Doug

Update on Living In Oaxaca

Posted on by Laughingnomad

I have almost finished my application for a Mexican FM3 year-long visa. Forms have to be filled out exactly right…with copies…and money paid to a bank. About $200 for the visa and another $40 for them to examine the forms. I have to show an income of $1000 a month. Four pictures, side and front. Two Mexican references, a letter of invitation (I’ll use my landlord) and a copy of his “credential” which is usually the voting card. And a copy of my rental contract. All this monkey business has taken a lot of time but my initial 90 day tourist visa I got at the airport upon arrival expires the end of August so I have some time.

At the CREATE alternative education program in Hillsboro/Forest Grove, I worked with two Mixtec indigenous cousins (see “One Oaxacan Family” entry). The parents are back in their village here.

Catalina says in yesterday’s email: “I wanted to talk to you on exactly where you are located. The reason why is because maybe you can visit my parents in Juxlataxca, Oaxaca. My mom and my dad are there now as we speak and I am not sure how far away you are from them. I know they would love to have you visit them. I know that there is hardly any tourist where they are at and my mom was saying that a few years ago they had a lot of asian tourist which was suprising.”

I am excited about the prospect of visiting the parents in their village, but can’t find it on my Oaxacan map. I will call Catalina, who is like the daughter I never had, on Saturday. She is working, going to school at Portland Community College, living with her significant other and has a little 2 year old that I haven’t seen yet. If I go back to Oregon to pick up my car as I am hoping to do I will definitely see her and her family.

Then I will be returning again to Oregon in January or February to attend to the sale of the farm in Salem.

Last night I talked to my son Doug and his wife Luk who are living in an isolated beach area of Koh Samui Thailand. They are planning on moving to the small town of Lamai. It will be better for them there…closer to things to do and they won’t have to ride his motorcycle so far in the wind and rain during the monsoon season to get to the market. A week ago, a palm tree fell on some electrical lines and shorted out their electronics and fans so hopefully they can get it all repaired.

Josh has been busy opening the “One East On Third” restaurant in the Hilton Hotel in Beijing China so don’t expect to hear much from him for awhile. Josh and Amy will be in China for at least three years so when my year is up here in Mexico I will return to Asia for a year…traveling back and forth between Thailand and China…taking an apartment somewhere as a base.

I found a great mail service in Oaxaca. Mailboxes Etc. has arranged to have U.S. postal mail go to an address in Miami and then to Oaxaca…bypassing the lousy Mexican postal service.

Update 12/2016: Mailboxes is no longer in Oaxaca

Visa Run Misery

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Every month my son Doug has to cross into Burma and come back into Thailand to get another 30 day stay in the country. If you are late it’s a $12 fine per day. It’s a racket. So this month he and Luk, his wife, took a bus south to Krabi town to get a crown placed on his tooth. Then he had a hell of a time on the bus getting north to Ranong where he crosses to Burma on a boat and back through Thai immigration to get his passport stamped. The bus stopped every few km and he got there too late to get across the border yesterday….so he had to wait til this morning and get a fine, which is a lot when you are living on the local economy.

I think he depends on Luk to get reservations etc. but she didn’t check if it was an express bus. When I have watched her ask for information I need, I notice, when I question her, that she hasn’t asked any detailed questions…just too polite to press for information. She appears very uncomfortable to ask again…too hesitant to “confront” even though she will use a very nice voice.

Late this morning I get another call from Luk complaining that Doug is angry with her. He left her in the hotel to do his three hour crossing with a request that she arrange for the bus to Surat Thani where they catch the ferry to Samui. Instead of going to the bus station for the ticket, she called and found out that there is a bus leaving every hour. But she didn’t ask if there was room or make a reservation for the next available bus. So when they got to the station at 11am they were told the buses were full until 2pm. Of course they didn’t bother to tell her that when she called. This would put them into Surat Thani too late for the ferry to Samui and meant that they would have to pay for a night in Surat.

Good-bye To Samui

Posted on by Laughingnomad

On 1 March I said good-bye to my son Doug and his wife Luk and Ting Tong…their little Shimizu…and caught a Bangkok Air flight back to Bangkok (Bangkok Air built the airport on Samui so they won’t let any other company fly in there) where I then transferred to budget Air Asia to fly to Chiang Mai in the north.

They had wanted Ting Tong to sire some puppies with Mark’s female (Mark was the guy who owned the last house I stayed in) but whenever we tried to get them together Ting Tong would run and hide. “Ting Tong’s a katoey!” He’s a katoey!” Luk squealed. For those of you who don’t know, katoeys are “lady boys” or transexual Thai men who are usually more beautiful than the women themselves…tall, slender, elegant…and they are wonderful entertainers. As a point of fact one of the local hospitals has a famous surgical sex change unit occupying an entire floor. The doctor there will even do vaginal rejuvenations. Look that one up on the web! 🙂

I will miss them all. Doug and Luk would often spat and then minutes later it would all be over and I would hear giggles and “Sexy man number one Hollywood!” Then “Sexy lady number one Thailand.” David, an American builder from Michigan who owns a cafe up the street and is married to a Thai said “Oh, yes, they will spat but in a couple years it will die down…it’s usually due to language or cultural misunderstandings.”

