Term 2

Yet again my students have melted my stone heart. 

My desk facing unrelenting blue skies

All Thai’s have long first names and go by their nicknames their whole lives, and boy do they have amazing nicknames; Beer, Porn, Ice, Cookie, Champ, Top, Say, Golf, Mang, Mook, Pla, Poo-pe, Benz, Palm, Pam.  It almost catches me off guard when they want to be “Ann” or “Cindy” instead of the more common, “Ooo, Aom, Ache, Aaat.”  Oh and if you don’t say Ooo with a rising tone at the end she will not know you are talking to her.  Luckily my weekday classes are small I might be able to remember some of them this time, good for me, bad for my school.

Wan in the administration area

I also have a blind student named “Doom.”  She is super bright and thinks about language in a way the other students don't.  She writes by punching holes in paper with a pointy stick, and fast.  She has the book we use, in brail, but I did a reading and writing exercise this morning and frankly I’m not sure what she did during it.  While coming up with pronouns though she did use  “Damara” for “she.”

Some strange clay activity set up on a table in the teachers area minus the teachers

There was a survey of my performance on the last class of last semester and I was quite surprised to receive 94% on my “likeable personality.”  Good thing I made that last class fun.  I also got good marks on punctuality which must mean punctuality on “Thai time” because I start class about 10 minutes late and take long breaks in the middle.  Us teachers claim this is so students don’t keep trickling in during the first 10 minutes but starting late might be a cause of them coming late, chicken or egg?

My school is also in the Korat Chamber of Commerce building

Teaching has gotten a whole lot easier and I would like to thank my manager for letting me teach Level 2 again it will be a well-oiled machine this semester.  I would say learning to tell time is easy but every single hour of the day in Thai has a different way to say it so there are 24 hours different hours to remember and that all changes when you add minutes.  I’m getting nowhere on time.

 My students come up with awesome new phrases like “familyship” and “Before, I couldn’t swim, not I can’t swim.”  I like it when they include me in their writing although my name is always "tea-chur." 

Vacationitis

I’m just going to dive into my holiday from teaching and Korat and being an adult. 

I spent my first week off wandering somewhat aimlessly around Bangkok.  I came to the conclusion that my guide book and purchased map sucked and glossed over, well everything and the best coarse of action is to just walk everywhere and let adventure find me.

The city is exactly like NYC except a little smaller and the falang are almost exclusively Europeans dressed like stupid hippies.  I thought the burning man convention was having it’s annual meeting but there were plenty of places to purchase your sun dresses and have your hair dreaded or just have dread extensions put in if you packed light.   

Khao San road, like a Dave & Busters for adults

Khao San road, it’s like the Time Square of NYC, where only tourist go.  You can buy anything there and see almost nothing legitimately Thai, but at least they contained that to one area.  

Why did I stay in that general area?  Many cheap guesthouses and hotels are in that area.  Plus there is plenty of everything, laundry, internet café’s, a variety of food, English language books, temples, the grand palace, tourist traps blah blah. 

Stumbled on the gun district in Chinatown, scopes and accessories were on the street, more hardcore stuff indoors

Not sure why all these fish were here

A view from the water taxi

I am also the only crazy person who walks everywhere in Thailand which is a leftover from living in NYC too long and being a glutton for punishment.  And it’s winter here so you only get sweaty not very sweaty.  It helped me get my footing although more regular street signs would have been helpful.  Bangkok, although very crowded is smaller than NYC.  It only has 3 train lines which are very efficient but it took me a half hour to take a cab to the train stop.  It is always rush hour in Bangkok which people take in stride, while in NYC I was constantly swearing and calling people offensive names based on their appearance.

A hairy saxamophone with a fuzzy musical expression

 Usually somewhere as chaotic as Chinatown in any city is somewhere that gives me a headache but after being in Korat for 2 months I was glad for madness.  I wandered into endless markets with miles of cheap jewelry, car parts, and “toys” which were not for children.  

Traffic Jam or just a case of the Mondays?

Reminds me of New Orleans

Endless shopping

The best part about my time traveling the country was that I didn’t really meet any falang (people of Western appearance).  I didn’t try.  But I used every single Thai word I know and had some very meaningful conversations with people in half broken Thai and broken English.  Thai people are incredibly nice, friendly, and warm and are as curious about me as I am about them.  The best reaction is when I mention that I live in Nakhon Ratchasima in Thai which raises some eyebrows and I’m guessing makes me hardcore.

A bedazzled "Spirit House" in the middle of the stuffy office buildings

The food in Bangkok is amazing and it was a lot easier for me to find restaurants that have my staple favorite soups and sticky rice with mangoes.  It was a little frustrating having everything be 3 times more expensive, most plates cost about $3-5, so I made as much effort as possible to go into places that didn’t speak English to get the local prices.

