'Nam Update
Ok so I havent exactly kept my blog up to speed with my activities here in Thailand, but would u really wanna spend every evening in a net cafe uploading pics & writing words, even if u have a slight perchant for computers...?? Ive guess Ive been here (Khao Lak) long enought to become a 'lil bit complacent about that, Ive actually been here 6weeks already, and mostly doing similar stuff as when I first arrived ie building houses.
However, the highlight of this week (for me, at least) was being the first farang to tile the first house in our construction village of Nam Khem. I tiled my own kitchen and bathroom back home in the uk, so it was kinda pleasing to be able to use similar skills to help the locals over here. Having said that, its been much harder, since we have limited tools over here (due to financial limitations) and the quality of some tools leave a little to be desired at times, lol! But despite all this, we have been making progress, and Im about half-way thru the tiling - there are some pics on my flickr site here, but not any tiling pics yet! Actually the preparation for the tiling (ie levelling the kitchen worksurface) took a lot longer than the tiling itself.
Other good signs of progress at the village - the week before last the first roof went up on the first house...theres a local thai guy whos a welder and hes been perched on the walls of his house welding the steel joists together in the blazing sun, with very little in the way of 'safety precautions', but such is the way over here...they dont exactly have a concept of 'health & safety', and they mostly just want to get the job done. Theres no tiles or anything else on the roof atm, but last week 2 more houses got their steel structure roofs, so our little village is looking more like a village of houses than a neatly arranged pile of bricks!
The other kool thing is that we (the volunteers) are working on one house just by ourselves (normally we work with the thai family members who own the house we are working on) since the owner is unable to work physically. The other week we spent a whole day screeding (levelling) the floor with the help of some local thais, and now we are building the walls using breezeblocks, which due to their larger size, means that the walls are going up at a terrific pace, so the house looks nearly finished already!
6 weeks seems a long time to have been here, and Im sure I shoudl have more to talk about than work, lol (back home in the uk, i used to be bit of a workaholic, lol). We only work on projects 5 days a week here, so I get the weekends to myself, which is kool. Last wknd was a bit of a lazy relaxing one, I just stayed here in Khao Lak and went to visit a couple of the local waterfalls with a friend, ate good food inthe local restaurants and went out to a couple of bars etc.
The wknd before that, I had to do a visa-run to Myanmar (formerly Burma) - when u enter Thailand as a tourist u only get a 30day tourist visa, so u need to go to a border, get a 'leaving Thailand' visa stamp, go into the neighbouring country and get an 'entry' stamp, and then return to Thailand to get your next 'entry' stamp valid for 30 days. Anyways, last time I went on a visa run to Malaysia, so this time I thought Id go to Myanmar with a friend, stay over night there and come back the next day. It seems liked a good plan...catch the public bus from Khao Lak to Ranong (3hours north), go to Thai Immigration to get the leaving stamp, go to the pier and hop on a longtail boat to take us across the water to Kawthong, the nearest Myanmar town, get an entry stamp there, stay overnight and checkout the town and then get the boat back to Ranong and get our 30 days entry visa from Thai Immigration. Well. What can I say. It all went smoothly til we got back to the Thai Immigration office in Ranong after spending the night in Burma. It turns out the Burmese officials had stamped our passports as having left the previous day, and didnt advise that we needed a further leaving stamp for the day on whcih we actually left the country. The Thai Immigraiton officials, however, were more fussy, saying we _had_ to have a leaving stamp that correllated to the day we actually left Burma...so they said we had to go back, spend another night (as the immigration office would be closed by then) and then get a leaving stamp in the morning before returning to Thailand...until we did that we would technically be illegal immigrants in Thailand, and would be liable to be arrested by the police if they stopped us and checked our passport for any reason. So we decided to do things their way, and ended up spending another night in Burma, but it all worked out ok, cos we got the required leaving stamp and finally got the 30day Thailand visa, yaay! [I hope that makes sense, lol, I will write about what we actually did in Burma another time - the highlight of the trip was hangin out with loads of local kids in this monastry, and visiting a temple with huge statues and 3D murials and lots of sitting Buddahs]
However, the highlight of this week (for me, at least) was being the first farang to tile the first house in our construction village of Nam Khem. I tiled my own kitchen and bathroom back home in the uk, so it was kinda pleasing to be able to use similar skills to help the locals over here. Having said that, its been much harder, since we have limited tools over here (due to financial limitations) and the quality of some tools leave a little to be desired at times, lol! But despite all this, we have been making progress, and Im about half-way thru the tiling - there are some pics on my flickr site here, but not any tiling pics yet! Actually the preparation for the tiling (ie levelling the kitchen worksurface) took a lot longer than the tiling itself.