David’s wife is an excellent cook in his open air beach-front cafe across the road from four houses he built to sell and had installed WiFi in them all…so all I had to do was drive about 600 yards up the road and sit in the cafe with my iBook laptop to check my email while drinking coffee yen (iced coffee). Or use my headphones to call my other sons, Greg and Josh, in the U.S. using Skype, free peer-to-peer telephony software developed by a Swede and an Estonian a couple years ago. (Check out “skype” on the web.) If both parties have Skype installed the calls are free. Otherwise the calls cost practically nothing. I have about $10 credit, have made more than half dozen calls for several minutes each and I still have about $8 credit remaining.

The last night on Samui we went to John’s Seafood for dinner for Luk’s 27th birthday. The upscale restaurant has about 50 tables right on the sandy beach and features a traditional Thai dancing show. During our meal, a large wedding party from Australia all took turns lighting fires under huge white cloth lanterns down by the water while making a wish. DSC00438.JPGDSC00440.JPG
The lit lanterns floated up into the night sky among the stars over the Gulf Of Siam while a singer sang “I Will Always Love You.” Enough to bring tears to the most hardened cynic. We took home the birthday cake we had brought for Luk’s birthday. Who would have had the heart to upstage a party like that? Luk called her mom on the phone and we all sang happy birthday together.
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Visiting Doug & Luk

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Arrived on Koh Samui a couple days ago on Bangkok Air to the smiling faces of Doug and Luk at the small open-air airport on Koh Samui. (Koh means island.) While waiting for the luggage Luk, looking cute in her pigtails, was approached by four young good-looking guys just off the plane who I think maybe were from northern Africa. Not wasting any time “I love you,” one said to Luk. She just laughed and said she was “already marry!”

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Doug and Luk live on the non-touristed side of the island…north of Chaweng, in an area called Thong Krut. Their lovely house is one back from the beach…their nearest neighbor a Belgian guy who has lived here 10 years. Another neighbor across the way is a retired engineer from England who is building his own hover craft…only 11 in the world with wings he says.

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Doug has been cooking Thai…going to the local market each morning for fresh puk (vegetables) and seafood. In the evenings, looking out at the blood-red sun setting behind the ocean, Doug sighs…grateful for his life here in “paradise” with Luk.

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Shower Lay Down

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Doug and Luk call me every morning. Sometimes I am awake and sometimes not. This morning Luk says “Good morning mom!” “I love mom!” “I miss mom!” “One more day!” Doug gets on the phone and tells me that Luk says I’d better take a “shower lay down” before I leave Bangkok for Koh Samui while I still have a bathtub!

Lucky Luk!

Posted on by Laughingnomad

I called my son Doug yesterday morning. He had just returned from the fish market on Koh Samui with a salad bowl of large fresh gung (shrimp) with heads still on for $1.60 and had cooked up a traditional Thai omelet with puk (vegetables) and prik (chilis) and steamed rice. Doug does all the cooking. Lucky Luk!

Familiar Bangkok

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Arrived in Bangkok on Jan 3rd on China Air after 17 hours and stops in Anchorage and Taiwan. There has been a cooling in Asia (northern India actually falling below freezing) and it has been mild with a nice breeze here.

Bob is somewhere else in Thailand I guess…he left a New York a few days before I did.

But it has been fun to have Doug and Luk stay with me in Bangkok this last week. We have been running errands…went to American Consolate to get more pages added to my passport and Doug ordered a new passport as his got wrecked when he was drenched in the water festival last spring. Then to Thai Consolate. Luk is delighted to have a new Thai passport with her married name on it! Now there are two Mrs. Goetz’s in Bangkok!

They will return to their home on Koh Samui Friday on the train. I will meet them on the island at the end of the month when my remaining dental work will be completed.

Keeping Body and Soul Together

Posted on by Laughingnomad

In Bangkok we got a good deal for a month in a beautiful completely furnished apartment on a dead-end street in the upscale Saladaeng area…close to the Skytrain and the new subway that is running again after a recent accident.

Many delicious food vendors just outside the front door were well-placed for the two towers of business offices at the end of the street. After a week Bob took off for northern Thailand and I stayed in Bangkok…taxiing back and forth to my Tufts university-trained dentist who employs a group of specialists…all women…on Sukhumvit 24. With two new porcelain caps and a root planing, I will return in a month for prep work on two implants that will be completed in another 4 months…all for about a 7th of what it would cost with no dental insurance at home.

