A Blog about the Daily Life on the Tropical Island of Koh Samui
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A few Words about Me
 My name is: Olle
I am living in: Lamai Beach, Koh Samui, Suratthani, Thailand
I am originally from: Stockholm, the capital of Sweden
I am doing for Kohsamui.org: Writing a blog about my life on a tropical island
How about my life here: Please read my blog below, my friends |
Why Do I Live In Thailand
Text by Olle - Living on Lamai Beach - Wednesday, September 23, 2009
It has been another quite ok day with a somewhat refreshing and pleasant weather. It has been some sun, but also a lot of clouds and the rain poured down very hard for a few minutes. I do not think I have told you why I live in Thailand so I thought I better tell you the reason I ended up here.
All my life I have thought that the Swedish climate is something that does not fits into my world and I have often wondered why people settled down there. One reason might be that the competition for the cold country were small and that they did not have to fight for the land and could live in peace. I do not know but it would make some sense to me if that was the case. I am a pretty frozen person and have been since I was a kid. I remember that I even as a child felt that the cold winters were horrible. Besides the weather, which of course has good sides too, the Swedish social climate is not really what I think strive for. The goal of my life has never been to fall into place and live like most other people do just because that is how life is and I do not want to spend most of my time working and longing for the weekends that I know many people does. Under such circumstances I do not feel that I am free. The first time I visited Thailand was 10 years ago. I went to Phuket for 2 weeks. I was almost 20 old years and went with my girlfriend. I had traveled a lot before but never to Asia which I had always found attractive for a number of reasons. Already on that trip, I said that I should live here but Phuket was not the place I had in mind. Stubborn as I am I knew that nothing could stop me, if you just want something enough and dare to let go for a while anything is possible. My next trip to Thailand took place 7 years later and we went to Koh Lanta. It was about that time I felt that it was time to make the dream come true.
At this time we had a dog which made it all a lot harder and in the autumn of 2006 we decided that we would move without any set plans to move back, but with the idea that after one year see what we wanted for the future. It did not take long to notice the problem with the Thai authorities and after numerous e-mails to addresses with endings such as yahoo and hotmail that were supposed to be the official email to the department in charge of import and export of animals, I managed to finally get answers to some questions that had popped up after having read the rules on importation of animals. Six months Before Departure we began the vaccinations of our dog and that is what it takes if you want to get everything done already in Sweden, which is an advantage for several reasons.
I realized that it is impossible to know if one wants to live in another country before one tried and no matter how much one traveled in that country before life is so different when you have a life with structures that can last for a long than having a lifestyle that is working for a set period of time. Since we did not know what our lives would be like in Thailand I did not want to sell the apartment and felt it is far better to have something to come back to if we felt that we wanted to move back to Sweden. Everything went as I wanted but it were several, according to other people, impossible things that had to be solved. Life flowed on as normal before we moved and we did not make any big thing about it all. It was as if we were going on vacation but with some extra things to arrange with the apartment and a few other things. We did not book any accommodation except for the first two days. I am not the type that worries very much.
Why Samui?
The reason I had an attraction to Samui was because I thought that the island could offer what we searched for, a calm place but not a place that becomes boring in the long run. Islands have a special feeling and that was also something that made me relate Samui with Paradise. We chose Maenam as our destination. To transport a dog by air within Thailand requires that the dog is seduced and we did not feel that it was an option and after a long flight we did not want to put the dog on a new flight either. There was only one option left to transport a dog to Samui, it was to take the train from Bangkok to Surat Thani. From there the plan was to take the bus to the ferry.
During my time in Thailand I have also lived in a quiet, but popular area on Phuket and the differences between Phuket and Samui are big, however both places have their charm and I am very happy that I have lived in two different places, it has given me a lot .
What A Great Day
Text by Olle - Living on Lamai Beach - Tuesday, September 22, 2009
I can finally say that it has been a great day without adding the word, but, or something similar.
I woke up, ate breakfast and sat down to work. The fan was turned on and gave the computer a chance to work without getting overheated. Everything went like a dance. I just restarted the computer once during the day because the web browser stopped working. Days like this when you do not have to spend time solving troubles you just get so much more done.
Last night we ate dragon fruit. Not the usual white one which I previously posted pictures of but the other kind that has a strong colored inside. The color was incredibly strong purple. This kind is said to be the one that has far more vitamins antioxidants but I must say that I prefer the kinds that have white flesh. This has a slightly mealy texture, and it is not as thirst-quenching, but although it is also very tasty. On the outside they look almost identical only a slight difference in shape and size. The one with purple flesh is a little smaller and has a rounder shape and the leaf-like outgrowth on the fruit is a bit thinner. Without studying them one would easily not see any differences.
