My first visa run..

A very interesting day indeed.. :/

After 3 months, 90 days to be exact, my original visa finally expired. So time for a visa run, I hadn't really prepared for it in time, that's why I decided to go for the emergency option, a day trip to the nearest Cambodian border crossing and casino.. :)
You see gambling is illegal in Thailand, so all along the border with Cambodia there are casino's just across the border with immigration offices on both sides to cash in on visas.

One of these crossings turns out to be reasonably close by, so after a minivan ride Rayong-Chantaburi (1 hour), Chantaburi-Cambodia (Daung) (1 hour), getting through the border offices (half an hour), spending an hour at the casino and then another 15 minutes going through immigration the other way and a 3 hour ride on the bus back to Rayong... Pffff.. but I have another 30 days in Thailand. :)

The thought of having to go through this every month is very tiring, so I will have to think about another (more fun) way to do this the next time.

On the other hand the casino experience was almost worth the trouble... ;)
The sight of busloads full of Thai going crazy in a casino was a lot of fun, but the game selection was very limited, one roulette table, a room full of bacarat tables and a room filled with tables with some kind of dice game..

This actually turned out to be an interesting game, it took me some time to figure out how it worked, but it turned out to work a bit like roulette but with dice. :)
Even more interesting was one of the girls working at this table, after a few minutes of watching how the game worked she slipped me a note, asking my name and if I had eaten lunch already ;) a very clear invitation for a lunch date.. Sometimes being Farang has it's advantages.
The idea was very tempting, she was very pretty, but in the end I had to decline, I had a bus to catch back home and also she looked very young, too young for me to get involved with. :)

So all in all a mixed day, on the one hand very very tiring and expensive to get into Cambodia, but on the other hand there were some interesting points about it too...

Adventure - part 2

The next day we would meet my dentist-student at Panthip Plaza for some shopping, for those who don't know, Panthip is a department store with five floors of every kind of computer stuff, hardware, software, digital camera's, dvd's, both legal and illegal, you can find the latest software and movies there very cheap if you don't mind if it's pirated.
It's very much like a computer discount show in the West, just a bit bigger.. ;) You have to shop around and compare prices to find the best shop for your desired piece of hardware.
We had quite a shopping list and it took about an hour to find some good prices, but in the end we saved a nice amount compared to the regular prices, enough to buy a very nice dinner later that night. :)
She also wanted some dvd's for her son, some cartoons, but it seemed the police had been looking for pirate movies in the morning so it had a very underground feeling today, the guys selling dvd's constantly looking out for trouble, but we managed to find a nice collection of movies, only we had to wait for 20 minutes because the dvd's were stored in a safe place somewhere else, it was all very tricky, but 20 minutes later we were ready to go and join BKK traffic..

By now it was already almost four in the afternoon, just when traffic starts to get really bad. Dada was driving, he kind of knows his way around BKK, I really don't, I just take the bus everywhere I go, it's slow, but quite relaxed.
We had to pick up some more things at a few places around town, but it was very very slow going, it was mostly gridlock all the way, we took a few pieces of expressway (expressways are elevated highways going over parts of BKK) where we could drive a bit, but down on the streets traffic is a disaster.
It took us almost three hours to get to two houses to pick up some stuff to take to Rayong..

Dada had to stay in BKK to take care of some things, so around 6:30 at night I started the drive back to Rayong, luckily once I got out of BKK traffic was pretty light so we could drive along very nicely and everything seemed to go very well..
Until we were almost home, we were just on the outskirts of Rayong when suddenly the engine went dead! So I pulled onto the side of the road and tried to start the car again, nothing.. Then I saw that the fuel meter was on empty and I realized that Dada had only filled the tank halfway before we left and this car really uses a lot of fuel, so we were out of fuel.. :(
Luckily I saw there were two gasstations close by, but on the other side of the road.. We had an empty water bottle lying around in the car, so off I went with my bottle..
The road was four lanes going both ways, luckily there were some breaks in the traffic or I would never have been able to cross.. On top of that the piece of ground seperating the two sides was four meters of swampland, so after almost losing my slippers, sinking up to my ankles in the mud and crossing 8 lanes of highway, I arrived at the first gasstation to find it closed! :(
Walk another five minutes to the second gasstation.. and yes, it was still open, I got my bottle filled, 1.5 litres of gas, should be enough to reach another gasstation, back across the road and the swamp...
Fill up the car with the bottle and yes, it worked! The car started!
A few minutes later we enter town, find a gasstation and fill up..

