Sonoma in Thailand

We have learned SO much about this whole Chiang Rai area over our first week: where to eat great Thai food, where to buy things for our little house, how to drive around on the left side of the road, which local guesthouses and hotels are the best for our own visitors to stay, how to say “hello” to our resident house lizard Mr. Too-Kay, where to see local temples and waterfalls and wood carvers….and how to get David his required work permit and his tax ID number. Our friends Richard and Nasura Frankel, who are building a second home near here in addition to their home in Bangkok, spent most of our first weekend showing us around and teaching us “the local ropes.”
Eating out is so delicious and so cheap that we now understand why almost no one cooks at home. We ate out one night as guests of Keith Syers, the Dean of Science here. Dinner for three with many delicious items (including Lao “lab” – minced spicy chicken” -- costs about $13. We ate another night at a restaurant near campus to which we were introduced by Richard and Nasura (it’s named “The Grilled Chicken”). Our Thai “tom yum gung” (spicy prawns) soup and other dishes with a large beer cost $7 for two. And on it goes. How on earth will we lose any weight in this diner’s paradise?
Shopping for items for the house is a veritable challenge, at stores that parody a poor man’s Costco (“Makro” and “Tesco Lotus”) or WalMart (“Big C”). We can’t seem to buy any sheets that will fit our bed, unless they come in a set with ruffled pillow cases or are made of 100 percent awful polyester. Our house had just a microwave, but no Microwave-safe dishes. So we have purchased an electric hotplate as well as a couple of sauce pans made in China. And speaking of the bed, we are both trying desperately to adjust to the hardest mattress either of us has ever encountered in all our travels. Literally, a Japanese tatami mat would be softer. Keith said he thinks these university mattresses are “made of coconut husks.” He ended up buying an expensive mattress; so far we have resisted doing that, but our resistance is dwindling. We will keep you readers posted on this situation