Ok so my 30th came and went with no world ending Big Bang. I did however wake in the wee hours of the morning to my husband rushing to the toilet with a case of Thai Belly. I felt sorry for the guy, only just last week I was doing the exact same thing, however I did feel a bit smug because he has been saying the entire time we have been in Thailand that he wishes for a bit of Thai belly to "clear him out", ha, I bet he isn't wishing for it now. I had rough plans in my head to spend the day getting massaged and going shopping and all the lovely things that girls like to do, luckily the nanny turned up for work and I instructed her to take care of Lillie and pretend like Marcus isn't home, as he was not leaving the bedroom, while I took Judd to school then headed out to spoil myself. The down side of being up and ready so early in the morning is that nothing i Pattaya opens until 11am, 10am if you are lucky. So I had to kill over an hour wandering around boring grocery stores until the massage parlor opened. This left me with only a handful of hours to have a delightful and surprising body scrub and aromatherapy massage. It was surprising because as I lay on the massage table with nothing covering me but a towel while the masseuse worked on my legs she moved up and proceeded to remove the top half of the towel and massage my breast area! Well she didn't cover the nipple area but even so this was very weird for me as having been with Marcus for over 9 years now it felt very unsettling to have someone else touching me there, especially a woman! She was very professional and I didn't feel that it was in any way sexual, but it was really quite a nice massage and after talking to my other expat friend here she also told me that she has had the same experience so I didn't feel like I was the only one.
After my massage I tried to do a bit of shopping but my time was running out and I needed to collect Judd from school. I managed to squeeze in 2 glasses of wine with a friend then I was off again to go hunting for ID photos for our work permit and visas that we had to drive to Bangkok for the next morning. When I arrived home, Marcus had arranged for someone from his work to deliver my birthday cake, we sang happy birthday and I opened my presents. Marcus and the kids got me a new very fancy camera that takes excellent photos, Rainy, our nanny, gave me a collection of snow globes from Thailand and even our maid who works for us on Saturdays gave me a lovely picture to hang in my kitchen. I was very touched by this, I didn't expect anything from either of the ladies who work for us and their kindness and generosity touched me.
So all in all I had a very busy, pleasant birthday and somehow managed to wake up the next day feeling no different to how I felt when I was 29 and life is just rolling along like normal.
We did have to drive to Bangkok that day, so the morning was spent arranging the kids for the long and boring drive. Marcus had mapped out our route but of course a quarter of the way there we discarded our plans and changed highways, not once but twice and ended up lost in some part of Bangkok, then once we found the road we needed to be on we sat in the worse traffic I have ever experienced without a 3 car pile up and a fatality at the end of it. We literally moved about 1 km in and hour. The way they sequence the traffic lights in this country is ridiculous, they leave the red for far too long and there is this unwritten rule that at every intersection you can turn left at all times, even when facing a red light. So the traffic keeps filling up the intersections until the other lights turn green and then that oncoming traffic cant move because the intersection is full of people who illegally or not ran the red lights. Confused? I am, constantly.
So after not murdering anyone out of frustration we managed to squeeze our way through the traffic, narrowly avoiding colliding with 2 buses and hundreds of motorbikes and we reached our destination but had to park on the opposite side of the road and just as we were about to run the gauntlet of traffic with 2 kids, the pram, Marcus on crutches and the nanny, Judd started crying and peed his pants. So back we went to the car and thankfully I had his school uniform shorts in the boot from the day before and was able to at least put him in some dry clothes. This time our second attempt at crossing I was hot, sweating, pissed off and had zero patience left and I just walked straight out through the traffic and held my hand up for the cars to stop and let me pass. It worked too, I think they could see the flames coming out of my ears and the devil horns appear over my head with a sign saying "don't fuck with angry farang".
Once in the airconditioning I was able to cool down, calm down and go to the toilet. We then had to sit in a waiting room with heaps of other people while our representative from the law firm who was handling our permit took care of everything. We then made it to our interview, but the officer didn't even ask us anything, he only wanted to know how Marcus broke his leg, he then stamped his papers and that was it. No interrogation about what our intentions are while living in their country, no security questions, just a stamp and a nod and 60 secs later we were out, paid our fees and that was it.
We are now in possession of a work permit and long stay visas until at least May when we have to renew them all again. The contradiction that irks me is that even with the 12 month visas we still have to have them stamped at immigration every 90 days just like we would have had to do a border run with the tourist visas, the only difference is that we don't have to leave the country we can just send our passports to the law firm in Bangkok and they will get them stamped for us then send them back. So no wonder alot of expats don't bother with work permits and visas and just stay here on 90 day tourist visas. But there is some relief that we don't have to make the border runs anymore, that in itself makes it all worthwhile.
Now my next project will be to get all the paperwork together to apply for Thai drivers licenses. Technically we shouldn't be driving without either a Thai license or a international license, and I am dreading the day that the cops pull me over to check my papers and I have to try and talk and buy my way out of having to go to the police station, where it is said to cost more than double what it would if I just pay the guy who pulls me over. And there are benefits too, apparently once you have a license and you show it at certain places around Thailand you get the "Thai price" not the "westerner price".
As for this weekend it is the Kings Birthday long weekend and we plan to rest, relax and try and find a beach down the coast in a town called Sattahip that is said to have clean beaches and clear waters. I have asked a couple of our friends to join for a sort of belated birthday celebration and the kids will absolutely love a swim and a chance to play in the sand.
No comments:
Post a Comment