I have just one photo for you today. Yep, just one!
We are currently traveling around southern Thailand and enjoying our time as a family.
My regular posts resume on Wednesday, where I am participating in a Blog Hop! Make sure to follow/subscribe to And Three To Go so you won’t miss it! It will be so much fun!
This is a picture taken from Railay Beach off the coast of Krabi, Thailand. (I will be writing a post about our time in Krabi on Friday.)
Happy Monday and see you on Wednesday!
This week in my Friday Food Review series I want to tell you about Kopitiam by Wilai. There has been much written on this amazing restaurant already, but I love to share when I find a place that has food so … Continue reading
I just was in one of the most feared places that most people could imagine. The DENTISTS office!!! Yes, that’s right, I have returned from a dentist’s office once more in my lifetime and am still alive!
A couple of weeks ago, I was carelessly inhaling eating a soft cookie, when a part of a rather large filling in my back tooth seemed to dissolve into nothing. I was flabbergasted and a bit anxious as I looked in the mirror and saw an actual hole in my back tooth. I calmed myself down with another cookie and decided to call a dentist the next day.
There is a Facebook group here in Phuket called the Phuket New Era Expats that is a wonderful resource for getting other expats help with anything on the island. I promptly put up a post about what torturer dentist is most liked in my area. I got many recommendations for a place called 32 Dental Clinic which happens to be a 5 minute drive from my house. I decided to go with them, but never called to make an appointment. Why do today that which could be done many tomorrows later?
With the thought that we are leaving for the States in 10 days, I figured I should get my tooth fixed before we go home where dental care costs every cent you will ever make for the rest of your life much more. I finally called yesterday and made an appointment at 32 Dental Clinic for today.
This evening, I was a bundle of exposed nerves (thank God not the nerves of my tooth… root canals are truly my worst nightmare and I never want to have one done… EVER!) and was admittedly mildly panicking as I walked into the office to the sound of screams drills and that weird smell that only a dentist’s office has. Seriously, does every dentist in the world have the same air freshener, or is it the sweet smell of fear from the hundreds of patients coming and going? I don’t know, maybe a dentist reads this blog and can answer this question. I think we would all like to know…
I filled out my paperwork and was ushered immediately into a clean and modern looking exam room. I spoke with the dentist, Dr. Lee, and told her what had happened. She leaned me back, took a look, and gave me a couple of options. I love a healthcare provider that will sit with you and explain all the options and be understanding when you ask questions, like… “What do you have to do to place a crown?”, or “Can you just give me general anesthesia to do this dental work”, or my favorite question for the dentist, “You don’t have to do a root canal, do you?” as I lay in the chair sobbing my eyes out.
I am exaggerating, no tears were shed in the dentist’s chair today, well, at least not by me. I took the option to fill the tooth again (it should last 2-4 years… long enough for me right now). She immediately sat me back and I tried to appear at ease as the dental assistant placed a blue cloth over my whole face with only a hole for my mouth. All I could do was shut my eyes and wait for the impending injection of Novocaine and hope and pray that it would go smoothly.
I heard the drill and grabbed the blue clothe off my face and asked with just a little tremble in my voice if she was going to use Novocaine. She chuckled and said that she was just cleaning the remaining filling and I wouldn’t feel a thing. The drill sounded again as I settled into the chair and literally five (yes, 5!) minutes later she handed me a mirror to show me my beautifully filled tooth! I thanked her profusely and went to pay the bill. From the time I entered the office until I walked out the door, was 18 minutes. I am not exaggerating at all, I actually timed it!
The total bill for the painless fix on my tooth was 824 baht ($25.57 US), WITHOUT INSURANCE! Back in my hometown, my copayment for a cleaning was $40 US with insurance! Something seems wrong with that, but that is a topic for a person with far more knowledge in that area than I. Regardless, I know where I will be getting all my dental work from now on. Thailand, you rock, yet again!
Now it’s your turn to tell me… How do you feel about the dentist? Would you travel to a foreign country to get dental work done on the cheap?
One thing that I have fallen in love with here in Phuket, is the ease at which we have been able to make friends. After our time in Hua Hin and the difficulties in finding anyone to hang out with, it has been a real pleasure meeting people that I already consider real friends.
I have been quite busy taking Zoë to multiple play dates a week, enjoying birthday parties, and just hanging out with great people. We also have found a church that we like so far and I have been enjoying our fellowship with other people of faith!
Everything is going swimmingly and I am embracing the opportunity to do the “normal” things with my family before we leave on our next adventure… We will be in Tokyo in 2 weeks and then the U.S. after that! I am excited to be on our travel journey again, but I am extremely happy that we will be returning to Phuket. This place has my heart!
Where have you felt the most at “home”?
Here are my pictures for the week, that I admit, have absolutely nothing to do with what I wrote about. I have thought about doing thematic Monday Montages, but honestly I like the haphazard, “never-know-what-you’re-gonna-get” format. Thanks for reading, following, and sharing!
Apparently Taylor Swift has her own ice cream flavor. Is this world-wide, or just a Thailand thing?
Up To You Travel and Agency. I wish I could go in here and decide what price I want to pay for airline tickets… hey, its up to me, right?
Old soi (street in Thai) dog. I thought he was a cutie.
I took this while driving… so not the best shot, but I was amused that people could live in “Rich Villa’s” by the Rich Group. I guess they are really trying to sell a lifestyle, not just a house. Haha.
A Beauty Buffet Store. I am not sure why a gentleman chef mascot would make me want to buy their make-up?! I wonder if this marketing theme works?
A view from the restaurant that is my new favorite (more on that in my Friday post!)
