- The Pier.
Showing posts with label groceries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label groceries. Show all posts
Friday, February 15, 2013
February 15th, 2013 - Panwa Bay, Live India, and Walks Along the Beach
We took a long walk up to Panwa Bay Village and along the pier today.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
February 3rd, 2013 - Grocery Missions and Taxi Misadventures
- Today's Random Photo: Sunrise in Panwa
Objective: Groceries
Groceries, as I’ve mentioned before, are weirdly difficult for us. I’m certain we are doing the grocery-thing wrong. I mean, they’re groceries, this isn’t neurobiology or anything. And I did take a neurobiology class (God help me), so I should be capable of this, right?
And yet.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
January 31st, 2013 - Central Festival, Phuket Aquarium, and the Not-Actually-A-Supermarket Supermarket
Internet, as it turns out, is a lot harder to figure out how to set up when all the instructions are in a foreign language.
I know, I know; you’re asking yourself, “But Lucky, why didn’t you just use Google translate like a normal person? Wouldn’t that have been a better use of the one day’s worth of internet from the front desk that you paid a ridiculous amount for?”
Well, that’s an excellent point you have there. But you see, that would have been too easy. I’m not the type to take shortcuts; if there’s a hard way of doing something, I will find it.
In my defense, though, most of the words I needed translated were actually in pictures and thus couldn’t have been translated by Google anyway.
After a few days of trying to get it figured out on our own, we reached a state of internet-deprivation that we could no longer endure, so we went to the Central Festival mall in Phuket Town to consult the professionals. The professionals being the very nice and very patient ladies at the AIS shop in the mall.
I know, I know; you’re asking yourself, “But Lucky, why didn’t you just use Google translate like a normal person? Wouldn’t that have been a better use of the one day’s worth of internet from the front desk that you paid a ridiculous amount for?”
Well, that’s an excellent point you have there. But you see, that would have been too easy. I’m not the type to take shortcuts; if there’s a hard way of doing something, I will find it.
In my defense, though, most of the words I needed translated were actually in pictures and thus couldn’t have been translated by Google anyway.
After a few days of trying to get it figured out on our own, we reached a state of internet-deprivation that we could no longer endure, so we went to the Central Festival mall in Phuket Town to consult the professionals. The professionals being the very nice and very patient ladies at the AIS shop in the mall.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
January 26th, 2013 - Visiting Phuket Town
After The Bug Incident, we emailed Mike to let him know what happened. Phuket Rental Properties
(now SuperHolidayVillas) are just the agents that help people find places to stay, so they
aren’t actually responsible for the places themselves. They do things
like manage negotiations between potential tenants and landlords, and
set people up with the perfect rental property for their stay.
But Mike, being Mike, insisted on helping us out and redeeming the whole moving experience for us!He called a cleaner to come in to go over the place again, and he treated us to breakfast this morning in Phuket Town (a fairly short drive away). We got a personalized tour of the area and visited the Gallery Café by Pinky.
He’s friends with the owner (actually, he seems to be friends with
pretty much everybody), so we got to learn a lot about the local scene.
Plus, the food was fantastic--I had pancakes that were so good, I might
have teared up a bit. They weren’t as good as my grandma’s pancakes, of
course, but they were very good.
This may not sound like such a big deal, but grocery shopping here is quite different from Canada. It’s not as impersonal; you don’t just pick up your goods, pay, and leave—for the most part. It’s harder to find grocery stores as we know them. Sometimes you actually have to interact with other human beings in order to find what you’re looking for. Especially since it’s all in Thai. (Now that I think about it, I’m really hoping that the opaque bottle with the cow on it that we bought is really milk and not, well, cow).
So, as you can see, we may well have starved without Mike’s help. And our moving experience has, indeed, been redeemed.
Thanks for everything, Mike!
-LuckyStar
But Mike, being Mike, insisted on helping us out and redeeming the whole moving experience for us!
He called a cleaner to come in to go over the place again, and he treated us to breakfast this morning in Phuket Town (a fairly short drive away). We got a personalized tour of the area and visited the Gallery Café by Pinky.
He’s friends with the owner (actually, he seems to be friends with
pretty much everybody), so we got to learn a lot about the local scene.
Plus, the food was fantastic--I had pancakes that were so good, I might
have teared up a bit. They weren’t as good as my grandma’s pancakes, of
course, but they were very good.
- The Gallery Café by Pinky
- This is Mike! Mike is nice!
He
also took us to the local Tesco Lotus for groceries (Wal-Mart would be
its North American equivalent) so we could pick up things like food and
drinkable water.
This may not sound like such a big deal, but grocery shopping here is quite different from Canada. It’s not as impersonal; you don’t just pick up your goods, pay, and leave—for the most part. It’s harder to find grocery stores as we know them. Sometimes you actually have to interact with other human beings in order to find what you’re looking for. Especially since it’s all in Thai. (Now that I think about it, I’m really hoping that the opaque bottle with the cow on it that we bought is really milk and not, well, cow).
So, as you can see, we may well have starved without Mike’s help. And our moving experience has, indeed, been redeemed.
Thanks for everything, Mike!
-LuckyStar
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