The Thai people aren't backward in coming forward when it comes to asking personal questions, "how old are you" and "what do you earn" are often early questions in any conversation. But even I thought calling a shop for the more curvy Thai woman "Fatty Fatty Girl" was a bit uber personal! Lots of shops and bars here have the same statues of slim locally dressed ladies outside, not sure what they represent but there are a lot of them, but this shop has replaced them with these two rather bigger ones.... Not sure I'd want to be seen shopping here!
And not only is the language non PC at times. Whilst we are trying to drastically reduce the use of plastic bags there seem to be more and more used here. It really came home to me as I saw the parade of mopeds leaving the morning market, each festooned with lots of carrier bags on the handles. On a positive note this demonstrates that a lot of people are still shopping and cooking fresh ingredients daily rather than living on packaged stuff, but all of it from the single lime to the chicken leg is in a separate plastic carrier. They also have nifty little hot/cold coffee cup carriers, like the handles of a plastic carrier that fit round the top of your drink, so much easier than the Starbuck's cardboard collar... All the street vendors sell their Pad Thai and Thai soup in small plastic bags. Even in the big Tesco Lotus Superstore, meat is not prepacked. It's sold like veggies where you shovel what you want into a plastic bag and take it to the counter to be weighed and priced. I'm sure it's different in Bangkok, but as you wander past the village houses here the "kitchen" is outside, a small tin BBQ, a gas ring and a hosepipe for washing up. Nowhere to store food. And it only struck me recently that none of the convenience stores here including the ubiquitous 7/11 has a frozen food section. Even a lot of the small cafés obviously have no freezers as the iceman does a roaring trade each morning filling up the insulated ice buckets left outside like a milkman of old. But why bother with frozen chicken when the fresh stuff stays fresh by scrabbling about your garden and reproducing itself...
The weather here continues to be a bit odd. Some rain, but not the monumental downpours of the wet season. More cloudy and cool. Even requiring long sleeves at night. There has been a real cold snap up in the North with the government giving out extra blankets, perhaps we are getting the edge of that. Today the German's are lying out on their sunbeds in the cool, determined to catch any stray ray on their face but with the rest of their body wrapped up in their sarong like an Egyptian mummy!Occasionally of an evening I have found myself going inside to get warm - a real reversal of the norm! Evenings see the latest Thai cold weather outfits - coats, anoraks, hoodies.... The wind is so high and the sea so rough today that there were no boats this morning at Lomprayah Pier where usually lots of daily boats go over to the smaller islands and on snorkelling trips to the National Park. And whilst from this pic it doesn't quite look ready for surfin' in Samui, for this part of the coast that really is a high sea! But don't get me wrong it's still a lot warmer in Samui than Swanley!
And in my efforts not to be a fatty fatty girl, I still enjoy the sights and sounds on my walks. The influence of the Russian tourist is seen by the ever increasing use of their language to the colourful shopping opportunities along the road.
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Location:แม่น้ำ,Thailand
