Night of Desirable Objects

Soccer, it seems, is a universal language, one in which I am thankfully fluent – albeit a little rusty. 

Me with, clockwise from left:  Kara, Carlyn, Alice, and Stacy
at the "Top-Up Bar" on the roof of a hostel in Krabi

This past weekend, two girls living in Trang, the province below us, came to Krabi for a visit.  On our way to meet them at the bus stop, I felt the need to satisfy a carnal desire feel a soccer ball at my feet and purchased one…at a store that also happens to sell school supplies, go figure.

When we took Kara and Alice to check in at the hostel we frequented at the beginning of our time here, the guy who runs the place noticed me holding the ball and invited me to play with him and his friends that evening. 

This being Thailand, I should have known that when he said to come at five o’clock, he really meant five-thirty, and when he said “play,” he really meant juggle and kick around with two other people.  But still.  It was a blast considering how long it’s been since I last played (I’ve still got some skills believe it or not) and how long it’s been since I’ve had any physical activity (walking to the bus in the morning it turns out, does not qualify).

It was of course roughly 8000 degrees when we were playing so “overheated” doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt when I was finished.  I could not make the shower cold enough!

Spanish boys, from left: Atilla, Javier, Jose and James

After we took our new friends from Trang to our favorite street food (where we recently learned the Shake and Spring Roll Girl’s name is Yulie – probably spelled much different than that), we went to a rooftop bar up the street where we met a group of Spanish boys travelling through Thailand.  They were fun and friendly and defied all the usual stereotypes of the greasy, skeevy Spaniard, so we spent the rest of the night hanging out with them.

When I mentioned I had a football (yes, I’ve started calling the game “football”) in my room, excitement turned into a 2v3 game at 1:30am on the lawn outside our hotel.  Carlyn and I against three of the Spanish guys.  After a bunch of big talk on both sides, they realized we actually weren’t terrible and the game turned into tackle soccer (naturally, since that’s always how girls v. boys games end up when the boys realize they’re being schooled). 

It must have been quite the hilarious sight to see two white girls in dresses and bare feet playing soccer in the middle of the night in Thailand with three random Spanish dudes all trying desperately to keep the ball from popping into the river, but we had a blast….and had the mud-caked legs to prove it!

Demonstrating that Carlyn and I did, in fact,
kick their asses.

James and Javier were good sports
 about their loss....sort of.

The One With the Monkey

I got attacked by a monkey.  True story.  Totally happened.  I've got documentation to prove it.

Chicken Island

Two weekends ago, we did a snorkeling trip around four of the islands in Krabi.  First was Tup where the snorkeling was pretty good and where I was viciously attacked by aforementioned monkey and as such will save that story for last.  Chicken island was the second island and the snorkeling there was really cool.  We neglected to bring an underwater camera so needless to say, any photos of the fish and coral are nonexistent.  Also, we jumped right off the boat into the reef so there was no means to take pictures on the island.

Take my word for it though, the sea life was awesome.  We saw these huge huge rainbow-y fish.  So brightly colored and they seriously looked like they'd swallowed a bag of Skittles!

This is supposed to look like a chicken....I think
it looks like a giant scrotum.  You be the judge.

There were some adorable pinky-greeny fish that seemed to enjoy our presence and also loved messing with us.  They would swim alongside me as I took in the coral and they would swim directly at me!  They would be perfectly still in the water staring at me - I swear its eyes were making direct contact with mine and I'm pretty sure it smiled - and then I would move a little and it would swim like a little kamikaze at me before darting off at the last second.  Playing chicken with the fish!!

None of the coral was especially colorful, except for these really cool lettuce-looking thingers that were bright shades of purple, green and pink and when you swam up to them, they sucked themselves back into their shells.  If you floated over top of them and were still enough, they would start to poke themselves back out of the giant shells.  Those were fun to play around with.

For some reason, I felt the need to kick furiously even though floating above the coral was probably my best option.  Obviously then I smashed my feet into coral more than once and was bleeding slightly when I got back on the boat.  It left some itchy scars on odd parts of my feet, but I'm all healed now!

There were a lot of places while we were swimming where I started to get a little freaked out because there was no place to stand should I feel the need to stand up.  The sea floor was totally blanketed with coral.  When I did manage to find a clear patch of sand to stand up, I got bamboozled in the leg by a fish!  It was like the fish said, "No you may not stand in this area thankyouverymuch I will headbutt you."  Kind of hilarious.


The guides kept telling us to watch out for the sea urchins, and man were they scary looking!  I found this picture online and basically, this is exactly what they looked like.  The spikey things were like eight inches long and sometimes I felt like I didn't have enough room to swim over them so I would literally suck in my stomach in hopes that I wouldn't brush past it!




