Mae Sai 04/20/2010 Pretty Typical

The day was pretty typical for us in the re-model mode. We got up around 6:00 AM and moved forward through the day.

Roof tile guys showed up and worked all day setting tile. We did have to have a little follow up talk about removing the loose, old coating before putting down the new tile.

Salad, the Burmese contractor that is doing the kitchen, bathroom and walls, came with some materials.

The stainless steel sink was a single bowl sink and we agreed on a double bowl. The two bathroom doors are only 180 centimeters high.

That means I would hit my head going through the doors. Thai people are very short. The doors should be 200 centimeters.

He took the sink back but I did not catch the door mistake until after he left. We will need to have the communication talk to be sure we both don't mis-understand each other.

The men from CAT Telecom came and did all the wiring and everything works great. Total hook up cost with dish, wireless router, cabling ND satellite TV converter was 7400 THB ($231 USD). After this month we will have to pay 790 THB for Internet service and 250 THB for television. That is about $33.50 in United States money.

It is a big deal to have these stations on TV here in Mae Sai. We already have two of the teenagers in the family sitting in front of the TV watching MTV.

I must stay mellow and remember "TIT" (This is Thailand).

Mae Sai 04/18/2010 Hail Storm

Today we just hung out around the place and talked about the projects we have going during the next few days. It is kind of a typical day.

Tomorrow Cat Telecom is supposed to run the wire down our street and hook up both the DSL for Internet and the Television.

The crew that is going to put on our new tile roof are supposed to start tomorrow. The boss is supposed to come by and pick up 20,000 THB for the sand, cement and 148 square meters of tile.

The contractor from Burma is supposed to come by so he can answer some questions we have about the new rooms and the new bathroom. Here they call it a water room as the whole room is made to be wet.

Around 6:30 PM it started to rain. Then it started to hail small hail about the size of a green pea. More rain and then the hail got larger and come down harder. We saw pieces of hail that were larger than golf balls.

At first it was fun picking up the small pieces of hail but then we realized that the hail was coming down so hard it was breaking the asbestos roofs. The hail was breaking out big pieces of the roofs.

Yes, they still use asbestos to make roof material here.

At our new place only the garage/cooking area at the back has this type of roof. We got about ten, pretty good size holes.

The bad part is that Daeng's Mother has that type of roof on her apartment and so does brother Tun's place.

After the rain slowed down a little Daeng went over to her Mom's and Brother's to find they were flooding out due to the hail breaking the roofs.

Both their places had a lot of water damage. Daeng helped them get situated for the night and came back home.

This day turned out to not be typical.

Mae Sai - Typical Day? 03-31-2010

I woke up late, around 7:15 AM. Today started off pretty typical except we had no Internet connection through the wireless system. I dressed and walked downstairs to make sure everything was plugged in as sometimes the night person unplugs the router. Everything was plugged in so I guess the storm must have knocked something out.

I fixed a cup of coffee. Daeng woke up about 8:00 AM and we talked about going shopping at Lotus/Tesco to buy milk, sliced wholegrain bread, instant coffee, crunchy peanut butter, jelly, sliced ham and French’s mustard. All items that were hard to find in the local market.
We can get small bottles of milk and bread at the 7-11. Yes, there are four 7-11 in town and a couple of Food Marts. I don’t think Mae Sai has a Circle K but there are around Thailand.

About 10:00 AM Daeng’s sister-in-law, Hlong, called to say that everyone was going to Daeng’s sister’s place in Chiang Rai today as her son, Jack, was going to the Temple to be cleansed.

I had seen this process a few times here in Thailand but still don’t understand it completely. Basically, when a boy becomes of a certain age, somewhere around 10-14, he goes to the Buddhist Temple to be cleansed both inside and out; physically and spiritually.

He is shaved of all hair, washed all over and blessed. He will also spend three to thirty days with the monks. It is a big deal, not only for the boy, but for the parents as well. I’m told that what the boy does will help the parents go upstairs when they died.

It is also a BIG Buddhist Party. To read more about these celebrations and more pictures CLICK HERE!

Daeng said she wanted me to go with her so we packed a bag and hopped on her 100 CC Honda Wave motorbike and headed the 60 kilometer south. Everything went well to the halfway point. We didn’t ever get stopped at the checkpoints. Then, it started to rain hard.

Daeng pulled over under the roof of a bus waiting area and we hung out about 45 minutes until the rain stopped.

As fast as it started it stopped, even the sun came out. We hopped back on the motorbike and headed to Chiang Rai again. We stopped once to check the air in the tires but continued to the Orchid Guest House by the old bus station. We like it there as it is right in the center of the Night Bazaar.

Unfortunately, they only had rooms with twin beds so we drove down the street a little to an old hotel next to the gold clock circle. We all sleep alone before we die but I'm not ready, to sleep alone!

While we are on the subject of the gold clock tower it is beautiful. At night they play music and the clock tower changes colors to the music.

We checked into the hotel, took a shower and headed over to Daeng’s sister’s place to meet all the family and arrange to meet up with them at 7:00 AM tomorrow morning so we can get some pictures of her son having his hair cut off, etc.

We had some supper with the family and Daeng brought me back to the hotel as I’m beat. She was going back to party with the family as this is a big deal in the Buddhist religion.

