These Ties That Bind

Malaysia approaching from the minibus window

So we said goodbye to Krabi on Saturday afternoon – not a final goodbye for Carlyn and me as we will be back with our families at the end of the month – and it was so sad!  I’ve been enjoying my time in Thailand tremendously, but had you told me four months ago that I would be near tears as I walked away from our hotel/home, I would have laughed in your face.  Nonetheless, it was quite the emotional day for us.  I’ll get to that in a moment though.  First – Malaysia.

When I was planning to come here, I had these grand plans that I would be travelling all throughout Southeast Asia – Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Bali, maybe Singapore or Taiwan – but I neglected to think about the fact that I would have a job.  Granted, we did treat this job as more of an inconvenience we had to endure to finance our travelling, but I still had to be there from 7:30 to 4:30 every weekday.  Doesn’t leave much time for travel.  Nor did our measly Thai salary allow us to spend many baht per trip so the entirety of Southeast Asia will have to wait for when I’m rich and famous.

Penang, Malaysia

The Malaysian flag looks strikingly similar to the American flag.

That said, the one other country I can say that I’ve been to (and I’m guessing Japan doesn’t count since I was only in the Tokyo airport for like five minutes) is Malaysia.  If I had to pick one country that I would have chosen not to visit – well, okay it would have been Burma, but second on the Don’t So Much Wanna Go There list was Malaysia.  Just seemed like it had nothing to offer.  Unfortunately, in order for us to remain in Thailand legally after our work visa expired, we had to make the trek to Malaysia.

Berhenti! In the name of the law :)

It took some serious convincing for our school to allow us to take off on the days we needed to travel, our only real leverage being that we had to or risk deportation.  And since we already have criminal records for overstaying our visas, it wasn’t something we wanted to mess with.  Our coordinator was convinced we had a seven-day window in which to leave the country (ohhh there’s that erroneous seven-day window again) but she was wrong according to everyone and everything else.  We had to bargain with the school, saying that if they allowed us to leave the country on the last day of our contracts, we would come back the day after we got back for one day to make it up.  This whole thing of course could have been avoided had our school just added days to our contract for us to make this very journey, but that would have required much more foresight than they’ve ever demonstrated they are capable.  Also of note:  Our contracts expired on February 28.  School was still in session, albeit only finals, through at least the first week of March.  Not only did the school not want to pay us for another month and therefore made our contracts end in February (this is not conjecture on our parts, our coordinator told us as much), but whatever brain trust was in charge neglected to check a calendar to see that February had 29 days this month!

Stacy and Carlyn in our icky hostel

So after some teeth-pulling, we boarded a minibus bound for Penang, Malaysia on February 28.  It was the bumpiest nine-hour journey of our lives.  There were times we thought we weren’t even on the road anymore!  But we made it to Malaysia mostly intact and followed our friend Ali’s instructions perfectly once we got there (Ali has made the visa-run trip to Penang more times than she would care to remember).  The way the whole thing worked was as follows:  We were in possession of “Non-immigrant B” visas which are working visas.  The visas expired on the last day of our contracts, February 28, meaning we could be in Thailand no longer than that date.  We left the country on the last day our visas were valid, and entered Malaysia.  We went through immigration and had our passports stamped upon entering Malaysia. The stamp said we could be in Malaysia 90 days from when we entered.  We found the hostel in the Georgetown section of Penang where Ali used the visa services many times and filled out the proper paper work and handed our passports over to the man who ran the hostel.  I know it all sounds a little sketchy, but this is what foreign teachers in Thailand are forced to do all the time.  It’s the proper procedures, I promise.  The man who took our passports and 1200 baht took them to the Thai consulate in Penang to get us new visas.  These visas, since we would no longer be working, would be tourist visas good for 60 days from when we entered the country.  With a tourist visa, we are actually prohibited by law from working – even volunteer work if you can wrap your head around that.  When the hostel man gave us back our passports the next day before we boarded the van back to Krabi, we had our new visas glued to a new page in our passports.  We went through Thai immigration in Sadao on the way back where they stamped the visa “used” and gave us a new stamp that said we could remain in Thailand for 60 days from that day (February 29).  Easy peasy.  Don’t worry chicken curry (as we’ve been told).

