There really isn’t a much nicer way to travel than by motorcycle. I’ve always loved it. Renting a bike twice this week and hitting the back roads in search of a place to call home has been a lovely diversion.

"Everybody loves a water buffalo, mine is fast but yours is slow! Can I buy milk? I don't know, but I need a water buffalooooooooo!" If your kids watched Veggie Tales, you probably get the joke, if not, you didn't miss much! 😉

Rural Thailand is stunningly beautiful: jungle covered mountains the remind me of the drawings in a Dr. Seuss book give way to shining wet rice paddies and fields of prickly pineapple plants sandwiched between deep, dark, invitingly cool rubber groves. Water buffalo free range along the roadside, along with children, and some of the mangiest dogs we’ve ever seen (and we’ve seen a few!)

Rubber grove

See how they cut the bark to make the rubber tree "bleed?"

The sap runs off of the tap and is collected in coconut shells

It’s been a long couple of days of exploration and house hunting. We narrowed it down to two suitable candidates at the north end of Phuket before we set out this morning to thoroughly explore the areas and make a decision. The winner: a three bedroom one story house in a little village of houses about a twenty minute walk from the beach here in Nai Yang. It has everything we could want, including air conditioning, internet and even a pool just steps from our front door. The beach and a pool? Yep. We’re that lucky.

It’s a ten minute walk from a big local market and everything we could possibly need.

The market makes me especially happy. I hate shopping in stores. It’s un-American of me, I know. Perhaps in a past life I lived in a village on the edge of nowhere and ran a market stall, who knows. At any rate, a thriving market is a necessity to me and the one on Tuesday-Thursday & Saturday in Nai Yang is perfect. There were only Thai’s shopping there (always a good sign!) and it lacked nothing: fruit & veg, clothing, housewares, hardware, seafood of every variety from squid to ray, shrimp, fish and snail (alive, dead, smoked, all of the above!) and meat. I’m especially excited about the meat, as that section of the market seems to be the exclusive domain of the Islamic population. I’m ecstatic about this. I would rather eat halal meat than any other sort as their regulations for hygiene and preparation are meticulous. I bought the children some grapes and a dragon fruit and learned the Thai script for “kilo” as I shopped. There are more varieties of rice in big bags than I’ve ever seen in my life, so clearly I’ve got some learning to do on that front.

Shaving coconut

Cleaning fish

Squid

Crabs

In addition to the excitement of deciding on a house, we also may have scored transportation. We’re not about to rent a car here (it would cost as much as the house for a small car that doesn’t fit us all!) But we are negotiating on a motorbike with a sidecar welded out of metal tubing for carrying everything from people to groceries. We figure we can tuck all four kids in there and have ourselves a Thai style SUV! Don’t worry, we’ll get helmets.

Dinner hour is approaching. The children are salty and sandy from their day at the beach while we were out house hunting. The only catastrophe of the day involved the cell phone: Elisha tripped and fell into the sea with it in his pocket. It’s fried. Completely done. We’ve only had it for four days. With a little luck the SIM card isn’t cooked and we’ll be able to pop it in another phone and carry on. Never a dull moment.