Pon's New Shop

Well I haven’t had the urge to write for a while. Somehow, without anything particularly exciting happening, I have felt quite busy. It has been nothing too demanding. I certainly couldn’t complain that my life in Phuket is stressful. It has all been easy stuff. A few odd jobs, a few chores, take care of the kids, play football, golf, swim, exercise, computer, etc.

Well come to think of it, I did have a computer hard disc crash. That was frustrating as my last full back up was 3-months ago and when I looked at it, it turned out it had not completed so I did not even have everything from 3-months ago. Lots of little things worked against me in my efforts to recover my data. The main thing was it looked like I had lost 4-months worth of family photos.

I had just about given up on the possibility of ever recovering the photos when I had the bright idea of scraping the memory card from my digital camera. The photos had all long been deleted from the memory card but with the right software, you can still recover deleted files from the card. So that is what I did and to my relief it scraped off the majority of my lost pictures.

So there is a lesson for everyone – make sure you keep regular back ups of the important stuff on your computer.

A month ago my wife Pon got the urge to open a small restaurant. It is just a Thai style food place in a shop front on the local estate. These sort of places will never make a lot of money but she is not really doing it for the money – she just likes food and chatting. Most Thai women like food and chatting.

These little Thai restaurants don’t make much money but they also don’t cost much to set up. She rents the shop for 2000 baht a month, she spent a fair few thousand baht fitting it out and that was it, she was open. She sells somtam for 30-baht and other Thai dishes for 50-baht. Everyday her friends and assorted local characters drift in and out. It is all very informal. Her friends might help with the cooking, bring food of their own or a few drinks. It seems like every few day, the evening develops into a general boozing session.

It is more of a social affair than a business enterprise. Still she is taking in more than 1000 baht a day which is good for a small Thai business. I’m not sure how much of that turnover actually turns into profit. Pon can’t be bothered to keep accurate accounts of her expenses and income.

I just pop in for my evening meal and occasionally join the locals for a few drinks. It is very handy having a restaurant in the family. I pre-order whatever dish I fancy – somtam, tom yam goong, grapow gai, gaeng keeow wahn, etc, etc, so many good options to choose from.

Well I better make full use of it while it is there. If I know my wife, it will be closed in a few months and she will be ready to move on to her next hobby.