Pictures and Stories from our Time in Thailand

Yep, thats right after 9 (closer to 10) months of doing not that much, except an international move, my lesuirely days as an expat wifey are all about to come to halt. I start the new job on the 17th of September. From now on I am the Regional Quality Assurance Manager for Asia/Pacific for an animal feed company called Alltech. I am being whisked off (hopefully buisness class) to the USA for training. Ill be going to Kentucky for about 3 weeks which should be quite a fun experience. The job includes quite a bit of travel I think with another trip to the US planned for December. Its a real, proper grown-up job and I may just be able to put all those years at uni to some use finally!

Apart from that big bit of news, everthing here has been a little quiet recently. Mike has buggered off a few times to somewhere with the excuse that he has work to do or something! So I have been flying solo occupying my last days of freedom with whatever I can think of. I have had to do a bit of shopping recently for clothes that I can wear to work. I was unable to find even ONE pair of pants that came even close to fitting me. The Thai`s just dont understand the concept of a bum. I also had to get a new pair bathers for an upcoming trip to the beach (more on that later!) as my old ones are YEARS old and the bottom is becoming a little thin! I found a range that is obviously only in the shops to help out the foreigners as the smallest size they had was XL. I had to go for the 4XL size...talk about depressing. The bottoms are way to big and the tops only just wearable. You need a thick skin to go clothes shopping in this country, too much of that 4XL business does nothing for ones self confidence!!

We had Penny, an old friend from Sydney, here over the weekend and it was so good to see a friendly face! We spent 4 days having lots of fun getting massages, pedicures, manicures, eating, drinking and shopping! It was great! We took a day trip to the north of Bangkok to check out a pottery island called Ko Kret. To get there we caught a ferry for ages and then we had to take something called a long boat to the island. OH MY GOSH...the long boat looked like a canoe with a HUGE motor on the back. I was not to positive about us making it there and back alive when I saw it! The three of us sat in a single file with the driver up the back and it seemed like it wasn`t that bad at all as we started out. Then the guy made the thing go so fast. I was up front, in the air and the boat was really bumpy and I was screaming because I was flying around like crazy! It took ages to get to the island and when I hopped out I made it rather clear to Penny and Mike that I was definately not going to be sitting up front again. Penny got that honour and had a bruise on her back from the bumps two days later! Certainly not a normal way to travel but fun all the same!

Mike`s sister Gina and her boyf Chris arrive in Bangkok tommorrow for a few weeks. Saturday morning we are whisking them straight out of town to as island down south called Koh Chang. We are staying in a very nice resort and the island has lots of stuff to do like diving, walks to waterfalls and elephant trekking! I think you can sit on the elephants and go for walks on them, Im not to keen on the sound of that! There is a pool side bar and outdoor massage tables, more than enough to keep me busy without the need to climb onto a wild beast. It`s my birthday next week, the big 25. It will be great to have Gina and Chris here to celebrate with...and of course that means more presents!

Speaking of massages, Penny and I went for a Traditional Thai massage last week. OH MY GOSH...it went for two hours, cost $13 and was completely unreal. We had to get dressed up into these funny clothes, hop into small dark cubicles, and a small Thai lady came in and went for it. I was poked, pulled, pushed, slapped and contorted in many different ways! I was sitting on the edge of pain the whole time. My gosh, I had sore bits that I didnt know were sore and they were certainly sore the next day! But Ill definatly be back for another one!

Ill pop some photos up of stuff thats being going on since I last checked in. I hope everyone is great, miss you all!

Until next time.....