After Chicken Island was Poda Island which was pretty unremarkable except for the freak rainstorm.  It was this weird little rest stop of an island with a restaurant pavilion that charged way too much money for food and barely anywhere in the water to swim on account of all the boats coming in and out.  Also there were monkeys which made me a little skittish as you will soon find out.

The last leg of the trip was Phranang Cave.  It was an island (peninsula?) we'd been to before, but we hadn't seen the cave.  Outside the cave was a temple of the colorful persuasion.  It was kind of a mash of confusion but people seemed to be praying so we figured it was sacred in some way or another.

The "cave" was a little bizarre.  As far as we could tell, it wasn't a cave in the traditional sense of climb-through-dangerous-but-beautiful-rock-formations-with-stalactites-and-stalagmites-go-spelunking-and-fold-yourself-in-half-to-get-through-that-hole kind of cave, but rather it was more of just a craggy overhang.  Not what we were expecting, but what in this country has been what we'd been expecting?

It was very pretty and one thing that was super cool was that at the back of the cave there was what I thought was a waterfall, but it was actually just an area where there was no cave roof and rain was coming through.  Against the backdrop of the other side of the cave, the rain looked like a waterfall!  That was impossible to capture on film (Do we still say "film" if there's no actual film in use here?  Curious.), but I did get some pretty shots of the actual cave:

One of the funny things about this beach is that there are "food boats" that pull up the shore and are like street vendors on the beach.  We've no idea how they keep everything they need on those little longtail boats but they've got everything you could possibly want, from pad thai and fruit shakes to cheeseburgers and tuna sandwiches.

Torrential downpour?  Not to worry, giant leaves may be used as umbrellas!!

So here's the story about the monkey.

Drumroll please....

So we go snorkeling on Tup, and when we get out of the water to do a little relaxing on the beach, we notice this monkey.  He's kind of adorable and clearly enjoying the tourists (and very very accustomed to getting food from tourists).

Taking food from one of the boat drivers.

If I look a little worried, that's because I am.

We called him Marcel, naturally - and if you have to ask, then you also don't get the title of this post either and I would have to ask you to log onto IMDb asap because otherwise I'll shed tears of pity.

After we'd had enough of the monkey (they get boring fast, turns out), we returned to our towels.  A though occurred to me:  "Man I really hope that thing doesn't surprise me and I turn around and he's sitting next to my head."

Cut to five minutes later when I'm laying on my towel, reading my book, minding my own business when I hear this rustling behind me.  I sit up and the monkey is, you guessed it, sitting next to my head.  Marcel has gone in my bag, taken out candy that my students had given me, and is now unwrapping the candy.

Naturally, we thought this was pretty hilarious, and started snapping pictures and taking video of the little thief.

That's when things started to get a little hairy.  I don't know if the monkey sensed I was going to try to take my bag away from him or he just decided to screw with me, but in an instant, he bared his teeth, made this horrible hissing noise and lunged at me!!

I freaked the heck out, jumped off the beach towel and away from the devil monkey, as did Carlyn and Stacy.  The three of us are standing there as I am literally shaking from head to toe while a small crowd gathers to watch the monkey torture me.

He starts rifling through my bag, pulling out my wallet, my pack of Kleenex, using my bottle of Advil as a rattle and the whole time I'm yelling incoherently ridiculous things at him.  I'm not sure what exactly was said, but I'm pretty I pulled a Lily Aldrin and growled  "youuuuuuuuu sonofabitch!" at him in the same breath that I told him I hoped he got diabetes from eating my candy.  It was like a sitcom.  Each time the monkey pulled something new out of my bag, I made exaggerated arm gestures and helplessly twirled in little panic-circles.

It was a high stress moment.

Finally, after I'm starting to worry that the monkey will begin flinging tampons all over the beach and take my money, we remember our "Thai mom" had given us sandwiches before we left.  We had no intention of eating them since they were green goo on white bread, but they were perfect for getting rid of the monkey (who we were no longer affectionately calling Marcel).

Carlyn tried to unwrap the sandwiches, but when the monkey saw what she was doing, he moved towards us and in a fit of panic, Carlyn flung the sandwiches, wrapper and all, across the beach thus effectively ending the monkey's reign of terror on all of my possessions.

The best part of all this:  Carlyn managed to snap a perfectly timed action shot.  My face is pure terror, and if you look closely enough, the monkey's face - freaking scarrrrry!!!

The Psychology of Letting Go

Disclaimer:  Written from my salty place

Ever get the feeling that your life is being lived entirely within the four walls of a television screen?  Sort of like a nightmarish version of The Truman Show?  Although now that I think about it, I’m sure The Truman Show was pretty nightmarish for Truman when he finally got a clue. 

