One Day in January

Khao Khanap Nam

5:10am:  Alarm goes off.  I must be imagining things, because I just fell asleep – damn those fireworks outside at 2am.  Realize I am not, in fact, imagining things.  That is the alarm.

5:11am:  Reset alarm for 5:15.  Five more minutes won’t hurt, right? 

5:15am:  Alarm goes off again.  Neither Carlyn nor I have moved from our beds.  Stacy is probably light years ahead of us. 

5:25am:  Dexterity sucks in the morning – drop mascara brush.  Slow motion drop-and-catch-attempt results in black smears on face and bedspread, black streak in hair.  Too tired to care much.

5:35am:  Realize checking Facebook is not a good use of time in the morning.  Ten minutes to go and still not dressed.  Wonder why there is a small swarm of ants around one shoe.

5:42am:  Stacy pokes her head in and announces she is going to start walking to the bus.  Neither Carlyn nor I are fully dressed.  School bags are not packed.  Left shoe is nowhere to be found.

5:45am:  Notice the room is a complete disaster.  Dirty clothes are indistinguishable from clean ones.  Promise self to organize upon return from school.

5:47am:  Carlyn and I hurry out the door.  One or both of us forgets a computer or a coffee packet and must return to the room.  Shoes make quite the racket on the marble floor of the deserted hotel.  Wrought iron gate screeches awake the entire street as we attempt to make a “quiet” getaway.

5:52am:  Speed walking to bus stop.  It is depressingly dark outside.  Women are doing sad-looking aerobics in a parking lot.

Monkey Man holding up lights near bus stop

5:59am:  Something smells terrible

6:00am:  Stay dog looks as if it has a question for us.  Crazy man yelling up the steps to the temple.  Monks are ignoring him.  Man hawks a loogie in an alley to our right.  Typical morning in Krabi.

6:02am:  Something smells terrible.

6:03am:  Arrive slightly out of breath at bus stop.  Stacy sitting serenely reading a book.  Sigh of relief that the bus hasn’t left without us.

6:04am:  Bus arrives.  Thai people elbow us out of the way (literally) to get on.

6:05am:  Situate self in seat.  Wonder where to put last night’s leftovers I’m bringing for lunch so they won’t fall.  Put iPod in ears.

6:06am:  Leftovers fall anyway despite careful strategizing of best position.  Bus still hasn’t left.  Curse self for forgetting to put on deodorant.

6:12am:  Bus finally leaves

6:20am:  Bus arrives at bus terminal where it sits for ten minutes while no one gets on.  Welcome the head of the person in front of me as they recline their seat onto my lap.  Stacy nearly throws up as a man coughs on her neck.  Carlyn has no place for her legs.

6:20-6:50:  Drift in and out of sleep listening to iPod on high enough volume to bust eardrums to drown out Thai music. 

7:00:  Arrive in Aoluk.  Climb over the person who refuses to move to let me gracefully off the bus.  Must grab back of chair, swing leg wide so people on the sidewalk see my underwear (good thing I wore nice ones), and straddle the person suggestively in order to vacate the bus.  Stumble off bus swearing under my breath that that woman really should have just moved.  Blonde, brunette and redhead stagger down the street half-asleep to the school.

7:04am:  Something smells terrible.  Gag reflexes not ready for something so foul so early.  Fight urge to puke.

7:05am:  Arrive at school.  Sign in at the office.   See Intestines Dog.  Can’t stop head from turning to make sure it’s actually him.  See the bright red intestines poking out of his butt.  Yep, it’s him.  Wonder how he is still alive.

7:10am:  Arrive at the English department.  Not a soul around.  Thankfully, they gave us a key.  Make “coffee,” eat breakfast, check email, creep on Facebook, decide which movie to watch today.

8:00am:  National anthem plays

9:30am:  First class of the day.  M 2/2.  Arrive ten minutes late – because that’s what you do here.  Seems to be too many students in the classroom.  Don’t know which ones don’t belong here.  Hand out worksheet to all; figure the stragglers will eventually leave.  They don’t.

9:45am:  Attempt to shout over the din in the classroom.  How do they have this much energy so early in the morning? 

9:50am:  Realize it’s pointless to try to shout.  Settle for talking only to the students in front.  They’re paying attention, but have no freaking idea what I’m saying.

10:00am:  Leave class ten minutes early – also because that’s how things work here.

10:15am:  Must choose carefully what to watch during break.  Once watched an episode of American Horror Story at my desk – was blindsided by kinky sex scene and had to minimize screen quick like a cat.  Know for sure that moment would be when someone looks over and thinks I’m watching porn.  Choose to watch The Usual Suspects. 

11:10am:  Second class of the day:  M3/5.  Shot in the dark here as no more than five students have ever shown up for this class. 

11:30am:  Have waited twenty minutes and still only five students are in the classroom.  “Students skip class,” they tell me as they’ve said the last twelve times I’ve asked.  No explanation beyond that is provided.  Give present students attendance credit, and skip out of there early.

11:50am:  Continue movie as I eat lunch.  Gabriel Byrne was totally hot in 1995. 

12:05pm:  Thai teacher offers food.  It is brown goo wrapped in a banana leaf.  It’s impolite to decline food offered.  I take a bite and immediately regret it.  It tastes like brown goo wrapped in a banana leaf.

12:37:  Internet goes out for the seventh time.  Restart the damn useless air card that costs us 900baht a month and check torrent downloads for the fortieth time today.  Season 2 of Party Down has been downloading for a week.  Curse the Thai intent.  Return to spicy noodles and The Usual Suspects.

