Life's Little Pleasures

A Thai Christmas
posted on Sunday, December 25, 2011 at 9:55 PM | 0 cmnt/s

Ahhh back in Bangkok, and just in time for Christmas!

Today began in the usual family fashion with present exchanges. I was a lucky duck and got a couple of cooking books, DVDs, 2010: Odyssey Two, a book of lists, plenty of chocolate, and some more watches to add to my growing collection. So I am feeling like quite a lucky duck at the moment.

Following that, we got ourselves moving and went down to Central World shopping center to get our (Mum, Carol, and I) hair done for Christmas lunch. It is so odd to have EVERYTHING open on Christmas day. But that's Thailand for you! Open every day of the year! Not to mention that Christmas is not celebrated by the majority of its population, which is non-Christian. So I got my hair cut and blow dried to perfection (my hair has never looked so good!!! :D), and also a pedicure for good measure!

We then headed to my aunt's work mate's place for a massive and absolutely amazing Christmas lunch with a full house of other Australian embassy staff members. The food was absolutely fantastic and our hosts put on a great afternoon.

After all bellies were thoroughly filled, we sauntered home. Upon arriving back at the apartment and realising that my back was really sore from the previous night's sleep, I walked literally across the road for an hour massage, costing me AU$12.61 (including 100 baht tip for my masseuse).

It's amazing how cheap things are here. It's so different to back home in Australia. I mean to get my hair cut back home, I'd be looking at no less that AU$50 considering the long length of my hair, but here I got a cut, the best blow dry in the world, AND a pedicure for 500 baht (AU$15.76). Hour back massages back home would cost me around AU$40-70, but I only pay a fraction of that here. Even at the supermarket, things are so different. There is so much more variety (excluding various supply shortages due to the recent floods, such as, to my mother's horror, Diet Coke and Coke Zero!!!). However, some things are much more expensive. Cheese costs a lot more here though. Fun fact: cheese costs more here because the local milk is no suited to making Western style cheese because it has less fat content. Furthermore, there is less market for it here. Mostly only the Westerners will have it, thus driving prices up.

But all in all, it's pretty cheap to live up here. Can't wait to continue to see how cheap it is over the next few weeks when I go shopping!!!

Merry Christmas all xxx
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