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International Night On Koh Samui

Saturday, February 25th, 2006

We’re back on Samui and I have rented a brand new furnished one bedroom house for $12.00 a night at “Solitude Resort” on a mountainside about a mile from Doug and Luk’s bungalow.

The first evening we were welcomed by our next door neighbors, a hilarious 55 year old skinny Austrian jewelry maker, Stefan, with a shaved head except for a very long salt and pepper pony-tail in back, and his flirty 30 year old Mongolian wife. He was escaping the extremely harsh European winter, he said. The owner of the simple “resort” with six houses and a swimming pool is a youngish Brit, Mark, from Yorkshire, and I understand only about half his English. His wife is a pretty young Hmong tribal woman from Lao. (I confess I can remember the names of neither woman.)

The Austrian and his wife were pretty well oiled by the time we arrived about 6 in the evening…Doug, and Luk and I opting for juice. The 7 of us sat on the front porch fighting mosquitos while the two guys regaled us with stories about how they met their wives (Stefan and his wife were both working in “Czecki” and Mark met his wife in Vientiane, Lao while on a post university year of travel) and about the difficulties in getting married when there are no consolates (Austrian or British) in the respective countries they are trying to get permission to marry in (Mongolia and Lao).

The women, with minimal English, gave up on trying to follow the hurried conversation and lapsed into a smaller discussion between themselves about how they had been married for 5 and 7 years and still had no children. To get married, Stefan had to go through the Australian Embassy in Beijing…Mark the Australian Embassy in Britain. Stefan was told he had to pay $125 for something but that it was “impossible to do!” (We all laughed having heard similar injunctions many times before!) Mark had to pay off officials all the way up the bureaucratic chain to the tune of $1500 to get the usual year waiting period reduced to three months. He had to fill out 25 forms that had to be translated in four different languages (the fourth because Mark’s father is from Mauritius off the coast of Africa). One of the forms Mark had to sign was an affadavit saying he had never slept with his prospective bride…if he had refused he could have been hauled off to jail…it being against the law to sleep with a woman in Lao if you are not married! I thought to myself that the pressure from the local families, probably financial as well as cultural, for these couples to be married must have been pretty strong to get these guys to go through all this rigamarole. Or maybe I have just become cynical!

Then, as usual between expats, the discussion turned to the lack of local efficiency…Mark lamenting about how any tools made in Thailand were sure to break or fall apart as soon as they were purchased…make sure anything you buy is made in China or the west he advises. And Stefan had stories about how gems were glass, earrings made of tin infected his wife’s pierced ears, and the gold he tried to make jewelry with broke apart because the 24 carot gold was so soft. (The Thais won’t have anything but pure gold. It’s a status thing.) This we already know of course. The evening’s black humor produced a lot of much needed comic relief. But, Mark says, even so, every place in the world having it’s ups and downs he would never choose to give up living in “Paradise.” We are all learning to live “mai pen rai!” loosely translated meaning “no worries’ or “never mind!”

This morning as I was leaving the house on the back of Doug’s bike, Mark was cleaning the pool. A 60ish year old Italian guy was animatedly trying to teach Mark Italian…in Italian…Mark patiently nodding and smiling all the while. Mark caught my eye and we had a good laugh!

These experiences I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Koh Pha Ngan

Friday, February 24th, 2006

Doug Luk and I took a break from Samui and put the car on the ferry for the two hour trip north to the island of Koh Pha Ngan for a couple days. Almost no car and truck traffic, motorcycles or pot-holes=bliss! This is the island, two-thirds the size of Samui, of the legendary full-moon parties but luckily we were there only during the post-half-moon party…the southeast beaches full of 20-something Europeans in dreadlocks and a slew of Israelis. We stayed on a serene northeast beach…me in an aircon bungalow and Doug and Luk in a 300 baht fan bungalow facing the Gulf Of Siam.

A drive up to the end of the paved road landed us at sunset in a sandy beach restaurant watching the sun go down while eating fresh-caught baracuda and spicy Thai salad…and we are leaving all this on the ferry in two days?!!

Clean Clean Clean

Monday, February 20th, 2006
Luk does the laundry by hand on the tiled shower floor...the water draining down a hole. She uses a brush and scrubs her heart out...twice with plain soap...and then a third time with "smell-good soap"...rinsing after each wash. ... [Continue reading this entry]

Now…Not Later

Sunday, February 5th, 2006
It is typical for Thais to think only about what to do now...not some time in the future. So when Doug was showing me houses to buy next year, we asked Luk where she wanted to go next...her answer ... [Continue reading this entry]

Eurotrash

Friday, February 3rd, 2006
I have learned a new ethnic slur..."eurotrash"...which apparently refers to the white Europeans who come to third world countries claiming to be somebody big back home but selfishly feeding off the local generosity...the word, I think, usually used by the ... [Continue reading this entry]

Visiting Doug & Luk

Friday, February 3rd, 2006
1wXSp3CkNsDoJl3s0SgHmw-2006171154009258.gif Arrived on Koh Samui a couple days ago on Bangkok Air to the smiling faces of Doug and Luk at the small open-air airport on Koh Samui. (Koh means island.) While waiting for ... [Continue reading this entry]

Shower Lay Down

Wednesday, February 1st, 2006
Doug and Luk call me every morning. Sometimes I am awake and sometimes not. This morning Luk says "Good morning mom!" "I love mom!" "I miss mom!" "One more day!" Doug gets on the phone ... [Continue reading this entry]