Movie theater!

Since there’s really no sites to see in Malaysia and since we couldn’t really do anything legit since our hostel bathroom wasn’t so much one we wanted to use to shower, we went shopping and saw two movies.  Penang was surprisingly western compared to Thailand.  It was quite clean and tidy.  There were skyscrapers, the like of which we hadn’t seen since Bangkok, and there were giant malls just like at home – with Starbucks!  The first night we got there, after we handed over our passports we headed over to the movie theater, bought tickets for a later showing and got dinner to kill time until the movie. When there was a half hour until the movie started we bought our popcorn and drinks and sat down in the theater.  We didn’t realize when we walked in that we had walked in on a movie already in progress.  We were talking full volume and making quite a bit of noise before we realized that not only was the movie in progress, but it was the movie we were supposed to be seeing!  Figuring that it was the end of the last showing of the movie (maybe it was some strange Malaysian thing to show movies alarmingly close together), we left the theater to loiter in the hallway for a half hour.  After we’d finished our popcorn and drinks, a cute usher who’d been walking back and forth past us asked to see our tickets.  We pulled them out and handed them over. 

The movie we saw

“This movie already started,” he said.

“No, no, we’re really early,” we assured him in the slow, halting English we use to talk to our students –not realizing that this man had perfect English.  “We’re just waiting for it to start.”

“It’s already started.”

“No it starts at 7:30.”

The usher showed us his watch.  “It’s 8:30.”

We exchanged confused glances.  This man was clearly on something.  Then we were hit with both clarity and embarrassment at once.  In our haste to follow Ali’s directions to a T, we had neglected to do any research on the journey ourselves.  There was a time change.

“Ah!  We’ve been living in Thailand,” we shrieked.  “We had no idea there was a time change!”

We busted out laughing and the cute usher laughed with us realizing our honest mistake, but we couldn’t help but be tickled at his very American response to our lunacy. 

“Seriously?” 

Movie we SHOULD have seen.

Seriously.

We survived the Malaysia trip just fine and spent one more day at school saying goodbye to the other teachers and taking pictures with everyone before boarding our overnight bus to Bangkok.  But first we had to pack. 

Packing.  Ohhh the humanity.

To watch us attempting to pack our lives away must have been something that belonged on SNL.  The amount of stuff I have accumulated since I’ve been here is hilarious.  Lucky for Carlyn and I, we’re returning to Krabi in three weeks and could leave our large luggage with Ali – bringing it with us would have been an impossibility.  After a sad goodbye breakfast with Ali and some last minute errands, we dragged our backpacks and comically large grocery bags of food to the lobby of our hotel/home.  We had cleaned out our rooms, swept away our baby-powder ant-barrier, and headed downstairs.  If I ever had a doubt in my mind that three people can have a profound effect on a single person over the course of just four months that transcends language barriers, our goodbye with our Thai mom Min was an example of just that.  She barely knows English and we barely know Thai, but somehow over these last four months we’ve been able to communicate better than most people who know the same language.  She worried about us when we drove around on rented motorbikes, she worried when only two of us came in without the third, and she gave us food constantly.  When we gave her a framed picture of her with the three of us, she proudly displayed it on her desk.  She took care of us when we didn’t even know we needed someone to do so. 

more Penang

When we came down to the lobby, Min was on the verge of tears.  She hugged us each many times and so tightly I wasn’t sure she’d ever let go.  She even learned to say “I love you” in English just for us and told us we were her family.  It was the most heartbreaking and sweetest moment I’ve experienced since I’ve been here.  Carlyn and I assured her that we would be back with our families at the end of the month, and before we started crying too, we walked out the door.  I could only bear to look back one time as we struggled down the street under the weight of giant backpacks because when I did, Min was standing there wiping away tears.