A little earlier in the evening we ate fish for dinner. This time we ate the larger fish we bought last week. I was surprised that it had so much bones in it while in the other ones, the smaller kind, we bought had significantly fewer bones. The bones in this fish was not like others I have seen, these had a fork and looked like a Y. I like fish but I don’t like when I have to anatomize the food. It was tasty but I will choose other fish next time.
In the evening I went to the gym, it was more people than usual and my demands on myself is a bit too high and I realized I only trained for three weeks, but to get back after a long break is very boring and I wish I had not stopped training before when I was on top. Luckily I am not the type who needs to force myself to the gym but I am more than happy to head to the gym. Now that we have two motorbikes Nui went down for a walk on Lamai beach meanwhile I was at the gym. There were a lot of people, she said. We have not been to the beach in a long time and last time I went to Thong Takian beach.
Nui is right now preparing an egg salad which is more than welcome because I am hungry again. Nui complained the other day after she had bought vegetables at the market. She thinks it is so expensive there, and it is much more expensive at this market than we have seen at other places. At the north side, in Choeng Mon, it was much cheaper. When Tesco opens in less than two weeks there will probably be a bit difficult to sell vegetables for the same price as today. I think the Tesco might ruin the business for several other small stores. Although I often think that it is better to benefit the small places, it is very easy to go to the larger well-known stores. I also think that it is pleasant to have everything in one store and be able to choose from a wide range of products. I am probably not alone thinking like that. What is a benefit for one part is a disadvantage for another.
Computers Are Not My Friends
Text by Olle - Living on Lamai Beach - Monday, September 21, 2009
Today we woke up early, or early for being us. Already at 8 o'clock we opened our eyes. I had woken up earlier because the roosters were making a loud noise and one of them sat just outside the window and shouted his lungs out. The crickets in the background played loud too and noisy vehicles were passing by on the street outside the house even before the sun had gone up. Strangely, I managed to fall asleep despite all that. When I realized that the time was only about 8 o'clock I was very relieved, I find it far more comfortable to wake up in a somewhat good time and the days get so much longer. I ate breakfast and put the computer on to start working. When I had been working for only a few minutes the screen froze and the colors on the screen went red and green at some places and then a blue screen popped up and I was worried that the video card or CPU was about to shut down for real. I was not able to restart the computer normally, but went into safe mode and then managed to restart it the normal way. When I opened up any software that requires an ounce of graphic power the same thing happened and I immediately started to save backups of all data that I may have made the smallest changes to since the last backup. Even if I do backups very often it takes time to make all those small changes you might have done in many files since the last backup. I thought it might be the graphics card driver that gone corrupt so I uninstalled and installed the driver again. At this time I did not feel that I wanted to check if it was working as I should do because it might brake down totally but instead I checked the phone number to Apple in Thailand and they can deliver a new computer within 24 hours so if I was unable to work I could get a new computer pretty soon. I will not buy another PC computer that’s for sure. Even while I wrote this the computer froze the same way but as a miracle I was able to open the document after rebooting the computer four times and also the software had saved everything I had written automatically. Sometimes I am lucky too. I have noticed that the computer gets extremely hot and it has been like that for the two years I have had it and at this time it was hotter than ever, so hot it burned if you touched it at some parts so now I have tried to put a fan on full speed next to it to see if it could be an overheating problem. At this point the computer is not even warm on the site it was BOILING HOT before, unbelievable. The computer is not built to run in 30-degrees heat. Now I hope that this might have been the cause of everything.
Ok, back to what I did earlier today. We needed to go shopping and I made the choice to do that first rather than testing any application on the computer and maybe even end up in a worse mood. While we were at the northern part of Samui we drove to the craftsman who will build the sidecar. He said that he would just repair an old sidecar for a customer and then he will start with our one, so within a week it should be finished.
When we got home I managed to work without any problems, though I still had not done a proper test. I thought it was better to get things done before making any unnecessary tests. I really do not understand what it is with computers in my presence because it is one problem after another. We did not care to find out about the bank fees for money transfers that we were investigating last Friday. I felt I had enough with problems for today.
The weekend was great and on Saturday we played tennis. I played a double with two friends and the owner of the IT complex. Very fun and it was good exercise too. The fine weather has not changed and it has been very hot and sunny. A few evenings ago it began to rain heavily but it ended after only 10-15 seconds. Nui have never seen anything like this, with extremely short showers, and in general very dry weather during the summer. On the news we heard about bad weather with lots of rain in the northeastern Thailand and we have got information from Phuket and Bangkok that it rains almost every day so summer on Samui is just great.
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