That sure is a lot of whiskey...

Like brandy in South Africa, whiskey (and beer, of course) is the staple here in the Land of Smiles.  This picture was taken on a night out in Khao San (the backpackers district), where the group was celebrating the birthday of one of the sidewalk bar owners. I don't drink whiskey (and was a bit under the weather at the time), but got a free Tom Yum Gai (a hot and sour soup with chicken) and a glass of Coke out of the deal so I was quite pleased.

Surprise snacks!

It's always nice when your boss comes to work bearing gifts.  This time it was a slice of Swiss roll and a puff pastry. Yum!!

Breakfast of Champions

This is my average breakfast at school. It consists of a cut up bun slathered with mayonnaise and tomato sauce (usually I have 2 of those), a chocolate brownie (which is actually just a block of chocolate spongecake with nuts on top) and the Thai equivalent of Mix-a-Drink with crushed ice.  Not the healthiest of choices, I know, but it sure hits the spot. And all for just 20THB...

What's for dinner?

This unusually large snail resides in our front yard.  Escargot anyone?

The eyes of the beholder

A drawing of me done by one of my high school students (a hearing-impaired boy named Non) after seeing my tattoos.  C'est tres joli, non?

A night of gaiety in Silom soi 4

A group of us went out to Silom soi 4 (one of the gay adult streets in the Silom district of Bangkok) to celebrate our friend Garry's birthday.  To start the evening off Garry had to blow out the candles on his very suggestively shaped "birthday cake" (I'm not exactly sure what it was made of).  We were also kept company by one of the friendly bar-cats lazing on a bar-stool next to our table.  The evening included watching some male dancers strut their stuff, a cover band fronted by a ladyboy and making a McThai run for cheeseburgers and Chicken McNuggets before heading home.

My least favourite school lunch

The meal consists of the standard clear Thai soup (which is the nicest part of the meal) accompanied by gristly pieces of minced pork (boiled, which makes it even more horrible), some boiled greens (usually cabbage, which I hate) and cubes of boiled blood (pig or chicken).  Yes, you read it correctly, boiled BLOOD.  

The best part of the meal was watching my fellow Saffa's (who are much less adventurous eaters than I've become) recoil in horror when I revealed to them what the gelatinous brown cubes in their meal was.  It would have been funnier had they actually eaten any of it, but being picky eaters they had all obstinately avoided the foreign objects in their food.

The Pannawit Crew

Meet the English Program teachers at Pannawit School (my current school). Excluding the Thai assistants and our Filipino coordinator, only ONE of the teachers is not South African. 

Not a great photo of me, but passable I suppose...

Birthday cake

We were all invited to one of our Thai assistants' birthday party at her house. The farang teachers all clubbed together and bought this ice cream cake from Swensen's (a dessert restaurant similar to Milky Lane).  The cake was delicious, but then again at a whopping 780THB it had to be...

Full size cakes in Thailand are ridiculously expensive and I for one would rather just have baked one, had I actually had an oven...  Another little Thailand curiosity. In our Thai-style townhouse we have a room that serves as a kitchen, but other than a wooden table, a fridge and a microwave, the room didn't come with anything else you'd find in a conventional kitchen.  The Thais don't use kitchens and tend to do most of their cooking either in the lounge or outside in their front courtyard.  Even in the more modern houses, where you might be spoiled with kitchen counters and cabinets and if you're really lucky a gas hob and a sink, you still will not find an oven. 

Sunset over our village

The photo doesn't really do it justice, but I found it striking that half the sky was a bright pinkish-orange and the other half was a clear blue.

Our temple babies

And here they are.  Meet Fah Chai (prince) and Fah Ying (princess), also known as Banshee (on the left) and Mottley.  We decided to give them both Thai and western names, but call them by their western names. Banshee was named after his insistent and constant meowing for no apparent reason. After the first time we saw Mottley we kept referring to her as Motley Crue and this eventually became Mottley - a combination of the words "mottled" and "motley" referring to her colouring and unknown heritage.


Both babies were sick with cat-flu and rail-thin when they came to us, but luckily we have a small veterinary practice next to our village with an incredibly caring and friendly young veterinarian who did all their check-ups for free.  I only had to pay for their medication.  They have since been eating like champions and wrecking our house so all is right in the world once more.

Temple Turtle

We spotted this little fellow lounging next to one of the small ponds on the temple grounds.

The inner sanctum

There was a beautiful building in a little walled inner courtyard with some beautiful murals.  I have no idea what the purpose of the building is and could see no way to get into it.  It could quite possibly have been some kind of mausoleum... My ignorance of the Buddhist faith and its practices is actually making me cringe, but I am simply too lazy to bother to Google it. 

At the entrance to this inner courtyard we encountered a beautiful blue-eyed pair of Siamese twins, but they were extremely skittish so we let them be.

Inside the temple grounds

Some more interesting statues and little shrines.  There was a section against the one wall with rows of statues that reminded me of little obelisks, which I took to be tombstones, but that's just a guess on my part. 

Wat Klang

As you enter the temple grounds, there is a little under-cover section on the right with more statues as well as rows and rows of what I could only assume are offering bowls.  There was also a stunning display of glass figurines of all the different animals of the Zodiac with more offering bowls in front of them.  This section leads to the indoor section were an ancient-looking monk resides.  I have been told that people come to see this monk to have their fortunes told. He will read their auras and their palms and is said to be very wise and enlightened.

