Thai family

I just wanted to write down what I feel are a few differences of family life back home to Thailand this may not be for every family and maybe just the one I am staying with mind you but I have seen the same behaviour with neighbour family's also.

First of all I noticed that when ever someone needs anything from the shop (1-2 mins away) or down town (13 miles) they simply ask one of their family members and they seem to do as if it's their job without any quarrel. The most surprising times I have seen this is when we are having a few drinks (beer or whisky) we start to run out and the parents tell one of the children to go get some more and I've seen them send off their kids as what looks like about 9 years old to the shop on their bicycle to get some more beer for them. This always makes me chuckle when I see them cycling back with a bag of beer :) Also funnily enough I have yet to see any drunken under age Thai even with this easily accessible alcohol to them.

Every meal is eaten together as a family and it is actually considered rude I'm told for them to eat alone. It's quite nice to sit around with them all listening to their stories about what happened during their day well that's what I imagine because I don't usually understand much so I have to amuse myself sometimes as to what they're actually saying.

I will keep sharing these differences but again I don't want to bore you too much in one post :) Just a couple of random pics as well of Briss and Mixer.

Thai style swimming

After being here a few days during the hottest time of year I had been looking forward to going for a swim. So once it gets to the hottest part of the day 1-3 pm we quite often head off to the local river. When I say swim I actually mean just a dip in the river as so far we haven't been to an area in the river deep enough for me to be able to actually swim. Thai style swimming usually means going to an area in the shade or after the sun has gone down and jump in with all your clothes on because most of them prefer lighter coloured skin and don't want to stay in the sun long. After we cool off in the river quite often the girls will go about picking some local plants to use in the dinner that evening. Also there's a couple of mango tree's close by that we always stop off at and get a few on our way home.

Welcoming Party

Ok so after a long journey on the bus and waiting at the bus stop I got to my new home. I greeted all the family with the traditional Thai greeting Sawatdee Kap, a small nod while doing a wai (putting your hands together like praying with your hands covering your mouth. There was a lot of smiling and talking amongst themselves but I couldn't understand much as they were speaking Isaan not Thai and I only know a little in Thai only. The differences are between the 2 dialects are big and Isaan dialect is closer to Laotian language just across the border than Thai itself but still some words are the same in both so I was able to understand little bits.

I was shown my new house which I have to say is much larger than it ever looked in the pictures. I played with Mixer (Moni's 2 year old brother) and Dab the family's dog. Slowly during the course of the next 2 hours more people from the village turned up to see the new Falang (their word for white foreigner) as well as other family members and some elderly people from the village. The family and elderly people came along so we could perform a blessing on the house so the ancestor spirits could look after us while we stay there. The elders coming would somehow bless me and Moni to to allow us live to their age. I have some pictures of this to follow as they werent taken on my phone but they show some of us in our house receiving the blessing and the cotton string tied around our wrists is the personal blessing of each individual to give us good luck which are then to be worn for 3 days and can only then be taken off.

Everyone then had a feast in our new house during which they all were keen for me to keep trying new things and eating the food the Isaan way. Isaan way of eating is traditionally done by using your fingers to scoop some sticky rice out of one of the bamboo containers and then rolling the rice into a ball. This can then be dipped into the food and you simply grab a little bit of what ever your dipping the rice into with the ball and the pop it all into your mouth. There was quite a lot of food and most of which I'm not even sure what I ate but most of it was quite nice. This traditional Isaan way of eating is done mostly by the elderly these days and with more youngsters now using a spoon to scoop the additional dish this sounds more hygienic to me but when in Rome. Everyone thought I was really friendly, polite and they kept telling me they had never met a white foreigner like me before.

Also just an update I am currently in Huahin a coastal town in Thailand as I am writing this and trying to catch up with all the blog posts of things I've done. It's Moni's birthday today and we had her party last night and we are off to Koh Samui with 2 more of our friends in a day or so.

