Everyday Life

The past two days was just like everyday life. Except we don't work for anybody. Thursday my brother and I were left to ourselves while the women went to do some paperwork in nearby Phitsanulok. We took the new old Datsun to the garage to have some minor repairs done, especially have the tread width adjusted which was totally out of place. It now drives like a charm!

The rest of the day went by with us trying to find the right plumbing gear for connecting a German faucet to a Thai water pipe and get the dishwasher connected as well. Sounds easy, but it is not! The European Standard provides for warm water, a luxury very rare in Thailand. And what for anyway? Everyone is glad to have a rather cool shower. Five times a day on average. So, with two connectors in Europe and only one in Thailand, European threads are somewhat smaller. So small, nothing Thai will fit. Nothing? Well there is this nifty Kubota Tool and Tractor shop in town that just wouldn't let this statement be completely true. With a couple what I believe to be hydraulic pipe connectors and adapters we were able to bridge from German thread diameter to Thai. And with one more connector found in one of the many boxes still piling up in the house we converted from Thai to dish washer.

With the shops closing early we actually didn't get all parts together in one day and assembled that bunch of bits and pieces the next day. We had to use the Thai kind of sealant which basically is some thin silicone strip wrapped around the threads. It took about five runs to the main water supply and back to get everything sealed tight. With the (only) main about 50 meters in front of the house it was funny, because we had to actually use our mobile phones to get the water turned off again when it was still leaking. And every time we had to take the whole thing apart and start sealing again. Finally, we had it down to one drop in a couple of minutes that by now has disappeared. Simple advice to anyone trying this: Don't use hydraulic pipe connectors for water! They like to leak.


We didn't go to school on Thursday, because the women got stuck in Phitsanulok with a discharged car battery. So we also used some of the day to clean the concrete car port floor and garden wall with water pressure. It was fun to see them slowly turn from a black and greenish moss carpet into a grey but clean concrete surface. Actually, the car port had not been used as such for more than five years at least. It was behind the house and there was no way to actually drive a car into it anymore, so all that was left was a concrete base plate with an ugly iron sheet roof. Still, it made a good place to store some stuff.

Some things had actually been "stored" for years. Among them were a couple of heavy clay pots filled with water. To clean the port we had to move them and to move them we had to empty them. Even though they look massive, you better treat them like raw eggs or they might just break any time. Feels a bit funny when you're just about to move that hip-high pot and see what looks like a snake tail disappear underneath. Ever tried to handle a raw 100 kilogram egg with a snake underneath? Well, watering, poking and picking under the pot didn't help. We ended up getting on a chair each and lifting the pot away to reveal a baby snake. Baby or not, you don't wanna be bit by a snake you don't know. With an iron pole and a bucket we managed to catch the snake and carry it to the neighbor. "Can eat," was his comment. And the bite is not dangerous. And there are many more like this right next to the house, but much bigger. Why in the world had we worried?


We were done cleaning the port just before dark when Lucie called and invited us to another night in a bar. I didn't feel like drinking that night, so I kept hanging on to Coke. Not so my brother and Lucie, who emptied a small bottle of Regency Brandy. My brother felt the effects of that right the next morning. It wouldn't be much of a busy day. We finished connecting the dish washer and skipped school again. Toni was sick with slight fever and was hanging around the house like half dead, not speaking and pretending to die any minute. His father still nurtured him as a good father does while inbetween he seemed to melt away in sweat putting together a small closet. With everyone hanging low we made that night a film night wondering if the women were to leave for Bangkok the next morning to get some curtains that they didn't seem to find in our area.