I was going to write about another one of our favorite restaurants here in Phuket, but I may have gotten food poisoning from them last night.
Before I totally write them off, or write about them here, I feel it’s necessary to partake in some more gluttony research and make sure that is indeed what happened and I don’t have some sort of flu or something.
All of this to explain that my post today is short and sweet and about nothing at all, except my taking time off to feel better.
I will do my utmost to test out the restaurant in question and be absolutely sure before I choose to stop going there (yes, it is that good!). You all will be the first to know.
Happy Friday everyone! Xoxox
I am not usually a worrier. I have pretty easily adopted an “anything can happen anywhere” attitude while we have been on the road. But I have to admit that these past couple of weeks, I have been worrying. We … Continue reading
It’s getting hot here in Phuket. Up until a couple of weeks ago, the temperature here averaged around 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) with a nice mellow humidity level. I think that is the best kind of weather, and I refused to use the A/C in our house until bedtime. That was until this week. All of a sudden the heat us upon us and it is roasting outside. Last night at 10:00 the temperature was 38 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit). It was much hotter during the day, but I don’t know the exact temperatures, as I couldn’t hold my phone to check, it kept slipping out of my sweaty hand. No, not really, but it could have been for that reason.
All three of us love and enjoy hot, sunny weather. But we are also thankful for fans and our air conditioning. How’s the weather been where you are?
Here are the pictures for this week. Thanks for reading! And if you haven’t already, please like our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter.
Election posters on the street.
This was the check out area at a outdoor/indoor shopping market called Super Cheap that we visited in Phuket Town. It was crazy and hot and hot and hot…
The swimming pool that is a couple of blocks from our house. It costs 70 baht ($1.75) per adult and 50 baht ($1.50) per child. We love it.
This is a very popoluar cleaning supply company here in Thailand. I do not think they know how wrong this is. 
A gas station squat toilet. It looks dirty but was actually fairly clean. Just old. This look is pretty common for public toilets though.
A public bus here on Phuket Island. They run from town to town without any kind of schedule. If you are able to find one and flag it down, it only costs 20 baht per person.
There are many things that I have gladly given up at one time or another while traveling. For example, freshly dried clothing-like in a dryer (isn’t sun-dried so much better anyway, well except for towels I think), or all-natural Tom’s toothpaste, or makeup that matches my skin tone, or even being able to bake (no ovens in Asia for the most part). There is only one thing that I truly (truly truly truly…) miss.
My fun hair color and style.
That’s me with platinum blonde hair and purple bangs (fringe) hamming it up with Zoë.
Yep, I know it is completely vain, and that I am on the trip of a lifetime, and I am safe and healthy, and living in Thailand. I am so thankful for all these things and more. But I miss my well-coiffed, straightened, platinum blonde (plus what ever other crazy color I felt like) hair.
For the back story, you can read my original post, Breaking Up is Hard To Do about what I had planned to make traveling easier. In short, I was going to dye my shoulder length hair a normal color and then let it grow out naturally as we traveled. I did not think that I would be able to find hair stylists that could bleach my hair correctly (I turned out to be right about that actually).
We left in April of 2013 and I had shoulder length red hair, I continued with that until we had been in Portugal for a month or so. My hair started looking more and more like a mullet. It would not grow longer in the front and the back kept getting longer. I had done too much damage throughout the years bleaching it and it was telling me it was time to start over. So I chopped it off, well, a rad hairstylist we met in Lisbon, cut it off. I left her house with a pixie cut. I had never had that short of hair before and I loved it! It was easy, my curls were almost non-existent because it was so short, and I found out that my ears were not as big as I had thought!
My red hair before we left the States.
Good-bye hair!
My pixie cut in red.
Then I got bored with the red hair and decided to dye it black in Budapest. Bad idea! Black is impossible to get rid of and very hard to grow out.
My pixie cut in black. Wow, there’s the ears!
I kept getting my hair trimmed along our travels, never really running into any problems. Until Thailand. I decided to get rid of the two-tone hair that I had at the time (black and my natural roots) and cave and bleach my hair and get it cut. I needed something more trendy. More me.
I came out of the mall hair place (yes, I went to the mall and stupidly thought that the hair place there would be good) with three tones of hair and a pretty bad haircut. That is when I decided that I was going to grow it out. For reals this time. I haven’t touched my hair since.
I took the picture from a good angle, it actually looks good here.
And now I am getting to that point, that point that everyone goes through when they are growing out their hair. It’s the dreaded “in-between stage”! I am doing my best to get through it, but now that we are heading home to visit next month I am feeling more and more that my “travel hair-style” is not working for me anymore. I am going to try to power through, but you may start seeing the pictures of me in this blog sporting pink or blue hair or something. I am going to try to win this war, even with every morning trying to do something with my hair is another battle.
People pay good money for ombre like this (or so I am telling myself). Also, I am so thankful that there are not many people who can see the top of my head.
Getting longer.
Wow, who knew I could write so much about my hair. Leave a comment and tell me what have you done to make it through the “in-between stage” with your hair? Or better yet, tell me a time when you got a really bad cut or color to make me realize my hair isn’t that bad.
Thanks for reading, and be sure to follow the blog, follow me on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
I am currently in the works to move from WordPress.com to my own website. Wait… let me phrase that in a more truthful way… Chad is currently working on our website to move it over from WordPress. We are using … Continue reading
Tonight we decided to forgo the Thai food and try a Mexican food restaurant here in Phuket. A fellow expat from California recommended Sala Mexicali as being the closest thing to California Mexican food in all of Phuket. Lucky for us … Continue reading
And Three To Go 