Sickening Home Sickness
I MISS VIETNAM!!! I’ve been in Bangkok for 2 weeks now and I deeply yearn to be home in Hanoi. Bangkok’s a nice place but I seem to have fewer hours in my day compared to Hanoi, and of course I miss all of you dearly!!!

I also miss the traffic, I miss the sweet smelling exhaust, the way the ladies would ask if im married, I miss the plain bland food, I miss the flowers and greenery, I miss the familiar pot-holed roads, I miss being able to understand (some) Vietnamese. I MISS MY COFFEE!!! It was tragic that I had no space to pack any coffee into my bags as I had already been carrying 30kgs worth of luggage. Oh my coffee! How thou hast forsaken me!

It’s interesting that I’ve never felt homesick before…till now that is… I guess Vietnam’s my home... I didn’t feel that way about Singapore… so I guess I ll have to redefine what home means

Kumustaka (im sorry if ive spelt it wrongly)
I have 5 Filipino colleagues and they’re a pretty cool bunch, Lois is a Christian and I joined her at her bible study last Friday night and guess what…BS ended at 12 midnight. So what would one do at a Filipino bible study?

1. Bible Study
2. Sharing
3. EAT
4. PLAY GAMES

Oh my goodness! GAMES!!! I was totally stunned but I got out of it pretty quickly (hey, I lived in Vietnam for a year…one learns to give up sanity easily) So I joined in, I would usually find it hard to laugh at the things the Filipinos laugh at but I found it easier to laugh at them then with them…(sorry kuyas and ates) They were similar to our BS in Hanoi except that they were louder…much, much louder…

And we had TONS of food, we ate before the bible study, during the bible study and after the bible study. One Ate made this unbelievable upside-down pineapple cake…it was the yummiest piece of cake that Ive had. The only problem was it oozed sugar and butter when I bit it…But its soooo good (I ll find out how to bake it ok)

As for church, Im attending the Evangelical Church of Bangkok and strangely enough I have been there before…perhaps 3 years ago and it was Kien Ann who brought me there. The service and worship was wonderful, I can see myself growing further with this church. As for further preparation… I will follow as He deems fit…so for now I have no plans…only a heart ready to obey…

Studio Apartment Siah!
Ive moved in 3 nights ago into my ‘studio apartment’ (quite a nice name for a one room flat hor…) Well it’s actually bigger then my room back in Singapore and I like it very much…very basic but I’ll do it up as the months progress… I’ve housed myself on the 5th floor so that I get to see out and that’s a really nice thing to have…
Oh and my priority is to setup the kitchen…and there’s not much space to do so….Thai food is nice but I would just die from the liberal amount of sugar they put into their food. Oh and I need a fridge too…one of those tiny fridges that would fit under the desk…

My building manager is a tigeress! She’s ultra fierce but she get’s things done, and compared to all the other apartments I’ve looked at, her’s was the cleanest and was maintained well. I guess its also a plus point that she likes me too :)

Go Web!
David, Steph and I watched Spiderman 3 and here’s something interesting. In one scene, peter parker was talking to his landlord and we noticed that the landlord lived in room 502. David then said ‘hey Toby, wouldn’t that make spiderman’s landlord you neighbour?” I then replied “who knows spiderman and I may even have the same apartment number.” As the movie progressed David and I looked for every opportunity to discover peter parker’s apartment number…and I am proud to say, spiderman and I do share the same apartment number…room number 501….muahahahaha

Speaking of which, here’s my address (but its not completely accurate let me check again)

Sukhumvit 71, Phra Kanong Soi 37, Unitec Apartments, Room 501,
Klong Toey, Watana,
Bangkok, Thailand

And my handphone number is +66846643348


Ko Samed
David and Steph are here in Thailand now on a week’s long holiday. We are now on our last day in Ko Samed. It’s a really good trip, Ko Samed isn’t as touristy as most other islands in Thailand however it’s developed enough for you to be comfortable. Food and drinks are everywhere and you could come here with nothing and will still be able to buy all the things you would need for a holiday here…and the prices are high but not extremely high. It’s more like a beach resort for Thais.

There is however an entrance fee of 400bht/$16sgd/$11usd for foreigners, whilst the thais only pay 40bht/$1.6sgd/$1.1usd, so when the ticket guy approached us and asked me how many tickets I needed. I replied ‘3 please’ in Thai and we only paid 120bht muahahahahahah!, a thai friend whom we met on the ferry was utterly surprised at how clear my diction was and I replied to him in thai ‘I speak thai well don’t I?

And on another note, I yelled ‘Em Oi’ at a waitress once, people turned and looked in my direction…realizing that I had forgotten that I was no longer in Vietnam and to salvage the embarrassing moment…I turned and looked in the direction which everyone was looking at…hoping to find another scapegoat for this embarrassing scene. So much for quick thinking…