12:50pm:  Third class of the day:  M2/9.  Can’t. Hear. Self. Think.

1:20pm:  Ear drums are bleeding.

1:40pm:  Fourth class of the day:  M3/7.  Literally can’t ever remember who is in this class.  Vaguely remember them not sucking.

1:45pm:  First thing that happens upon walking into class:  "Teacha, teacha!" one girl holding her friend's phallic-shaped lollipop calls to me.  I turn to look.  Girlchild A thrusts lollipop in an out of Girlchild B's mouth, making sure I see it bulge against her cheek.  It is too much lunacy for my brain to handle.  I giggle.  That probably makes me a terrible teacher, but a girl can't help but laugh at fourteen-year-olds making a blow job joke.  YOU try to keep a straight face, yo!

2:10pm:  Back to The Usual Suspects.

3:15pm:  Last class of the day:  M3/9.  Last period of the day.  No one wants to be here, including me.

 

3:45pm:  End class early because students want to go watch the football tournament going on – yes, during school hours. 

3:46pm:  Finish up at desk before booking it out of this joint.

4:05pm:  Kevin Spacey is Keyser Söze.

4:07pm:  Wonder why Kevin Spacey annoys me in every movie he’s ever been in.

4:10pm:  Shove our way through throngs of students to trek up the hill to the bus stop.  Sun is blazing.  Feels about 140 degrees.  Sweating from places I wasn’t aware had sweat glands.  Use umbrella to shield sun.  Feel like a fool.  Don’t much care.

4:12pm:  Something smells terrible (It’s not us).

4:20pm:  Minivan bus arrives.  Wait patiently in line.  Shoved out of the way by Thais.  No way will we fit on this one.

4:23pm:  Larger bus arrives.  Attempt to be more aggressive.  Still shoved out of the way by Thais.  Don’t even know where they came from.  Dejectedly sit back on hot stone bench to wait for inevitable death by sun-induced spontaneous combustion.

5:00pm:  Bus finally arrives.  Slip off seat due to excessive sweat.  Air conditioning blasting through broken vent.  No way to fix it. 

5:17pm:  Sweat freezes to body. 

5:26pm:  Begin shivering.

6:00pm:  Driver insists the 7-Eleven on the main road is “last stop” even though he’s dropped off every last person but us at their homes.  Pretends to not understand English. 

6:02pm:  Attempt to look menacing.  Give directions in mangled Thai.  Driver reluctantly takes us the extra 90 seconds to Marina.

6:05pm:  Tumble into room in desperate need of air conditioning only to remember the air conditioning is operated by the key which was used to lock the door and has been at school with us all day.  Crank A/C to freezing degrees and lay spread eagle on the bed until shivering again. 

6:30pm:  Look at giant mess on the floor.  Too tired to do anything about it.  Dinner sounds like a better option.

6:45pm:  Dinner at our favorite vendor.  We look half-dead, but our day is brightened by Yui, our favorite waitress/cook/shake maker who looks like she could be Hollywood’s next It-Girl if we could only smuggle her home with us.

7:30pm:  Stuffed and exhausted.  Shower.  Dry hair despite the fact that it does nothing in terms of aesthetics – it smells mildew-y if it air-dries.  Gross.

8:00pm:  Settle into bed for a few hours of watching movies because we’re too exhausted to do anything else – Had no idea The Talented Mr. Ripley was a psychological thriller.

10:30pm:  Go to bed sufficiently creeped out by Matt Damon.

Riding the Lightning

I’ve always had kind of a weird aversion to meeting new people.  And before jumping directly to the explanation that accuses me of being unsociable, hang on for other, perfectly logical reasons.  First of all, and I am working on this, I have a tendency to give a terrible first impression.  I don’t mean to come off as a bitch, I promise.  Jane seems to think it’s because I stand with my arms crossed and often appear “standoff-ish.”  I swear I’m working on it!  Second, and I think I get this from my dad, but I tend to be a bit of a wallflower until I can get a pulse on the people and the situation.  I’m not one of those people who are bubbly right out of the gate, and that probably adds to the poor first impression.  I’m not judging, people, I’m observing.  Give me time!  And third – meeting new people is exhausting.  I’ve got to hide the crazy and be likeable right out of the gate which is difficult since, admittedly, I’m kind of an acquired taste – one of those people you need to get to know to love.

Riding in boats with girls.
 (L-R): Emily, Stacy, Carlyn, me, Ali, Lauren

Okay so now that that’s cleared up, I was understandably a little hesitant to join in on the activities of last Saturday.  A few months back, we met two girls from Dublin who are teaching English in Krabi.  We’ve had dinner with them a couple times, but haven’t hung out other than that.  They suggested that we rent a longtail boat for the day with a friend of theirs, their friend’s boyfriend and the boyfriend’s friend.  We could bring our own food and drinks and just make a day out of it.  The whole idea of being trapped on a boat with people I barely knew and people I didn’t know at all was daunting, but I didn’t want to be a buzzkill, so I put on a happy face and joined the fun.

If I’m being honest here, I was kind of expecting to have a miserable time.  And sometimes, you see, it pays to have low expectations.  The amount of people and alcohol involved kept increasing to the point where I was sure I would be the only sober person hating life on a boat full of wasted, happy strangers.  None of this turned out to be true.  No one got wasted.  No one was sober though either, though.  The strangers are no longer strangers and they were awesome.  AND – and this is the kicker – I had a blast. 