Other good signs of progress at the village - the week before last the first roof went up on the first house...theres a local thai guy whos a welder and hes been perched on the walls of his house welding the steel joists together in the blazing sun, with very little in the way of 'safety precautions', but such is the way over here...they dont exactly have a concept of 'health & safety', and they mostly just want to get the job done. Theres no tiles or anything else on the roof atm, but last week 2 more houses got their steel structure roofs, so our little village is looking more like a village of houses than a neatly arranged pile of bricks!
The other kool thing is that we (the volunteers) are working on one house just by ourselves (normally we work with the thai family members who own the house we are working on) since the owner is unable to work physically. The other week we spent a whole day screeding (levelling) the floor with the help of some local thais, and now we are building the walls using breezeblocks, which due to their larger size, means that the walls are going up at a terrific pace, so the house looks nearly finished already!
6 weeks seems a long time to have been here, and Im sure I shoudl have more to talk about than work, lol (back home in the uk, i used to be bit of a workaholic, lol). We only work on projects 5 days a week here, so I get the weekends to myself, which is kool. Last wknd was a bit of a lazy relaxing one, I just stayed here in Khao Lak and went to visit a couple of the local waterfalls with a friend, ate good food inthe local restaurants and went out to a couple of bars etc.
The wknd before that, I had to do a visa-run to Myanmar (formerly Burma) - when u enter Thailand as a tourist u only get a 30day tourist visa, so u need to go to a border, get a 'leaving Thailand' visa stamp, go into the neighbouring country and get an 'entry' stamp, and then return to Thailand to get your next 'entry' stamp valid for 30 days. Anyways, last time I went on a visa run to Malaysia, so this time I thought Id go to Myanmar with a friend, stay over night there and come back the next day. It seems liked a good plan...catch the public bus from Khao Lak to Ranong (3hours north), go to Thai Immigration to get the leaving stamp, go to the pier and hop on a longtail boat to take us across the water to Kawthong, the nearest Myanmar town, get an entry stamp there, stay overnight and checkout the town and then get the boat back to Ranong and get our 30 days entry visa from Thai Immigration. Well. What can I say. It all went smoothly til we got back to the Thai Immigration office in Ranong after spending the night in Burma. It turns out the Burmese officials had stamped our passports as having left the previous day, and didnt advise that we needed a further leaving stamp for the day on whcih we actually left the country. The Thai Immigraiton officials, however, were more fussy, saying we _had_ to have a leaving stamp that correllated to the day we actually left Burma...so they said we had to go back, spend another night (as the immigration office would be closed by then) and then get a leaving stamp in the morning before returning to Thailand...until we did that we would technically be illegal immigrants in Thailand, and would be liable to be arrested by the police if they stopped us and checked our passport for any reason. So we decided to do things their way, and ended up spending another night in Burma, but it all worked out ok, cos we got the required leaving stamp and finally got the 30day Thailand visa, yaay! [I hope that makes sense, lol, I will write about what we actually did in Burma another time - the highlight of the trip was hangin out with loads of local kids in this monastry, and visiting a temple with huge statues and 3D murials and lots of sitting Buddahs]
posted by Patricia @ 21:13
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