Farewell Pattaya, Hello Karratha!

Expat Wife would like to apologise profusely for the lack of blogs over the past week. There is, however, a fairly good reason for this. The project on which The Husband has been working for the past fifteen months is coming to an end and we are leaving Thailand. I am currently packing up the flat and getting ready to bid farewell to Pattaya in a couple of days. There is so much we will miss - the inexpensiveness of pretty much everything (except for wine - the one drawback!), being able to walk down to the beach, having a sea view (well, if you squint!), the year-round wonderful weather, the friendliness of the people, the fabulous holidays we have enjoyed in this country... the list is long and I could go on. Of course, there are things that I won't miss, and if you regularly read my blog you will know what they are, but more often than not they are more a source of mirth than anything else. At the end of the day, we have been visitors in their country - there are certain things you just have to grin and bear. Mai pen rai and all that!

The good news is that our departure from Thailand does not signal the end of the adventure, for we are on to pastures new. I shall soon be Expat Wife in Australia! This may not seem much of an adventure - after all, the national language is English, it's a first world country and I actually have a large amount of family there. We will not be living in any of the cities, however. In fact, we will not be anywhere near a city. We are moving to Karratha, over 1500km north of Perth (the nearest city), pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It is a town built purely to house workers mining iron ore and, later, other big companies using the region's natural resources - before 1968 it was a remote cattle station. The town has grown and modernised over the years but it is hardly a bustling metropolis. Expat Wife likes her shops, restaurants and bars so it will be interesting to see how she adapts to life in remote Western Australia. At least the wine will be cheap!