Have I mentioned I live here?  :)

This always happens.  The course of events is usually as follows:  1) I whine that I don’t want to do something.  2)  One or both of my parents tells me to do it anyways because they’re sure I’ll end up having a good time.  3)  Nine times out of ten, I have a good time and have to come home to tell my parents they were right (which is almost more annoying than how annoyed I thought I’d be in the first place).  This time my parents weren’t prodding me to do anything, but damnit if I didn’t have both of their voices in my head anyhow.  Thanks guys.

The boat took off from a really, really, really disgusting little muddy place in Aonang.  It smelled like a petting zoo AND a sewage treatment plant all at once.  BUT once we got out of the cesspool near land, the water was beautiful crystal cerulean.  Absolutely gorgeous.  The day was beautiful, Carolina-blue skies all around. 

Our first stop was at some random giant rocks in the middle of the water.  It was apparently a good place to snorkel, so four of us jumped off the boat to splash around with the colorful fish.  Those left on the boat kept tossing hunks of bread at us in the water so every few minutes we were swarmed by these adorable little green and yellow fish. 

Snorkeling pit stop

Cute, cute fish

After snorkeling, our boatman, who was a friend of one of the Thai guys on the boat with us, took us to another totally random island.  We had no idea where we were, and when I asked, the name of the island sounded like a noise a goose would make right before it gets eaten by a goat, so I can neither remember nor pronounce it.  Anyways, it was this little spit of land that was basically our own private beach!  It was unbelievably hot though so we spent a good deal of time in the water.  We swam out a bit to an area of rocks where two rope ladders hung down into the water.  We climbed up the ladders and onto the rocks where we did our best Tom-Cruise-on-the-side-of-a-building impression and then jumped off into the water.  Looking up from the water, the jump wasn’t actually very far at all – probably maybe just twenty feet, but when I was standing on the rocks looking down at the water, it was scary!  After baking in the sun for a while, we headed to Poda Island where we piled our towels and blankets together and whiled away the afternoon with Thai beer, rum with pineapple juice, and lively conversation. 

Private little beach

After returning to Krabi, we were having too much fun to let the evening end (read between the lines: We weren’t quite ready to switch to water) so we planned to shower and head back to check out the Aonang nightlife.  We are normally the perfect guests in our hotel, but that night we blasted music and tore through our clothes like monsoons, dancing and singing as we got ready to go out.  It was a Saturday night though, and after dealing with undomesticated chimpanzees all week, we needed to unwind!  By the time we got down to the night market for dinner though, the wind had picked up and it smelled like rain.  Undeterred, we sat down to dinner under the umbrellas and no sooner had we gotten our food that it started to pour, and we learned the unfortunate truth that the umbrellas were useless.  The customary thing to do in a situation like this would be to say, “Hey there, we’re getting drenched; let’s get the heck out of here.”  But like I said, we hadn’t switched to water yet, so we had no real issue with sitting there getting utterly soaked.  We did, however, have enough sense to 86 our going out plans in light of the fact that our mode of transportation back to Aonang was on motorbikes which aren’t so rain-friendly.

When we got back to our rooms, we had to literally ring the water out of our clothes.  As we dried our rain-drenched hair in nothing but our bras and underwear, Stacy made a keen observation:  “We are every guy’s fantasy right now.”  Truth.  We totally were J

From a Whisper to a Scream

The day started out normal enough – or, more accurately, as normal as you can get on a day when the scheduled activities included gorging myself on Party Down reruns and pretending we haven’t noticed how greasy the students have gotten after spending three days sleeping on the floor of the classrooms – but it ended with three Americans who now have a record in Thailand.  A criminal record.  Yeah, you know that awkward moment when you almost get deported?  That happened today.

This one has Stacy's name on it, but we all got
matching reports from the "Royal Thai Police"

We have been waiting for over two weeks for the paperwork to be processed for our Thai work permits.  This is something the school is responsible for getting done and which should have been completed about a month after we arrived.  But like I’ve said before, this is Thailand, and nothing gets done in a timely fashion here.  Also on our plates was the visa extension we needed to stay in the country.  The visa we got before we left North America is called a Non-Immigrant B Visa, and is a working visa good for 90 days from the date we arrived in the country, which for us was October 21.  Because we’ve been deluged with more information than the human brain can process, and because nothing here is ever explained fully, we were under the (false) impression that we needed to be in possession of the work permit in order to get the visa extension.  Logically, this makes sense because how else could you get an extension on a working visa without proof (work permit) that you are actually working in Thailand.  Turns out all the proof we needed was a document from the school, but we found this out too late.  We couldn't understand why they kept telling us to go get our visa extensions before the work permit was in, and they wouldn't explain what was going on, so we figured we needed to wait and do both at once.  This was wrong.  We had also been told that we had a seven-day window on either side of the 90 days in which we could get the extension.  If we failed to report after the 97^th day, we would be charged a 2000 THB charge.  This was also wrong.  It obviously comes down to the simple fact that we should have either been paying more attention or double-checking things we thought to be true – really this was our fault and could have been avoided had we been more diligent.  It would have been nice, however, if the school had been more on the ball and helped us sort through the quagmire of paperwork.

Original visa

Today we got a call from one of the teachers while were sitting in the English department moaning about whatever it is that’s going on with the United States Congress that is preventing all our favorite illegal downloading sites from illegally downloading our shows.  The teacher told us that our work permits were in, and we could leave school and pick them up.  We got a van from Aoluk to drop us off right at the Labor Office where we picked up our new work permits no sweat.  Then we walked from there to the immigration office to get the visa extension.  It was at about this moment when the shit hit the fan.

