Today's Saturday, which is usually laundry day. I loaded up the laundry basket with our weekly offering of darks and lights, strapped it to the scooter with paracord, and drove the 5 minutes to our village's communal washing machine station.
An elderly woman was standing at one of the washers when I parked the scooter. She was holding a section of a washer's lid in her hand. I smiled and nodded and bowed slightly and "Sawasdee-ka'd" her, and loaded my laundry into two open machines. She said something to me, which I didn't understand, but I smiled again and looked at her machine. "Do you need help?" She gestured toward the part of the lid in her hands and said something else.
I figured that part of the lid had somehow disconnected and she couldn't figure out how to reattach it, so I stepped close and worked for a few minutes getting the lid to re-align and lock back into place. There was laundry in the machine and detergent powder sprinkle over the top of the laundry.
She said something else to me after I got it fixed - it was in the same tone as what she'd said to me before.
Then I began to wonder if she didn't have enough baht to pay to cover the cost of the machine - but I didn't hear anything that sounded like Thai numbers. Additionally, I didn't have my purse with me and had only grabbed enough coins to pay for my two loads. Then, after I'd smiled yet again, she turned, walked into the shop/restaurant that seems to manage the washing machines, pulled the garage-style metal door closed over the opening, and left me outside with my scooter.
Now I'm not sure if she was a customer needing help with the machine and/or money, or if she was a manager asking me if the laundry was mine/if I'd broken the machine, or if she had intentionally taken the machine a part to fix something and I'd un-done her work.
I'll probably never know. So much for trying to be helpful!
In other news, my parents mailed us a package that included rat poison. We seem to have at least a few rodent occupants in the ceiling above our bedroom and the guest bedroom. Our guest bedroom has smelled weird since we got here, and it wasn't more than a month after we'd arrived that we started hearing scampering/rustling in the ceiling at night.
This week, I was awakened two times, absolutely convinced something must be in our bedroom. The first time I thought I heard a small body "jumping" around the room - sort of weird "plopping" noise - and the second time, I was sure a rat was unwrapped plastic from something in our room. In both cases, I grabbed my headlamp, turned it on, and beamed the invasive, hopefully-intimidating light around the room and the bathroom, but I didn't see anything. I went back to sleep shortly later in both cases.
Today, Gabe found a step ladder, went into the bathroom in the guest room, climbed the ladder, pushed up one of the ceiling tiles, and threw four cakes of the rat poison in the four different directions. We're praying the rats will do as their told: eat the poison, leave the premises, and go find water to drink and die away from our house.
Now, as we were crawling into bed, we just heard a loud kerfuffle in the ceiling, along with some screeching, active scampering, and rustling. Let's hope the noise was due to rats greedily fighting over the poison and not the nest going into death convulsions above our bed.
An elderly woman was standing at one of the washers when I parked the scooter. She was holding a section of a washer's lid in her hand. I smiled and nodded and bowed slightly and "Sawasdee-ka'd" her, and loaded my laundry into two open machines. She said something to me, which I didn't understand, but I smiled again and looked at her machine. "Do you need help?" She gestured toward the part of the lid in her hands and said something else.
I figured that part of the lid had somehow disconnected and she couldn't figure out how to reattach it, so I stepped close and worked for a few minutes getting the lid to re-align and lock back into place. There was laundry in the machine and detergent powder sprinkle over the top of the laundry.
She said something else to me after I got it fixed - it was in the same tone as what she'd said to me before.
Then I began to wonder if she didn't have enough baht to pay to cover the cost of the machine - but I didn't hear anything that sounded like Thai numbers. Additionally, I didn't have my purse with me and had only grabbed enough coins to pay for my two loads. Then, after I'd smiled yet again, she turned, walked into the shop/restaurant that seems to manage the washing machines, pulled the garage-style metal door closed over the opening, and left me outside with my scooter.
Now I'm not sure if she was a customer needing help with the machine and/or money, or if she was a manager asking me if the laundry was mine/if I'd broken the machine, or if she had intentionally taken the machine a part to fix something and I'd un-done her work.
I'll probably never know. So much for trying to be helpful!
In other news, my parents mailed us a package that included rat poison. We seem to have at least a few rodent occupants in the ceiling above our bedroom and the guest bedroom. Our guest bedroom has smelled weird since we got here, and it wasn't more than a month after we'd arrived that we started hearing scampering/rustling in the ceiling at night.
This week, I was awakened two times, absolutely convinced something must be in our bedroom. The first time I thought I heard a small body "jumping" around the room - sort of weird "plopping" noise - and the second time, I was sure a rat was unwrapped plastic from something in our room. In both cases, I grabbed my headlamp, turned it on, and beamed the invasive, hopefully-intimidating light around the room and the bathroom, but I didn't see anything. I went back to sleep shortly later in both cases.
Today, Gabe found a step ladder, went into the bathroom in the guest room, climbed the ladder, pushed up one of the ceiling tiles, and threw four cakes of the rat poison in the four different directions. We're praying the rats will do as their told: eat the poison, leave the premises, and go find water to drink and die away from our house.
Now, as we were crawling into bed, we just heard a loud kerfuffle in the ceiling, along with some screeching, active scampering, and rustling. Let's hope the noise was due to rats greedily fighting over the poison and not the nest going into death convulsions above our bed.