Doug and Luk took an overnight train from Krabi and stayed with me for a few days while a friend babysat their dog Ting-Tong at their house. They eat very small meals many times during the day…Thai food being what it is…so it seemed like we were eating constantly. One evening Doug took us up to the top of one of the tallest towers in Bangkok where we looked down from an outdoor bar/restaurant sitting on the very edge of the building…refreshing cool breezes blowing our hair…jaw-dropping night lights of the city down below. But mostly Doug and Luk just hung out in the air-con apartment with me…dreading the return to their “fan-cooled” (a uphemism if ever there was one) house in Krabi.

Bought a 20 hour wireless card I use with my Mac computer in any of the many Starbucks around town…handy for uploading blog notes and updating software…visiting with other computer users like the young guy from London who just moved here for a two-year tour with his company…paying as much for the freight on his furniture as it all cost in the first place. Our visit ended when a Thai-boy sat down at the Brit’s table…shooting me a look that could kill. Apparently I was interfering with their date.

Visited the six floors of Panthip Computer Shopping Mall several times where you can buy any high-tech item you could ever want. There are hundreds of stalls selling CD’s and DVD’s and at one I spoke to a rough-looking character standing next to me. “I come here often for R&R,” he says looking at the Thai girl standing next to him. (One in 30 Thai women have said to be working as prostitutes although they don’t call themselves that…they just want an ATM guy to exchange sex with.) “Most things are cheaper if you order over the net,” he says, apparently except for the handfulls of games and software he is buying for his employees in his computer center in Iraq.

Checked out the Foreign Correspondents Club, one of many around the world (I used the one in Phnom Penh Cambodia) that honor each other’s members. In the penthouse of a Bangkok tower you will find the club with a bar/restaurant that hosts speakers from around the world…recently the Dalai Lama spoke there…has a state of the art media center for journalists, jazz on Friday nights…and expats to speak English to! The night we were there ASEAN was hosting an open conference regarding Burma.

Stamp-Out to Burma

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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“Stamping out” consists of leaving Krabi Thailand at a border crossing…in the case of Ranong the border is with Burma…and then “stamping” back into Thailand. To do this they went to the Thai immigration office at the port in Ranong to officially exit the country called “stamping out.” Then they hired a boat ($12) for a 40 minutes ride across the estuary to Burma. They paid $5 US (had to be a US bill) at the Burmese immigration office for a stamp in their passports to enter Burma. They walked around the little dumpy Burmese border town trying to avoid the sellers (the big sales item was Viagra…probably from India) for 30 minutes and then took the boat back across to Thailand where they returned to the Thai immigration office to get stamped back into the country for another 30 days.

In my case I had purchased a 60 day Thai tourist visa in Kunming China so I had another couple weeks in my passport. While Bob and Doug were monkeying around with this, Luk and I found a nice air-con hotel that would accept their little Shimizu “Ting Tong” (the name means “crazy”) for the night…having take-out dinner purchased from the local night market and eating it in our room … one of the best meals we had in Thailand…all of us feasting for about $3.

The next day we drove east to Surat Thani on the east coast of the Thai peninsula …visiting a famous Buddhist meditation teaching center (in English) on the way. Had strong thoughts of being dropped off here for a month but there was no air-con or even fans in the rooms and that even I was not ready for. I just settled for my good old TM mantra in my comfortable air-con room in Krabi.

Ao Nang Beach Krabi Thailand

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Bob and I have been here in Krabi Province of Thailand with Doug and Luk for three weeks now…a welcome respite after a month in smoggy noisy Bangkok where I had some dental work done and a 6 month routine check-up at Bumrungrad Hospital.

Bob left a couple days ago to do some hiking in Khao Sok National Park up north. I stayed here in my little 2nd story bungalow on lazy Ao Nang Beach watching the dark wiry young boat guys guide their long tailed boats to various karst islands and isolated beaches out in the deceivingly placid blue and green ocean and return again. Bob and I will either meet up in Bangkok or he will return here first…who knows what he will do. The breeze cools down at night until about noon…then air conditioning goes back on again.

Doug and Luk come over every morning (my place is 10 minutes up the road from their house) and we breakfast together. Then we all pile on the motorbike for a ride through the karsts and banana tree forests looking for a little fantasy house for me to rent…can get a house with tile floors, bathroom, hot water, kitchen facilities and bedroom and main room for about $200 a month if you are not on the water. A bottom floor bungalow on the water like Doug had before the tsunami is about $450 a month.

Weird to see inaugural celebrations on Fox News and then to drive by the Krabi Wat with hundreds of pictures of victims and piles of burial boxes.

An internet friend of mine who just married a Thai girl is staying on Patang Beach on Phuket Island where most of the damage was done. He said the beaches have been cleaned up…chairs and umbrellas are back up and the local businesses are begging for tourists. Reconstruction has already begun on some of the lost and damaged hotels. The second worst place in Thailand to get hit was Khoa Lak…just up north from here. They are still finding bodies in the Mangrove Forests and the village water well ended up with a car and 92 bodies in it. Several thousand bodies have not been found yet, many of them illegal immigrants from Burma. We hear they will not even try to rebuild at Khao Lak.