Spoilt

Well, the wind down for Mr John is well and truly on.  He only has to go in Monday (the prime focus being to pick up his pay) and then he's done.  It's been a difficult week for various reasons.  There's nothing to do at school except catch up on some TV and movie watching.  He comes home for lunch and we've been having coffee with Wicus on a Wednesday which has been great.

There was a trauma for both of them this week as one of the Thai teachers, who can speak a bit of English, wandered into their office gave them some forms and said they'd have to pay 5000 baht in tax.  You can imagine the impact this had and to say Mr John was not a happy bunny would be an understatement.  There's no mention of tax in their contracts.

So we went to see Pii Kob (that man is a saint).   He looked at the forms, explained to us it is personal tax, that so much of your income is tax free and then there are legitimate deductions and........wait for it....... Mr John has to pay 25 baht tax. Phew!  Another classic example of the lack of communication at the school because none of this was explained to them.

On a brighter note, the lovely Taan (head chef at the corner shop) gave us yet another lovely sweet treat this week.  Star fruit (Thai's call it something else that I still can't pronounce let alone spell).  It was aroy mak mak (very delicious). Not only did we get a bowl after dinner but we were given two to take away, that needed a couple of days to ripen properly.  Like all the fruit we've tried here it was beautiful.

Even more exciting was a surprise package from Oz for our anniversary.  Joan (my sister-in-law of OMG 41 years) just knew we'd appreciate these.  If you're not from down under you may not have heard of Adriano Zumbo but he is a patissier god.  So far we've only tried the raspberry white choc - one of my favourite combinations - and it didn't disappoint.  Looking forward to the Choc Brownie - rationing obviously is taking place!  Thanks Joan, you're a star.