Progress

Well we are all moved in to our new, quiet apartment!

hallway

kitchen

kitchen

store/laundry room

open space

study

study

dining room

master bedroom

master bedroom

master bathroom

balcony off bedroom

Well, it's already much more habitable. Apart from the toaster and one of the hard drives, we have found most of the things we need to function for the time being.

We are however in limbo again, waiting for the air-conditioners and hot water boilers to be installed. We have tried to keep things away from the airco sites, so that the tech guys can reach the walls, and I don't want to open more boxes as the contents will just get scattered/broken/covered in plaster dust.

On a positive note, we have borrowed a gas cooker from the embassy, and it's plumbed in, and so is the washing machine (deep happiness all round - Helen was getting back ache from all the handwashing), the cable tv is installed, and we also have wifi installed. This was much more complicated than it should have been.  As this is a new apartment, it comes with LAN cabling in the walls, and even a few rooms in which there are jack points to set it up. Fantastic one would think. The person who bought the jack points wasn't aware that you need a LAN jack, not a phone point, and there were many many attempts to stick a LAN jack in a phone point, the guy who came to fix it even put the old plate back on and was surprised when it didn't fit.  Next we had router issues, our fully functioning, CISCO router couldn't be made to work, so we bought yet another new one and WIFI at last.

But the best news is the water filter! we have a tap that comes out above the sink, with safe water.
The old apartment had a super duper hot and cold filter, that was huge, and we had no decent space to put it in the rather smaller kitchen we have now.  I think the water filter guy couldn't get his head round why we would want the less fancy option, it took a lot of persuasion to get this model.

left side drinking water, right side normal water

filter arrangement - like the power supply

this is the bucket filling "sink" on the balcony

In other news - our driver's wife had a cesarean on Monday, their 3rd daughter, so we got traditional sweets! He was hoping for a boy, but is happy enough. His wife has had some complications and has had to go to a different hospital. We hope that all goes well.

We are off to Bangkok tomorrow for a few days - first time in Thailand for us!