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 |
Nice and Cold
Text by Olle - Living on Lamai Beach - Friday, December 4, 2009
Today we had another day with cloud and even some rain.
In the morning it looked as if the cloudy weather would turn around and the sun even shined for a while. But then dark clouds came drifting and soon after we saw them the rain came down really hard. It only kept raining hard for a few minutes and the rest of the day was quite dark. One guy who seemed extremely happy about the rain was the buffalo Mr Pink. He quickly made himself a really big and deep pool where he rolled around and enjoyed the "good" weather.
My PC that I have been able to use as a reference to the Mac quit working today. It has been very good to be able to check everything on that one too since what you see on PC and Mac is not always the same. Also the scroller at my Mac mouse stopped working and I was only able to scroll down with the scroller ball which is annoying. I thought I better go back to the store as soon as possible and I went outside and took off. After a few hundred meters the engine on the bike stopped and never came to life again. That was strike number three. One very nice you guy pushed me back home with his bike so I did not have to walk. The PC is only a bit more than 2 years old and completely broken and the bike is the same age. Well, I do not think the bike is broken completely it has been like this a few times before and usually it comes back to life with out doing anything. Probably water gets in somewhere at times. Things in general just seem to give me trouble which has drained my energy completely.
I thought I could better make some music but then it came to mind that a cable is broken and such cable I have not been able to find.
In the evening the bike had rested and worked fine just as I was hoping. We went to the Mac store and now the mouse is sent for repair and I will have it back in a few weeks. The weather is almost cold now at 21 o'clock, only 25 degrees and it feels extremely fresh. With the door open the temperature is just perfect as little difference to the regular 30+ degrees.
Tomorrow is a big day in Thailand. It is the birthday of the Majesty the King and in days already celebrations have been going on, not least in the capital with big fireworks and parades.
Today it is Friday again a I have yet to come up with idea on how to make the time go slower.
Have a nice weekend.
Tesco in Problem!
Text by Olle - Living on Lamai Beach - Thursday, December 3, 2009
Today it has been a really cloudy day. When I woke up it was almost dark even if it was not that early. Nui decided to skip working since days like this does not generate much. I thought it was a good decision since we other wise work 7 days a week but I had to work anyway.
Yesterday when we went to Tesco we heard to employees talking about that Tesco have so much problem now days, they said that 20 people had been fired from the store in Chaweng and that many stores would close down. On the news today we heard more about that and that one of their biggest stores, in Bangkok, were closed already as far as I understood and also stores in other parts of Thailand had closed down. To me it seem a little strange to open up a new full size store in Lamai if the store in Chaweng have problems. I do not know if the problems are regarding lack of costumers or else, but the store in Chaweng seem to have people shopping all the time and since they opened up a store in Lamai the problem might be something else.
In the evening today I went for a chat with Jens, he had heard that the guys making the new road had put asphalt over the well systems. In this northern part of Lamai the road was done very recently and I have not been around much. When I went back home it was already dark but I took a closer look and he was right. The wells were all covered and at places they had started to penetrate the road to get down to the wells and in some places they had removed the asphalt on top of the well completely. In the southern area they fixed the wells before they put on the asphalt, and raised them to the level the new road was estimated to be in. If they completely forgot about this or if they changed the technique I would like to know. I just hope they will make this section as good as the other because it is very dangerous as it is right now.
Smoked!
Text by Olle - Living on Lamai Beach - Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Yesterday I was very busy. On Monday evening I got a request for a music project that had to be done in 24 hours. At first I honestly felt like saying no but that isn't an option. I anyway thought that it would never be done in 24 hours since it often is very much things being added and changed from the other end. This time however it all went very good and after a late night at the computer I continued on Tuesday and had it all done my midnight which felt extremely good. The thing is that in the past it has always been a lot more trouble than this time and that has to be included in the timeframe.
The timing of this project was also very unfortunate even if it went well. This tuesday we had our anniversary and had planned to go eat dinner somewhere and just have a good time. With projects like this I never know if I will be done in five minutes or two days since sudden changes often appear but this time I had my first part already taken care of and we could take a few hours to enjoy a good meal which felt great.
That morning, yesterday, I got a less nice surprise. A neighbor cut down branches from a tree outside his house and put it all just across the street and made a huge smoke bomb out if it. There were almost no wind at all and all the smoke slowly swept onto our house and I literally got smoked. Since this smoke bombs does not last for a few minutes but the whole day my Swedish brain wanted to strangle the neighbor but hey, this is how it is done here so like it or not, stay or leave. I shut the doors and tried to survive but without exaggerating it was hard to breath and that laundry that was hanging in front of the house, guess what. It had to be washed again. It probably cost me a few weeks of life ass well.
The weather today has been cloudy, but the sky was still very bright. 31 degrees and very nice. This is the biggest variation regarding the weather we have, a little bit of clouds or blue sky.
Driving On Clouds
Text by Olle - Living on Lamai Beach - Monday, November 30, 2009
This weekend the road got finished along Lamai. It feels so much wider then before and it is so soft that is almost like driving on clouds, ha ha. The biggest difference is when driving a car and it really is a huge difference in sound. The reason they waited with the middle part of Lamai till the weekend was probably to make it as smooth as possible but the traffic got completely jammed anyway and the line of cars was reaching as far back as I could possible see. On Saturday the people who took care of the traffic were people from the company who make the roads and many people got tired of waiting and neglected signs and the people trying to control the traffic. They had to close a long section of one lane and that section included a sharp corner. When some people did not see any cars coming they just went even though the person trying to control the traffic said stop, however sometimes cars were arriving around the corner and the extra jam was a fact. I felt sorry for the people who tried to do their job.
On Sunday that job was done by the police and then people obey without any questions and it all got more controlled.
It is very different from how I have seen this being done before. People are strolling around and even small kids were very close by these big vehicles. One buy you can see on the picture standing only centimeters away from the big vehicles when they were driving past him.
I guess it will take some time before the complete ring road is done and it is a huge amount of asphalt that is used and there are plenty of big trucks transporting the material. All over Lamai the smell of asphalt was significant and the concrete parking lot outside Tesco that used to be light gray was turned into black.
I think that the new roads will contribute to higher speed on the roads and when I went to buy ice this morning I found myself driving a lot faster than before so maybe the old roads had some benefits anyway.
The weather this weekend has been good. The sun has been shining most of the days but we have had some clouds as well which I do not really mind. Tomorrow we step into December and every year I get surprised, mentally it is still summer for me and it seems like I will keep getting surprised every year. At times I can miss not having the christmas feeling. It just cannot be done here and certainly not without the family. Last year I spent the christmas in Sweden and if it was possible I would not hesitate to spend two or three weeks during christmas and new year in Sweden this year too. Maybe that will be possible next year and then it might also be double the fun.
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