NO SERVANT PROBLEM.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 196, 20 July 1937, Page 12

NO SERVANT PROBLEM.

HOT POTATO CAKES

ON SIAMESE ISLAND. There is no servant problem in the little island of Bhuket, West Siam. Each of the European families has four or five native hoys—chauffeur, gardener, cook, and one or two house servants. They receive the equivalent of £3 to £4 10s a mouth and wash cleanly and efficiently. Jf, ibi> any reason, one is, discharged, ho immediately brings a successor to his mistress. This is what Mrs P. O. Shiel told a reporter when she arrived at Wellington on Sunday by the Maetsuyker. Mrs Shiel, a former Dunedin resident, went about a year ago to Bhuket, where her husband lias been engaged in tin mining for the past ten years. Mr and .Mrs .Shiel are now spending a six months’ furlough in New Zealand. Siam, however, is not a housewife’s paradise. With cauliflowers at Is Od a pound and steak at 3s Gd a pound, living is expensive. The high cost of meat is accounted for by the fact that it has to ho kept in cool storage. Tinned food is used a great deal, and a bachelor can often say, with reasonable accuracy, that lie has opened twenty tins to make a dinner.

Mrs Shiel finds life on Bhuket very pleasant. There are only eight European families and they usually meet at the club in the evening for “paliits” or drinks. Golf and tennis are the popular recreations; there is a theatre, but it is patronised only by the natives. Malay is the common language; it is not difficult, and most of the European children speak it before they do English.