Toms' shop

 Finally, here's the piece on our corner shop that I've been promising for ages!  You can easily get here if you know where the Police Station is.  It's on the road that Tesco is also on (3150 Thaluang Road) but you need to head towards Wat Chan.  If the Police Station is on your right, you need to turn left or if it's on your left, go straight ahead.  If you've come from Wat Chan and over the bridge you will see it on your left ahead of you and you need to turn right at the lights.

I can't say enough about the whole family and their welcoming attitude to all who drop by.  Taan (Toms mum) has "adopted" Mr John as I'm sure he gets slightly bigger serves than me and we are often given sweet treats afterwards - mostly in the form of fruit.

This shop sells everything, and I mean everything.  You can get a litre of petrol for your bike (only 25 baht), cleaning supplies, beer, cooking supplies, toilet paper, eggs, ice and a plastic bag filled with ice, then coke and a straw added for convenience.  We got Leon to have one of these when he  was visiting.

Then of course, there's Taan's great food which is very reasonably priced at 30 baht for pretty much all meals.  We especially like the crispy pork and pad Thai.  You need to be aware though that cooking stops at 6pm in the week and 5pm on the weekends but you can eat anytime from 6am.  Tom has written the menu not only in Thai but also in English.  I guess he's done this because the houses across the road often have foreign teachers staying.  What ever the reason, it's incredibly handy.

Tom is a Manchester United fan (so of course we gave him lots of stick last weekend when Liverpool beat them 3-0) but has a large collection of football shirts, of all sorts of teams - including Liverpool that he's been given over time. 

He has a Thai - English dictionary and likes to spell things and look them up if it's a new word.  His command of conversational English is not that great and so when you speak to him it's almost best to do it in "broken" English.  This gives him enough time to come to grips with what you're saying.  He's pretty much self taught and can tell you things - it's the conversation side that is a bit trickier. 

I should point out however, that his English is way better than my Thai.  He's also very helpful at telling us the Thai word for things and we do our best to remember them.  If you get a chance, pop along for dinner. You won't be disappointed