A Blog about the Daily Life on the Tropical Island of Koh Samui
 |
A few Words about Me
 My name is: Olle
I am living in: Lamai Beach, Koh Samui, Suratthani, Thailand
I am originally from: Stockholm, the capital of Sweden
Doing for Kohsamui.org: Writing a blog about my life here
How about my life here: Please read my blog below, my friends |
Square Eyes!
Text by Olle - Living on Lamai Beach - Friday, August 21, 2009
Today I have been a computer geek all day. I made some music related work and the urge to produce music again recently got stronger. It may very well be that I have my gear sent down here which I need to get started again. I will wait and see, but days like this when I just want to sit down and make music makes it a pity that I do not have my music equipment here. I have asked Nui if I had square eyes but I have not received a real answer only a very strange look saying, what???, or something. In Sweden we say that you get square eyes if you look at TV or sit in front of the computer screen to much. If that is something you also say in other countries I do not know but by the reaction at home to judge, it is hardly something one use to say in Thailand.
Time flies when you work and even faster when you do something fun. Suddenly the day had past by and it was time to go and help Nui to close up the cafe. Today the weather was hot, as always these days, and we went down to the beach to take a nice bath. For some reason, it was very little people who were swimming even though it was a lot of people on the beach in general. We threw our slippers off and rushed down to the water but noticed that the water today was not clear and nice as it used to be. Not only that, it also smelled bad like old fish or so, and there was a lot of things in the water which looked like small pieces of plastic bags. I do not know whether it was bits of fish or jellyfish or else, but I think it was from animals. Strange but there is certainly a simple explanation of what it was and why it was there. We were a little disappointed and we skipped the swim and sat on the beach and looked out over the sea. Two dogs dug deep pits some distance away as the sand flew in all directions. As usual, it was a lot of people walking along the beach and a few ambitious people were jogging.
A Thai girl ran and played with her dog and after a while the dog came up to us, I thought he were sniffing behind my back, but it turned out that the little fella was trying to show his position by peeing on me. I was lucky because he missed with the few drops he managed to squeeze out. If I had known what he was up to, I would without doubt teach him a little lesson about peeing on people. Since he missed me I could stay where I sat without having to take a swim to get rid of the pee and we sat and watched the clouds slowly changing patterns and colors. They get really red for a moment when the sun sets and a quiet evening like today makes the sea turn into a big mirror reflecting all those nice colors.
 
Right now I am sitting with a big dragon fruit shopped up in front of me. There are plenty of delicious fruits in Thailand. At the moment I have been crazy about eating dragon fruit which in Thai is called "gaeo mang goon ". Before I often bought loads of pineapple and mangosteen but for now I am a big fan of dragon fruit. The dragon fruit has the advantage that it is extremely easy to peel. It is very easy to just peel it by hand or to slice it in to pieces and then eat with a spoon. I do not think it tastes very much but it is still nice and that fact that it does not taste that much might be the answer why I want to eat it so quickly and a lot of it. I would say that it tastes a little as a variant of kiwifruit with less taste and even more sweet and not sour. Dragon fruit is a cactus just like kiwi fruit, so it is no wonder that they do remind of each other by some extent in terms of taste. Dragon fruit come from South America but today it is found everywhere not least in Asia. The name dragon fruit I have read comes from an ancient Asian legend which says that when the dragon dies the fire from its moth turns into dragon fruit and that can be seen as evidence that you had killed the dragon. The fruit contains plenty of vitamin C and other beneficial substances such as the antioxidant lycopene and the protein collagen. The kind of dragon fruit that have red meat contains higher levels of such substances. The fruit grows in the end of rather thin but long cactus branches.
I read a bit about the dragon fruit before because I was wondering where the name came from and I got some extra knowledge as well and that is always fun I think.
Flat Out
Text by Olle - Living on Lamai Beach - Thursday, August 20, 2009
Yesterday, I wrote a little about the roads on Samui and I remember that I wrote that they have a certain charm with the holes and other flaws. Sometimes you regret what you just said and that was exactly what I did today.
I Woke up a little bit too late as I do most days, Nui use to turn off the alarm clock before I have the time to wake up. I do not like to wake up late that only make me feel stress just to get something useful started instead. In a hurry I ate my porridge that I very rarely compromise. Then we went to open the cafe and then I went to get some ice as usual. Since we ran out of vegetables and other things I felt that I better go the store so I had that part done. Off I go and in the hills I caught up with a slow car that did not have the strength to get up in the same pace I was driving. Just when I was starting to overtake I saw that there was quite a significant hole in the road but I did not have so many different options avoiding it in just that moment, so I ran into the hole with a sharp bang as usual. I have an enormous ability to always locate the holes in the road and ensure that I am in a situation where the safest option is to continue straight forward down into the hole. Sometimes, like this time, it is much like running straight up a curb. As you can figure out, it will be quite a bang and I sometimes wonder how the mike can manage not to brake. Even this time it seemed to have gone well and this time was one of those times when I thought about how it is possible that noting brakes. Kept going and stopped at Macro where I bought various things and then I took a quick stop at Tesco to buy cooking oil which is only sold in packs of 3 in Macro and it feels unnecessary to buy a big pack. Then I stopped at a flower store, owned by an old man, and asked to buy some "baithei" a type of leaf plant that Nui need to make "sankaja" which is a mix that reminds a lot about the mixture when making sponge cake which they eat with bread. The man, however, refuses to receive payment as well as the last time. Why, I do not know but he grows it himself and maybe he thinks that there is a small quantity that does not need to be paid for. I tried of course again to insist on paying but refused and should not have anything and just waved goodbye.