There were three people in the office dealing with us:  A man we later realized was a police sergeant (this was a police matter, yo!), a young-ish woman and a middle-aged woman who from the get-go was nothing but nasty to us.  Then she saw the stamp on our passports that said our visa expired on January 18.  “You overstay two days!” she kept yelling.  “Visa until 18.  Now it 20!  You pay fine!”  I was the first of the three of us to sit with her to get the extension and you all know that having me sit there while this lady spits in my face was a bad idea:  You yell at me, I will yell back at you.  I raised my voice to match the decibel level of hers and pointed out that we had seven days after the expiration to get the extension.  She wouldn’t let me speak and just kept yelling at me in incomprehensible English.  That’s the thing about Thais – they don’t let you speak your piece.  They say what they want and then while you are trying to talk they either talk over you, ignore you, or flat-out walk away.  It’s one of the single most frustrating things I’ve ever experienced.  This lady was of the “I won’t listen to what you have to say, and I will just keep repeating myself as if acting like a damn broken record will make you shut up” camp.  Steam started pouring from my ears and Stacy and Carlyn stepped up to argue with me.  We kept mentioning the seven-day grace period and she just kept saying “overstay!” 

Thai work permit.  We got those photos taken
here, and they Photoshopped us to within
an inch of our lives: Lightened our skin
(as theyare wont to do), darkened our
eyebrows and added more eyeliner.  We look
like creepy porcelain dolls.

This went on far longer than it should have before we finally called our coordinator who literally did nothing but say that the school will reimburse us for the fine – and let’s face it, this school says a lot of things.  They’re a whole lotta talk with zero follow-through, so if we actually do get reimbursed, I’ll have to place a call to the Pope, because it’ll be a genuine miracle.  When we saw we were still getting nowhere, we called our OEG director, hoping he could sort out the mess like he did with the housing mess earlier in the semester (he’s probably getting sick of us). 

Turns out, the “seven-day window” was actually not for the visa extension, but rather for “checking in” with immigration.  I still don’t understand this.  When would we ever have to check in with immigration if we weren’t getting the visa extension?  These are the types of things that need clarification…..in writing….in big, bold, black letters…more than once….and NOT when we’ve been in the country for four days and are overcome with paralyzing anxiety and jet lag.  We have been given so much confusing information that I feel like I’m living in a Tarantino movie.

We did end up having to pay the fine and the extension fee which was a pain, BUT it turns out that if the people had been in a bad mood, they could have just deported us right then and there so we can be thankful that didn’t happen.  If that lady wasn’t in a bad mood, I would hate to see what a bad mood actually looks like on her.  I imagine such a mood would come standard with its own flying monkeys.  We also had to sign what appeared to be an official police report.  In America, I’ve got a couple speeding tickets and a few dozen unpaid parking tickets from the John Carroll Campus Security (Ha! I knew I could get away with that!), but in Thailand, I’m a freaking felon….I might not actually be a felon, but it sounds more badass to say it that way, so we’ll stick with felon.

Top half is the visa extension.  Bottom half
tells all concerned that we violated our
visa....future implications?  Who knows.

To further complicate matters, they can only extend our visa according to what the document from the school says our contract is until, which for us is February 28.  We finish teaching on that date, but Carlyn and I don’t leave until the end of March, and Stacy is here through mid-April, so that date was next to useless.  Probably what the school is supposed to do is lie and say that we are “employed” through whenever our return flight is so that the visa extension actually makes sense.  This didn’t happen for a few reasons.  1) Because it seems our school was actually quite impressively unprepared for farang teachers and all the paperwork such an undertaking entails, 2) Because they never double-check anything, and 3) Because they inexplicably lumped all the paperwork for the work permit and the visa extension together when really they were two completely separate issues.  This is a serious problem because this means our visa is only valid until February 28.  What we’ll try to do is get the school to write another letter saying we’re here until April 1 so that we can get yet another extension (which, we will NOT be paying for thankyouverymuch).  If that doesn’t happen, which let’s face it, in the land of Murphy’s Law, it won’t, then we do have to make a border-run to Malaysia to get a tourist visa before our current ones expire.  I believe these are only good for seventeen days which would mean that we would have to do it again smack in the middle of March during our much-anticipated, all-we-live-for-these-days travel time.

So we survived and haven’t been deported and we aren’t sitting in some sort of immigrant jail, so I guess we escaped the day relatively unscathed.  We avoided what could have been a three-way meltdown of epic-proportions had we not quickly found a ride home when two motorcycle taxis magically pulled into the immigration office as we were walking out.  It’s like the universe sensed we were on the verge of punching a cat in the face and intervened to save the cat.    

Anthropology 201: Lessons Learned

On the beach in Patong, Phuket.  Don't let the picture fool
you - this beach was absolutely packed with tourists.

I’m still learning after nearly three (!!) months in the Land of Smiles.

ª      Where have all the men gone?  Most of the men here don’t look like real men.  They’re all these emaciated, skinny-jeans-wearing, sexually ambiguous, Asian David Bowies.  It may sound like reverse sexism, but guys aren’t supposed to weigh less than me unless they’re like ten years old.  This is a fact.

With some girls from M2/5

ª      After three months, you would think students understand that I cannot read Thai.  For crying out loud, they’ve got three different symbols for the “kh” sound….which until three months ago, I didn’t realize that was a sound.  The kids are forever writing their names on their papers in Thai and I have to constantly ask for clarification.  “Chu len,” I say to them, which means “nickname,” but I must be pronouncing it wrong because they just laugh at me.

