ThaiBankie

After a few weekends sitting around the house doing nothing we decided we should do something fun and get out in the fresh air for a few hours.

Nok started off this morning taking Megan for her piano lesson and then they came back home and we headed of for Dream World, which is about 30miles north of where we stay.  I have been there with Nok before but that was about 5 or 6 years ago and I thought that it would have changed a little in that time.

Nothing had changed but it was good having Megan with us this time as we were seeing it through her eyes this time.  At first she was her normal hesitant self but after a while she started to calm down a bit and started to get into it a bit more and do more and more things.

We started of in the Giants House, this was a room that had everything in it oversized, Meg was a bit freaked out and ran through the place in a matter of seconds.  I was starting to think that it was going to be one of those days…

I did the main roller coaster that they have and it was really quite impressive, fast and loads of tight corners.  It was the first time that I have been on a roller coaster that your legs just dangle in the air so I was a bit worried that my feet would hit something while we were going round as I am a bit taller that your average Thai so I wasn’t sure if they had considered this when they were designing it.  In the end my feet were still attached to my legs but exiting the ride my legs were a bit wobbly from the effects of the ride.  In the video below I am in the last row.

Roller Coaster from ThaiBankie on Vimeo.

We moved on to Snow Town and Megan got her first experience of snow and I think it will be memorable to her even if we were in a large freezer at -30C.  I had a go on the snow slide and nearly killed some young girl.  I was flying down the hill and at the bottom the guy bounced into me to try to slow me down before I bumped into the wall but all he did was put me into a spin and some girl had to jump over my legs as they spun round or she would have been flattened.

Deep Freeze from ThaiBankie on Vimeo.

I had a go on a couple of the fun fair games and I managed to pop 5 balloons with 7 darts getting Megan a small stuffed monkey who we named Coco.

We had a 15min go on the boats and then onto the train that runs round the grounds of Dream World.  Finally was Megan’s biggest achievement, she went onto the racing cars by herself and wasn’t even fazed when the girls in front of her were screaming and had to exit the ride halfway through.  I think we really made a breakthrough here.

Racing Cars from ThaiBankie on Vimeo.

A really good day out was had by all. Photos are in the Holiday section

I have been trying to drive up some traffic to the website and to do this I recently submitted my website to the Top 100 Thailand Websites on Thailand’s Lost Boy website.  This also added me to the Thai-Stars website.  I am currently ranked very low so feel free to vote for me and bring up my ratings. 

I am about a month late in writing about our Songkran holiday.  At first I was planning on doing a daily diary but I got lazy because I was enjoying being at the beach and somehow forgot about it.  Anyway, here is a brief update on our holiday.

This year for Songkran we decided to go to Pran Buri, this was our first time to visit there and it was only about 20Km south of Hua Hin where we have been so many times over the last few years.  I think Pran Buri is more for Thai people as it is a bit cheaper than Hua Hin but some of the resorts there are well on par with what Hua Hin has to offer.  The down side of Pran Buri was that other than a strip along the beach which was a few Kilometers long there was very little else to do there.  Hua Hin seems to have more of a complete package for tourists as there are much more bars and restaurants to choose from.  We decided to stay at the Golden Pine Beach Resort which was a little small but it was very well run and it was very relaxing.

We arrived a few days before the crowds arrived as our office finished work a day or two earlier than most companies.  There only seemed to be about half a dozen other people staying at the resort when we arrived but the people at the check-in desk assured us that the place would be full over Songkran.   The good think about finishing work before other people is that we don’t get stuck in traffic which is often the curse of New Year and the Thai New Year (Songkran). 

Megan fell in love with the beach on this trip much more than she has done on previous holidays, maybe it is because she is getting a bit older or maybe it is because I am not keen on the sand getting stuck all over me.  Anyway, Megan was having a ball and she was loving making castles and playing with all her toys (or friends as she calls them!!). 

Nok, who usually doesn’t enjoy eating hotel food, thought that the food at the hotel was really good and she was also happy with the cost so we ate at the hotel most of the time.  On our last night we went to another hotel which was not to far away from us.  This was a real luxury hotel which looked really good.  I had a steak there and it was probably the best steak that I have had for many many years. 

All in all a really good holiday that was a great way to recharge the batteries.  I think I didn’t have high expectations before the holiday so it was great to have such a nice time there.  I think there are a couple of nicer hotels around that area so we may try there again in the future.  Also, going on holiday with Nok and Megan I don’t really miss the nightlife too much because we don’t get much chance to get out and enjoy it even when it is on our doorstep.

I have uploaded some photos into the holiday section and also posted a couple of videos which you can see below.

The Old One

You may remember a post a while ago when Nok was on holiday and I told how my camera dropped to the ground and the zoom stopped working. It was at that time that I thought that it was time to buy a new one. We also decided to check at the time to see how much it would cost to get the old one repaired. The price quoted was quite reasonable, 2800Baht (40quid) so we decided to fix it. I think the camera still has some problems though and at times it struggles to find its focus and I need to zoom out a little to help it. It is still a good camera and its photos are still really good quality but after 3 years and thousands of photos it is time to retire it and get a new all singing, all dancing, super duper fancy camera.

