Thai purse gets fatter

I have found some extra work to do at the office, so for the first time since the last oil price rise, our income should improve.

When oil prices went up a couple of months ago, I lost two part-time teaching jobs. Boyfriend Maiyuu, who works just a couple of days a week, also found his services in less demand, as Thais felt the income squeeze.

The extra work I have found should bring in an extra B12,000 a month, which is a big increase - even compared to the days when I had teaching work.

Maiyuu and I have not discussed what we want to do with it, other than to buy a new pair of jogging shoes for me. We might like to take a trip somewhere - get out of Bangkok, which we have not done together for at least a couple of years.

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'Would you like to go back to Chon Buri?' I asked Maiyuu last night.

'No. It's boring...nothing to see or do,' he said.

'I will take you to the Don Wai floating market in Nakhon Pathom instead,' he said. 'We have been there before.'

We have? I have forgotten.

'We will buy food...walk around...eat in a restaurant.'

At the start of our relationship years ago, we would spend weekends away in Chon Buri.

Maiyuu and I travelled to the coast to visit his home town there a couple of times a year.

We stayed at a hospitality hotel kept by the navy.

One of Maiyuuu's childhood kathoey friends has a father in the navy, and if we we wanted to stay, his friend would arrange a place through her Dad.

Ocassionally Maiyuu invited me out with his friends for the night. More often, his gay and kathoey friends - Chon Buri has so many, they could start their own theme park - would gather at our place for something to eat, then go out dancing without me. I stayed back because I wanted time by myself.

I would take a bath in the place we rented for the night, then look forward to sleeping between cotton sheets. At home I have a duvet, which is not the same.

My fantasies of enjoying another bubble bath and wriggling my toes between the crisp cotton sheets of the navy hotel will have to wait. The Chon Buri phase in our relationship appears to have passed.

Maiyuu's family is over there - his sister and grandmother, with whom he has fallen out of touch, plus uncles, aunts, and their children - but he has no desire to see them. His childhood friends are over there, too, but he does not appear to miss them.

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The cool season is approaching, to replace the wet one we are now in. The sun goes down faster - by 6pm, it's almost dark in Bangkok - and the air is getting cooler.

The ants who have taken over my place in recent weeks are growing fewer.

They do not like the cold, so take shelter wherever ants go when it gets too cold to roam.