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.  

Entrada

A few weekends ago (I know, I know, I’ve been incredibly lazy with updates lately – I’m sorry!) Carlyn and I visited our friends Alice and Kara in Trang, the province directly below Krabi.  We got to experience a far less touristy town than our own which was a nice change of pace for the weekend. 

40km drive to Pakmeng.  Our butts were sooorrreee.

For the two and a half hour journey, we took an evening bus from Krabi right as we got home from school.  This of course did not go off without a hitch.  We arrived at the bus station from Aoluk (where school is) and asked a bus lady for a ticket to Trang.  “Last bus leave,” she said.  That was it.  That was all she said.  “Isn’t there another bus at 5:30?” we asked (We knew there was).  “Last bus leave,” she repeated showing zero interest in helping us any further.  Happy woman.  Luckily a cab driver named Polo who is obsessed with Stacy noticed us trying to pull teeth from the unhelpful lady and asked where we needed to go.  Polo is constantly telling us that he’ll take us places for free, but we’re never sure if “free” is only for Stacy (who he LOVES) or if “free” means “free of cost but sexual favors included” so we have yet to take him up on the offer.  We explained that we were headed to Trang and knew there had to be another bus.  He said there was and instructed us to walk back out to the main road and catch a bus there.  Thanks, Polo!

Clearly enjoying the ride.

Sidenote:  I should mention that whenever we said we were going to Trang, we were met with completely blank stares from Thai people.  No matter how many different ways we tried to pronounce it (one wouldn’t think such a simple word would be so difficult), they never understood us until we pointed to a map.

As we reached the main road, a bus was pulling into the road that leads to the bus station and we flagged it down to inquire whether it was going to Trang.  It slowed and I walked up to speak with the bus steward (I made up this term, but there is usually a person who sits with the driver who helps with luggage and takes ticket money so I figure “bus steward” sufficiently describes who this guy was).  To accurately picture what happened next, it is necessary to place yourself on the road with me, preferably from Carlyn’s point of view about ten yards behind me.  The side of the bus was about six inches from the edge of the road (remember they drive on the left) so as I walked to the front of the bus, I had very little room (and I was carrying a large backpack).  I was walking on that kind of rounded edge where the asphalt curves under before it gives way to dirt and plants.  The combination of my comically terrible balance, the twenty pound backpack strapped to me and the fact that I was walking on a curved surface was, as you can imagine, the perfect storm of slapstick-meets-potential-disaster.  Trying to jog to the bus steward, I started wobbling on the curvy road edge, and my feet started doing that thing the Roadrunner does – a whole lot of spinning going nowhere.  I desperately tried to find traction on the road, but with a backpack that weighted more than me hauling me down, I was headed into a slow-motion cartoon fall.  For a second as I teetered on the edge, I was sure I would pitch myself into the brush to the left (and who knows what horrors would await me down there) but at the last second I managed to avoid that and my knees smacked hard down on the street.  The bus steward, who had seen all of this unfold was still standing next to the open bus door making no effort at all to help me off the ground and in fact appeared to not even care that I was down there.  With the weight on my back and so little room to maneuver, getting up was a task, so I extended my arm to the bus steward.  He looked at it like I was handing him a gopher carcass.  Okay, I thought, so he’s not gonna help me up.  I did my best to heave myself off the ground on my own power.  “Trang?” I asked him.  He flapped his hand the way Thais do to indicate “no” and got back on the bus.  If I thought he would tell the driver to wait til I was out of the way before he took off again, I was mistaken.  The bus lurched away literally inches from me.  I stood frozen still.  I was terrified that the side of the bus would knock my backpack, propelling me into that scary brush area next to the street, but luckily it just narrowly missed me.

Tough life, eh?

I turned around to see Carlyn with her jaw at her knees.  Having witnessed the entire ordeal from behind, she too had been certain the bus would knock me off the road, and seeing the way I fell, she thought for certain I had landed on my face.  Lucky for my future career as a SI model (oh, you haven’t heard about this?!), my face was fine.  My knees were another story.  The left one was already starting to swell, and both were bleeding, caked in dirt and gravel, and somewhat numb.  Though once she realized I was fine, Carlyn could no longer hold in the laughter and once I had time to process how ridiculous I must have looked, I too was doubled over in giggles. 

We did finally make it to Trang and spent the evening with Alice and Kara at a local restaurant listening to live music.  We were the only white people in the place and as such, some Thai guy at the next table bought us dessert and roses.  That’s just how it goes here for farangs as fetching as us.