ª   Some of my favorite nicknames:  Ping-Pong, Tukta, Hliw (However you say that), Um, Poom (This kid will be what causes my psychotic break.  Let the proper authorities know.), Fang, Poo, Pee (Seriously), Guitar, Pakbung, Golf, Sprite, Jane (Hey mom!), Sanook (This means fun in Thai), Baifern, Mistine, Fcci (I still haven’t figured out if this is real or if the kid is just effing with me), Pookie, Baitoey, Chompoo, Smile, Hondabeat, Sara (Holla!!), Porn (Thai for “beauty,” ironically), and Pancake.

ª     The kids are so violent with each other that were this America, they would, I kid you not, be arrested for assault and battery. 

    With students during the New Year's party

      Worry not that I’ll inadvertently (or possibly on purpose, depending on your view of me) insult the king.  Such an offense is punishable by imprisonment, and judging by what the non-behind filthy bars part of the country is like, prison is hardly somewhere I’d fancy going.  I really don’t even know enough about King Rama XI to even attempt to insult him.  All I know is that his people love him.  Seriously LOVE him.  I mean his birthday is a national holiday and Father’s Day.  If there’s anyone who doesn’t like him, I’ll never hear them say it (not that I would understand them anyhow).  Even stepping on money with his face on it is highly offensive.  It’s not that I’d like to insult him – truly I have no problem simply existing here for five months without ruffling too many feathers.  I know, I know, the idea of me not ruffling feathers is a foreign concept to many who know me, but just take me at my word.  I’m pretty sure though that as an American, I’ve always taken for granted the ability, the right even, to insult, publically disapprove of, or criticize the leader of my country, his leadership skills and his decision-making.  Pick a president and you’ll hear good and terrible things said about him on any street corner in America.  It’s just something you never think about in a country like ours, that you have the right as a citizen of the United States of America to voice your opinion about how your country is being run, that if you so desire, you can run down the street wrapped in an American flag with a tattoo on your forehead that says “Fuck Obama” and no one will ship you off to a prison camp.

This is Baifern, one of the best students

ª      People here should buy stock in Whiteout.  The students use it constantly.  And they never let it dry fully.  They just smudge it around with their fingers and write over it forcing me to later attempt to decipher what looks like a primitive Rorschach test.

ª     You know how there are those girls (and to be fair, some guys) so obsessed with bronzer but so lacking in brain cells (inhaling self-tanner will do that to you) that you can actually see the line on their jaw where their orange glow stops and their normal, human skin begins?  Here, it is the total opposite.  Being pale is envied.  Everyone loves our white skin.  Instead of bronzing power or lotion, they use whitening stuff.  For the first few days here, I kept wondering why the lotion aisle at 7-Eleven was full of toothpaste

ª     Everything here is SO sweet.  When talking about coffee, we do the ironic air quotes because the “coffee” here is SO not coffee.  It’s little packets of powder to mix with hot water (yeah, I’m the snob who’s never had instant coffee) that tastes like a combination of hot chocolate with a tiny bit of coffee and an overdose of sugar crystals. 

    This is what "nail enamel remover" does.  Sure, it takes off the

    nail polish, but it also inexplicably turns your toes chalky white

      One of the things I miss like crazy is regular, unsweetened, brewed iced tea.  I got English black tea the other day, thinking erroneously that “black tea” would be just like black tea always is – bitter.  It was sweeter than any Bojangles southern sweet tea I’ve ever drank and spit back out in a South Carolina gutter.  Even the ketchup is sweet!  And by the way Thailand, putting it in a Heniz bottle does not fool this Pittsburgh girl into thinking that it’s actually Heinz.  If I don’t come home with like fifteen cavities, it will be a miracle.

      Our visas expired yesterday.  In order to get the necessary extension on the visa, we need our work permits.  The work permits still haven’t been delivered – because this is Thailand.  No other explanation is needed, really.  Our coordinator called us the other day when we erroneously thought they expired a couple weeks ago to tell us that the paperwork would take too long and that we would have to go spend a couple days in Malaysia and reenter the country to get a new visa.  Malaysia.  Malaysia.  Cause that’s how we wanted to spend our weekend:  in a hostel in freaking Malaysia.

ª      You know what it looks like when you feed a baby lemons?  Their face gets contorted and they sort of shiver, and even though it probably counts as some form of child abuse, you can’t help but laugh hysterically?  That’s what it was like watching my students eat Sour Patch kids for the first time.  Priceless!

ª      By the end of the day, the students stink.  They seriously smell so bad it makes my eyes water. 

ª    There is phys. ed classes here – outside…in the blistering sun…and the kids are wearing pants.  It gets so hot, I want to walk around naked, and these kids are playing ruby in sweatpants! 

New and Far, girls from M2/6

ª     There are no tampons here.  That’s a lie, actually – one can occasionally find the tiny o.b. ones that come without applicators, but for the most part, it’s maxi-pads across the board.  Luckily, I brought a ton with me or I would have been on the first flight home.  I don’t get it!  And I feel so sad for these terribly un-enlightened women who think feminine hygiene hasn’t progressed beyond wearing a giant, paper towel in your underwear.  Score one for North America!! 

I’m sensing I lightly traumatized both my dad and Bob and possibly a few other men with the last statement, so I’ll leave you with something funny:

ª      Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week, the kids have been involved in scouting activities….by sleeping at the school.  Even though we have no classes, we have to come in every day and sit in the English department with the Chinese teachers twiddling our thumbs.  The five of us are watching a lot of television online….and getting paid to do it J

Love/Addiction

If I haven’t mentioned it before, the Thai education system frequently leaves me scratching my head.  Oh I have mentioned it?  Two dozen times you say?  Okay well then suck it up and listen again!

