Category: Thailand

I am not going to make a definitive comment on this article beyond what i know. The only coconut monkeys i have seen are in tourist shows. The showman sends the monkey up the tree. The monkey twists the ripe coconut until it falls and goes to the next ripe coconut to repeat the process. In Khanom, the south of Thailand, there are coconut trees in almost everyone’s yard. Haven’t seen one monkey. With the short trees some people use a long pole with a knife on the end to cut the coconut tether so the coconut falls to the ground. Coconuts have a very hard shell so there is no chance of them cracking open when they fall. But with the taller trees people just wait for the coconuts to fall. Again, never drive under or spend time under a coconut tree. Coconuts are heavy. If one falls on your head there is a very good chance you will be killed. Many times i have come upon coconuts lying in the middle of a road having fallen from a tree. 

Trucks drive around every so often and have people put their coconuts aboard for shipment to market. Not sure when and how people get paid for loading their coconuts on the truck. They probably get paid cash right on the spot. 

Large coconut groves might use monkeys to harvest the crop but, again, all i have seen are the tourist tricks. 

This is about remoras and it is about a conundrum, but it’s not about remoras having a conundrum and it’s also not about flying spaghetti monster‘s.

I have a conundrum but I want to talk about the remoras first. Just five days ago, most of the way through my morning swim on the beach, I felt something like a jellyfish bumping up against me but sticking longer than jellyfish do and no sting. Then I felt a little ticklish where they were. I looked down and saw what looked like a foot-long remora which tends to stick around whale sharks, sharks and other large fish to clean off the algae and bacteria on the skin or scales. Immediately I was reminded of the fish in the waterfall area last month, the ones cleaning your feet.  These remoras, if that’s really what they were, I haven’t looked them up yet, just seemed to find different places on my body they needed to clean. This was before I took a shower so who knows what they found for breakfast. I never had this experience in many thousands of hours in the ocean. It was kind of fun and refreshing. Several days later they were around me again and have been there almost every day since. I also noticed there were fewer beach fishing nets strung out and so maybe these were the tiny fish these fishermen were trying to capture for some food reasons. I can’t imagine them being much except bones.

Now for the conundrum. Have you ever been in a situation where you were in a place for a long period of time and it started to grow on you so you felt like it was not a place you were going to leave? I’m not asking if it was a feeling of want or need. It’s the kind of feeling where you just don’t expect to be going anywhere because you feel as though you are one with the surroundings and the furniture, if there is furniture (not in the case of outdoorsers of course). Enjoy my new vocabulary. 

What started the whole chain of events was what I think is a hernia and I hope it’s nothing worse. I don’t think going to a local country hospital is the right thing to do. So the best thing to do is to go to Bangkok and try one of the well-known hospitals up there to get checked out. Because I haven’t been back to Japan to do some bureaucratic stuff my health insurance will expire the end of July. And there’s a good chance I won’t be able to get back before the end of July so it just seems best to get things checked out now.

But I have been stuck in Paradise due to the COVID-19 crisis, never really expecting to be here more than a month but it’s been more than two months now. By saying that I’m not suggesting I feel it’s time to go because I feel like part of the furniture. I feel like part of the beach, part of the ocean and pretty settled.  I don’t feel a real need to leave except I do feel it may be growing on me too much and I do have visa restrictions so it’s about time to skedaddle. 

My old friend whom I started Bubbles with (my scuba diving training business in Phuket Thailand) lives in Bangkok in a large house with a pool. He works for the UN and so has a very stable work and living situation which keeps him there for a long period of time.  So I will go up and stay with him and get a few health things checked out at some good hospitals while doing my best to avoid any viruses.  

So the remoras I explained and the conundrum is solved, I just bought a flight ticket for Friday from Surat Thani to Bangkok. So life goes on, travels continue and new things Lie ahead. 

Last week I thought I had a major accomplishment. On the route to the beach and the route to shopping there were no more dogs chasing the motorcycle. The ones  chasing the motorcycle either became friends when I stopped to talk with them and pet them or they shied away.