Sunbathing on the boat

One of the things we were most excited to see in Trang was Moricot Cave which Alice and Kara had talked about when they visited us some months back so the next morning, we rented motorbikes and drove the 40km to the beach at Pakmeng where we hoped to get a longtail boat to Koh Muk, the island that is home to Moricot Cave.  Since Pakmeng isn’t at all a tourist destination, there were no advertised tours nor were there boatmen harassing us for trips to Koh Muk.  Instead, Alice negotiated with some random guy with a boat to take us to the island.

To get to Moricot Cave, you anchor your boat next to the island, hop off, and swim through the cave into the center of the island.  When we reached the island, the boatman pulled out a fishing rod and his assistant handed us life jackets.  We jumped into the water and waited for the assistant to follow us.  He did not.  Alice and Kara had made the short trek before with a guide so they figured maybe they could figure it out themselves this time so we swam towards the entrance to the cave.  A giant line of Thai people were coming out of the cave and we started in after they exited.  It took about ten feet for us to realize that this method was not going to work.  A few feet in and everything went pitch black.  We couldn’t see our hand in front of our face let alone a path into the center of the island.  Fearing that we would get lost and trapped in some dead end of the cave only to end up in a Donner Party situation, we turned back to once again plead with the boatman’s assistant to guide us in.

Beach restaurant in Pakmeng

Again, he said he would not accompany us.  He did not have a flashlight.  It was at this point that we realized that we hadn’t rented a tour boat – we had paid two random fishermen to drive us to a dark cave.  Aces.

Luckily we saw a farang couple heading toward the cave entrance with a guide and a flashlight.  They kindly allowed us to tag along.  What followed was nothing short of incredible.

Winding through the total darkness, we held on to each other so as not to get lost and followed the faint glow of the guide’s flashlight.  Then with no warning, the water below us lit up to a Day-Glo turquoise.  The sun was streaming in through the opening we could not yet see creating the fluorescent glow in the water.  We kept swimming towards the light and suddenly burst into an opening.  The pool of water around us was brilliant turquoise while rising up on all sides were angular limestone cliffs and jungle flora.  The tiniest jellyfish I’ve ever seen were littering the water and their stinging felt more like a funny nuisance than any kind of real pain.  We heard people shouting and for a few moments had no idea where the noises were coming from until four rock climbers hopped off concealed rocks across the jungle beach.  How they got there was a one mystery and where they vanished to after making their brief appearance was another.

We couldn’t take our cameras with us into the cave since none of us had underwater cameras or Drybags, so I figured stealing from Google was my next best option.

Saturday night, Alice and Kara had a small party at their house where we got to meet some of their Thai friends from school.  We taught them how to play flip cup and beer pong.  The exchange that best encapsulates what sets American/Canadian college experiences apart from all others:

On Alice and Kara's sweet deck

American Guy:  You toss the ping pong ball and if it lands in the cup, she has to drink the beer in that cup.

[pause]

Thai Guy:  Why would you do that?

[pause][blank stares]

American Guy:  Because.  That's what you do.

Thai Guy:  But why?

[blank stare]

American Guy:  Dude, just do it.

We saw a random elephant walking down the street on our way to a bar.  No big deal :)

It should also be noted that Alice and Kara's house is haunted.  Like legit haunted.  Apparently two people have hung themselves in the stairwell.  We've all examined the stairwell and are unsure where one would hang oneself should the need arise and it doesn't appear feasible, but desperate times and whatnot.  So after the girls moved in to this house (quite the nice place by the way and a steal since the whole town knows its haunted and no one will rent it), the Thai teachers at their school were asking them how it was going.  Kara offhandedly responded that she'd been having strange nightmares.  That's when the Thai teachers told them about the suicides and the hauntings.  They said the ghost was eating Kara's soul and made her go to the temple early one morning to give an offering to a monk so he could bless her.  They had multiple ceremonies at the house attempting to cleanse the evil spirits but none seemed to work.  One night Kara went downstairs to get a glass of water and when she returned, her pillow case had inexplicably been removed from her pillow.  Freaked out, she went into Alice's room who had been feeling weirdly frightened and was at that moment wishing for some company.  The whole thing is a little strange but the amount of people (and monks!) that have gotten involved has been astounding.  And they can't move out because the school's director found them the house and 1) Everyone is afraid of the director, 2) The director is Christian and I guess can't be persuaded to believe in Buddhist ghosts, and 3) The director is crazy. 