She was also going to take her Mother to see Boonreang, her son, who is at school here in Chiang Rai. He goes to a boarding type school here. What “boarding type school” means is that he goes to a school and lives with his teacher. Since Daeng enrolled him in this school his grades have gone from failing last year to a 2.8 average this year.

Was this a Typical day in Mae Sai? I think not as we were only there for a few hours in the morning.

Good-night!

Mae Sai – Typical Day? 03-30-2010

As I sit in candlelight typing, I am trying to answer the question: “What is a typical day in Mae Sai, Chiang Rai Thailand?” This is a question that several people have asked.

Mae Sai is a small, 25,000 to 30,000 people, border town on the Myanmar (Burma) border. The temperature is 10-15 degrees cooler than Bangkok as it is higher in elevation that most of Thailand.

Mae Sai is as far north as you can go in Thailand and is in the area known as the “Golden Triangle”. The three countries that come together to make this triangle are Laos, Thailand and Myanmar (Burma). At one time it was the largest producer of Opium in the world. It has slipped to number two as Afghanistan has the number one spot now.

The typical things we do here are very much like the things we do in California or any place we are at. We wake up, have normal body functions, shower, brush our teeth, get dressed and eat. I guess those parts of our lives here are typical.

Daeng and I try to walk a few miles every morning to get our exercise and keep the increasing arthritis pain in my lower joints to a minimum.

This morning I woke up about 4:10 AM and called my Mother in California. There is a 14 hour time difference. Thailand is 14 hours ahead of Pacific Daylight Saving Time. I use my new notebook which is hooked up with the free wireless Internet connection here at the Yeesum Guest House where we live.

I then hook up our Magic Jack and we have telephone service to the USA and Canada. Mom was doing pretty good but was complaining about her joints hurting, too. It was around 4:00 PM on the 29th there.

After talking to Mom I answered some of our emails. This technology is amazing to me as I was born before broadcast television. Now, I can talk to folks on the other side of the world with no wires hooked to my communication device.

Daeng woke up a little after 6:00 AM. We had coffee and toast and talked about the day ahead of us as the electricity to all of this area will be off from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM today. This time down will allow them to replace some of the high voltage wires to increase the potential of the electrical grid in this area.

Sure enough at 8:00 AM the electricity went off so we went for a walk. Daeng and I turned right when we walked out of the guest house and traveled up the street along the river that seperates Thailand from Myanmar. When we got to the end of the street we walked up the hill past the little house that I like.

The house is unique because it is built into the side of the hill. Last week we called the owner to ask if he wanted to sell it. He told Daeng he would have to talk with his daughter who is presently living there. We haven’t heard back so the answer is probably no. We’ll call him again after Thai New Year celebration, called Songkran, is over.

We then walked down the hill and turned right so we could go the morning market to have breakfast. We had to walk around the huge construction site of the hotel and townhouse condominiums that the Piyaporn Family is building.

The building of this new hotel complex is driving the prices of property up as everyone thinks this complex will bring lots of business to the area. The prices of property are already double that of other areas, even Chiang Rai or Chiang Mai and Chiang Mai is the second largest city in Thailand.

We had breakfast in the center of the morning market. I had fried pork and a cup of steamed rice with some “Akha” toppings that Daeng had bought from a lady as we were entering the market.

Daeng had fried vegetables, rice and this “Akha” specialty that was made with pork entails and fermented cabbage. It was very tasty but we would not recommend it to the weaker stomached folks.

We then walked up the main street to J@J Internet Cafe as I told the owner, Cola, I would make a call to the United States National Visa Center for him.

We stopped to buy an umbrella on the way as it looked like it would rain, again. It rained last night. That was a good thing because it cleared the smoke from the jungle fires and put them out.

As we got to J@J Internet it started raining again. Cola’s wife, Monn, said that Cola stayed home to do anything without electricity. We told Monn to tell Cola we would see him tomorrow.

Just about that time our Australian friend, Peter, called as he was in Mae Sai going to the bank. He met us under the bridge that leads across the little river to Myanmar. It was raining hard so we had coffee in the little open air café next to the bridge.

We talked about his rice land that he leases out and his apartments that he had built. He was in the process of putting bathrooms in two more of his apartment.

He was going to see another friend so we said good-bye and walked toward home. It was a good think I had bought the umbrella.

On the way home we bought a small water melon, a barbecued chicken and a “Som-Tom” papaya salad. We ate most of it when we got to our place.

I was pretty tired for some reason so I laid down for a little nap. Daeng went to visit here brother and sister-in law, Tun & Hlong.

My cellular phone woke me us at about 5:30 am. The lights were back on and it was Daeng telling me she was going with Hlong to visit someone and did not want me to worry. I told her to have fun and be careful.

I ate the rest of the barbecued chicken and watched some English television. At around 7:00 PM it started to hail and rain hard. The lights went out, too.

I called Daeng to make sure she was okay. She said it was raining very hard where she was, about 10 miles south of town, and not electricity.

This was a good test of my new ACER notebook that I bought in America. The six battery, battery pack lasts between 5-6 hours on a full charge. The keyboard is small for my fat fingers (86% keyboard) but if I am careful it works great. I want to thank Jay Scelsi for helping me pick this notebook. It works well in candlelight.

Was today a typical day in Mae Sai? I’ll try to blog each day and you can to the judge.

Daeng got home at around 9:30. She was pretty wet but safe and the lights came back on.

Good-night.