Settling Down Here in Krabi...

Meeting the neighbors...

We are in a great neighborhood with very friendly neighbors!  Thai people are amazingly hospitable.  Since we have begun to meet them, we have received more yummy treats than we can begin to count.  Sometimes, it's a pomelo, sometimes sweet coconut milk with some kind of treat inside, or a dinner entree.  Sometimes, we are not quite sure what it is--a great opportunity for a little Thai cultural lesson. On just one day this past week we received a huge hand of bananas, two coconuts (hand picked by our neighbor's son, who climbed the tree himself to get them for us!), a pack of fried banana chips, a couple bags of shrimp flavoured chips (which the girls loved!), 3 cucumbers, and 3 mangos.  If we meet anymore neighbors, we might not need to go grocery shopping anymore!

Our super sweet neighbor, Loong Chai peeling a pomelo for us to eat.

I've tried to reciprocate and have received (and had) a lot of good laughs!  One morning, our neighbor's son, Monchai, came to do some yard work for us with Chris.  Since they had been blessing us with so much, I  decided to give him some of our oatmeal to try.  :-)  I'm not really sure that he liked it; but, he gave it a go.  He only finished a third of the small bowl.  The next day he came, I made pancakes topped with pure maple syrup from back home.  This went over much better; he said it was much more tasty than the day before.  On Hope's birthday I poured some milk for everyone to drink with their cake and ice cream.  The two teenage girls didn't even attempt to pick up their glasses and the father drank his like it was a shot glass, quickly pouring water into his glass to chase it down!  I still laugh when I think about it.  I'm hoping to make some chocolate chip cookies to pass out soon; I think they might win the day with everyone!  We'll see...

Another thing that amazes me is how quick they are to invite us to go on significant trips with them, after knowing us for only a short while.  The family that we are renting our house from came by this week to deal with our terrible termite problem.  As we were talking, they invited us to come to visit their shrimp farm in another province.  They said they would pick us up and we could stay with them for a couple days.  Our neighbor's son invited us to visit his relatives' fish farm on a nearby island and then take Chris to go deep sea fishing.  A couple of days ago I met a neighbor who, after talking for only a short time, invited me to go to another province with her to see a large temple in the city.  I can't really imagine people in America meeting a foreigner and inviting him to his uncle's house in DC after one brief encounter!  :-)  We'll see if we can somehow fit all these trips in into our increasingly filled and busy schedule.

By far, our most exciting experience this past month was when a snake came to visit!  I was passing by the kitchen window and thought I saw something move in the carport.   So, I went for a closer look.  Sure enough, it was a snake!  I called Chris to come and kill it (you don't mess around with snakes here!).  Too late.  It quickly slithered under a concrete based table I had set up for the girls to color on.  We waited for a while to see if it would come out.  When it finally peeked it's head out, we saw that it had a diamond-shaped head; so, we were fairly sure it was poisonous.  Chris tried spraying water under the table to encourage it to leave; but, it didn't budge.  With the table being right next to our house where our kids play everyday, we decided to call our super-helpful neighbor, Loong Chai (who works only 3 minutes down the road) to come and help us.  He sped here on his little motor scooter right away with a long PVC pipe as his chosen weapon of execution.  Chris and Loong Chai managed to lift the heavy top of the table off without getting bit to see inside.  Loong Chai started swatting; we could all hear the snake hissing at him.  Thankfully, he was able to kill it. When he dragged it out for a closer look, we saw it was a cobra! Yikes!  Thankfully, it was not the spitting variety often encountered here.

In addition to snakes, we have huge spiders and poisonous centipedes here, as well.  Chris has killed two giant spiders under our carport and the longest centipede we have ever seen in our lives under a pile of rocks he was moving with Monchai.  We have also seen some dead scorpions, but know that their living relatives must still be lurking around outside somewhere.  Thankfully, we haven't encountered anything in our house yet, other than lots of lizards, termites, ants, and a newborn kitty, which lives above our drywall ceiling in the kitchen and screams for its mama throughout the day!  Speaking of lizards . . . the day after we killed the snake, Chris was just waking up in the morning when a kamikaze lizard leapt from the air conditioner on to his bare back.  I heard a loud crash in the bedroom and ran to see what it was: just a kamikaze lizard . . . no need for alarm.  