You can see why we were itching to get here.

Last Friday yet another teacher was transferring schools (all this transferring mid-year is really counterproductive) so “maybe” we wouldn’t have school on Friday.  We already didn’t have school on Monday because it was “Teacher’s Day,” aka another excuse to avoid learning, so Carlyn and I made plans to spend the long weekend on Koh Jum.  Unfortunately, our plans, like most plans here, didn’t work quite as expected.  First, as it turns out, we did actually have school on Friday.  That teacher leaving only had a small contingent of teachers going with her so the rest of us had to teach.  Our coordinator told us we had to come on Friday because otherwise it would mess up our salary – which I’m sure is a lie because half the teachers here don’t show up for one thing or another.  So we went back to our travel agent, Ray-nu, to ask for a postponement on the ferry and a refund for Friday night.

I should mention that Friday was a completely pointless day to even be at school because due to a randomly scheduled soccer tournament and the fact that half the teachers were missing, most of the students chose not to show up for class.

Transport to the island

Finally, Saturday morning we took off for Koh Jum.  It is one of the most remote places I have ever been to which was completely awesome.  The only piers on the island either are not convenient for the resort traffic or else they’re only for bringing in food and supplies because the way we got to the resort was crazy cool.  A short ferry ride brought us about a half mile out from land.  The ferry slowed down and six longtail boats zoomed to meet up with it.  They tethered themselves together and to the ferry, three on each side, and began shouting out the names of the various resorts they represented.  We found the longtail boat for our resort, Sunsmile, and indicated as much to one of the workers who tossed our backpacks to the boat.  Then we hopped our way across three boats until we reached the one that would take us to Sunsmile.  It was so strange, but so cool!  And so Thai.

Our beautiful, if a bit rocky, deserted beach

We reached the resort at about 2pm and decided to walk to see if we could find a 7-Eleven (remember, they’re everywhere in Thailand).  I had forgotten a toothbrush and Carlyn needed to top up her phone.  We trekked uphill through the jungle behind our bungalows as choruses of what had to have been liver-sized bugs chirruped and wheezed and, honestly, freaked us out a little.  The cacophony was so intense that we had to raise our voices to a yell in order to carry on a conversation!  We finally made it to the “main” road only to realize we truly were in the middle of nowhere.  There was not a 7-Eleven to be found.  The occasional cluttered convenience store dotted the road, spaced unevenly between rickety homes and monkey families.  Every few minutes a seven-year-old zoomed past us on a motorbike. 

#106
Our lovely little bungalow :)

After walking for a bit (I did find a toothbrush…and ice cream), we realized that there was nothing in front of us but more of the same, so we turned around to head back to Sunsmile.  And we were met with a downpour.  Neither of us had thought to tote a rain jacket or umbrella along with us, so we got completely drenched in warm, jungle-rain as we slid downhill through the orange mud back to our bungalows.  The downpour lasted the remainder of the afternoon and into the early evening, so we didn’t get to beach it up at all on Saturday, but we did chill out on the porch of our bungalow devouring our books....Sidenote:  If you haven't read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, DO IT.  I was mesmerized. 

Don't know exactly what kind of flower these
were but they were gorgeous!

The bungalows were set up a hill just yards from the ocean in the middle of a sea-side jungle full of squatty palms and towering coconut trees.  Bird of Paradise–looking flowers in vibrant crimsons and marigolds hugged our porch, their giant green leaves poking through the wooden railing.  We hung our wet clothes to dry on the clothesline strung across the porch, but with the humid rain blowing in, they never actually dried.  As we read, we were serenaded by steady sheets of rain on the roof that drowned out the crashing of the waves.  Eventually the torrents of rain became a steady patter on the canopy of leaves before ceasing all together, surrendering sound effect duty to the tiny waves breaking onto the beach and the occasional putter of a longtail boat. 

Carlyn and I slept in workout clothes, figuring that was the only way we wouldn’t chicken out and actually go run on the beach in the morning.  We left around 7:30 and completed an utterly unidentifiable distance of beach alternately running and walking since we’re both so pathetically out of shape.  It was more than we had been doing though, so we considered it a win.  On our way back to Sunsmile, we explored some other resorts we thought our parents might like, picking up brochures and flawless shells in equal number.  When we got back to Sunsmile, we headed off in the opposite direction to find a resort I had seen online.  The map at Sunsmile showed that it was less than half the distance we had gone in the other direction, so we figured it would take us no time to get there.  Man, were we wrong.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

View of the water from our porch

We had to navigate through so much slippy, barnacle-covered rock that it took us probably an hour to traverse what should have taken fifteen minutes.  We finally got to the resort in question with no shortage of bloody fingers and bruised shins, picked up a brochure, and decided that taking the road back would be a better option than what we had just done.  Again – wrong.  The woman at the resort told us to hike up the stairs and go right and then left to find the road (or something).  We hiked up the stairs and went left and then right.  We hiked up and up and up and up until I started to worry we would get altitude sickness.  Every time we stopped to consider what the heck we were doing, we decided to go “just a little bit more” because the road “has to be right there!”  It was not.  Instead, after hiking for about an hour in the wrong direction, we came very near the top of the mountain at the hut of two crazy men who spoke no English and thought “Where is the road?” meant “Can I steal your motorbike?”  It was like walking into a horror movie.  If I’d been in the theater watching this saga unfold, I would have been yelling at the screen, “Stop walking!  They’ll skin you alive and take your earrings!”  Luckily, no such thing happened, but it was the impetus we needed to finally turn the heck around.  It took us an eighth of the time to make our way back to the resort where we had neglected to follow the correct directions and then continued in the opposite way of where we went originally.  We never did make it to the main road (there is only one road on that island, so where it was compared to where we were was anyone’s guess), but we did make it back to Sunsmile, exhausted, sweaty, starving, and slightly sunburnt.