Anyhow, that’s kind of how I feel…except instead of The Truman Show, this is feeling like a supersized episode of Punk’d.  I realize what with his divorce from Demi looming like a giant I-told-you-so-cloud, Ashton probably forgot that he was in the middle of producing a particularly weird episode, but I beg you Ashton, please, please, please come out of hiding now.  I have no other explanation that makes any sense any more because “It’s the Thai way,” is one dead horse that has been beaten so hard his eyeballs are dangling by the optic nerve, and his head is facing the wrong direction.  If “It’s the Thai way,” is truthfully the legitimate explanation for everything then I must ask:  How has this society not collapsed under the weight of its own apathy? 

No one seems to care about anything.  Nothing worries them, and as someone who is regularly blinded and tripped up by her own neuroses, this worries me.  See how out of hand I’ve gotten?  I’m worried that they aren’t worried.  It’s like a brain teaser for the insane. 

They don't even seem to care that this poor
elephant looks like a victim of elder abuse.

I could make anxiety an Olympic sport, and the Thais are totally unconcerned that these crazy westerners keep pestering them about contract terms and using phrases like “stipulated in our agreements,” “null and void,” “expressly stated,” and “not a negotiation.”  

Sidenote:  Sometimes when I have to talk like a serious adult, I sound exactly like my mom J 

Sometimes I wish I could be as relaxed as them, but then just the thought of losing so much control makes my stomach tighten and my pulse race.  I have a lot to learn, or this place will give me hypertension. 

That we lack a kitchen in our posh new digs is a fact that is beginning to pose a small problem.  “Oh, the food here is so cheap!” we shouted to everyone who would listen in the beginning.  It is cheap.  But there’s the small matter that we have no money.  Not “we have no money” like, “this exchange rate is fantastic, but we should probably wait until we see what we’ve got left over before we buy that beautiful wood carving of elephants making love.”  Rather, it’s the kind of “we have no money” situation where we start to skip meals. 

Our rent is due in six days and we’re still not positive that we will be getting paid before that.  We have a better chance of correctly predicting the participants in the next five Super Bowls than we do of guessing what number our salary will finally work out to.  Our coordinator told us today that she secured for us a small raise and an assurance that they won’t try to make us move back to Aoluk, but a verbal commitment here (or a written commitment, for that matter) is about as valid as if we’d smeared mud on a post-it and tried to have it notarized, so we’ll see.

If there was a fixer for a situation like this, we would sure like to meet him.  Somebody with a thorough understanding of the idiosyncrasies of both our cultures, to swoop in and marshal a deal with the powers-that-be at this institution – if you want to call it such.  “Institution” implies a higher degree of organization and knowing what the heck is up than this place can ever lay claim to. 

When I ask a question, I generally have come to expect a definitive answer, one that will leave me with a distinct feeling of closure or information or whatever it was I was seeking when I asked the question in the first place.  Over the past month though, I’ve been fed a steady diet of, for lack of a better word:  bullshit. 

Seriously. 

I know they don’t mean for it to come off that way, but the fact remains that it does.  It seems no one wants to say “no” to my face for fear of upsetting me.  Instead they say yes, or nod, or simply grunt a strange throaty noise of affirmation that I think is something akin to one made by an old, out of shape man having sex with someone far too young for him.  It’s a noise that grates on my eardrums and my soul, kind of like when Americans say “HUH?!” in that loud, nasal, Fran Drescher way we often do when we’re not thinking instead of a far politer “pardon me?” 

My dad always says that I should never hesitate to ask a scary question because “The worst they can say is no.”  Except here, they’ll never say no.  The worst they can say is yes when they mean no and I don’t learn the truth for three days.  If you are going to say “no” and risk upsetting me, that’s fine – we can fix that.  If you say “yes,” but don’t mean it, that is not fine.  It takes a lot more to fix that, and there’s roughly 89% more of a chance I will cause you physical pain in the process.

It’s funny what they choose to have guidelines about and what is left to total chaos. The students get away with bloody murder.  I realize not speaking Thai puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding what’s up, but it’s pretty obvious just walking around campus that there is zero discipline.  No one is ever in class.  Kids are wandering around campus, screaming, fighting, hanging out of windows, and every few hours there is a noise that makes me think either someone’s been shot with a large caliber gun or a wall has fallen on a car.  As far as any of us can tell, there is no real means of punishing students for acting like chimps strung out on Pixi Stix – no detention or anything similar.  The place resembles a home for delinquents more than an educational institution.

Students of M2/10 with Flat Garrett, pretty much the only
class that behaves and acts like they want to learn.

