Our house

Welcome to our humble abode! We have been slowly gathering bits and pieces to put together our apartment and it is finally ready for viewing. Property is much cheaper here (unless you are trying to get a place right in Bangkok) so we are paying around $300 a month for this 7th (top) floor "penthouse" apartment with a seperate bedroom. Each building here has a theme from around the world. This picture shows you our hall in the "Africa" building at Champs Elysees. The green tusks really give it that little something extra :)

Home sweet home. Sort of. This is actually our neighbours' door. When they moved our mattress in they broke one of our elephant's tusks! We thought you would want to see the elephant intact. This is what all the doorways in this building look like.

Welcome inside! This is our front hall. Bathroom is on the right :) it looks much the same except for the addition of the ass blaster by the toilet.

Our "kitchen". You can see our oven on the counter, our hot plate is put away in the drawer. On the fridge we have pictures of all our friends, family and pets who we miss back home! Notice the lack of kitchen sink. We have to do all our dishes in the shower... kind of awkward.

The living room. We aren't huge fans of the sofa, it looks a bit like the back seat of a van. However, it does fold down into a somewhat short bed... perfect for watching movies on lazy Sunday mornings. Also perfect for anyone who wants to come and visit! The apartments come mostly furnished. All we had to buy was: TV, fridge, hot plate & oven, dining table & chairs.

Entertainment :) Some electronics are fairly cheap here, such as TVs. Our plan is to try to tote this giant thing back with us when we come home... wish us luck!  ; )

The curtains are covering the french doors out to our little balcony. It has a big ugly air conditioner but is nice for sitting in the evening (if the mosquitoes aren't too bad) and is handy for drying the laundry! You can also see our little dining table in the corner; excellent for games, cards or dinner with friends.

This picture is looking up from our living room at our bedroom. On the right hand side you can see the stairs up to the bedroom. It looks like there is a  big window in the bedroom but it is actually a skylight over the living room, reflected in the window. The seperate bedroom makes for a nice quiet sleep, or some privacy for any guests who come to visit!

The bedroom, with the HUGE bed! What you can't see is the big closet (lots of room for new clothes) and vanity. 

Wine and Wild Animals Weekend

Well, it was definitely a different sort of holiday from the island retreats we have been on recently! This weekend we headed northeast to the National Park, Khao Yai. We started off the weekend by waking up at "sparrow's fart" (a term introduced to us by our friends) and taking the first bus up to Pak Chong where we rented motorbikes. Then the fun could begin! We biked up into the mountains and immediately noticed the cooler temperatures and the clean jungle air, as well as the monkeys hanging out on the road! For our Friday in the park we rented tents, blankets and a "mattress" from the park office. Unfortunately the "mattress" was just a THIN woven straw mat, more useful for laying out on the grass for a picnic than cushioning your rest!

Once we had our tents set up we enjoyed some lunch, and got to see what Thai people do in a national park. Unlike National parks at home, where you would get fined for so much as THINKING about feeding the animals or dropping garbage, the national parks here are a little more relaxed. This picture is of some Thai people taking pictures of a deer, they then proceded to bring it all kinds of treats, including ice cream and bananas.

These kids thought that they wanted to feed the deer, but then they got scared.

We had a great day, hiking around following traces of elephants (elephant poop). In the evening we went out on a night safari. This seemed like something that we should do as tourists in Thailand, but we weren't expecting much. We boarded the noisy old truck and headed off with a Thai man holding a spotlight as our guide. Although we didn't expect to see many animals, we saw a ton! We saw: 3 kinds of deer (including a tiny baby barking deer, about the size of a cat! so cute) 2 civets, 3 porcupines, a wild dog called a Dhole and for the finale... 8 wild elephants at a salt lick! It was so amazing to see elephants in the wild, especially since there were quite a few resorts on the way up which has some pretty sad looking elephants that they were using for tourism... sad elephants are a really hard thing to see. It was amazing to see them in their natural habitat.

That night was a bit rough, since it was a long weekend the place was packed and there were people talking ALL NIGHT LONG! We woke up groggily in the morning and headed out on a long jungle hike. We were hoping to see some gibbons (another kind of monkey) but unfortunately they seemed to be hiding. No matter where we walked we always heard them 1 km or so behind us! However, we did have a great hike and saw some more signs of the elephants, although no luck seeing an actual elephant.

This second photo is from the observation tower at the end of our walk!

That night we headed out to a hotel, needing a little more comfort. After a much needed night's sleep we went for a tour around Thai wine country. We had no idea that this place even existed! We went to two different wineries, one of which had some really good wine! Hannah even took a turn driving the motorbike. We bought a bottle and then had to head back to check out and get back to reality... a great weekend overall!

Things Made in Our Oven -Part 1

I say part 1 because I hope that we will cook more things in the oven in the next 8 months that we are here.

As we have mentioned before, our Thai apartment does not really have a kitchen. When we moved in we bought a fridge, a hot plate, and the little convection oven that could. It looks like a giant glass bowl with a robot helmet on top, and we were both skeptical about how effective it would be... for comparables see the "flavour wave" of infomercial fame. Boy, were we wrong! So far in our oven we have cooked cheese bread, a roast chicken, pork tenderloin, cookies, a pumpkin pie AND hamburger rolls! Here are some quick pictures of some of the things we've made... here's hoping that our successes in the kitchen continue!

It was one of those, "yup, I'm in Thailand" days...

