Sidestory: The Thailand Temple Trip ~ Rest Day

12-Oct-2026

I got bitten by a dog yesterday, so today I'm gonna take it easy. Perfect time for a rest day. Let me use this chance to give you a bit of info on Thailand.

The Kingdom of Thailand was formerly known as Siam. So for those of you who have a Siam cat, this is where they come from. In terms of size, it's a little bit bigger than Spain, and with 70 million inhabitants, its population ranks just below that of Germany, and above that of Tanzania. In terms of population density, that puts Thailand on par with the Czech Republic.

Climate-wise, most of it is tropical, but surprisingly a tropical savannah climate with dry winters.

Thankfully, we seem to be in the dry winter phase by now. I can still see the aftermath of the typhoon rains all around, but it's only rained once since I've been here, and I didn't get wet a single time, apart from a few drops from roofs, cables and trees.

The government of Thailand is complicated, so I won't go into detail here. Read up on it on Wikipedia if you're interested. Suffice to say, the Monarchy is highly respected here, which means you can find pictures like these everywhere. I'll give you a chance to guess who is who.

Ready for the solution? Those are from left to right, King Vajiralongkorn - also known as Rama X - Queen Suthida, and the late Princess Bajrakitiyabha, who succumbed to illness at the age of 47 after a decades-long career of humanitarian work and championing the rights of women.

Anyway, that's enough background info for now. Let's talk about what little happened today. First, Chella prepares me some lovely sweet potatoes for breakfast.

Sadly, she's not feeling well today, so it's up to me to walk the Path of the Tiger once again, and get some supplies from the supermarket.

After I return, I make Chella a big bowl of healthy tomato-rice-cream soup, hoping that she gets better soon.

Meanwhile I have some of the cup noodles that I bought on day one. These ones are Tofu and Shiitake flavour. Interestingly, this one comes with a folding fork in the box. Didn't see something like that before.

The things I bought also include some cutlery, as well as a decent cutting knife and cutting board, because our kitchen is woefully short on that. As a result, I learn that there's apparently a brand called Cheetah here that sells exactly those things.

The only other adventure today is a trip to the garbage room to empty out the garbage bags. There are two containers here: One is labelled "Recycling", and the other "Wet". A bit confusing. In the end, I end up putting the plastic bottles in the recycling container, and the rest of the garbage in the wet container.

Oh yeah, and we also do laundry today. That is, after we manage to figure out how to properly close the door of the machine. Interestingly, the washing machine plays the exact same jingle as the washing machine I had at my Airbnb in Davao, although they're completely different models. Maybe it's a Samsung thing.

Not much else happens today. I use the chance to catch up on blogging, while my beloved Chella cuts me some tasty guava...

 

...then spend some quality time with her, and before I know it it's already time to cook dinner. Now, today it's my turn to cook, so during my earlier trip to the supermarket I procured some ingredients to make a truly international dinner today:

• Italian Fussili Tricolore
• German Mushroom Sauce 
• Chinese Eryngii Mushrooms

Despite me not having all the spices and ingredients I'm used to, it still turns out pretty good, and Chella likes it too, which makes me very happy.

As for what we'll do tomorrow... we don't have any concrete plans yet. Part of it depends on how Chella is feeling tomorrow. But whatever is on the agenda, we'll do it together. So until tomorrow, stay tuned and be of great cheer!