The Coffee

Served black, in all its full-strength, muddy, bitter glory. Ideally topped up with a dollop of creamy New Zealand butter.

And what would you know but the sap is rising and all ( ok, many ) things seem possible on  a toasty South-East Asian morning.

Last month I was riding 5 minutes to a local eatery, and fidgeting while the Help took its sweet time brewing up the elixir. One morning, I finally decided that 20 minutes’ wait was beyond the pale. There had to be a better way.

And there was. My brother in NZ, a bit of an aficianado, gave me some advice about finding the Good Beans, and even found a local shop which ground their own beans. Imported no less from Myanmar, and Chiang Mai, and cheap at about 150 ฿ . That worked.

But my equipment, I suspect, was letting me down. A cheapo coffee maker from Tesco Lotus ( ‘low-TAR’ in the local lingo ), which does the trick, but doesn’t quite have the same kick. Or the same taste.

After a few words with the other NES teachers, one suggested the 7-11s, many of which contain an ALLCafe. They brew surprisingly good coffee, only 25฿, and delivered fast and hot. See above.

So the weekday morning routine is now one with the Good Beans, and the shoddy coffee-maker, above, and one from the 7-11, further above.

On a weekend, I’ll travel to a locally-owned and run cafe ( mother and son I assume ) where they make spectacular coffee. As no doubt do many cafes around town.

Trouble is, none of them open til 7 am, which is way past twitching time.

Monday at work was such a day.

The school hosted something they called an ‘Expo’, bascially a free-for-all where students played computer games, peddled merchandise, or just danced. As below.

Details of the reason and thinking behind the whole caper are sketchy, because – as I’m learning is standard practice – we get told sod-all.

We did, however, have a Monday’s worth of no lessons, so I wasn’t making a fuss.

My Thai co-teacher, however, was. He seems to have made it his mission in life to create as much work as possible for me. In line with that, he insisted I ‘supervise’ a roomful of students playing video games. He and his wife ( also a teacher ) were in the room emjoying a cosy chat. The rest of the Foreign English teachers were in the teachers’ office doing their own thing.

I followed suit.

After three months here, I’ve finally got a loose grasp on a major drain on the pocket – power costs.

It’s finally dawned on me – years after everyone else – that running air-conditioning overnight, and during most of the day, is sky-rocketing expenses.

In my defence, it’s set up as a rort, because apartment owners are making a killing by retailing electricity at a profit. So they’re hardly likely to have a word on the ear of power-hogging tenants.

The wholesale rate, which they pay the Government, is 3 baht / unit. They then typically retail it at 5 – 8 baht / unit. At a typical 300 – 500 units / month, that’s anywhere from ฿600 ( baht ) –  ฿2500  for whistling dixie.

Being a little slow to catch on, I’ve spent around ฿8,500  per month in the last two apartments. The first, ฿5500 + ฿3000 in power, and the second, ฿5000 + ฿3500 in power. It seemed there was no escape.

But on grilling a fellow NES teacher ( Scott, a quiet but wily Californian ), he pointed out the obvious – it’s the air-conditioning, you marnis.

Experiments have proven this hypothesis – below is an example of the Monkey Brain taking over shows power usage here at the Wiang Walee. Enlightenment happened on July 29.

Power Usage at the Wiang Walee

How have I coped with this given the 30+°C heat? I’ve started wearing damp t-shirts and neckerchiefs inside, and I’ve turned the air-conditioning off when I’m out, and during the day.

It’s still too hot to sleep without the air-conditioner. But I’m finding ( from reading, and since confirmed ) that the unit set for about 26° cools enough, and uses way less power.

An awful eating out experience last night reminded me what not do in Thailand.

That would be to travel to a country offering a smorgasbord of what has to be among the best cuisine in the world – and eat pizza. And ice cream.

That’s what happened when I took a diet regime ( “listen to the Sisson” ) swerve for the sake of a social outing with some fellow NES teachers.