At a Thai bar that had no tequila, no vodka, no coke.
Basically there was beer and whiskey.
DO NOT drink Thai whiskey.

So Carlyn and I are sleeping in Kara's bed.  Carlyn was on her computer and I had just entered that state of sleep where you're not quite sleeping, but you're aware that you're also not really awake when there's this crash.  Just dead silence and then bam!  Carlyn lunges at me at the same moment I sprang awake.  We both sit there for a moment totally unsure of what to do, thinking there's some sort of spirit in the room ready to eat our souls.  When my heart was no longer in danger of flat-lining, I got up to turn on the light.  Nothing in the room was disturbed, but Kara's flatiron was on the floor.  We figured the flatiron must have fallen, but it's not like it had been teetering on the edge of the dresser or there had been a strong breeze to blow it off.  

Must have been the ghosts.  

Alice, Carlyn, me and Kara at the bus station

Living, Breathing, Teaching....Thailand

1.    Sometimes I teach barefoot. 

2.    I’m confused most of the time.

3.    My strange new English-Thai hybrid language is actually making my English-speaking skills deteriorate. 

       My pidgin sign language on the other hand?  …yeah, that still sucks.

4.    I have a new appreciation for real beer – all Thai beer tastes like light beer.

5.    I can easily tell when something contains condensed milk.

6.    We get laughed at.  A LOT.

7.    I’m usually told I’m beautiful no less than six times a day, and at least one person says they love me.

8.    Just because intense nose-picking is a way of life here doesn’t make it any less revolting.

9.    The guy who sliced my loaf of bread was shirtless and smoking.  I still ate it.

10. Thai people go to the doctor for everything

11.  Seeing students stick a tube of menthol up their noses is no longer shocking…in fact, I’ve got my own “smelly stick.”

12.  Six people on a mortorbike is normal.

13.  Six farangs on a motorbike is probably illegal and probably the only road rule in the country that would be upheld.

14.  There are road rules?  Oh wait…no there’s not.

15.  A ten-year-old driving a motorbike is normal.

16.  I have eaten scores of tiny ants because they are EVERYWHERE and it is unavoidable.

17.  I have squatted to pee. 

      This of course resulted in me peeing on the floor. 

      Because I did it wrong. 

      Turns out you’re supposed to face the wall.

18.  When I hear someone say “okay okay” I want to squish their face in a vice.

19.  Turning clothing blue is not something specific to my crappy washer in Ireland.  It is in fact a trait common to all shitty washers and all people who suck at doing laundry more than they suck at life.

20.  I HAVE envisioned the power-tripping men who run this school dying in various gruesome, bloody ways. 

       It’s cathartic, but not entirely satisfying. 

      Sometimes I want to stuff a Susan B. Anthony bobblehead up their rectums and watch them cry.

      (Sometimes I’m salty)

21.  An entire sliced pineapple costs 65 cents.

22.  People talking all around me is just noise at this point. 

       My brain will overload when I get home when I can actually understand all the noise.

23.  We saw two white people biking through Aoluk this morning and we stared like it was our job.
       Our first reaction:  “What the heck are those white people doing here?”

24.  Confession:  I have NO idea what I’m going to do when I get home.

       This makes me not sleep.

25.  The quantity and frequency of profanity in my journal is directly proportional to just how much the school has pissed me off on any given day.

26.  It’s impressive how many different parts of speech the word “fuck” can become when I am so angry it’s the only word I can think to use.

27.  If I turned said journal into a series of blog entries, the unanimous diagnosis of psychiatric professionals would be that I am bipolar.

28.  I am not bipolar. 

       I am teaching in Thailand.

       The two ideas are interchangeable.

29.  Truth:  I spent twenty minutes trying to remember the phrase “mutually exclusive” for the above sentence.

      Then I realized it didn’t work.  Fail.

30.  I have NEVER eaten this much rice before in my life.

Thai Students Meet War Heads. Chaos Ensues.

So my awesome parents have been sending me packages filled with wonderful things the entire time I've been here.  I doubt I would have survived if they weren't so spectacular.

Sidenote:  Shoutout to all the other wonderful people who have sent me an endless stream of packages and cards:  Gram; Rachel; Marilyn & Bob; Meg & Bob; Georgine; Dianna, Chris, Stephen & Dominic; Jackie & Shirley....and George (Seriously dude, you've got a weird sense of humor), thank you all SO MUCH!!!  It's such a fantastically terrific surprise to get mail here from people I love at home!  End sidenote.

