25 Jun, 2006

Hello, all. We had a bit of a week last week. here is an email I sent to a friend on Thursday:

"It's been an annoying couple of days, we've had to go to immigration two days in a row. My work permit is now sorted, but Rob has a different issue with his because he had one at the last school. They cancelled it when he left, as they should, and when we came here he asked our new school if he should go out of Thailand and come back in with a tourist visa instead of the year-long one. (the thing is, if you finish employment and you have a work permit for that job, when it's finished you then have 7 days to get out of the country and then come back in on a tourist visa if you are getting a new job or travelling again.) That would mean that a work permit could be applied for, along with a new 1-year visa, and all would be fine. BUT the nun who runs the school told him: oh no, don't worry, give us your passport and we'll do everything. So we waited, and it turned out it was wrong. So he went to immigration last week and was told he had overstayed his visa since the end of April!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So he had a fine of 20,000 Baht, which is about 270 quid. He made the school pay it cos it was their fault, and then yesterday we went to a different immig. office with the 4 CHinese teachers, and we were told that 1) they couldn't do Rob's there, it had to be Bangkok, and 2) none of ours could be done either cos they had had a power cut and their computer was out of order. So............we had left town at 7 a.m. and got back at 5 p.m. - a total trip of 10 hours (3 hours travelling there, hours and hours waiting around, and 2.5 hours back) for NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And we were going to have to do it all again today.

Then Rob told me it had been decided that we would all of us go to Bangkok today and we had to meet at school at *6* in the morning!!!!!!!!!!!! To avoid the morning traffic into Bangkok. But of course that didn't work, which added an hour and a half onto our outward journey this morning. Got to the counter about 10 a.m., and the woman said she couldn't do the papers there and we had to go to another office, and couldn't do rob's at all till the 3rd of july when the result of his visa applic will be known. She did change her mind, and did our papers after all. We were all done and dusted by about 12, then the others set off back home. I wanted to stay in Bangkok for a bit and relax with a foot massage - didn't want to get straight back in the minibus and go all the way back. So while rob was in the loo I told them we were staying and they should go. Then when he came out of the loo he said he'd been planning to go back in the minibus as well. So that was that - he set off back on the public minibus and I had a massage - and then he rang to say he was on the wrong bus to the wrong town in the wrong direction because the driver had told him it was the right bus.

I just hate sitting around in offices and on minibuses for hours and hours, just for the sake of filling in 2 forms! - that's all i have done in the past 2 days and in 22 hours of trips to immigration - fill in 2 forms."

Rob now has to wait another week until the outcome of his applic is known.

Other than that......school has been pretty uneventful (who am I kidding?), and today I joined the gym. You may remember we were members of one in Bangkok - really expensive to keep our membership and not very motivating. But here - it's a low-tech affair, no pumping music, no showy people, no fanciness. it's much nicer, and they have big French doors that open out onto a spectacular view of green fields and distant mountains. So when i'm doing my torso twists, my incentive for each twist is getting to see that view. There's also a little sauna, which I had all to myself today, and I did a good workout and found before I started that I had lost a bit of weight. I'm sure it's because we're eating so much better than in Bangkok, lots of home cooking, no rice in the evening, and we're also having a good breakfast every day - rice porridge (khao dtom), piping hot like oat porridge, with dried chillis, fish sauce and a bit of sugar added by me to spice it up a bit. We have it at a stall outside school, and it's 10 Baht for a big bowl and sets us up for the next 3 or 4 hours. (10 Baht is about 15p!!!!) So our metabolism is kicked into action first thing in the morning, with the comfort food of khao dtom. I honestly don't know what I will do without it when i leave Thailand! Maybe I'll go on a porridge odyssey of the world.

So I'm now full of adrenalin and endorphins after a good workout and a couple of bowls of noodle soup with plenty dried chillis. Very happy!

NOW READ THE ENTRY MARKED "25 JUNE", A LITTLE WAY UP THE LIST OF ENTRIES.