hot plate on a cabinet... Also notice the lack of food on the shelves. This is because we HAD a brand new bag of rice, unopened which apparently had a tiny hole in it. When we got home from work there was a trail of ants from a crack in the ceiling, along the wall, into the bag of rice. We aren't sure what they wanted in there but there were so many ants in the rice we had to throw the whole bag out. Now all food (including cereal and other things that do not need to be refrigerated) is in the refrigerator. Also noteable, everyone here seems to drink predominately instant coffee. We don't have a coffee maker or pot so got some for ourselves but soon realized that it was commonplace here...

 This is our breakfast nook! This is not really different from an apartment in Canada but is pretty cute.

 Our bed :) They must think farang are huge fat foreigners because King sized beds are common in our apartment complex (which houses many foreigners). Also, for some reason Thai people do not do the whole top sheet thing. When you buy a set of bed linens you get a fitted sheet and pillow cases and you can get a duvet but so far nowhere (including the hotel) has had a flat top sheet.

 The toilet and, as we affectionately call it, the "ass blaster". Since our apartment building caters to farang, our bathroom features a western-style toilet and toilet paper roll holder as well. To the left of the toilet is the shower, this is fairly normal except for the lack of hot water. Yes, all showers in Thailand (except perhaps in hotels which cater to foreigners) are cold. This will be refreshing in the warmer season but currently makes for a brisk pick-me-up in the morning.