Over the many times passing chasing dogs I found the owners either abusing them or teasing them by chasing them on the motorcycle. I’m not a dog psychologist but I suspect this contributed greatly to their motorcycle chasing habit.  Those dogs no longer chase my motorcycle since they know I will stop and try to be friends. They cower and slowly slink away. But today the three dogs at the property next to this resort started chasing the motorcycle again. But they are a very special group. They are in mortal conflict with the dogs at this resort property and that’s another reason to chase me. But I stopped and two of the three came to smell the other dogs’ scents on the motorcycle and my hands and then shy away. The third one is still too uncertain to approach me.  Individually none of them will chase me any more as they used to. It’s only when two or three are together they form a very bold pack.

So today I was going to write of a major accomplishment last week, no more motorcycle chasers. And then today the pack of three decided they would see if they could scare me off.

I’m not a dog psychologist so I don’t know why dogs chase cars and motorcycles but it really is a better idea for owners to teach them not to do that.  After all, if you have kids don’t you teach them not to chase cars and motorcycles?  

This morning the owner of the resort recommended I go to the Sunday morning market to see what they have. So I got on my motorcycle and went to see what was available. When I got there the place was flooded with people. Parking a car would’ve meant walking a little distance to the market since there were so many people there but having a motorcycle makes it much easier to find a tiny place to park.

As you can see in the photo I wound up buying bananas, a couple cucumbers, couple limes, some mustard leaf pickles and one of my favorites, grilled pork on a stick with sticky rice and very spicy sauce. All of this was 100 Baht (32 Baht=US$1). 

Yesterday I posted comments about my finances now in Thailand during the COVID-19 crisis. After I posted I gave it some thought and decided it would be helpful to compare current crisis\low season prices to high season prices. So here they are.

Below is the Calc sheet I did for my current expenses. You can probably tell I did not include Laundry. The owner of this resort is doing laundry for me at no charge and that’s why there is no line item.

Total Monthly	THB 31,440
Transportation	THB 140
Hotel	THB 16,800
Food	THB 7,500
Massage	THB 4,000
Incidentals	THB 3,000
$US MONTHLY	$983

Below you will notice the difference in current prices and high season prices. Laundry and motorcycle chargers are added in.  If you want a general idea what it would cost to have a second large meal during the day probably at a restaurant then a good idea would be to add about 200 baht per day extra.

Total Monthly	THB 49,640
Transportation	THB 6,140
Hotel	THB 27,000
Food	THB 7,500
Massage	THB 4,000
Incidentals	THB 3,000
Laundry	THB 2,000
$US MONTHLY	$1,551

I’ve been procrastinating on this topic mostly since there’s so much potential detail and so little space on the Internet to explain everything. But I’ll do the best I can and getting to the crux of the matter. (As a treat there is a monthly budget at the end.  Gotta learn inserting Numbers data with WordPress.)

In terms of per day expenses The really big ones with traveling tend to be in getting there and back.  Most of us know during the COVID-19 crisis traveling expenses to and from places can be horrendously expensive and I won’t go into those.  But domestic travel is definitely a very important part of getting from one area to another especially if you don’t wanna spend too much time in one place.  In Thailand the domestic flights are not really overpriced and are becoming much more frequent as is less expensive bus travel and other local forms of transportation as the country continues to “open up“.  Air travel is really not too expensive in Thailand, bus travel is extremely reasonable but that depends upon the type of bus you travel in. You can get anything from the luxury bus or what they call the VIP bus for long-distance trips which make stops when necessary for food and rest, to what I call the chicken buses. Those buses are mostly for domestic local travelers who need to put their chicken cages on top of the bus. The cages of course don’t carry their children, they carry chickens.  Maybe the chickens are going to market, maybe they’re going as a gift to someone else but you can be 100% assured chickens carried on buses in Thailand are not comfort pets (those things Americans take on planes with them because they’re afraid of people or some other issue). You can see from my comments I think these emotionally retained pets on planes are really bad idea. 

It used to be possible to get private cars which would load up with as many people as they could accommodate uncomfortably that would take you from city to city in 1 to 3 hour trips. I don’t know if those are still available and after a few experiences I’m not really interested. They tend to put three people in the back of a very small car. And it wasn’t seemingly forbidden for the driver to drink while driving.