Phew, home at last, by now it's about ten o'clock, time for dinner, so we find a nice outside restaurant in town and have some great food, sometimes life is very good.. :)

Later there would be more car troubles, the gearbox is very bad and the battery is also always giving trouble, but these are the standard problems with this car, not really worth a story.. :)

Adventure!! - part 1

Well, a little bit anyway... ;)

Yesterday afternoon I was having some English conversation class with the son of my yogateacher when Dada called, my computer student, the dentist had asked Dada if he could help with the car to move some stuff from Bangkok to Rayong.
But the car was in Rayong while Dada was in BKK, so he called me to ask if I could drive the car to Dada's house in BKK?
Well, as I've said before driving in Thailand was no problem and driving TO BKK was not a problem, but he was asking me to drive the car INTO BKK.. :o
I've been in BKK many times now and one thing is a constant, the traffic, from 5 in the morning till 11 in the evening there is a traffic jam and how in hell to find my way to the house??

But I decided to give it a try anyway.. Dada had told me where to get off the highway, so it should be ok.
And as I expected reaching BKK was quite easy, the motorway is quite good and traffic wasn't too bad and the car behaved very well, so it took me two hours to reach BKK, a very good time.
But then the BKK outer-ring started and it turned out there was quite some construction going on, but unlike in Holland, the parts with construction aren't marked well in advance, no you're just driving along and suddenly there's a roadblock ahead, with just seconds time to decide to brake or to move to a different lane.. Very dangerous. And of course it caused a lot of delay, a few miles of standing and slow moving traffic.. And that's where the car showed it's one big defect, the gearbox, sometimes when you want to shift gear it just refuses to go into a new gear and you have to stop the car, turn it off and start again, that trick always seems to fix it. :) So in the end I just drove the whole traffic jam in second gear, low enough to accelerate and high enough to move along with traffic when it was moving.
In the end it took me more than an hour more to get from the edge of BKK to the house, still not too bad considering the traffic, I even managed to find the right street and the house in one try! :)

That was the trip to BKK, tomorrow part two, the trip back home, another adventure. ;)

Smelly water

Coming back from my trip to the beach I was again confronted with the water at our house, more specifically with the smell of our water.. :(
We have to pump up our water from a well in the garden and you would think that would be quite clean and fresh water, but no, it's really disgusting, it's a light brownish colour and it smells a bit like rotting eggs.
Actually we are connected to the local waternet provided by the water company, but the water company hasn't been providing water to big parts of Rayong for months now.. The story I hear around town for the reason is that the water company must provide the industry in a big area around Rayong with water and they don't have enough, so they just cut off parts of Rayong.

So until this situation is fixed we are stuck with our smelly water to wash and shower with.. I just use extra soap while showering, try not to wash it all off and then dry myself really well, that way the bad smell doesn't seem to stick so much to me. ;)

Dogs

One of the things that is starting to annoy me are the dogs, especially here in the neighbourhood it seems like every home has two or three dogs and they all feel they have to protect their little piece of territory.
So every single time I walk or ride my bike through the street going to or from our house every dog comes running out, barking and growling like a dozen burglars are attacking their house..

The first few times it was quite scary getting surrounded by all these angry dogs, but you soon realize they don't really want to attack you, but they're just desperately trying to protect their piece of land.. And now it's just very very annoying, because they do this with everybody who walks or rides around this neighbourhood, so about 50 times a day all of the dogs around here start barking like their lives depended on it.

I hope I don't offend any dog lovers out there, but it's just so sad and pathetic... I've always been a cat person rather than a dog person, although I've met some very nice dogs living with friends of mine, but the dogs around here have really convinced me. :)

Rayong and beach

It's been quiet for a while, first of all because I've been quite busy and second because I've had a short beach holiday. ;)

The boys have school holiday this month and almost all of them have gone to visit friends of family, so I don't have much to do in the house, but I've been giving computer lessons to the local dentist, she is a friend of the foundation and helps to organize things and helps out with the kids sometimes.
She is 53 years old, but she is back at school learning some more new advanced techniques, and now she has to learn to use a computer, so I've been busy the past weeks teaching her every morning at her office between patients. :) In return, she treats me to new things to eat at every breakfast and lunch, so it's a very good deal I think.. I will even get to learn how to make some Thai dishes.

And there are more benefits to being friends with the local people, I mentioned last week I wanted to go on a short beach vacation near Rayong and asked her if she knew of a good place to go and within an hour she had arranged for me to stay at a resort run by a patient of hers on Ko Samet with a huge discount! :)
So I just came back yesterday from a three day stay on the paradise island of Ko Samet, in a luxury bungalow with aircon by the beach.. Sometimes life can be very good.

But now back to daily life, my dentist student will be in Bangkok most of next week, so it will be a very quiet week.. Actually my only duty outside of teaching is learning yoga at the moment, a very light schedule.