The new place
Today is the big day. Moving into the new place. We gathered all our worldly belongings and flagged down a songthaew to go 4 minutes down the road. Once we arrived, we met our roommate Marta. She is a lovely Spanish girl who is going to be managing the house. We were also joined by a Transylvanian fellow named "Tod" due to the fact that his actual name is impossible for regular humans to pronounce. Really nice people and we felt comfortable right away. That said, the rooms needed a little help. Since we were first in we chose our room at the front of the house. Easy choice with the least rock hard mattress (still made of springs and sheet rock) and the most windows. We also took this opportunity to trade things we liked from other rooms out for things we didn't from ours. Stole the nicest table, a fan, and a rack for our clothes. Some basics from the house were missing like towels, a toaster, more plates and things like that. Thankfully Marta will be wrangling those in the next few days. We joined forces with "Tod" and headed for Tops (White man's reverse T&T) to get some groceries. On the way, we learned about the year this poor guy has had. "Tod" moved to Thailand a few months ago with his girlfriend. He worked with her managing her internet business for publishing and marketing books. While they were in Phuket, he got into a scooter accident and was hospitalized. Due to the unwritten rule of "the foreign guy is always at fault", he had to pay for both his and the other guys scooters and hospital bills. That basically ate up all of their savings and he was bed ridden for a few weeks. During that time, he and his girlfriend began fighting. She abandoned him in Phuket shortly after with him basically broke and living off of the 200-300€ that he had coming in from his existing clients. He had a ticket to Kuala Lumpur already and needed to take it to renew his visa. Unable to afford much there he ended up in a greasy hostel and took up the local hobby of smoking. After a month, he decided to come back to Thailand and put himself back together. Thankfully, he is in a much better headspace now and putting his life back together. He's a really nice guy and I've got nothing but hope for him. Also, what kind of person abandons somebody broke and injured in a foreign country? Real prize there. We went around and bought some groceries as well as bug killing implements and came back to set up. We hung a mosquito net in case shit really went sideways and set up our bug killing fan and bug repellent incense. It actually worked shockingly well. Slept without being harassed by bugs and that's a welcome surprise. For dinner, we grabbed some Japanese at Matsu. Easily the best Japanese we've had here and by far the most reasonably priced. Highly recommended. It's nice to find new places we love so early on as we explore the area around our new home. Before bed, we did a little more bug killing and settled down on our rock hard mattress for sleep. Tomorrow, we settle in properly and see what a night here does to us. Wish us luck