When I was almost all the way to Lamai, I felt that something was not as it should be with the rear of the moped, if you ever had a flat tire in a bike once you know exactly what is going on even if it is only a little bit of air that disappeared from the tire. The tire just had given up and let the air seep out after the incident before. I am surprised that it does not happen more often and I was lucky that the pressure were lost so slowly that I almost reached all the way back home before I had to drive in a very slow speed. The entire tire had broken up and I had recently thought of replacing that old one, which been on the road for almost 20 000 kilometers, about half a lap around the Earth.
Now it is done and we have a nice new tire in place. However I discovered that the guys who put the tire on forgot to tighten the rear brake, which did not make the slightest of impact when I suddenly needed to slow down and it was pure luck that the road were free from sand or that I needed to brake hard. This time it was ok only having the front brake.
When that adventure, that got a bit longer than I first planned, had come to an end I went back home to take care of the tasks in the world of computers that had to be done today.
All Over the Island
Text by Olle - Living on Lamai Beach - Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Today we woke up very early, think it was around 4 o’clock, it was raining heavily the thunder was roaring from the sky. Those were great roars and the whole house was shaking. I think it is nice when it is like that sometimes. It kept on like that for about one hour before it got more calm, and when we woke up a little later, it was cloudy and I thought it would be a cloudy day, a couple of those days is actually more than ok, but it turned out being as the other days, the sun continued to shine. It will certainly come periods when it rains a lot and then it is less fun so I am not complaining at all about the nice weather.
Today was another day for Nui without opening the cafe. We drove around all day and were looking for craftsmen who can build a sidecar and it takes time to find out where to go and who to ask. Now she at least knows a couple of workers who can make those so now is to find a used Honda Wave. It feels a little unnecessary to buy a new one when we will make it a sidecar, but it is not easy to find a used bike here as I first thought. We in the western world is very spoiled with the internet sites where we can find everything we can think of whilst here in Thailand, it is not as common with computers in general and the few sites that offer buy and sell services do not have a huge range of products to chose from and I think it is primarily us farangs (white immigrants) who are using those sites.
During the day we saw another accident of the smaller type, but this time at least one guy has some injuries and there were a little more people involved, once again, it was a tourist and I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that you do not see traffic as a fun game just because you are on holiday which actually seems to be the case sometimes. The majority of accidents I have seen have been involving young guys, but even if far from all traffic incidents are caused by reckless driving, I think one can reduce the risk a whole lot by not taking unnecessary risks or playing around.
However, there are positive sides to driving around like this, even if it is not my favorite thing to do, and it is that you get to meet new people and there are many nice people that make you in a good mood. We talked to a guy who was selling fruit from his sidecar and he gave tips about the places he knew and what he paid.
We left and headed home on the bumpy and in some places broken road. Here on Samui the roads are not made of asphalted, except parts of Nathon, but those are made of concrete and when the rain makes the land underneath flushed away the road brakes in the end and often leave behind a hole, not least because the heavy traffic. Now, however, it is so well that the government has contributed with 900 million bath, I hope I remember the right amount, to improve the roads among other things. How exactly it will be made I do not know yet but I have heard that they will widen the road and if they also spend time on improving the road quality it will be significantly safer to drive here. Anyway the roads at Koh Samui are charming, at least I think so, but even despite that it is of course great with improvements.
Now in the evening it has again started to roar from the sky and the TV signal is lost so we headed into the world of music by playing the stereo at a somewhat loud volume and we will have some fresh fruits like guava and dragon fruit. Guavas in Thai language is called farang, which also is the name of us white people and I have been told that reason for that is because the guava is similar to the head of a farang. If that is an official explanation or not I do not know and I think I should probably do some research about that before I tell that as a fact, I think it sounds fun but crazy.
Sleepless on Samui
Text by Olle - Living on Lamai Beach - Tuesday, August 18, 2009
 
I had a difficult time falling asleep last night, nothing unusual nowadays. When I managed to fall into a state between sleep and being awake the dogs in the neighborhood started to bark like crazy. Nothing unusual because one of the neighborhood dogs, who spend most of the time tied to a tree, barks as soon as he does not sleep.