Taxis are much more expensive but you can get cheaper prices if you negotiate and can take them on one hour trips if you find it financially the way to go.  I had to do that when escaping from Sratthani when they closed all the hotels. It cost me about 2,000 baht to get where I needed to go in a one and a half hour ride. (32 Baht=US$1). BUS and motorcycles are the best way to get around town if the destinations are too far to walk.  If you’re taking a motorcycle it’s best to see the drivers have a jacket with a number on it indicating they are an approved public transport motorcycle driver.

As for my transportation around Khanom the explanation fits in the general expense discussion. I’m using a small 100 cc motorcycle provided by the hotel owner without charge since I was the only customer.  they wanted to make sure I was happy so I would stay a long time, which i’m doing currently, more than two months now. I think it’s interesting here to note the typical motorcycle in Thailand Has a 100 cc engine which is good enough to go pretty much anywhere you want. It is basically what they sell in the US and Japan as a 50 cc motorcycle. They put a larger engine in those frames in Thailand because they tend to be the family car. Families Put up to 6 members on the small frame depending upon the size of the kids. Very often you see a two-year-old kid in a position that looks like they are the driver.  While the motorcycle is free and normal charge per day for rent would be about 150 to 200 baht.  I pay for gasoline of course which is about 35 baht per week and that will take me about 80 km (multiply by 0.6 to get the equivalence in miles). So I get about 115 miles per gallon.

The hotel room itself is normally about 900 baht per day but since I was the only customer in a smaller room and I needed more space the owner agreed to let me use the large suite room with a private patio for 600 baht per day.  Again, divide by 32 to get the US dollar equivalent. It’s about US$18 per day. 

As for food, I spend an average of about 250 baht per day but that might partly be because I am on a fairly strict diet of one meal per day. That’s just over 8 US dollars per day.  I buy food from the local food carts and sometimes from restaurants. I bring the food back here an hour or two before I eat and then heat up in the microwave just before eating.  My daily consumption is coffee in the morning with some yogurt or fresh fruit and then a fairly significant dinner in the evening with snacks afterwards and maybe an alcoholic drink, one glass a day.  But when I say a significant dinner I really mean something in a medium-size bowl whether it’s mostly liquid or not. So probably a couple scoops of rice (ice cream scoops) and a little bit of meat and vegetables in small quantities. If you go to my Photos page you can see some of the meals I’ve had here. What I eat is more than sufficient for my energy usage and age.  As for going out to eat in a restaurant, which is still a little bit of a problem here due to the COVID-19 crisis, you might expect paying a little bit more. If you want to eat extravagant food, maybe some German or Italian food which is fairly prevalent in many parts of Thailand, expect to pay much more.  As for myself, if I want German food I go to Germany if I want Italian food I go to Italy or to my Sicilian friends’ restaurant in Gila Bend Arizona. You’ll see a link to the restaurant in my “recommended“ page on this website. It’s under the “about“ main menu item.  If you visit, ask for Nino or Antonella and tell them “Bill from Japan“ sent you. But if I said something rude to them the day before they might kick you out.  Joking aside, it is really excellent Italian food. And their fresh bread and gourmet pizza are about the best you could find even in Italy. That speaking from one months traveling experience in Italy.

OK, back to finances. Necessities. You don’t really need that much. Make sure you have some suntan lotion, some after sun skin aloe gel and whatever else you think you need. 

If you want to get a cell phone Sim card or data sim they are very inexpensive, anywhere between 60 and 600 baht per month. That all depends upon the plan you decide to purchase. You can reload them online or download an app to do that. You can also go into one of the very many mobile phone shops and let them manage it for you.  You can set up those domestic phone numbers to call internationally as well but I have never done that. I use the data part to use one of the telecommunication apps on my iPhone or iPad. You can get Internet to landline or mobile phone plans on applications like Skype for about three dollars per month, an unlimited plan.

You don’t need much in the way of clothes in this warm climate so if you don’t bring very much don’t worry, go out and buy what you need, clothes here are not very expensive. 

If you need any medical treatment it’s not expensive here so I wouldn’t worry too much about it. There are pharmacies everywhere with inexpensive medications of all kinds, also not expensive. 