A while ago, we decided it would be fun to give the students some American food that they don't have here.  Since candy is the easiest and least-perishable thing to ship, it was the obvious choice.

First up was Jolly Ranchers which they thought were especially tasty.  Then came Sour Patch Kids.  For a bunch of children who can easily eat food so spicy it could kill a herd of wild horses, it was completely hysterical to watch them squirm with surprise and over-worked salivary glands at the tart deliciousness that is Sour Patch Kids.  Truly hysterical.

Skyping with my mom one day, she had another suggestion:  "If they loved the Sour Patch Kids so much, you should try some War Heads!"  Thus was born the idea to give my Thai students War Heads.  Jane and Ed sent a package containing food for me and candy for my students.  In addition to War Heads, Pop Rocks also made the journey.

I had to choose carefully which class to treat to the sour-fest since with 45 students per class and 22 classes per week, there was no way they were all getting some (plus, I just flat-out don't like a good portion of those over 900 kids).  I chose my favorite class - M2/10, by far the most skilled of all my "English learners"...yes, those were intentionally in ironic quotes.

Sidenote #2:  There is a set of twins in M2/10 and it took me a good two months to realize that they were two people, not one girl who had an uncanny ability to be two places at once and move really fast.  End sidenote #2.

Last week, I treated the M2/10s to their first taste of Pop Rocks and War Heads.  Neither Stacy nor Carlyn had class during that period, and the classroom is right next to the English department, so they came to watch it all go down.  The reaction to the Pop Rocks was pretty funny.  The kids wondered what the heck was going on in their mouth and all you could hear for a good five minutes was the sound of 40 12-year-olds fizzing.  I had a strong urge to also give them Coke :)

The reaction to the War Heads was possibly one of the funniest things I have ever witnessed.  Words cannot properly describe how hilarious it was to watch unsuspecting kids eat War Heads, so a felt taking a video of the shenanigans was imperative  (This is one of the twins.  Aon or Aum - I can never be sure which.  The other twin is to her left.)

Anthropology 301: Over Here

There is a heat wave in Krabi.  A heat wave in the tropics.  Imagine that for a second, will ya?  Having trouble?  Lemme paint a picture.  Put yourself in the hottest sauna you’ve ever experienced.  Got it?  K, now add a large bonfire, a space heater, and a fire-breathing dragon.  That’s about how it feels here.  Everyone knows what it feels like when sweat drips down your back.  It’s pretty gross.  But when I can follow the progress of that drop – or as is the case, drops – as they makes their way down my butt, that’s when I know I’ve never been quite so hot.  When said sweat trickles start inching down my leg, meaning I have felt their journey all the way down my icky sweaty body (Oh man, this is starting to sound like a bad porn novel), that’s when I start to worry about heatstroke.  It is the most horrifyingly disgusting thing ever.  We are apparently entering the “summer” months soon.  If what we’ve been experiencing so far isn’t summer, then these next few months could very well kill at least two out of three of us.   

As part of the school uniforms, girls at Aolukprachasan School must have short hair.  They’ve all got these little bobs, making it so difficult to distinguish who is who.  There are a handful of girls who have long hair that they wear pulled back in a ponytail or braid, but it is our understanding that they have to seek permission from the director in order to keep their hair long.  Whether there is a random lottery or good grades gets you long hair, or it’s simply based on the mood of der führer il duce the director is unknown, but there are very few girls with long hair.  Recently we’ve come to realize that the girls’ hair must be a specified length – just above the chin. If their hair exceeds the allowed length, then they are forced to have their hair cut by a male teacher (as far as we know, the designated hair-cutter) under Building 4 on Fridays.  Occasionally I’ll walk into class to see girls huddled together at the back, furiously hacking away at their hair so the guy won’t be able to cut it for them.  As you can imagine, this amateur trim-fest results in some pretty ridiculous styles.  Some girls have uneven hair all around.  Some have a sort of unintentional diagonal effect going on.  I saw one girl who must have been in a hurry and only cut the hair on the sides.  Her came around the back of her head and at her ears there was this abrupt one-inch step-up.  Sheer insanity.  Pun completely intended.

At all the markets all over town, there are caged birds for sale.  They’re everywhere.  Every little stall selling anything – from the weird corn-and-ice-cream combo I have yet to try, to Thai periodicals, to chicken satay – have rows of cages holding one single bird.  The birds are quite pretty – shiny black feathers with yellow accents and pointy heads – and they have beautiful, funny little chirps, but why there are so many for sale is still a mystery to us.  I think it’s possible that people buy them to release for good luck, but beyond that I’m out of guesses. 