While admiring the Zodiac figurines we were approached by a man visiting the temple who introduced himself to us and proceeded to tell us a bit more about the temple.  I don't remember the man's name, but he had some kind of military background and was very friendly and helpful.  He informed us that the thing that Wat Klang is the most well known for is it's magic.  He also asked us to join him in having a meal with the monk, but as we had already eaten and were quite thoroughly intimidated by our lack of knowledge of Buddhist customs, we thanked him and politely declined. We were, after all, on a mission of a different kind.

A visit to our local temple

Being the crazy cat lady that I am, I decided that my house has been too long without the touch of the four-legged fur-ball variety.  My mind being made up, I decided that I would adopt.  In Thailand unwanted animals are more often than not brought to the temples for the monks to take care of.  The majority of these unwanted animals being cats.  So this is how we ended up making the trip to our local temple, Wat Klang ("wat" being the Thai word for temple).

Here are some pics of the temple grounds.  There really was a RIDICULOUS amount of golden Buddha statues near the entrance to the grounds. I expected there to be a few, but was really surprised at how many there were. The temple is right next to a klong (canal) and had a little gazebo next to the klong where you could sit and admire the scenery.

Long time no see!

As life goes on and we become more and more settled into a routine, I realize I've failed to keep my blog updated. Not an awful lot has happened since my last update as financial strain has kept us home for the past couple of months and being worked to death also didn't leave me with much time or energy to do very much of anything.  

Let me tell you, as easy as it can be to get by here in the Land of Smiles, it can also very much depend on your personal situation.  If you are debt free, live frugally and spend a lot of your time at home you should easily be able to save up enough money for extended holidays and such, but if that is not your situation it becomes much harder to get by.  With debts back home and one of us being unemployed for a few months the going has been tough and therefore the blog posts also few and far between.  

But as things are looking up again, hopefully I will be able to take some time out of my busy schedule to relay some interesting sights and experiences. I have, however, built up a small backlog of pics which I will now proceed to upload so keep an eye out!

Long time no see!

As life goes on and we become more and more settled into a routine, I realize I've failed to keep my blog updated. Not an awful lot has happened since my last update as financial strain has kept us home for the past couple of months and being worked to death also didn't leave me with much time or energy to do very much of anything.  

Let me tell you, as easy as it can be to get by here in the Land of Smiles, it can also very much depend on your personal situation.  If you are debt free, live frugally and spend a lot of your time at home you should easily be able to save up enough money for extended holidays and such, but if that is not your situation it becomes much harder to get by.  With debts back home and one of us being unemployed for a few months the going has been tough and therefore the blog posts also few and far between.  

But as things are looking up again, hopefully I will be able to take some time out of my busy schedule to relay some interesting sights and experiences. I have, however, built up a small backlog of pics which I will now proceed to upload so keep an eye out!

That's a lot of whiskey...

Like brandy in South Africa, whiskey (and beer, of course) is the staple here in the Land of Smiles.  This picture was taken on a night out in Khao San (the backpackers district), where the group was celebrating the birthday of one of the sidewalk bar owners. I don't drink whiskey (and was a bit under the weather at the time), but got a free Tom Yum Gai (a hot and sour soup with chicken) out of the deal so I was quite pleased.

Surprise snacks!

It's always nice when your boss comes to work bearing gifts.  This time it was a slice of Swiss roll and a puff pastry. Yum!!

Breakfast of Champions

This is my average breakfast at school. It consists of a cut up bun slathered with mayonnaise and tomato sauce (usually I have 2 of those), a chocolate brownie (which is actually just a block of chocolate spongecake with nuts on top) and the Thai equivalent of Mix-a-drink with crushed ice.  Not the healthiest of choices, I know, but it sure hits the spot...

What's for dinner?

This unusually large snail resides in our front yard.  Escargot anyone?

Me as seen by one of my high school students

A drawing of me done by one of my high school students (a hearing-impaired boy named Non).

C'est tres joli, non?

A night of gaiety in Silom soi 4

A group of us went out to Silom soi 4 (one of the gay adult streets) to celebrate our friend Garry's birthday.  To start the evening off Garry had to blow out the candles on his very suggestively shaped "birthday cake" (I'm not exactly sure what it was made of).  We were also kept company by one of the friendly bar-cats lazing on a bar-stool next to our table.  The evening included watching some male dancers strut their stuff, a cover band fronted by a ladyboy and making a McThai run for cheeseburgers and Chicken McNuggets before heading home.

My least favourite school lunch

The meal consists of the standard clear Thai soup (which is the nicest part of the meal) accompanied by gristly pieces of minced pork (boiled, which makes it even more horrible), some boiled greens (usually cabbage, which I hate) and cubes of boiled blood (pig or chicken).  Yes, you read it correctly, boiled BLOOD.  

The best part of the meal was watching my fellow Saffa's (who are much less adventurous eaters than I've become) recoil in horror when I revealed to them what the gelatinous brown cubes in their meal was.  It would have been funnier had they actually eaten any of it, but being picky eaters they had all obstinately avoided the foreign objects in their food.

The Pannawit Crew

Meet the English Program teachers at Pannawit School (my current school). Excluding the Thai assistants and our Filipino coordinator, only ONE of the teachers is not South African.