Songkran - Two weeks without Posting

As I start to type at 3:30 in the afternoon, I can hear the dogs barking at the firecrackers, kids and young folks screaming and laughing, pails of water hitting the sides and windshields of cars and the sounds of ambulances. Hey, it's the first official day of Songkran.

You can read about the holiday and the real reason for the water by CLICKING HERE.

Now, here is a video that pretty much tells what is the true story of water on the street during Songkran. CLICK HERE

The video was shot in Chiang Mai which is a much larger town then ours but the same thing happens all over Thailand and countries in Southeast Asia. I ask you: "Doesn't this look like fun for three to seven days?"

Many of us just hide out until next week. By the way, a good thing is the temperature is about 95 degrees today.

We haven't posted for the last two weeks as things have been pretty normal around here in Mae Sai and I have been a little discouraged. A ScanDisk card for my camera somehow got corrupted so I can not load some of the recent pictures.

When we visited Mechu and Si two weeks ago we made arrangements to pick them up on Tuesday, April 3rd. We're sorry to say that Mechu got sick so that did not happen. We have to wait until next week, after Songkran, to see if we can do the trip to visit Chom-nom then.

In the mean time, on April 2nd CATtelecom.com installed fiber optics into our home so we now have far, reliable Internet running around 20/2 Mbps. We can now stream video. The installation was a little sloppy but it works. Remember "TiT", that stands for "This is Thailand".

We also looked at a small piece of land with a little house that is for sale on the hill over looking Mae Sai. You can not drive to it by car but you can by motorbike and the price is only 450,000 Thai Baht (around $14,750 USD). It will not be surveyed until sometime in the next five years so there is a little risk on the lot lines but that is about the only risk.

The view is breath taking but we don't think we want to get involved in building a place that you can't park a car and we are not speculators.

We also stopped at one of Daeng's deceased friend's Mother's home and Daeng spent some time with her. Daeng later returned to visit her and take her some things that she needed and could not buy herself.

Also, on Monday our neighbor had the steel and the materials delivered to put a raised roof over her third floor open roof. I might add that the price of the crane is just about the same as it is in California. It was a nice crane, too.

On Tuesday morning, while having coffee we saw "Mi", the workman that helped us do all the repairs after the earthquake last year. We yelled at him and he came over and had coffee with us. We talked and Mi said he would work for us for the next month or so if we wanted him. We said that was great and he agreed to start on Friday.

Wednesday we drove to Chiang Rai and did some shopping. We did get stopped at the check point. We talked to the officer and explained what was in the nice carrying case, my CPAP machine and he said to go on.

We bought drapes for the guest room and third floor front room along with all the hardware except the rod itself. We will buy that in Mae Sai as it comes in 6 meter lengths. We also bought two more night stands for our master bedroom. Why, you ask, as we already have two? Well, we are going to stack them. We know that sounds funny but they look great.

We stayed the night in Chiang Rai and drove back to Mae Sai the next day to get ready for Mi the next day. Now that we have new drapes for those two rooms we should paint before we put them up. I bought primer, crack repair stuff, caulking, paint and brushes. We are going to keep the colors the same but just a little lighter shade, cream color ceilings and light blue walls.

On Friday, Mi showed up early and we got right to work talking down the the old curtains. Daeng got a call, a friend that had advised us when we helped with building the school in Myanmar (Burma) had a death in his family. His thirteen year old daughter had drowned while swimming.

We talked it over and Daeng was going to go later today and tomorrow and I would go with her on Sunday for the funeral. Mi and I worked for the next two days getting the ceiling of the whole third floor ready to paint.

The project started as just paint two walls and put up some drapes and looks like it will end up paint at least two floors of this building. More will be revealed.