Lesson 2: supporting the Thai economy

Our second day in Thailand was all about trying to get ourselves settled into a new place. Thai apartments are different from your typical Canadian place, in part because they largely do not feature kitchens. Perhaps cooking is considered a thing that only families do, or perhaps it is merely because food for a single person is so amazingly cheap here, but whatever the reason most apartments do not come with a stove or a fridge... or a kitchen sink. Luckily, the local carrefour is brimming with excellent home appliances, groceries, and other supplies.

A carrefour is basically your local walmart on steriods. FULL of people, groceries, electronics and other goods it is a store where you can get just about anything. They also have a 5oclock mandatory Carrefour dance (hated by the staff but beloved by our employer's 19 month old son) which we sadly missed out on.

After driving back home with our purchases crammed into the tiny vehicle it was time to set up house and then go out for a late lunch. This is where we discovered our new favourite restaurant and favourite Thai lady...
The restaurant is just a little place in the Champs D'Elysees complex where we live. The food is excellent and dirt cheap (roughly $3 for our entire meal) and the owner is a lovely woman who not only helped us order but taught us how to say we wanted something spicy (or not) in Thai and how to say that the food had been delicious. Then she brought us out a plate of fruit as a complementary welcome to Thailand gesture. We now never want to cook anything again... good thing we got that hot plate.

The jet lag is still pretty harsh in the evenings once it starts to get dark (it gets dark around 6:30 here) so luckily we have our pal the Louis Lotus... our King sized bed (aparently they must think all farang (foreigners) want a king sized bed as these come standard in every apartment we looked at). We sleep so far apart we are nearly in different time zones. For your viewing pleasure, a little bit of Thai/English translation...