Home comforts

Still no real camera (we're going to the mainland to collect it on Wednesday) so we can only record the progress of the villa on Ian's mobile.

As you can see in addition to walls we now have ceilings as well!

The carpenters have been busy putting up the eaves around the roof line and the rest of the workers have been busy building the overflow tank for the pool.

In addition to our own house building duties (choosing a colour scheme and floor tiles), we have been entertaining Michi (an ex colleague of Tammys) and her husband Ryo - this pleasurable task involved visiting several of our favourite eating spots and a beer or two - thanks for coming guys!

Another weekend goes by..

Here it is Sunday night ... and most of the developed world are stressing over the fact that they have to go to work tomorrow. We are in the fortunate 1%, and my next appointment is a Pilates class at 10am tomorrow! Meanwhile - Ian gets a big sleep in! :-)

I wouldn't normally update the blog so soon, but we've had such a busy weekend - I figured it was time.

We went out for a yummy Italian meal on Friday night with Wendy, Roger, Peter & Cat (future neighbours), at the fabulous "Antica Locanda" restaurant in Samui (run by Stefano). After the meal, we decided to go to a bar than none of us had been to before. There is always some risk in this... and as a result, it took around 15 minutes for them to make my margarita. Still enjoyable!

Saturday was quite a lazy day at home (while Ian finished his jigsaw, and I went to a Flow Yoga class). In the evening we went out... yes 2 nights in a row... to the monthly Karma party. We didn't get to see the impressive acts of the English magician - but enjoyed a trendy night out catching up with friends. We think that "Karma" was built on Rocky Bay where we enjoyed a more laid back New Years Eve party on the beach in 2001. Progress is inevitable they say.

And today - after a few domestic chores, visiting garden centres (bamboo trees for 2 pounds anyone?), furniture+antique stores and supermarkets - we moved on to help Peter celebrate his 50th (sorry I meant to type 49th) birthday up on the hill. Peter & Cat used the same builder as us - so it's always comforting to visit their house - knowing that our home will soon be completed! :-)

In my previous blog I mentioned how things were going slow on the house - well, surprise, surprise - we visited our house today and discovered that they're putting the first coat of paint on (both inside & outside). Blow me away with a feather! So we're off to the paint shop tomorrow to get colour samples for the top coat!

It's now 11:30pm, Sunday night - almost time for bed - except we're playing our music loud trying to annoy our neighbour... since he was up partying till 6am on Friday night! We'll turn it down at midnight...

T.

PS. sorry, still no camera!

TGIF

We've just past the 2/3 milestone in our year off. We've been in Thailand for 8 months now, with just 4 months left. Fortunately, everything is going to plan.

The villa is starting to look a lot like a house - all the walls are up, the roof is 99% complete, and we now have concrete stairs going to the ground floor (this means we don't have to hobble under scaffolding with the risk of wet concrete being thrown on our backs as the guys are busy plastering the exterior walls). It seems that the construction process isn't always as fast as we'd like... some days they achieve miracles and we can see changes very quickly. Other days (such as this week), things seem to go very slowly... and we're still waiting for the last 10 tiles to go on the roof !!

We're sorry there's no photos to share this week. Somehow managed to get sand in the lens when we were at Koh Phangnan (beautiful beach, but very fine sand), so we had to take our camera to the mainland for a sabbatical at the Sony Service Centre. There isn't anywhere on the island that repairs Sony cameras... so last Saturday we were up early, and on the ferry to the mainland and driving into Suratthani - the nearest big town. You can get most things on the island, but it's not till you have to make the 2.5 hour journey to Suratthani that you realise how remote we are.

We also took advantage of being on the mainland, and went to the Hash House Harriers run in a small coastal town called Khanom. It was an interesting walk/run through the jungle, finishing with beers alongside a creek. We stayed overnight in a very old bungalow on a very quiet beach (Nai Plao) and headed home the next day.

Just 2 days later, it was time for us to renew our Thai visas... so we were off on a day trip to the Malaysian border. This involved getting up at 3am for a 1.5 hour ferry ride and a 3.5 hour mini-bus ride to the Malaysian border. We walked into Malaysia, bought some duty free, and walked back into Thailand - an easy way to get your passport stamped for leaving the country (which we have to do every 90 days). The trip wasn't as bad as I thought it would be - and I think the four DVD's we watched on the mini-bus certainly helped. The guy who organises the trip runs it like a military operation - which means you get back to Samui in reasonable time.

Last night we went to our neighbours for dinner - and enjoyed some home cooked Thai food (pad krapow moo, tom kha gung and panang vege curry). Tammy had entirely different cuisine at the SOS Ladies Lunch on Wednesday at a restaurant called "Chez Andy"... parma ham, white asparagus & steak! Still equally yummy!

Tonight we're off for Italian with Wendy & Roger, and then on Saturday night we're going to a party where a British magician (Darryl Milward) will be performing. I read somewhere that he's a bit of an illusionist - similar to David Blaine!!

Blame it on the rain

It would seem that the 'Monsoon season' has come to Samui a few months early, because we have just had a week full of heavy rain. Fortunately the sun came out on Saturday morning - so we could show Tammy's mum the beautiful Haad Rin beach on Koh Phangan. However, the storms came back this afternoon, and it looks like we're in for another week of rain!

Fortunately, the roof tiling on our house is almost complete, making it a somewhat dry place for the guys to work.
















Despite last week's rain, we managed to explore the island with Tammy's mum during the day, and out for dinner most nights. Here's a picture of Margaret and Wendy at Club 44 on Friday night, and Margaret on the ferry to Koh Phangan.