What a Week!!

Well as you can see I have lost a week somewhere, to be honest I have had a week of disasters. First there was the great flood, Noah where’s your boat. I live in what is described in Thailand as a two bedroom shop house. On the first floor or ground floor we have a large shop unit, a small living area, kitchen and bathroom, on the second floor we two bedrooms and a bathroom, each bedroom has a balcony. The back bedroom where we sleep because it’s cooler has a large balcony that is used as a laundry area (weird eh), it’s kind of square shaped and walled in, with two small drainage holes out onto the kitchen roof. As with just about every house I have seen here there is no provision for drainage, no guttering nothing and believe me when it rains here it bloody rains.

So last week sometime, Tuesday I think there I was happily tapping away on my keyboard when, as is my want, I decided to go to the kitchen I get a cup of coffee, at this point it had just started to rain. While I was in the kitchen it really started to rain, and it hammering down on the thin kitchen roof. The next thing I hear is running water, not just a little but a lot, in fact a waterfall coming down the stairs. This was followed by a terrible screaming sound which I quickly realised was me, so I shut my mouth. I grabbed the wife and we both waded upstairs to find that the rear balcony was totally flooded and water was gushing inside.

We quickly fixed the problem; both the drains had become blocked and then started the long and difficult task of clearing up the mess.  Fortunately the house has tiled floors throughout (cosy) so it wasn’t too bad, for me the biggest problem was five computer books I had left on the floor, but they are drying out. Books here are very valuable to me because you cannot buy them, not English books anyway.

So that was problem number one, the second disaster started that night when the wife’s cousin decided to pay us a visit and this time he had some money. He’s been round a few times with no money and sat and drank my beer so I told not to come again until he had some money. I was only joking but you can’t joke with Thai’s about such things they always take it seriously. On a normal night I will only drink two large bottle of Chang Beer, anymore I end up the hangover the next day. That night I drank seven and also managed to break two (I know I’m still in therapy trying to get over it), so a part from throwing up during the night, the next day I felt like I was going to die and to crown it all I’d eaten just about anything put in front of me and so also had the runs.

I actually felt really bad for the next 4 days, also the children had the same problem especially Harry who was also running a very high fever. Anyway, after a visit to Khun Armor, the doctor the kids are on the mend. One nice little point is that the father-in-law heard I was sick and turned up at my bedside and gave me 500 baht to go buy some medicine, now I bet that’s a rarity.  I used it to buy some more beer, not really only joking.

Now after all that it looks like the wife is now sick with the same thing, oh what a week.