My recent vacation

Ok..we just got back from Thailand after spent 3 weeks over the X’mas and new year. Guess what?, we chose to stayed at some condo in Jomtien beach area for entire 3 weeks, and never once set foot in Pattaya! We had booked the condo over the internet a few month before with the taxi pick-up service of $1200 from the airport. Our flight was supposed to land around 11:00pm but didn’t actually land until 2:00am! Our driver’s pretty cool about it. Then..off we went and slept pretty much the whole trip to Jomtien beach. We had so much fun over there! You’ll be amazed at what we did during our time there….which’s nothing much!

First – our condo’s very nice and in the super location. We’d decided not to book a hotel room because it’s much more expensive during the high season, and we found out that our condo’s much much better than some 4 stars hotel rooms and we’re paying only $18 a night. So you guys, next time during the trip…book a condo room instead. It’s much cheaper! Anyway our routine is like this. We would walk out 5 min. to catch the 10B songtheaw to our favorite breakfast place – Lotus foodcourt for breakfast…then walk around for a few hours within the vicinity…then catch a songtheaw back to Jomtien beach for the same 10b and have our lunch there…then back to our room for 3-4 hours…then go out again at the night food market for more food hunting (either at Jomtien beach or the one next to Theprasit rd.) We did this routine for entire 3 weeks. Can you believe that? The night market next to Theprasit road’s quite big during weeknights, and 4 times bigger during weekends. We probably tried every foods at every stalls inside Lotus foodcourt and at those 2 night markets as well! Man oh man…thai foods are very yummy!

Anyway the second reason – as why we had to be in Thailand’s that I have to renew my thai-ID card after 23 years absent. In order to do this I have to go to Bang-Kapi city hall in BKK, and what a hassle that was. It’s about 2 hrs from Jomtien beach to go to the Ampur Bangkapi, this’s where my tabiean-baan is. Luckyly my aunt and uncle came all the way from BangKapi to pick me&my hubby up and sent us back too. I was so nervous and not sure whether they would let me do this or not, because as of now I can only speak and write thai about 75%. I’d gone to the US to study since high school and then on to university and all these times didn’t use any thai at all, but since I have such a nice uncle and aunt who did filled out everything for me!

Then the official asked me whether I’m married or not and wished to change to the new married lastname. So I asked her, if it would be better to change it? Then she said better not… since my husband is an American, it’ll be less hassle when I’m trying to buy some properties over here later on, even though the current law allows me to…but the law can change at any time! So that’s that…I got to keep my old last name…it’s kind of famous lastname anyway! At the same time I told her that I would like to change my first name also and I wanted to be “Teresia” – because this is the name I’m using in the US. But the lady official told me I can’t use this because it doesn’t have any meaning in thai and according to 1998 law all thais must have thai names….and here is the book….just look through it and pick one or go to the monk asking for one. Well I don’t have time to go to see any monks, so all four of us (me, hubby, aunt, uncle) looked through the book given for just about 15 min., then came up with the name “Nisha”. We all agreed it’s very pretty and means “smart & pure”. So my new first name will be “Nisha” to use in Thailand.

Then came the hard part – the id making, this’s the most difficult of all, I had to fill out some paper works and in thai too, because they just want to make sure I can still write in thai , before they would renew my Thai-ID card, and with the penalty fee of 300b + 25b id’s fee. I filled out most of the blank spaces, but not all, and they said ok..fine. So after all these years I finally have my new id card with the new firstname!

So now I have it
In the US , my name is…..Teresia + old thai name + married lastname
…now I have to change asap to …..Teresia + Nisha + same married lastname

But in Thailand….I will be known as……Nisha Sankavadana

I know it’s a bit confusing!

In addition, I also made the new biometric thai passport right away to match with the new name. The process was simple : waiting time – 1hr and after that, only 10 min of making it – at Central dept. – Bangna branch.

I’m so happy that everything had gone smoothly and now looking forward to buy a piece of land for our future retirement home in BangSare – Chonburi.

In the next article I will be writing about our house and land hunting experiences in BangSare, with pictures. BangSare is the seaside town between Jomtien beach and Sattahip, Chonburi.

Thanks for reading my story
“Nisha”