ThaiBankie

After the recent success of taking Megan to the photo studio last month, Nok though that it would be good to take her again today.  The results are good but I don’t think they are as good as last time.  Megan also was not smiling as much as she was the last time.  When Uncle Paibool asked her why she didn’t smile too much she said it was because she doesn’t have any teeth….  I think she is starting to get a bit self conscious.

Megan was struggling not being at school and was getting a bit moody and maybe lonely too since she finished school a few weeks ago. Nok decided to ask her brother, Kai, if Yang and Chi could come and stay with us for a few days to keep Megan company and give her some friends to play with during the day.

For most of the first couple of days while they were here they spent most of their time in either the small pool that Megan has or at the big pool at the Clubhouse in our village which is just round the corner from where we stay. Megan was still being a bit naughty and on Yang and Chi’s first night here Megan told Yang that she wanted then to go home. She didn’t mean it when she said it, she was just a little frustrated but Yang took it quite badly and was a bit upset. It was business as normal the following morning and Yang seemed to forgive her.

Nok also took them to the play area at Yo-Yo Land at Seacon Shopping Center, the same place I took Megan a few weeks ago when Nok was on holiday. I was at work so couldn’t join them but they seemed to have a great time and it looks like Megan was a bit more adventurous than she was when she was there with me. She was jumping around a lot more and sliding on some of the larger slides that they have.

On last weekend we took them to Leoland, this is a big water park on the roof of Central City shopping mall in BangNa. We have been there before, probably a couple of years ago when Megan was much younger, I think she was able to enjoy it much more this time because she is older and less scared about playing in water. They were all a bit wary at first so I decided to get in the water with them and play with them a bit more and try to bring them out of their shells. Megan was more interested in eating and spent most of the time running between the pool and eating the food that Nok had bought. I think it was a good time for Yang and Chi to get a bit more used to being around me and they seemed to relax much more than they had done previously. Most of the time before then they would just stare at me like I was a big monster because they found it difficult to communicate with me because they speak little or no English and they also don’t get much experience being around westerners.

Yang is very much like his dad and is much more confident and is very jovial. Chi is very different and more like his mother, he is much quieter and a lot of the time you feel he is just sitting back and watching and learning. They are great kids and more that welcome to come stay with us again. I know that Megan will miss them a lot over the next few weeks.

Here is a great video from a couple of years ago.  It is amazing just how much Megan has changed and grown up over the last couple of years.

Noddy from ThaiBankie on Vimeo.

Nok took Megan to the shopping mall yesterday and stopped of at one of the small photo studios to get some photos of her.  Here are the results.

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.