That often triggers several other dogs living in the area and that result in a fairly intense barking. Suddenly I heard a dog growl outside the door several times and I thought it was better to check so there was not anyone else outside our house. It was not. The dog, which was big for being a Thai dog, had come up on the porch to get away from the other dogs that followed him. The other dogs left him alone and he rested a while before he disappeared. I went out for a walk, mostly because I felt so awake at this time and the dog was actually coming back when he saw me but he went away almost immediately.
I went back inside again and tried to sleep. After half an hour at 3 o’clock or something like that, a rooster started to make noises. We never had a rooster here, so what made this guy come here singing in the middle of the night, I wondered. He was unfortunately pretty bad at singing and it was a funny sound he made.
I still tried to sleep and managed to slumber, but woke up and discovered that Nui sat and watched TV at 5 in the morning. She had fallen asleep quite early and also had a hard time falling asleep and she had already cooked some food and now was watching TV. Anyway I succeeded falling asleep in the end.
Today Nui took the day off and we went to get an update on the moped prices because we will buy another one and build a sidecar. Unfortunately, you need to drive up to Nathon taking the West Coast, and up to Bo Phut taking the East Coast to find a big distributor of mopeds. Something that is rather strange, in most places they are quite common everywhere.
On the way, we saw two traffic incidents of minor nature which was lucky. In both cases there were tourists involved. The first incident we saw was a young tourist and a Thai man and the second incident was a single accident, a guy with his girlfriend made a smaller after breaking to hard with the front wheel while he was turning. However they did not get hurt but it appears that they had a little trouble starting the moped again. While there we also went through Fisherman Village which is a nice little place in Bo Phut.
This morning, we had a cloudy sky and by noon a very little rain, very small and fine drops. In the afternoon it became better with a lot of sun. It has been really great weather the last month, something I think many tourists appreciate very much.
A New Week
Text by Olle - Living on Lamai Beach - Monday, August 17, 2009
 
 
The weekend offered no unexpected surprises, it became very normal.
Last Saturday Nui opened the café later in the morning so we had time to go up to Big Buddha. Clear and sunny weather and very hot. It has been around 35 degrees Celsius every day for some time now. Not many people were at the temple and we started to do the ritual "wai paa" the part where you pray in front of a statue depicted a popular monk who died. Usually there are also statues of the gods close by.
Then we did the part called “seang sim see” which I wrote about last Friday.
Having done that, we thought we would go up and look at the view at the top of Big Buddha, it is always nice. I noticed that the other people had shoes on, usually it is a sign below the stairs saying that you should take off your shoes, something which is common on all temples. I thought no more of that, took the shoes off and we started to walk up the stairs up the. We walked in the middle lane of the three lines the part that has reddish tiles and after a few steps, I remembered everything. Sunny days the stairs gets extremely hot and I felt it burn under my feet, walked a little faster, and I thought that there was no idea to turn back. We ended up running with burning feet to the top where the white tiles were as refreshing as ice in comparison. We laughed but it burned quite much and long.
Yesterday I saw two dogs that were sniffing on each other in a way which indicated that one of them were a girl, but it appeared to be two males. One less interested than the other and he tried to sneak away but the other one followed, and behaved just as the dog would have been a bitch. Dogs do dominate by climbing the other one that is common but this was not something that I have seen often. In the evening we were thinking of taking a swim and went to the beach. At the beach, we both got the feeling that the water would be cold. Although I knew that this was not the case we stayed at the beach watching people hang gliding after a boat until the sun disappeared.
Tesco or Big C, which one is better?
Where there is a Tesco there is usually a Big C close by, it is more a rule than a co-incident at least in the places I have been to. Which one is the best? What I think distinguishes them both, at least here on Samui is that Big C feels more clean, in addition, it is much quieter and the temperature is more pleasant. At Tesco, it is cold and it feels more loudly and more like a warehouse. I also think it feels more hygienic at Big C where the chicken and other meat are placed. Not too rarely the chicken at Tesco lays in blood, however I still go shopping at Tesco ones in a while and I have never been sick of the food. Prices are probably about the same I have not compared exactly, but I know that some things are more expensive at Big C while other cheaper, who would win for having the lowest price if buying a big load, I am not sure at all.
We also had an ant attack this weekend, just like that they try to invade the house and everything eatable, however, they had not attacked the sugar which was lest open, a mystery.
A whole bunch had unfortunately drenched in cooking oil, which also was uncovered, according Nui it was closed and she was trying for a long time to convince me to believe that the ants must have worked as a team and managed to open the lid, I have not yet decided what to think in the matter.
Previous weeks: Week 34 | Week 33
More: 2010
|
|
|
Tip of the top » This blog about the daily life in Koh Samui is updated several times a week. Please come back regularly
Online since February 1999 and more than 6 million unique visitors!