I should have seen the writing on the menu when the group agreed to meet at Passione, a major shopping mall in Rayong. It glitters, but it’s not gold. The lights are over-powering , and most of it is so .. uniform that dithery middle-aged guys are apt to lose themselves. On the upside, there are some stalls cooking real food, served up hot, and delicious, so all was not lost.

We agreed to decide on an eatery when we got there, but when I arrived ( on time ), the rest were all parked up at a small franchise pizzeria. Ugh. But I decided to ditch the food zealotry, and enjoy the social occasion and indulge.

We all ordered, er, pizza. OK. I got an allsorts bacon topping, thin crust. It was OK ( bland, no spices ), but didn’t come anywhere near satisfying. Everyone else either has their appetites better trained, or ate in advance, because it seemed to do them.

Not so bad, but when it was time to fix up the bill, taking five separate paymnent was totally beyond the staff, or the system, or both. Result – a 20-minute drama. Unbelievable.

The others trundled off to a dessert shop to eat ice-cream. I made my excuses, and went searching for some real food – I ate – a fatty pork sausage, a pork chop, finished off with cocoa and coconut cream with cinnamon and Goji berries. Mmmm.

I paid 220 baht for a pizza which didn’t satisfy. I then paid only 70 baht for the sausage and chop, and maybe 20 baht for the cocoa. If I could have found a nearby market in my frenzy, I could have had a good, and filling, meal for 60 baht. With perfectly good outdoor seating.

Aside from all that, it’s beyond me why one would travel to Thailand to eat crap American-style food. It’s expensive, in unpleasant surroundings, and dull or unpalatable.

OK, some things haven’t changed for me in this new residence. I watch similar videos, for example.

But when it comes to a really easily accessible part of the Thai culture – the food – it’s almost criminal to let that chance pass by.

Scootering

There’s nothing like the freedom of meandering along on a scooter on a warm summer’s day.

And here, rain or shine or otherwise, it’s always a warm summer’s day.

Which means  going out for a quick jaunt is my idea of  an ideal Time Out. Beaches, buildings, parks, shopping, endless food stalls, all within 15 minutes – a man can easily make a pig of himself.

I have learned something from my recent troubles – I’m a lot more … sedate than I used to be.  I no longer try to load all my Thai possessions onto the scooter.

Nonetheless, I’ll nearly always ride helmet-less, avoiding the main roads, where the police lurk with ticket-books in hand. Everywhere else, nearly everyone goes for comfort over safety,  and shuns helmets.

The ‘controlled’ intersections are also nearly all on the main roads, of course, so everywhere else it’s every man, wife, and child for themselves. Sometimes all three on the same scooter.

Scooters are universal here – from early teens to the elderly, it’s the most common form of transport.  As such, it’s very loosely policed.

And gas is ridiculously cheap – a 100 baht tank refill will fuel me for around 60 km, or around a week of pottering about.

That pottering includes the 5-minute trip from home to work, the 5-minute trip to the nearest Food Mile, a 10-minute trip to a ‘supermarket’, or the same to big fresh produce markets ( I’ve found three so far, no doubt there are many more ).

Cheap, quick(ish), convenient – you gotta love a scooter.

It’s almost Scottish this morning – a cool 29 deg. C  as at 7.35 am.

This is probably the coolest it’s been since I got here . It’s almost cool enough to turn the air-conditioning off.

So I’m off for my therapeutic wallow at Saeng Chan. beach. It’s doing the scrapes from the bike accident no end of good.

The architecture

Thais have a style of their own.

It often involves wild colour combinations. I see it in electronic documents, advertising, and especially the architecture.

Here’s where they’ll use vivid pastel colours you won’t find in a Dulux catalogue.

No doubt there’s a simple and widely-known explanation for how these colours are achieved, but I don’t yet know it. Each case of this technique seems to produce a unique colour, which suggests that it’s manually ‘brewed’.

Below is a small sample. The buildings shown are all within a circle maybe 5km across.

Watch this space, I’ll add images to this post as I collect them.