A place to live

House shopping was a bit tiring. From what we could gather, the way to rent an apartment or house here is to walk around a neighborhood we might want to live in and if we see a phone number (we can at least recognize numbers if not any other writing) and the front, then it is probably for rent. Since we have our handy dandy cell phones (I still have no idea when they might stop working) we can call the number from right there and hope that the person on the other end speaks some english. In this fashion we found a few homes and condos and became depressed at the quality. After days of this, I saw a phone number on a fence post (no, I didn't want to live on a fence post) and called it. This turned out to be a real estate agent named Nid who took us to a house that was under construction but probably 3000 square feet (too big) and another way out in the country side that was built by a scottish man. This was an awesome house, but the daily commute would have been about 1/2 hour. However, it would be the perfect place for a writer looking for a secluded beautiful place in the country side. If anyone wants to give up their day job and write, let me know. So the real estate agent thing didn't work.
After some frustration, Megan and plopped ourselves down in a wawee coffee (kind of like starbucks but much more thai), drank something that tasted like a meted frappacino, got way too cracked out on coffee and opened a local publication for expats called City LIfe. We found an add for something that seemed too good to be true called the number and found the cutest house in Chiang Mai. It is in the old part of town, down a quite secluded street, owned by an english teacher named Suwy, and cost about 200 dollars per month.

Here is a photo of our kitchen. Yeah it is simple, but this is the way it works. When we looked at places, none of them had kitchens. People simply eat out for every meal. At first this sounds cool, but sometimes, I just want to scramble up some eggs for breakfast.

In order to cook, we needed to buy a wok and some ingredients. So we took a trip to the day market and had an adventures buying some goods. Here are some photos of said market, I like how this lady is surrounded by vegetables. She must climb in at 8 am and not leave until 5. She looks quite at home in her vegies.


So today we go motorcycle shopping at some used motorcycle market. We hear we can get a pretty nice ride for around 500 dollars. Hopefully this is the case. The good news is that there are cheap mechanics everywhere, the bad news is that I have no idea how to look at the motorcycles around here and tell if they are good or bad. We have a thai woman coming with us which is helpful. Hopefully we end up with something sweet.

Oh yeah, and I got sick about 5 days ago which is fine. I knew it was going to happen and I might as well get it out of the way.

Marshall