Before I conclude this I want to add …. my website is for retirees and budget travelers. If you want more luxurious accommodations or travel you can spend as much money as you want to spend.  I will say I live in very good comfort, Wi-Fi and everything else I need every day. 

Oh, I forgot one thing. I didn’t mention massage. There’s a blog post on massage so you might want to go look at that if you’re interested. Expect to spend about 150 to 400 baht per hour depending upon the type of massage, relax massage or medical massage.

Massage in Thailand

Most tourists are going to go to tourist sites and some of them will charge something to get in. I don’t go to tourist sites anymore since I’ve seen most of Thailand having spent a month driving around the whole place and visiting what I hadn’t seen before so I’m not really into the traveling tourist things. Also, I lived here for seven years and I find the most interesting part of Thailand is being able to go to the beach every day, good Thai food and relaxation; and of course work on this website.

Oh, I should probably also mention getting money. You can use credit cards here and many larger companies don’t charge the 3% credit card fee anymore but some might. The ATM machines have a 220 baht ATM fee and I think I want to have a separate blog about that issue as well as something about credit cards.  MasterCard and Visa and a few others are accepted pretty much everywhere. You can also take cash advances from your credit card in the ATM machines. ATM machines are literally everywhere. Not in the ocean of course. And they don’t yet put them on the tops of coconut trees. But besides those two places you can find them wherever you need them.

Total Monthly	THB 31,440
Transportation	THB 140
Hotel	THB 16,800
Food	THB 7,500
Massage	THB 4,000
Incidentals	THB 3,000
$US MONTHLY	$983

There are many unfortunate situations and many sad stories now.  By telling my stories I by no means hope it will diminish the pain and suffering other people have been going through for the past six months.

As you know from my other blogs I am staying in a place in Southern Thailand called Khanom in the province of Nakhon Si Thammarat. It’s on the east coast directly opposite Phuket (west coast). Here you can see a map of Thailand with Khanom marked with the Google maps blue (I am here) dot, next to the heart.

I got to this place by accident. I was kicked out of Surathani province when they closed all the hotels. a taxi brought me here to this resort. At that time I was the only customer and through at least half the days of the week I am still the only customer. But since the country is beginning to relax regulations there are more days when there are customers staying here and also when the place is fully booked, almost all Thai tourists here for one night.  

 Recently I’ve been waking up between 5:30 and 6:30 which is a perfect time to get to the beach for a swim before the sun comes up. I’m doing the best I can to keep up 2 swims a day to lose weight. When I got to Thailand in March I weighed 84 kg and now I weigh 77 so the exercise and the diet, mostly not eating very much, is serving me well. (1 kg equals 2.2 pounds)

Since I don’t have a swimsuit I use a very tight bikini underwear which wasn’t really made for swimming but which is perfectly acceptable in Thailand. Many people can’t afford swimsuits so they just swim in their underwear if they go into any water deeper than their hips.  I had three swimsuits but they all have seen better days and had problems that made them unusable.  

After the 15 minutes to half hour swim I come back to the bungalow, wash the sand off my feet and sandals, take a shower and get ready for the events of the day.  

Almost all the morning I spend on my private outside patio drinking coffee, reading email, Facebook and messenger communications and the news from a variety of countries and different new sources.  Once I become thoroughly disgusted with all of the news I go on to manage other things before noon which could be finances, certain issues in the states or Japan or work on various projects such as the family digital museum. Many of the small family heirlooms were passed down to me since I am the oldest (excepting a older brother who pretty much said he divorced the family).  So after giving everything to the next generation I decided to take all of those photos of photos and documents and PDFs of letters and books and share with everyone in the family. 

One or more of those projects is normally finished before three or four so if it’s not raining it’s time to go shopping for dinner. If it is raining I might decide to go in the ocean for my second swim of the day. There is something unusually refreshing about swimming in the ocean with the cool raindrops falling on your head while in the warmer ocean waters feeling almost like a bathtub.

Normally I’ll buy food and then go for my second swim between 5:15 and 6pm when the sun is behind the palm trees and ready to go down. That keeps me from getting sunburned. By the way, a little bit of sun every day is good for the body but over time it’s all so bad for the skin. 

