thewills'wanderings

Our time in Chiang-Mai has been very relaxing and a big surprise to us in lots of ways. First of all our house is incredible! The Perich family have been here in Chiang-Mai teaching at Grace International School for the past year and they’ve been renting this house. It has 4 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms and is in a subdivision of houses all the same with a guard at the gate. A very different experience from our time in Nepal. It’s been the perfect place for us to have a bit of settled time, do some schoolwork, cook for ourselves(occasionally!), and explore Chiang-Mai.
The Periches were with us for the first week before they left for Europe on their way back to New Zealand. It was great to spend time with them, meet some of their friends and for our girls to hang out with their kids. We’ve spent a bit of time at the resort style school swimming pool trying to cool off from the muggy heat.
We’ve also spent some time getting dental check-ups which are so much cheaper here, and with the Periches recommendation we were able to find an awesome dentist. It’s been a shock to us how good the standard of living is here for foreigners. It would be a very easy place to live if you had a reasonable job.
We love the markets here. We’ve been to the touristy night bazaar a couple of times, the Sunday markets, and a few times a week we head to the little local market where all the locals buy their fresh meat and fruit and veges. It’s fun walking past the snakes, frogs, termites, and other tasty bugs without looking too repulsed in case you offend the stall owners. It’s funny that while this market has all of this really interesting stuff, right next door at the 7/11 store you can buy a burger for 80c and a big slushy (the girl’s favourite) for 50c. We’ve been eating out mostly but have occasionally cooked when we can’t quite face going out. Chicken is so cheap here. I made burgers last night and bought chicken breast to put in them and it cost $1.50 for enough chicken for the 6 of us! Eating Thai food is cheap, about $1.50 for a plate of noodles and veges but if you go Western it’s probably a bit cheaper than NZ, but a lot more pricy than Thai. The girls have coped pretty well with the food. Sometimes Charlotte will just have plain rice with an omelette on top which seems to be on every menu.
When the Periches left, they also left their car and their maid. I know, it’s all sounding far too glam now. A month after we leave, the new teacher and her husband arrive and take over the house, and they didn’t want to put Acha(the maid) out of a job, so we have her on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. She is an 18 year old girl from Burma and had become part of the Perich family while they were here. She doesn’t speak much English or Thai but we know that she came from a difficult situation in Burma and that her mother is still in there and she sends money back to her. It has been kind of strange having her do everything. Every day she’s here she does the washing, folding, cleans all the bathrooms, sweeps up leaves, and mops the whole house which is all tiles, and a very big house! I never know quite where to put myself and I can’t help feeling guilty as I read my book and do stuff on the computer. I’m sure I’d get used to it quite quickly if I lived here though. It’s just part of life here and all of the foreigners have them.
Having a car has been great as we’ve been able to explore Chiang-Mai easily. We’re getting used to the driving which isn’t all that bad just a bit loose with road rules and tons of motorbikes everywhere. A few days ago it was my turn to head out on my own while Tim did schoolwork with the kids. We try to have turnabout so we can both get a break. It was my first time driving right into town and I was a bit nervous as there are lots of one-way streets and I wasn’t sure about parking. Anyway, I made it and found a park in a little back street temple parking area which didn’t have many cars in it. I spent the day wandering the streets, scouring the second-hand bookshops and eating Pad Thai. When I finally made it back to the car, which took a while because I couldn’t exactly remember where I parked and all the little streets do look quite similar, I noticed that the car park was now full and a car had parked right behind mine. Now, in NZ I would have been furious and would have had to wait until the owner returned. Not in Thailand though. Luckily, we had seen this happen in the big shopping mall and noticed the sign saying that if you do this, please leave your car in neutral with the handbrake off so you can be pushed out of the way. Imagine this working at Westcity, or St Lukes! I don’t think so. So, with sweat pouring off me I casually pushed the car out of my way and managed to drive myself out of the car park. I did have a slight panic as I started pushing, wondering if it was on a slight slope and would it run off and crash into something. I’m still getting over the Woodlands Park driveway incident!
While we’ve been here we’ve also visited an orphanage which has just been started by an Aussie couple. They are friends of the Periches and we met them and asked if we could help them out while we were here. They have 9 little girls who have all been rescued from horrendous situations. Most of them have come from remote areas or Laos and don’t speak mainstream Thai, so even with the Thai speaking staff in the orphanage there are lots of difficulties in communicating. Luckily, the oldest girl who is 12 can speak enough English to do lots of translating. We all went for a ride to pick the older kids up from school and our girls piled in the back of the ute with them.(check out the photo of those gorgeous girls, it was so nice to see them giggling and laughing, knowing what they’ve come from). Tim has since been back to build a wall to make more sleeping space. He had fun trying to find wood and tools, all a lot different from building in NZ.
Last weekend Grace International School, where Catherine worked as the music teacher, ran a sports camp outreach for local Thai children. Tim and the big girls went along and helped. Tim was a leader on the volleyball station and the girls joined in with the activities for the 2 days. They had about 250 local Thai kids so that was quite an experience.
We spent the day at Chiang-Mai Zoo on Wednesday. That was a different zoo experience. We were expecting really cramped conditions for the animals but it was actually a pretty amazing zoo with lots of development taking place to improve enclosures. It’s a huge zoo, impossible to walk around so you take shuttle buses all around. The best part of it is that you’re allowed to feed the animals so we were passing bananas to the monkeys and elephants. You can actually bring in your own veges to feed them! The panda was very cool! Check out the photo! I think part of the enjoyment is that it didn’t cost the earth to get in. When we visited Australia Zoo in February, we loved it but it cost SO much that you can’t help wondering if it was really worth it.
So, life here has been great. We’ve enjoyed having a house and car and a bit of normality while we explore more of Thailand. We’ve been out a few times with no children, got to know some of the Perich’s friends (actually, we really have just taken over their lives). Grace International School would love to give us jobs actually, but no, don’t worry, though tempting as it be would be to live here, we’re not going to settle down in Chiang-Mai.(not in the near future anyway)
Tomorrow Karen, Willem and Hayley( my sister and children) are arriving in Chiang-Mai and we can’t wait! It’s going to be so much fun showing them around. We’re going to do an overnight elephant trek in the hills and by this time next week we’ll be leaving our home comforts behind and will be off to the Golden Triangle and then across to Laos and down the Mekong on the 2 day boat ride!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 8:34 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.