Why they choose to have rules about things like sleeve length and which hand to eat with rather than important things is thus far a mystery.  It seems time would be better spent working on the discipline thing, or the massive waste management problem that makes the entire country smell like ass and leaves you wondering if God is testing our gag reflexes in anticipation of some sort of world-wide-doomsday-Porta-Potty-explosion, or the far more repairable problem they have of never saying what they mean.  I'm living in one giant grey area.  It’s infuriating.  If you mean to tell me that no, it’s doubtful my underwear will ever find their way back to me, then holy macaroni, just say it. 

The bush has been beaten around so much that there is now a moat around the bush.  It’s filled with sea water, and sail boats, and probably dragons, and a forty-foot waterfall.  We can continue to ride around the bush in our sail boats with the beautiful Brazilian skipper (Why is there a Brazilian here you want to know?  Don’t ask questions that have no answers.), or we can just start whaling on the bush.  Beat the hell out of it even if it starts spitting thorns in our eyes. 

Of course, unless I plan on spending the next four months with thorns in my eyes (or if I'm being a real Pittsburgh girl - jaggers), I'm going to need to learn to just let it all go, slide off me like rain.  I won't lie - it's gonna be hard, but the alternative is probably a stomach ulcer and I have a feeling that hospital bill would be expensive.

The Other Side of This Life

Last weekend, we discovered that Koh Lanta was a little piece of paradise.  We also discovered that "It take not long" means "It will take three and a half hours on four different vehicles to get there, and when you do get there, your room won't be ready which will of course lead you to believe they forgot about your arrival and you will have to tent it up on the beach."

Of course then we saw the beach and 1) We didn't care if we'd have to sleep there (putting a pin for a moment on the inevitable buffet we would provide to the mosquito population) and 2) None of the first three and a half hours of the journey even mattered anymore.  Why, you ask?

This is why:

We ate at the little restaurant in the resort, and enjoyed the lovely view of the ocean while we lunched.

Also, the bar next to the restaurant, the Why Not Bar, had a cool tribute to some familiar rock stars:

Clockwise from top left:  Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Bob Dylan,
Ozzy Osborne, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Bob Marley, & Jimi Hendrix

We had it in our heads that we would be able to go hiking - an activity deemed necessary by us since we've been consuming more calories than we've been burning these days.  And with every weekend spent in a bikini, things could get unsightly, FAST.  Unfortunately, the closest hiking area was a ten minute ride away, and after the whole morning spent in that van, the last thing we wanted to do was get into another vehicle.

We kept our expectations low going into this whole thing since we barely paid anything by American standards for our room at the "resort," but we were pleasantly surprised by all of it.  Props to the travel agent across the street for scoring us a nice room with an sweet view!

Fortunately there looked to be some interesting terrain down the beach from our resort and we set about attempting to create a workout out of relatively flat ground and what appeared to be volcanic rock.  This guess comes from what I remember from a third grade geology unit, but judging by the fact that there was no volcano in sight, I'm going to assume I'm wrong.

Carlyn and I scaled what we thought was a relatively tall rock, but upon examination from across the beach turned out to be about a third the height of the PPG Christmas tree.

Climbing up

View from the top

Posing awkwardly as giant rock pieces poke me in the butt

Posing gracefully because four years of modelling
apparently teach you how to sit on rocks :)

Climbing down.  See, it totally looks steep, right?

Steep steep steep!

We didn't get to actually relax on the beach until a bit late in the day and believe it or not, it was a little chilly!  We saw one of the most spectacular sunsets though!!!  I took about a hundred pictures of it, so forgive me if it was a little difficult to narrow down my favorites.

While we were laying on the beach, a girl came up to us to tell us about the "Sunset Bar,," and since we had nothing better to do that night, we thought we'd check it out.  The "right up the street" location the girl lied to us about really meant "right UP the street," as in up a nearly completely vertical road.  It was brutal and further proof that we are so totally out of shape that John Goodman could probably beat us in a foot race.

The restaurant was worth the near cardiac arrest though because it sat right on the edge of a bluff over looking the water.  We couldn't actually see anything because it was pitch black outside, but we could hear the ocean waves below us and the general ambiance of the place was awesome.

We're slightly obsessed with fruit shakes.
Nary a dinner passes without us enjoying one.

Also, there was a 'Fire Show," which was basically a guy twirling flaming batons, which I'm sure if she practiced, Jane could still do better, but it was definitely a fun way to be entertained before dinner.

I ordered red curry, but this looks more like green curry or yellow curry.  Either way, it was fantastic :)

I'm still not positive if one is supposed to put the rice in the
bowl of curry and vegetables, or if it is better to put the curry
and vegetables on the rice.  I prefer the latter.