Salas near the beach for when shade became imperative

We had been gone for five hours.  And lost for probably three and a half.

After scarfing down our brunch, we spent the rest of the beautiful day blissfully baking away on the beach.  The sun was blistering hot and we had to jump in the ocean quite frequently as it felt like we were literally inside a kiln.  When it got too hot to bear and we could feel our hearts beating in our heads, we retired to the shaded bamboo salas where we read until sunset.  Koh Jum was a paradise I could have easily spent a month enjoying in all its remote, do-nothing glory.  Is there such a thing as “too much beach?”  Can a person ever get tired of the sand between their toes and the sound of the surf?  I’m sure if it’s possible, such a concept will always remain foreign to me because the beach is the best escape from the frustrations of teaching little Thai miscreants than I can think of.  It’s the place I go in my head when I have the murderous urge to bitch-slap someone with a machete.  If only our time there could have lasted longer! 

Looking left from our bungalow

From our porch

#106....second from the left :)

Sunset over the Andaman Sea

Getting some shade in the sala

Flat Garrett on yet another tropical Thai island...the kid gets
around!!  (Although he's starting to look a little worse for the wear.)

Our early morning jog path

Our blanket was actually a GIANT towel!

Yes, please :)

Basic Rocket Science

Last weekend had no 21-hour cross-country journey, no multi-cultural holiday celebrations, and no drunken beach raves, but it was one of the most authentically Thai weekends we’ve had yet.  One of those weekends you look back on through a haze of Sunday night exhaustion and go, “Holy hell, I’m living in Thailand.”

Friday night we walked around a random festival in Krabi Town.  We have no clue what the festival was for.  There is almost always a festival of some sort, but we can usually make out what it’s about.  This one is as yet unexplained…but there have been fireworks every night for over a week so make of that what you will.  The tents at this festival were selling damn near everything, including large pieces of furniture, mattresses, caged birds and meat on sticks.  I kept thinking that it was probably good my parents aren’t here yet because Jane would totally have wanted to ship home a dining room set…or a gazebo.

Small class:  me, Alex, Kira, Carlyn, Ya and Stacy

Late Friday night – well, “late” by Thai standards where everything seems to close early for no reason – we decided we wanted to take a Thai cooking class the next day.  We had been planning to do the class for weeks but neglected to actually look at the brochure to see that it was closed on Sundays.  Figuring it was probably too late but worth a shot anyways, we called, and to our surprise – or not, I mean this is Thailand – we were in!

Ready to cook!

Saturday morning, a transport arranged by the cooking class picked us up at 8am sharp – a shock to be sure since we figured we’d be waiting until 8:45 at least (at which point we’d start to worry they’d forgotten about us).  The cooking school sawng-taew took us to an adorable outdoor kitchen nestled under a wooden bungalow.  It was as if someone had set up a kitchen in the bottom section of Olives.  A table was set for five people to the left.  At each place setting were a cookbook and an apron.  To the right was a series of woks on portable burners and in front of us was the chopping station: cutting boards shaped like tree trunks and large chefs knives set up on a high-top table. 

We waited a bit for our other cooking companions, a Greek mother and son from Germany (nope, not a typo).  Kira and Alex were pleasant fellow chefs even if she was exceedingly vocal about her dislike of sugar and he had that creepy, European mother-obsession-bordering-on-Oedipus-Complex thing going on.

I felt like an evil queen mixing up some
poisonous brew :)

Our instructor, Ya, was a lively middle-aged Thai woman who had a degree from a culinary university in Bangkok, because, as she pointed out, her parents didn’t subscribe to the archaic (but not so archaic in Thailand) theory that women don’t get educations.  She instructed us on the finer points of Thai cooking – we learned that “chop, chop, bang, bang” was the gist of it all as we chopped a variety of strange-looking things and ground spices into a fine powder with a very heavy mortar and pestle set.

We made four different types of curry – red, green, Massamun, and Penang (my favorite) – as well as pad Thai, spicy papaya salad, tom yam soup, chicken & cashew nuts, and fried rice.  We got to eat everything as we cooked which was delicious and saved the leftovers for dinner.  Since we paid in cash (a credit/debit card is next to useless over here except at an ATM), we got a free apron at the end!  I can’t wait to use my new Thai cooking skills at home! 

This one was SO heavy!!

When we were leaving, Ya was insistent that we come back and stay in her bungalows.  Evidently she’s got five homes but she’s all alone so I guess she was looking for company?  Kira said she was alone too – pointing to her son, she said, “He always work work work!” (Yeah no kidding you overbearing mother; he’s thirty-five years old and should have his own life that doesn’t involve joining you at yoga and waxing appointments) – and that she would love to come stay with Ya.  It was clear that Ya was actually speaking to Carlyn, Stacy and I, not the Greek Germans.  So that was awkward.

We were home by noon and stuffed beyond belief so my food coma lasted for a couple hours.  I love the adventures, but sometimes it’s fantastic to just chill out on a Saturday afternoon.

Pad Thai!

Delicious feast!!

Leftovers...take away is almost always in these funny little bags

Saturday night I corrected a terrible wrong that has been eliciting horrified, half-frozen expressions from people since this summer:  I finally watched Harry Potter #7, Part 2.  Oh hush with the judgment, people.  Carlyn hadn’t seen it either, so we geeked out together, excited that we were at long last witnessing the finale in the saga of the boy wizard who grew up with us and depressed that it was actually over.  It was like the final nail in the coffin of my childhood….not to be melodramatic or anything.