Either way, before 6 I wind up having finished my second dive and having purchased food for dinner. Normally I go to the little food carts in the little city main street and buy things to be slightly heated in the microwave and get ready to eat. An important part of food in Thailand is the sauces. You can buy various kinds of sauces but the food vendors create these really exquisite sauces you can use as dips for what you buy.  very often I buy rice with the meal, either sticky Rice if I’m going to eat little things that I dip in sauce or regular steamed rice if I’m going to put some curry or some soup or something else on top of the rice. Very often I add coconut milk to the rice and the curry to tone down the spices and create a more rounded flavor.  This all melds together in the microwave. Are use the microwave since the food can cool slightly on the way back or from having been purchased earlier in the day.

While having dinner I watch some entertainment I made available to myself through some method or another. I can’t tell you what I watch or my sources. If I did I’d have to silence you.

After a couple hours of some kind of screen entertainment I go to sleep and wake up and start the next day.

The order of doing things during the day depends upon the weather and trying to stay away from the jellyfish, more prevalent after about 6 PM. And I’m not talking about land jellyfish. Those can be exceptionally disturbing, though not as powerful and are inspiring as the flying spaghetti monster.

In another blog I’ll talk about my finances during the day which will be very interesting to those on budget travel requirements.  If you’re interested in this blog you can enter your email address on a blog page so a notification of the new blogs will appear in your email. I won’t use the email addresses for anything; I don’t even see them. And they are conglomerated by a open source program I added to my webpage. I don’t think anyone else would have access to that information.

In closing this writing today I feel lucky to be able to say my situation is a lot more fortunate then many other people.  I wish everyone well and I hope you’re able to travel to interesting places safely as soon as possible.

When many people think of “monsoon” they think of a time of year when constant heavy rains downpour all day. And that may be true in some places in the world but from my experiences in Thailand it’s a little bit of a misnomer. In fact I recommend traveling in Thailand during the monsoon season which can extend anywhere from March until October.  Below is the etymology of the word.

From Arabic موسم (mausim, “season”), from وسم (wásama, “to mark, to brand”), through Portuguese monção and Dutch moesson

I don’t think the word monsoon really fits what happens in Thailand six months out of the year. It is true the origin of the word really refers to a season and not the amount of rain pouring down. The more appropriate term is “rainy season“.

In Japan there are a few months out of the year where they do have extensive rain almost every day. In Japanese is called TSUYU (梅雨) (literally “plum rain“) and it is most often translated into English as “the rainy season”.  But the rainy season in Japan is very different from Thailand. There are a large percentage of days where you get very light misty rain, almost like something you get from misters which, if you’ve ever been to Arizona in the summer, you have experienced.  Even though you can get heavy rains during the rainy season in Japan most of the time it’s just a lot of light rain. But then there is a season for typhoons where Japan does get quite a bit of rain but it comes all at one time so I can do quite a bit of damage As well.

Here in Thailand the rainy season consists of an hour or two of rain almost every day. It’s very hot during the season so the rain Cools everything down and creates a very pleasant time to relax, read a book, get off the motorcycle and just talk to people you’ve never met before. But in some places in Thailand, especially the West Coast where Phuket and many famous tourist beaches are, the wind comes from the west and creates waves that create quite a ride on a boat. About 60% to 70% of scuba diving guests get sea sick in the rainy season and that’s why many boats don’t go out. On top of that it can be somewhat more dangerous to dive since the boat has to drop people off the dive platform and then pick them up. When the boat is he heaving up and down that can cause injuries and extreme stress and discomfort.  That’s why most of the diving off the West Coast of Thailand is done during November to late January  when the wind is from the east.  

So from this description you can surmise the change in winds six months out of the year bring in the rains.  In the northern part of Thailand April and May can be extremely hot and humid. You can be walking around every day as though you’re inside the bathtub with clothes just waiting to be wrung out all during the day.  But in the south it’s actually very comfortable with an hour or two of rain every day and then maybe some nice cloud cover so you can go to the beach without worry of extreme sunburn. But watch out for that very light cloud cover since the sun rays magnify through light fog and light clouds and can cause a worse sunburn than a sunny time.