Because the hot-water boiler-thinger we used in the morning to make our “coffee” and oatmeal was unceremoniously ripped from the English department, the only explanation on the matter being that “The owner come to get,” we had to find an alternate way to get hot water.  After some searching, we found that the school store had a large drum of hot water we could use.  Now every morning while the kids are at their assembly, we fill our glasses with boiling water in the store.  There is a table next to the big hot drum where some random assortment of teachers and staff sits to chat in the morning, and because Thai people are so generous with their food, they constantly offer us snacks.  And because it is rude to turn down food offered, we generally have to take what’s given.  One morning, one of the women gave us delicious banana muffins she had made.  Sometimes we get sticky banana leaves wrapped around gooey sticky rice wrapped around funny meat (not a favorite).  This morning, hoping for more banana muffins, we were instead given a small bag of what looked like dense pink and white mini-cupcakes that had split open at the top.  They smelled faintly of flowery soap.  Turns out they tasted like flowery soap too.  Soap cakes, if you will. 

Yes, yes, fine.  I’ll cease and desist with the cringe-worthy puns. J

Scars & Souvenirs

More than a little nervous....That's baby
powder on my wrist.  It's a whole Thai thing...

If Rashard Mendenhall had gained ten yards this season for every time someone told me “Oh wow, I didn’t think you would actually do that!” over the course of my life, then the Steelers might actually be vying for the Lombardi today instead of the Coughlin/Manning v. Satan/Antichrist battle going down in Indianapolis.  But I don’t, and Mendy’s a fragile-pansy ignoramus, so let’s not revisit that again.  It’s like there’s something fundamentally weird about me that makes people either think I won’t do something marginally offbeat or that said action goes against my character.  I can’t be sure what that says about my character, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Along those lines, I got a tattoo on Saturday (yeah, it happened) and Caitlin’s verbatim response to the email and photo I sent was “A bit surprised ‘cause I didn’t think you were going to do it…but I like it!”  Jane’s response was “You’re so cool,” but I’m sure that was just a polite cover-up of what she was actually thinking which was “Holy crap, she really did it?!” …except she never says “crap,” so it would have been a less crude variation of that.  If we travel back in time to when I was fourteen and she took me to get my bellybutton pierced (or as Jane comically calls it, my “navel”), she only really did it because, in her words, “I didn’t think she’d actually go through with it.”  This theory apparently having been supported by the three times I chickened out before I finally got my ears pierced, the only (glaring) difference being that I was like six.

Watching as the artist traces the lettering

So I either give off an air of goody-two-shoes prudishness or I am way flakier than I’ve ever thought.  I don’t need to know which of these possibilities is more accurate since they’re equally depressing.  Instead, I’ll take this moment to enlighten you all on the art that is the bamboo tattoo.  Oh, I’m sorry, you thought I got a normal tattoo?  Psshh please, I’m in Thailand.  I went authentic!

Bamboo tattooing is, I believe, more formally known as sak yant.  Sak means “to tap” and is the word for tattoo.  The technique has origins in Southeast Asia – Buddhist monks would tattoos prayers on each other for health and protection.  It is still possible to get a tattoo from a monk, but what little we heard about it sounded a little shady.  One of the most popular sak yant tattoos is called Gow Yord which means “nine spires” and is a very cool-looking, primitive design of the outline of a temple.    Another very popular one is called Haa Taew which means “five rows.”  This is five vertical lines of Khmer script, typically on the back left shoulder.  Each of the five lines relates to a different blessing for success and good luck – made famous by Angelina Jolie.  She even flew to Thailand to have it done!

Prep work

The main difference between a Thai tattoo and a western tattoo is in the procedure itself.  Whereas most tattoos are done using a machine gun type thingy that buzzes and actually rips through the top layer of skin as it applies the ink, mine was applied entirely by hand.  A small needle was attached to the end of a long bamboo stick with a piece of pink string and fired to make sure it would hold together.  Then the tattoo artist, who had to have Derek Shepherd-steady hands, tapped the ink into my skin, one little pin-prick at a time.  It was quite impressive to watch actually (yup, I totally watched), and while I’ve heard that bamboo tattooing is quite a bit more painful than normal tattooing, that’s either wrong, or I have a badass, high threshold for pain.  It hurt, sure, but it was hardly excruciating.  It just kind of felt like a bunch of tiny ants biting me.  Some taps were more painful than others, but I survived and it was over in no time at all!

