Thailand: First impressions

Arrived in Tailand shortly after ten in the morning on Tuesday, dead tired after a long flight from Berlin. I didn't get much sleep at all, but had me some discreet fun with playing old Vera Lynn tunes on the puter. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud when she sang "the RAF and me just had another good day". Then I remembered I was in a German plane and stopped snickering.

Immigration control went very fast and with no problems at all. I caught a taxi to Hua Hin, which is about 3 hours south of Bangkok. I'd heard some horror stories about traffic down here, and while it was clearly less organized than in Norway it still wasn't any worse than Italy... My driver was not familiar with Huan Hin, so he stopped after taking off from the freeway and I was picked up by the British guy I'm renting from. His choice of music left much to be desired, though. The first song on his playlist was "I will always love you" with Whitney muthafuckin Houston. Sigh. He also had some Celine Dion and various other annoying artists.

A few words on the property I'm renting - it's a largish house with four bedrooms and five bathrooms, some of them quite spacious. Huge living room, small kitchen and a dining room on the first floor, three bedrooms upstairs. Lovely pool outside. Mmmmm, pool. I've discovered some problems with the place - leaky faucets and clogged drains, etc, but I've been promised that someone will be around to fix them Wednesday.

I've slept most of the afternoon, and woke up just before midnight, and there are some things I still have to figure out. One is that it seems nighttime is when all the fuckin bugs come out to play. I've yet to see a single spider, so that's good. On the other hand there are some bugs that look like roaches that keep scuttering around here, two or three of 'em.

There are also some sounds I have yet to figure out the source of. Earlier today there was a noise like someone tapping on a window, so I got up and went to look, but nothing and nobody could be found. I heard the same noise now, after midnight so either it's the airconditioning or some fucking bug making the sounds. There's also a sound like a mad monkey screeching, but again that might be airconditioning... or bugs. Generally, there are way more sounds both inside and outside the house after dark. I shall have to investigate further tomorrow.

The only store around here is a tiny shack appx. 5 minutes walk from the house, just outside the walled community where I live. I went up there to buy unseemly amounts of water and soda, also raiding the few easily identifiable foodstuffs they had (raisin bread and some kind of sausage bread).

I've yet to venture into Hua Hin proper but I'm strongly considering renting a scooter or something to cut down on the cost of taxis (even though they're dirt cheap) and the time spent traveling. I'm prolly gonna have most of my meals outside the house, so I need some kind of permanent transport arrangement.