The New One

When I decided to get a new camera my research started straight away and I noticed that Panasonic had announced a new camera at the end of January. It does everything that the old one could do, only better. It can take 9megapixel photos and has a 10x optical zoom (the old one was 12x) but for me the real selling point is that it is capable to take videos at a really high resolution. I started looking on the net to see when it would go on sale and for a while I couldn’t find anything, then a few articles mentioned Mar/Apr so as it was not too far away I thought that it was worth the wait. I had a look on some of the big American stores websites and they had it listed but it was saying that it was not available yet. On the Amazon website it had an option that they would send you an email when it did go on sale so I checked the box and entered my email address and sat back and waited. About a month later (31st March) I noticed an email in my inbox from Amazon saying that it was now available. Hurray.

My decision now was whether to wait for it to appear in the shops in Thailand or to buy it on Ebay. I had a look around the Thai websites and nothing was mentioned about it and it wasn’t even mentioned as coming soon. I also noticed that the prices on the Thai websites for other, similar cameras was much higher than they should be so it looks like Thailand is not to good a place for buying cameras. I checked on Ebay and found a few sellers that had it in stock and the price was also quite reasonable (175quid + 40quid for DHL shipping). The shipping costs seemed to be a little steep but I was willing to pay because I want the camera for going on holiday this week for Thai New Year as there will be lots of opportunities to get loads of great photos on the beach with Nok and Megan. I was also willing to pay that price because I thought that the camera would be priced about 16000~17000 Baht when it goes on sale here especially looking at the going rate for similar cameras already on sale. My total price was about 13500Baht so I think I made a reasonable saving.

I decided to buy from Digitaland who are based in Hong Kong but from all my research they seemed to sell mostly into Europe so I had a look at some of the reviews that people had given them and they looked to be quite a good company so I clicked the BUY IT NOW button. Their ad said that they would ship 24-48hours after receiving the payment so I was starting to get a bit nervous when on the 3rd day I still hadn’t received any notice from them that my goods had been dispatched. I sent them a mail and they said that their supplier was late in delivering to them and that they hoped to ship out by the end of the week or Monday at the latest. I was starting to worry that I wouldn’t get it in time for my holiday but I decided to sit tight and see if the guy could get it shipped out to me. On Saturday afternoon the email arrived to say that it was shipping and a couple of hours later I got another email giving me the DHL tracking number. By Sunday morning it was already in Bangkok and had cleared customs and I was hopeful that they would deliver it to me on the same day. Nok called them and they said it would be Monday morning that it would get delivered.

Nok called me this morning to say that it has arrived. I told her not to open it yet as I enjoy doing the opening and will do it after work. I will post some photos and videos later this week and next as I start to get used to the new camera.

Last week we had to go to Lopburi to attend the wedding of a very old friend from my very first days of Thailand more than 7 years ago.  Jarunee who worked in the Quality dept had always really helped me in the early days much as she had done with my predecessor, Ian, in the time before I worked there.  She was always arranging hotels, transport, parties and anything else that we needed help with.  She even helped me and Nok arrange some parts of my wedding as well as being the host on stage at the wedding reception.  It was a given that I would not be able to miss her wedding after how good a friend she has been to me over the years.

I had been out for a few beers on the Saturday night so I was a bit tender on the Sunday when it was time to leave and drive to Lopburi. I started the car and put my foot on the clutch and I thought that it didn’t feel like it normally does but maybe it was the hangover and I was imagining things.  We managed to drive the 60Km along the east ring road around Bangkok and were taking the slip road and having driven the majority of the last 60Km in 5th gear it was time to drop the gear and slow down a little but the clutch dropped to the floor with almost no effort and I spent the next 10 seconds trying to find a gear that I could get into.  Nok said to just go home but I didn’t want to miss the wedding so I decided to keep going and fight with the gearbox for the next 90Km until we got to Lopburi.  The wedding was good and it was really great meeting up with people that I had not seen for the past 4 years.

The drive home after the wedding was a nightmare greater than anything I had experienced before.  Every time I needed to slow down or stop because of the traffic I would desperately try to find a gear that I could get into so that I could drive when I needed to.  A few times I was in a real panic as I didn’t think I would be able to do it, then I remembered a time about 17years ago when I worked on the Ice-Cream van and it’s clutch cable had broken.  I remember someone telling the driver of the van to keep the revs high and it will go into gear easier, and I was even more surprised when I tried it a couple of times and it worked.  We managed to get home safe and on the Monday morning I drove the car to the Honda garage to get it repaired.  We also decided to get it serviced at the same time so I was surprised when the bill was only 5200Baht (80quid).

While my car was being repaired we managed to borrow Tuk and Paibool’s Ford Escape which was a big big help to us because we didn’t want Megan to miss school as it was her last week.  This weekend we needed to return the car to Rayong and we set out in a convoy with Nok leading in the Escape and me trundling along behind in my Jazz.  After about 60Km I noticed that the car was starting to get a bit hotter and thought that it must be getting really hot outside but when I turned up the fan it didn’t make any difference, in fact it was probably getting hotter.  I called Nok and told her that the air conditioning in the car was not working so we continued south to get to Rayong.  I had all the windows down and was starting to get really sweaty but it wasn’t too long till we reached Tuk’s house.

Megan was not to happy about driving with the windows open and she would always tell me to put the windows up a little every now and then.  By the time we got home they were only open about 1cm and almost nothing was coming in through them but it was early evening so the temperature outside was starting to drop a little.

Honda just finished fixing it this time and it is costing me 8090Baht (125quid) to fix it but in Thailand it is a small price to pay to keep cool while driving.