The second guy is holding the skin tight for artist-guy.

Other benefits to the Thai tattoo:  It can get wet practically the second after it’s finished, and there is no bleeding or scabbing.  Plus – its way cooler J

All finished!!

With Tattoo Man and Skin Holder Man.
We really should have learned their names...

Stacy got one too!!  We're either awesome or a little nuts.
Ps. This was seriously the teensiest tattoo parlor ever.

It says "mai pen rai"....Thai for
Hakuna Matata.  It means no worries / For the rest of our
days/ It's our problem free / philosophy :)

I'm a shiny sweaty mess for two reasons:
1) Nerves
2)  The fan was only blowing on my feet

The Art of Discourse

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” 

– George Bernard Shaw

Here’s the problem with communication:  No one realizes just how bad they are at communicating until something drastic happens.   From cruise liners crashing into icebergs, to entire governments going to war over a rumor (Shoot, did I just say something political?), to pretty much anything Christopher Columbus thought or said, it is a fact that the world really, really sucks at communication.  And it’s not just a large-scale thing either.  Communication blows all the way down to the human level.  The divorce rate isn’t fifty freaking percent for nothing.  It’s an epidemic, and there’s no end in sight.

                                                                                        

To that end, the Thai culture is especially poor at communication.  We think we’re making inroads, learning how to live here without stressing too much (after three months, I guess it’s about damn time!), and then we’re slapped across the face with the realization that we have no idea.  There is this vast cultural divide that it would take years to properly bridge, and even then that bridge would be rickety, at best. 

I’ve mentioned before how at school, the students serve as the janitors.  They sweep, they take out the trash, and they wash our dishes.  It’s a bizarre system, but it seemed to work.  Recently, the kids had a three-day scout camp.  There were no classes, but all the teachers came to school to participate in the activities.  We didn’t have a role in the scout camp, so we had to come to school every day and sit alone in the office.  Every day, we put our dirty cups in their usual basin for the students to come wash.  When no one came to get them, we figured it was because the students had been relieved of their janitorial duties during scout camp, but the next week, still no students came to get the dirty dishes. 

One afternoon, Bo, the new head of the English department, pulled Carlyn aside to explain to her that we were supposed to be washing our own dishes.  This, of course, was news to us since up until four days previously, the students were the dishwashers.  Carlyn said as much to Bo who informed her that the decision to have students wash dishes was that of Supalak, our coordinator and the unofficial former head of the department.  Supalak had stopped spending time in the English department for unknown reasons (We think there was some sort of drama, but no one knows for sure) and instead taken up residency in the library.  It seemed that in her absence, the rules she had laid down were being subverted by new ones.

Bottom line here was that the students would no longer wash our dishes; that was now our responsibility.  It’s hardly like we make a mountain of dishes every day – between the three of us, there is at most five cups and a few pieces of cutlery – so washing our own isn’t some great inconvenience.  The problem though was that no one told us.  Supalak had been spending her days in the library for well over a week by the time Bo informed us of the rule change which probably means that in the interim, while we thought the students were still doing our dishes, one of the other teachers was.  That hardly seems fair.

We’ve been doing our best for three months here to assimilate to the Thai culture and shed the image of the spoiled westerner (housing mishegas and salary dispute aside, of course), and in one fell swoop, we looked like divas through no real fault of our own.  Obviously there had been discussion after Supalak left the English department about modifying some of her rules, but like most of what goes on at school, it crossed no one’s mind to let us in on the change.  Not only did they not tell us, but they seemed a bit peeved that we weren’t following the new rule we had no idea existed.  “You understand?” Bo asked Carlyn with the condescending tone you use to tell a nine-year-old for the fifteenth time to stop climbing on the back of the couch. 

“I feel like I just got yelled at,” Carlyn said when she returned from her scolding.  It’s entirely possible the conversation about doing your own dishes took place right in front of our noses since we wouldn’t have understood it even if we did know what was going on.  And it’s understandable, I guess, when things like that slip their mind – it’d just be great if it didn’t happen so damn often.  We have no issue at all doing our own dishes – we thought it was strange we didn’t have to in the first place – but now it looks like we’d been turning our noses up at the new rule for a week!  Its times like this we have to chant mai pen rai under our breath until we achieve a satisfactory level of Zen.