True story.

If Saturday was relaxing, Sunday was anything but:  We rented a motorbike. 

For serious you guys, we really did it. 

All ready to pull out on the street and then this happened.

At first, I was supposed to be the driver so I went with our Thai mom to rent one…at the same place that does our laundry.  I think they do bikini waxes and sell insurance too.  I tried to act all badass like a real biker chick, but I think it was pretty obvious I had no idea what I was doing.  The lady seemed a little reluctant to rent to me, and with so much lost in translation, the whole thing was rather difficult.  She’s trying to explain to me how to work it but neglected to tell me how to accelerate.  It was a simple enough thing to learn, but since I’ve never driven a motorcycle before, I had no idea it was with the handle (Or, I’m sure I did know this, but was far too nervous to remember).  It didn’t help that the bike was freaking huge and SO heavy, and I’m not so big or strong.  I got increasingly frustrated with her because she wouldn’t show me how to make it go forward!! and kept trying to scoot it forward with my feet, and she was understandably skittish to rent to the deranged girl trying to drive a motorbike like Fred Flintstone.  She kept saying “no” all sad-like and miming scraping knees and elbows because she was sure that I would never be able to drive the thing without crashing.  It was becoming more apparent that she didn’t want me to have it, so once I figured out that the handle was the accelerator (with no help from her), I just took off on it.  Figured that was the only way it could take it was just to hijack it.  Except I’d already paid, so it wasn’t technically hijacking.  I was a little unsteady – it felt giant – but eventually I started to figure things out. 

When I was satisfied with my test run enough to go back home to get the girls (yup, all three of us were going to ride this), I came to an intersection and realized I had no idea how to stop gracefully while balancing the monstrosity.  Go ahead and tell me it’s just like balancing a bike and I’ll tell you what my parents and a couple dozen ditches on the Montour Trail already know:  I’m not actually that good on a bicycle.  I started freaking out that I had to slow down, check both ways for cars, turn slightly, and then continue down a hill.  Next thing I know, I’m veering towards a row of parked bikes and motorbikes in front of a hostel and I have no idea how to avoid them.  I keep over-steering and wobbling and then I sideswipe the entire row with my left knee.  I could hear the slow crescendo of sound from what I’m sure was a Stooges-worthy domino-effect toppling of bikes behind me, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn around and look.  I knew I had only really hit everything with the side of the bike and my knee, so there was no actual damage except to my ego, but they were for sure all on the ground.  If I’d done anything really terrible, someone would have started chasing me, but a Thai guy on the sidewalk just said “mai pen rai, mai pen rai” and went to pick up all the bikes.  Another Thai guy encouraged me “sl-owly, sl-owly” to cross the street, and I was so blinded by my own embarrassment I barely acknowledged these two kind souls.

Driving!!

Naturally, that little event shook my confidence to drive with two other humans behind me, so Stacy took over driving responsibilities and aside from a few close calls and more than one instance of her yelling “Get out of the way, asshole!” to whatever unfortunate farang got in her way, the rest of the day passed without incident.  Unfortunately, because the bikes are only really allowed to be rented to two farangs to ride - which as far as I'm concerned is discriminatory since I've seen an entire Thai family of five squished on one motorbike - we only got two helmets.  Thus the person in the middle (me) didn't get a helmet (sorry, mom).  I tried driving again later on a less crowded street and....SUCCESS!!  I feel confident that when we do it again, I won't crash into any parked vehicles, motorized or otherwise.

woo hoo!!

The day before, on our way back from the cooking class, we passed through Aonang, the little beach town near us and saw that THERE WAS A STARBUCKS!!!  We cursed our ignorance that we had not known there was such magnificence so close to us and vowed to come back the next day.  Thus the motorbike.  It should be noted that we easily could have taken a sawng-taew for 100 baht each round trip, but we thought this would be more of an adventure.  Understatement of the year.

We drove to Aonang (only managing to get lost in a random Muslim community once) and parked ourselves for an hour at Starbucks where I finally finally got to enjoy the blessed brilliance that is an UNSWEETENED black tea.  It was perfection.  My teeth enamel thanked me.

After Starbucks, we ventured next door to McDonalds….not to eat the food (ptooie!), but rather to act like insufferable tourists and take our picture next to the Ronald statue.  You see, this was no typical Ronald McDonald.  He was posing in a frozen wai.  How very Thai.

Yes mom, I am standing with my feet wayyy spread apart.
Sorry 'bout that.  Also, I've got crazy serial killer hair.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach.  Aonang is certainly does not have the paradise appeal of Railay or Koh Chang or Lanta, but it was a whole lot cheaper and we got a tan, so it was fine for teachers on a budget.

We made it home on the bike and both our Thai mom and the rental lady were positively shocked that we were alive and the bike was unharmed.  Aces J J

Woosh, thank goodness it was a fake monkey!
And it had a beer!!

Garden gnomes are creepy no matter the culture.

Reclining Buddha on the side of the road we stopped
to see on our way home

Flat Garrett sees his first giant reclining Buddha!

Tiny wats :)

The "Reclining Buddha" posture represents the
mahaparinirvana: the Buddha's final stage of
enlightenment before his death.

Buddhists believe that a properly rendered Buddha image is
a hypostasis: an actual spiritual emanation of the Buddha which
possesses supernatural qualities.  This is why Buddhists make
offerings to and pray before Buddha images.

Lighting incense