Wednesday, April 8, 2020
Here’s the update from Thailand…
The city of Ao Nang is now completely closed, luckily, we’re approx. 300 m outside the city boarders,
so we’re still able to drive to supermarkets, take-away restaurants, banks, beach etc.
The only downside: we can’t visit ‘Hotdog&Coolcat’ anymore, but fortunately they now offer home-delivery.
Yes, we could drive around for sightseeing, go to the sea – but somehow we don’t want to be ‘the stupid foreigners’ who don’t accept the actual situation. So we drive just for shopping and take-away dinner, the remaining time we better stay within the walls of our Villa.
Monday:
The Villa showed its downsides, for example the curtains are white and thin – so from 7 am there’s no chance for me for sleeping (while it’s no problem for the others). So I established my own routine, getting up, cleaning the pool, the terrace, the inside of the house – and afterwards enjoying a cup of strong milk-coffee. When I’m done with my routine the house is getting awake, slowly. Surprisingly they’re all so happy I can’t sleep too long and the pool & house are spotless clean when they awake.
Breakfast for Valentyna and me was my signature fruit salad: papaya, oranges, grapefruit, pineapple, banana, pomelo and Asian peach, sweetened with Equal, rounded up with some big spoons Greece Yoghurt,
topped by Swiss crunchy Müesli.
Later I took Valentyna to ‘Tesco Lotus’ supermarket near Krabi airport,
which has a much better selection than BigC or most European supermarkets.
We even got Sour Crème from New Zealand, salted Butter from France, Salami from Italy, wine from South Africa and Chile, Müesli from Switzerland, Maple Syrup from Canada, Honey from the Black Forest in Germany. For some other goods we afterwards passed MACRO, then drove back home again.
Also I was finally able to order adjustable dumbbells with 30 kg weights, which should be delivered Friday.
The evening brought a highlight: I’m not a potato-lover, but I like ‘draniki’ or ‘Kartoffelpuffer’.
While the girls ate them Ukrainian-style, with Sour Crème, we ate them German-style, with the apple-compote we bought at ‘Hotdog&Coolcat’.
Tuesday:
was totally relaxed, the girls watching some TV,
swimming in our pool. In the evening we drove towards the beach to enjoy the sunset,
ordered the most disgusting Thai food (The Beach House Restaurant & Bar) I had in quite a while. It was honestly so bad, that we decided to ‘recycle’ it.
Wednesday:
In the morning we got the news, that the automatic Visa prolongation was finally signed by the Thai government – but it would only become active after the PM signed it.
Bad news are how some tourists behave in Thailand, not accepting the curfew but instead doing drug parties. These people are shown on Thai news, with nationality and names – which is very bad for all foreigners still in Thailand. We just saw today a foreigner on a bicycle approaching a checkpoint, not wearing a mask (US$ 650 fine). We saw the police taking him to their table, doing paperwork. Yes, we do have checkpoints on our way to the supermarkets, going around the closed city of Ao Nang – but the police is still very friendly, temperature is measured, that’s all.
Also we got the news that some Thai districts are issuing an alcohol-sell-ban from April 10th. So we straight drove to Tesco Lotus to stock up wine, so our girls do have something to drink.
Near the copy-shop where we made photocopies for the immigration office, there was a vendor for take-away Thai food.
I got a portion of Pad See Ew Gai, a omelette with minced shrimps over rice, which I then ate at home. Quite good for a US$ 3.30 meal, much better than the Thai food the night before.
In the evening the news were spread, that the PM had signed the Visa exemption – but still nobody knew when it would be implemented and what it’ll say. So we again had to wait for the official announcement.
Dinner was simple but tasty: spaghetti, perfectly al dente with a spicy, freshly prepared tomato-sauce and some grated imported Parmesan cheese.