My home in Isaan :)

Sorry for the lack of posts but these first 2 weeks have been more of a holiday as well as me simply adjusting to my life here and also the fact I haven't got a decent internet connection sorted yet so uploading pictures takes ages. Also I did plan to do this update a couple of days ago but I fell ill so wasn't able to but more on that later.

Ok so its time for the first proper post about my life in Thailand and I thought I would start by showing where I'm living. Just a few pics of Mixer first.


This picture is for my mum as she gave me some cars to give to Mixer before I go, he loves them and plays with them all the time.

You probably already know my little home from the building project and it hasn't changed much since the last update other than unpacking a little and adding some bedding but here are a few pics of inside.





Next is Moni's family home which is where I get most of our facilities from e.g. water, bathroom, kitchen and even a fridge. Even though they do have a fridge it's not worth keeping much of anything in there except drinking water and some fizzy drink due to the regular power outages, occasionally food is kept in there but it is usually finished within the day as everything is gotten fresh as and when its needed.

Front of the family home from the road.




Behind the family home





Some pictures from under their home while in a hammock during the hottest parts of the day :P







Kitchen the door behind goes into a larger pantry/kitchen with the fridge. This is where all our food is cooked.



Cleaning area, think of this as the kitchen sink. Quite often the chickens hang out here picking off the little scraps of food and hiding from the sun.



Bathroom this is smaller in height than I expected with it being 4 or 5 inches lower than me being able to stand tall in there so my time in here is spent crouched. The idea of the toilet is to squat over it do your business then use the water a small plastic bowl to pour water of your bum to clean yourself and down the toilet to flush it. You then use your hand to scrub or alternatively use the toilet paper I bought :P One last strange but I think quite cool idea is in the water trough there are 2 bottom dwelling fishes (2-3 inches) and these eat any mosquitoes that try to lay their eggs and live here because mosquitoes love stagnant water. I only found out about the fishes because I took my solar powered lantern to the toilet one night when I was having some bowel issues and I could see them swimming around at the bottom. This is also also where I shower while crouched and pouring water over my head.




So this is my first proper post but believe me I have only been here for 2 week and already have lots more to talk about. I have started writing some notes about upcoming posts but I don't want to make any post too long so you you all get too bored when reading :)

7 Days in Thailand

I am still settling in to village life and I think there's lots to write about but for the moment I just wanted to do  a quick update.

I arrived in Bangkok after my 15 hour flight which was actually quite good as I had 2 seats next to me free and even though I didn't spread out across them all at least it meant no one bothering me. The stop off in Mumbai was also better than expected as there wasnt much of a wait getting through all the checks :)

In Bangkok I stayed on Khao San Road where I met up with Moni and we went to see some of my old friends and we had a normal partying night to welcome me back. The next day we went out to a local market to buy some presents for Moni's family as is the Thai tradition when you meet them. I think there were about 15 gifts in total for different family members but they were all quite inexpensive items of clothes and only cost £20-30 in total. Later that evening we caught a bus which takes about 8 or so hours but there was quite a bit of waiting as we wanted to arrive at Moni's family house around 6am when everyone is waking up.

I don't want to bore everyone with too long a story so I will finish this post with I am here at Moni's family home and our new house.

Weekend away with my family

I spent the weekend away at my mums with my family and here are the pics :)

We spent the day in Livepool and spotted this strange busker

This is my Mum and Dads old pub in Liverpool many years ago and were my brother was brought up

This statue reminded me of the bronze Bruce Lee statue in Hong Kong so I did the Bruce Lee pose infront of this :P

So the next time you see pictures I would imagine I will be in Thailand. I will miss you all but not that much lets face it because I'm in a hot sunny country being lazy and well you are all back here working haha

Leaving party drinks video

This is a video me and Dan Bauer did on the day of my 2nd leaving party. Thank you to everyone involved with the video and to everyone that came to see me off :)

My thai home

I just wanted to share some final pictures of my little home. There is lots more to be done still but for the moment at least its habitable as far as I am concerned  I think the next step will be to put some windows in instead of the boards :P