The Dirty Post

It's been a busy few days since I have last written.

Firstly, we found a place to live through the good old internet. We came to see it on Monday and told the guy we would take it, then moved in by Tuesday. It's pretty awesome - 14^th floor in a brand new building, never lived in, spacious, close to everything necessary (restaurants, BTS, supermarket, Thai prostitutes...err, forget the last one.) But seriously, it is in the district called Nana which is the main prostitute district. Their cat calls are kind of cute actually. And, the best part is in comes complete with a very nice pull out couch for anyone who decides to make the trip over here! Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean...

One downfall of the place though, last night we started doing a load of laundry and then went to the grocery store to do a bit of a stock up. When we came back the living room was a swimming pool and every drop of water that went into the machine seemed to come out the bottom. Once we finished furiously toweling up the water, and spinning the clothes dry, I reached into the machine to retrieve our mentionables and unmentionables (how come “mentionables never really made it as a description for clothes?) and got a shock by the now electrified drum. Needless to say, we aren't going to be doing any more laundry very soon.

In setting up our apartment we went to a local mall called MBK. This place is the palace of comsumerism folks. Imagine a place 7 floors high, each floor dedicated to a different article (housewares, electronics, clothes, etc.) and packed with stalls like street vendors. I don't think I'm getting across how massive and confusing this place is – each floor is about half a kilometer long and always (I've been there twice now) packed with people. It really is unbelievable.

Yesterday was especially busy because we went to the immigration bureau to get our visas changed to “non immigrant B” visas – which we need to work. The cab ride there and back took about an hour, but we were only in the immigration bureau for about 10 minutes. Of course we didn't understand anything going on because the secretary from the school, Pornthip, did all the talking and we just sat there smiling and trying to look presentable. (Seriously, her name is Pornthip. For some unknown reason a lot of people seem to have the name “porn” in their name.)

As I write this I'm sitting in front of our huge windows, looking out on the scene below, and I keep thinking about all the crazy/weird/amazing/sad things I have already seen and I have only been here a week. There are people right now, outside this very window, bathing themselves from 55 gallon drums on the street level below. The beggars here are hard up – I saw a guy yesterday selling lottery tickets with no arms and only 1 leg! Everything you can imagine you can buy from a street vendor – religious amulets, bits of metal, airport metal detectors (the hand held kind,) fruit, brooms, wicker baskets, and more. Sometimes I feel very overwhelmed but most of the time I'm just trying to hide my amazement.

We have a pretty busy social schedule in the upcoming week – we had a get together for new staff last night, there is a “going away party” on Friday night, a costume party on Saturday night, and next Tuesday is a holiday so we are going golfing. I need a pay cheque soon!