Rice baked in a pinneaple sprinkled with ham

I did some serious shopping in Bangkok spending half a day at Panthip Plaza, the electronics mall that sells knock off everything electronics.  Since I don’t have regular access to the internet here I indulged myself in buying way to many dvd’s for about $2 a pop.  When you buy a dvd they give you a handwritten piece of paper, a text message is sent to someone in the garage, and you are told to come back in 20 minutes.  I also bought a new copy of Dreamweaver that I am supposed install with my internet off for about $5 I hope it works.  I have to wonder what else you could find there.

Thai’s don’t do anything for Christmas.  The falang in my neighborhood had cleared out as they headed to the islands and my neighborhood was up LATE singing karaoke and I along with them albeit from bed with my ipod on.

At the airport, someone will need a big box to put this one away

If you could only see my armpit sweat while trying to take this picture.

The best shopping in the whole world is the Chatacuk, or weekend market.  It had miles of vendors from all over the world and things were cheap.  Everything from everywhere; it had a cowboy section, new and used shoes, fish and aquatic creatures in bags, ceramics, fake flowers, jewelry, furniture, Mexico, Tibet, Nepal, India, Japan, the Middle East everything from everywhere.  And cheap.  It’s all about haggling but I found that some things were so cheap I didn’t bother trying to save $0.30.

Now onto the fun stuff, or the sun stuff, the island of Koh Lanta.  We took an awesome overnight train ride that was about 13 hours to Surat Thani a town on the east of the peninsula.  There were beds that folded down, food, and bathrooms that just emptied onto the tracks, it was the best use of our time.

We brought toilet paper although Thai plumbing can't handle it and we couldn't handle that

After that we arrived at the train station we were herded onto a bus to a “bus station,” and herded onto another bus west towards Krabi.  Then a passenger van across 2 ferries and finally to our resort.  The whole trip took about 24 hours and was very confusing and lacked proper food and bathrooms so I would whole-heartedly recommend taking a plane next time.

The bathrooms were surprisingly clean at the bus station go figure

That is a guy sitting in the stairwell, classy all around

Ferry ride to the island

The resort was amazing, facing the beach, the people warm and friendly and our bungalow was charming, mosquito net and all. 

 

Our first full day there we rented motorbikes stopping only to take pictures, jump in the water and eat.  We saw random monkeys by the side of the road and stumbled onto a place you could take an elephant ride although it seemed quite cruel.

The water was warm and beautiful and the beaches weren’t too crowded although we cut our feet up on the rocks the waves would push us onto and saw many men with giant gashes and bandages on their calves the rest of the trip.

 The south is interesting because it’s closer to Indonesia and is very Muslim.  It was a culture shock from the north where I live and people looked more Indonesian than Thai for the most part.  All the women riding motorbikes wore head-scarves although they also wore short sleeve shirts which must be specific to the climate here.  You would think falang would look around and see what the locals are wearing but apparently if women are wearing head scarves, it must be ok to wear a bikini top too.  Anything goes in Bangkok although the more outrageous dressed women were actually men.

It was hard to pick just ONE amazing sunset photo to post on this blog, just saying.

Koh Lanta is not as commercial as Phuket or the other big tourist destinations but it has many many many long streets full of t-shirts, flip flops, sun dresses, Bob Marley wall hangings, henna tattoo’s, and other awful tourist trappings that make everyone look the same.  I also never want to hear a Red Hot Chilli Peppers song again.

I think this bush looks like Pokemon

The inappropriately dressed falang, mostly Europeans, were riding motorbikes which I hope they weren’t doing from bar to bar because there are no real streetlights on the island and people drive like crazy.  It was not uncommon for our van to drive on the wrong side of the road for long periods of time “passing” another car, or just while we were taking a sharp turn on the side of a steep hill.  I read a statistic in the Bangkok Post that there were 358 vehicle deaths reported during the 7 day New Year holiday period in the country of Thailand.  Yikes. 

Onto more cheery fair. 

Insert obligitory I'm on a boat song here

On Day 2 we rose bright and early to take a snorkeling tour.  The boat ride was at least an hour, maybe 2 to the first dive site and the whole process was quite confusing as smaller boats would meet up with us to pick up and drop off people from other resorts like a longtail taxi service.  We would dock at a dive site near a jutting rock where the fish looked like an salt water aquarium and we were able to swim through groups of them as they threw food in the water which was emerald green, warm and made you float.

 

One of the stops involved putting a life jacket on and letting the current take us through a winding cave that was pitch dark except for the occasional flashlight our guide would shine to keep our heads away from the rocks.  When the current spit us out we were in the most picturesque cove of beautiful water, rocks and a small forest.  I guess pirates used to hide treasure there but I would’ve just hidden myself there and Benjamin Buttoned.  For lunch we docked at a beach and ate delicious food along with some friendly, timid local dogs.  Everyone napped on the long boat ride home as being in the sun all day and looking at water is exhausting.