I was sitting in the office, getting ready for KG this morning when one of the staff members came in with a puppy. Apparently it is one of the litter across the street who was nearly hit by a car. She was worried about it so decided to bring it over to the office where she plonked it on my lap saying she was off to get it something to eat.

Only in Thailand does someone put a stray puppy on your lap at work. Here is a picture of me at my desk with said puppy! Cutest inconvenience ever...

Parade of Soi Dogs

It's the moment you've all been waiting for! Live, coming to you straight from Thailand... the parade of soi dogs!

In case you aren't up on your backpacker slang, a soi dog is a street dog here in Thailand. The small streets branching off of larger main roads here are called sois, hence where the soi dogs got their name. These animals can be found sleeping on the freeway, cuddled up under a table in the school courtyard, hanging out behind restaurants and practically anywhere there are people (and therefore food). Some are friendly, some are not but overall they are a great source of amusement for us here in Thailand. We have nicknamed many of the soi dogs that we see regularly, and here they are for your viewing pleasure.

 This is Goiter Dog, so named because he has an unfortunate tumor on his right hind foot. In this picture it looks a bit like an oversized toe.

This is one of the many dogs that we call "Ugly Dog". We distinguish them by their colour and how much hair they have left... so for instance if we were to talk about this dog we might call her "ugly black dog with a little bit of hair on her back".

 One of the dogs in the monks' posse. We don't see this guy too often but took his picture because he looked healthy.

 Fat Dawg. This dog lives near a bunch of restaurants and is clearly the recipient of ALL the scraps...

 Sad Dog. This dog has droopy eyes, giving him a sad appearance.

Sleepy Dog. We ALWAYS see this dog lying down or sleeping, except on very rare occasions.

Puppies at the elementary school! This litter has been running around for the last couple of weeks. I am told that their mother is very fierce but the kids seem quite taken with them and bring them their lunch scraps daily.

 Soi dogs in a rare moment of play... They often choose their moment during the national anthem in the morning.

 Swim Dog. One of the healthier dogs at school, she is named swim dog because we always see her wet, after she has been swimming.

Tongue Dog. We think maybe this little fellow had a stroke, or the dog equivalent... One side of his face looks a little droopy and he can't put his tongue in all the way. He is one of our favourites!

Sneak Dog. This dog got her name because she is always sneaking into the area where the elementary school kids have lunch, trying to clean up scraps of food dropped by careless kindergarteners.

We really miss pet dogs back home, but at least all of these characters are good for a laugh!!!

A Cat-Like Robot from the Future

For those of you who are huge manga fans, I may not have to explain myself. If that is the case please stop reading now as this post will serve no purpose but to bore you...

For the rest of us, who believe that the purpose of a blog is to inform as well as entertain, this post will be about the cultural phenomenon of Doraemon.

Doraemon is a cat-like robot from the future, sent back by Nobita's (the show's main human character) great-great grandson. It is a cartoon that has been running since 1969 and remains hugely popular today. Probably 90% of the boxer shorts that my Kindergarten kids wear under their uniforms feature Doraemon, and he is also frequently seen on adults. Doraemon can be found everywhere, on any kind of merchandise... We have seen Doraemon themed cars and motorcycles. There is also a popular program at 7-11 here where you earn Doraemon stickers for your purchases which can be later put towards Doraemon merchandise (we are going for the flatware set). Kids go crazy if you print off a Doraemon colouring sheet for them... Doraemon has a pouch which, much like Mary Poppins' bag, contains any tool that is needed in any situation.

Also important to note. Doraemon had his ears chewed off by a mouse and subsequently developed a phobia of the entire species. Mice please take care not to alarm our blue cat-like friend. 

Other than these facts, we know very little about the mysterious Doraemon as it has never been translated into English. For more information, wikipedia is worth a look... as is Youtube. Even though you can't understand what they're saying, it is still pretty hilarious.

Cooking with KD

Today we had our first cooking lesson, provided by one of the lovely ladies who we work with. We made green curry, spring rolls and pad wun sen (mostly this was just with leftover from the spring rolls filling). The recipe for green curry is as follows.

Ingredients:
Kha (I think this is what it was called, it is related to ginger but not ginger)
garlic
shallot
rind from a type of lime (yes there are different types of limes... this was news to me) which is knocked down with a long bamboo pole from a tree by a neighbour (we didn't have any of this ingredient so had to go down the road to find one)
lemon grass (about 3X as much lemon grass as any of the previous ingredients)
paste made from tiny shrimps (and other things, not sure what this is called)
chillies (MUST be green -it is green curry after all) to taste
chicken
coconut milk
fish sauce

-Put the Kha and lime rind in a mortar and pestle -beat into submission
-add the lemon grass -beat into submission
-add the chillies -beat into a paste (if too dry can add salt here to draw out moisture)
-when the former are pastey, add the shrimp paste, the garlic and the onion (adding these together means that the shrimp paste won't stink)

-fry the curry paste with some coconut milk (apparently if you do this properly you separate the coconut milk and fry the curry paste with what is essentially the coconut cream from the top)
-add the chicken
-add more coconut milk (this would be the less fatty underneath bit)
-bring to a boil
-add eggplants, long beans and chillies that are "just for decoration" (also somewhat spicy)
-just before finishing, add Thai basil, lime leaves (from same tree as landlord lime) and coriander (if you have it, apparently not essential)

Serve with rice/roti/or croissant (one of the staff enjoys this little taste of Thai-French fusion) haha

We can't wait to learn more so that we can cook for everybody back home!!! Delicious!