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Published: June 28th 2004
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My pool
paradise :) Dear All,
This weekend I moved out of one of the best hostels I’ve ever stayed in, and into my apartment. I’m living in a very Thai area, which I was really excited about - good for learning the language, should be more enriching than just hanging around other expats - but during my adventure in the supermarket, I fast realized that there are some disadvantages to staying in a Thai area - the only cheese they had was either New Zealand Mainland Tasty and these Kraft cheeses like the Laughing Cow (which I shamefully admit to buying and eating and feeling ill afterwards), tons and tons of condensed milk and powder milk but only these tiny bottles of real milk (which is still much sweeter than our milk), and no yoghurt with fruit, just flavoured yoghurt. Plus I didn’t really know what anything else was. Which is interesting, but unfortunate when I found that I’ve bought cuttlefish-flavoured green peas rather than wasabi peas! And as for the tea situation… green tea is easy enough, and some disgusting Lipton black tea, but no Twinings, no peppermint tea, no lemon tea. Instead, there was plenty of these tea sticks - they
look like those unfrozen icy poles you buy in big packs at supermarkets, where it’s just the liquid and then you freeze them. Except that it’s dissolved tea, and you don’t freeze it (I don’t think you do at any rate), you just drink it straight out of the plastic. They also have plenty of talcum powder (half an aisle!!), a great variety of skin whitening products, and a full half an aisle of different sorts of fish sauce.
My apartment is small of course, studio with a balcony and a little kind of kitchenette - a bench, sink, and fridge. And a gecko. At there is the most beautiful pool. I swam there Saturday and again Sunday night at 11pm and could barely drag myself out of the pool to go to bed. Around the pool are the most glorious green trees, frangipani trees, palm trees, etc., all lush tropical green. Behind them is the pale lemon yellow apartment building which actually looks quite fetching against the green of the trees! As I swim there, I think that I must be the luckiest girl alive. It’d be the PERFECT place for a BBQ and a colleague mentioned giving
me his grill so for people who visit me… there could be some very nice nights indeed!
I can’t cook in the kitchenette in my apartment, of course, but hopefully I’ll soon buy some electric hot plates and set them up my balcony. I imagine that I’ll be cooking more often than most expats do here as the variety of vegetarian food on the street is very small. Though if I were a meat-eater I don’t know that I’d want to be eating meat - by the time they cook it, it’s been sitting out in the sun, unrefridgerated, for however long. There’s quite a few fresh food stalls on the street near me, including ones which sell meat, fish and other seafood. No refridgeration at all, but lots of big flies! Yuck.
I started work last week, which was really interesting. I attended a briefing run by UNICEF on how to work with victims of trafficking for the Vietnamese and Chinese governments. We went to an Immigration Detention Centre (IDC) and to a shelter for women and girls who been victims of domestic violence, sexual abuse, trafficking, or were homeless. It’s very rare that people are allowed to
visit the IDC, so I was lucky to be able to go, but it was sad, looking at people locked up. I felt like such a voyeur, so I spent most time looking at the children in the daycare centre run by the International Organisation of Migration. The children were gorgeous, all curiosity and big smiles for the adults. The shelter was actually a lot easier to visit, because the girls there were not locked up, and again, they always had big smiles. It’s inspiring that girls who have suffered the traumas they have can still smile so beautifully and sincerely. I would love to do volunteer work with them, teaching English, but they have their classes during normal school hours when I’m working so I don’t think I’ll be able to.
I spent the rest of the week in the office, absolutely freezing. I need to buy myself a shawl because they have the air-con up so high! It’s mad. The other staff leave jackets at work to wear in the office. Apart from being so cold that I can barely think in order to conserve my energy, I’ve been reading about the project which sounds really good.
Meat stall on the market street
The meat is kept on a table - no ice, flies occasionally swatted away... YUCKO! I might be going to Hanoi in July and Yangon in October, and the other staff are wondeful, so it’s pretty exciting.
My Thai remains very minimal. Every day I learn about 15 new words from various Thai people and then promply forget most of them (which still means that I’m making progress!). I’ll start taking language classes soon. I have however been invited by Tom, a Thai woman who works at the restaurant next to the guest house where I was staying, to go to Isan (north-east Thailand) with her next month! Her children, 9 and 4 years old, live there with her husband’s parents, and she’s going back next month for her son’s birthday. Isan is the poorest part of Thailand, and one of the major source areas of trafficked women, so it’s important that I go there. And what better way than with an Isan woman? Not that it’s going to be a study tour, but I’m sure I will learn a lot. They’re so friendly and generous here. Tom was genuinely delighted that I want to go to Isan. And a woman who works at the guest house lives near me, and so she’s given
Buddhist shrine
At my apartment building me her number so that we can meet up.
xxx
Nina.
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anonymous
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apartment
It is so impressively neat!! How do you do it?? - naomi