Our boat companions from all over the world

The bus ride home was another awesome 24 hour journey.  We shuffled into a cabin of a night bus with 3 couches and a table with too many people crammed in including a beautiful blond Nordic family.  It took me a while to realize the mother wasn’t an older sister to the 4 children who were all trying to diligently read books while a few episodes of “Weeds” was being piped into the cabin although our tv wasn’t on.  Good thing a speaker was behind my head.  We landed back in Bangkok just as the sun started to rise and promptly found a place to try and get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Instead of braving the traffic cross town for New Years we stayed in old town at a park where hundreds of people were quietly sitting, listening to a monk chant.  When the new year went off people lit paper lanterns and just like that they went home to celebrate and eat with their families.  And then a marathon ran by, nobody was drinking.

I am happy to be back home in Korat now and recover from vacationitis.  In Bangkok everyone has an agenda; tuk tuk drivers and store keeps are always trying to push something on you and it’s overwhelming having everyone want something from you.  You know you are getting the most expensive price.  The tuk tuk drivers are quite aggressive about trying to give you a ride.  The only repellent was to pretend I didn’t speak English.

Vacation is hard work

There aren’t a lot/any young falang in my city so people leave me alone and assume I know what I am doing, although I noticed yesterday at the Big C that more people stare at me than they do in Bangkok; in fact everyone stares at me.  Every single person.  There was something nice about blending in and life is certainly easier for falang in Bangkok, socially, and everyone speaks some English and are used to being patient and communicating with English speakers.  I was constantly surprised at words I’d never used before in Thai coming out of my mouth, like trying to tell a shop keep I would never wear pink. 

Cowboys and Ladyboys

You may be thinking that half of my social life involves street festivals.  Well you are half right.  The other half involves shopping and eating, which are not always photo worthy.  I do have some cool scarves though.  Because it’s hot here.

No really, Thai people are wearing jackets and sweaters right now in the evening when it’s in the 80’s.  At night.  Not low 80’s either.

We went to a “cowboy festival” which involved many leather goods made by Thai’s wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and long hair.  Having been to Texas myself a few times I appreciate their nostalgia for all things Western including Westerns.

After some light “American” shopping we gorged ourselves on various types of meats on sticks and foods we don’t want to know how they are made they were too good. 

When I asked my coworker who eats these bugs she said nervously “I do, when I see them.”  Apparently it’s a snack you just get used to like fruit cake, I’m guessing pregnant women don’t crave them.

Christmas here is going to be weird.  After swimming in the pool, as usual, with the clear blue sky dotted by palm trees, I went to shower in the locker room when I heard Elvis regailing me with some Christmas droning.  It’s going to be painful listening to all the music this season, especially since Thai’s seem to pick some pretty dreary renditions of classics.  The Mall plays acoustic renditions of popular American songs by the likes of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, really sets the mood.

The best part of the evening was a competition on the stage of choreographed teenagers dancing to John Denver’s “Country Road” and then a song of their choice.  I heard the song about 6 times and although their costumes changed the quality of dancing did not.  One of the groups was quite racy, and living in a pretty conservative part of Thailand, I wasn’t used to seeing all those shoulders and knees.  From a distance the performer showing the most skin looked like a tall Asian Barbie Doll but during the interview portion of the show she was revealed to be a ladyboy.  We were then lulled to sleep by a Thai singer, in a cowboy outfit, singing some classic Mexican ballads.  I guess you have to do something with the horn player in your band.

A nice visit to the Flamingo farm.  There were live goats too I guess bringing live flamingo's would have been silly.

Loi Krathong

All over Thailand people celebrated Loi Krathong by floating offerings made of banana leafs and flowers into the water to apologize to the water for any wrongs they had done it in the past year.  There was music, food, shopping and a float/krathong contest.  I'll spare you the several hundred pictures I took of the floats.

Black bean ice cream on a stick in a cup.

People taking pictures with dinosaurs? 

Usually there are lavish floats in the water but this one is floating in a sea of people.

A Krathong competition

Music, food, shopping, classic street fest fair without the beer sponsors.

People making a wish and apologizing to the water for any wrong they had caused it.  There was incense attached to the candles and some people tuck money and hair into their floats, or krathongs.  Men were also in the dirty dirty dirty water up to their mouths rummaging threw the krathongs looking for money.  I guess it's ok if you give an offering and someone takes it moments later.  Don't ask me to explain why.

A refreshing cart of dried squid that get rolled through a press and served with a salsa-like sauce.  My friend could seriously not understand how I could stop eating it after one bite but I claimed to be full.

A ride home in a cozy tuk-tuk, our driver was evacuated from Bangkok and didn't really know the way.  Thailand has no city planning and most streets aren't really on any maps.  I'm told most cities in Thailand use regular taxi's but in Korat the tuk-tuk is standard.  And smelly they must run on diesel and the exhaust must come out of the front.  It does feel safer than a motorbike though and is quite fun.