On the way home from language school this afternoon, Faith noticed a family of monkeys tightrope walking on a neighborhood power line to get to a rose apple tree in blossom above the street. . . . just one of the many unusual, fascinating, and (sometimes) scary, sights we experience daily here in our new home near the equator on the other side of the world.  Anyone want to come visit?  Our guestroom warmly awaits you!  ;-)

This centipede was over 7" long!!!  Crazy!

Hope's 6th Birthday

     Hope's Special Day

     We are pretty much settled in our house here in Krabi.  We still have a few things, or maybe a number of things yet to do, but we have started back with school for the girls and language school for us.  Since we were all terribly ill for my birthday a month ago, we decided we would have a really fun outing for Hope's and my birthday.  So, we gave Hope a few suggestions of things we could do around here and she choose the "elephant ride".  So, here are some pics of our time....

At first we were both pretty scared, to be quite honest!  The seat had no seat belts and the first thing our elephant needed to do was cross a small, swiftly flowing river.  As our elephant went down into the river we clung to the seat and each other so we would not fall out!  :)  About 5 minutes in, Hope asked when it would end.  The guide laughed and said in about an hour, to which she smiled.  After some time we got used to things and could relax and enjoy the ride.  Our guide was from Isaan (the region we used to live in).  It was fun to talk with him and hear him tell us things about the jungle.   Evidently, there is a very pale snake we really want to avoid.  We saw a giant lizard lying on a log across a small creek.  Chris and Faith were able to see some monkeys fighting in the tree tops.  Our elephant was too heavy to make the trek to that neck of the jungle.  Chris' elephant was a little ornery that day and was making all kinds of "elephant objections".  The sounds were so cool, though, echoing off the mountains.  

After the trek, the girls fed their elephants bananas by hand...

Overall, it was a great time and the girls had a blast.  Then we headed to the beach to have some fun in the water.  Someone from church had mentioned that the beach at the Sheraton was very clean and clear so we eventually found the hotel and walked through their beautiful landscaping to the ocean.  It was overcast but not raining.

   This was the first beach we have seen that was pretty clear.  It wasn't even sunny and Faith could see down to the bottom.  She was super excited about this, as we had told her about the beautiful beaches of Southern Thailand and we had yet to see one.  

Then off for pizza in Ao Nang...

Then, we did nails and hair...

And then we ran back home to have cake and ice cream with our neighbors.... it was a wild day!!!  We bought a cake in town and had them write Hope's Thai name, Hathai (one of the few Thai words for "heart") on it.  

  This morning, Hope asked "Mom, when is my next birthday?"  I said in 364 days.  So, the count down begins again.  :)  I should be recovered by then!

Finding a house in Krabi, Thailand

Finding a house in Thailand

     It can be very challenging to find a house in Thailand to rent.  There aren't many websites that list houses for rent nor many realtors that will take you around to see anything and if there are they are usually crazy expensive.  So, what you need to do is drive around yourself and go down every street of the city to find a place that has a sign, in Thai, that says "for rent".

     Another fun challenge is finding your way around since there are no detailed maps of the city.  It's fun exploring the city because you never know where you'll end up or what you'll run into, a dead end that you can't turn around in, a rubber tree plantation, an alley way you can't fit through or a dog sleeping in the road that won't move.  In Ubon, it took us a while to find a house and when we did it needed MAJOR work and clean up.  This time, here in Krabi, we took 3 days to look and found a few houses that could be options for us.  I felt like we were on House Hunters International.  We could have done our own show.  In the end we choose a house that fit most of our criteria that we were looking for...  It was in Krabi Town, 3 bedrooms, bathroom in the master bedroom, safe, quiet, middle class neighborhood where the girls could ride their bikes.  We were really hoping for a furnished place but since there were so few places to choose from, this desire was not met.  We did bargin with the owners to leave the fridge and washing machine.  So, tomorrow we hope to meet the owners and write up the contract.  They have to move all their belongings out and then we can get in there and paint and clean.  Here in Thailand, renters are responsible for everything in the house, so if something breaks, we have to fix it and if we want fresh paint, we need to paint it.
     Thankfully this house is in pretty good shape.  It needs some paint, deep cleaning and yard work.  We are so relieved that we don't have to do any major repairs!   The cherry on the top of this is that there is a community pool!!!  The girls are super excited about that!  :)

     The house even came with our own lion and zebra mascots!