And now what?

Haven't written in months. Sorry. Here are some videos

2008-02-17T14:51:00.003+07:00

Rak Hang Siam (Love of Siam). Big deal Thai movie which caused a whole controversy because it was advertised as a cute teenage love movie with two girls and two boys, but really the girls had about 10 minutes of screen time and it was about the boys. Together. And they kissed! Ah! I thought the movie was pretty good. Long, like three hours or something, but I liked it. It was a nice change from the ridiculous Thai comedies I usually see.

This is the big hit from the movie. The singer is Q from the band Flure (one of the bands I wanted to see at Fat Festival but sadly missed).

Another big movie soundtrack hit. I may have posted it before. It's Pop from Calories Blah Blah and Da from Endorphine. For my friend Josh's birthday I gave him a karaoke VCD so he could practice these songs and this was supposed to be our big duet at my 4 hour all-star karaoke session right before I left. But neither or really practiced as much as we should have...

A Thai ska band! I watched their video for the first track during my first Thai karaoke experience in the mall booth in September 2006, but for some reason it didn't make it into my standard karaoke repertoire. I've tried a couple of times since then and now I can mostly keep up with the chorus, but years away on the verses.

Hmm... maybe what made me think of them recently is the fact that the weekend I came home there was a huge ska and reggae festival in Pai! GGGRRRRRRRR! I wish I could have gone. But all these groups I dig that were up there, their videos on youtube aren't that good, or don't even exist. Teddy Ska Band, T-Bone, and my girl Palmy!!!

But she's all over the youtube. So quick update, I'm home now, but between November (when I stopped working at AUA) and February 10th (when I came back to New York) I was actually way busier than this blog would have you believe. It was because I was so busy that I couldn't update the blog. Kinda.

The biggest thing by far was my family coming for two weeks. After a day in Bangkok followed by a ridiculous weekend in Pattaya (strangest/grossest/saddest place I've ever been) I met up with my brother in Bangkok and caught a flight back to Chiang Mai. We rented motorbikes and biked around the mountains of Northern Thailand, where we strangely ran into two old students of mine who met in my class, have been dating since, moved to this middle of nowhere town about 50 kms out of Chiang Mai where they live together and teach English together at the local school. Weird, huh? So Alex and I ended up having Christmas dinner at Lux (Thai girl) and Manu's (French boy) house. We had kow ka mu, which means pork leg (with pork leg sauce) on rice! Delicious!

The rest of the motorbike trip was fun. We visited some hill tribes which were super chill and not the kind where they chase with you crap to buy. We took scary dirt roads. We got lost once but in a fun way. I got to speak a lot of Thai while trying to make sure we got un-lost.

The second day we did the same thing but didn't get lost. Got back to Chiang Mai in time to meet the rest of the Charpe.... party of 8 at the airport and checked into the hotel I had dreamed about staying in since 2005. It was magical.

So when the fam was here we did tons of cool stuff. We stayed a night at Elephant Nature Park, we did a cooking class at an organic farm, visited the highest peak in Thailand, spent an afternoon in a bamboo hut on a lake eating more awesome food, went to the mall, saw my neighborhood, ate at the restaurant with the hands-down nicest view of Chiang Mai, hit up the Sunday Market and walked around the city visiting temples and seeing other cute things.

So... at these temples you can talk with monks. Awesome. I used to go when I first moved to Chiang Mai. Not that I had too many questions about Thailand or Buddhism, but my friend had told me they're awesome to practice Thai with and they're generally cool guys too. But back then I only went, hmm.... 3 times.

So fast-forward a year and a half and I bring my family back. While I'm there one of them says, "Wait, you live here? You teach English?" "Come to Chiang Rai with us on January 25th to January 27th. You can teach English to poor children."

Ok! So, I keep in touch (via cell phones and email, love it!) with my monk contacts and January 25th I find myself sitting in a songtaew (red truck) across from a row of monks with some mango and pomelo trees between us. Nuts!

The weekend was amazing. Twenty monks, 10 Thai uni students, 9 foreigners. We went to an Akha village in Chiang Rai province. It took three different truck changes to get us there. We played soccer, we gave ice cream, we taught them head shoulders knees and toes, played a ton of games, we gave a ton of stuff (food, clothing, school and sports supplies) and taught some English. It was amazing. Saturday night, there was a big show. The Akha kids had all prepared little shows, the uni students prepared some shows and they wanted the foreigners to do something too. Paige (my friend who I dragged along even though she thought she was sick) and I stepped up and did our respective things. She played guitar and sang a song she wrote (she does that in real life too) and I, FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, sang a Thai pop song acapella, and it happened to be in front of an entire village. When I got to Thailand one of my goals was to sing a Thai pop song in front of people. So to do it acapella and in a hill tribe was way beyond anything I could have hoped for. I didn't sing it from memory, but I did read the lyrics ALL IN THAI! YES! A friend wrote them out for me and I held the paper with my shaky little hand while Paige held the flashlight so I could read it. Cause I was holding the mic and the lyrics. Amazing.

Anyway, here's the song I sang. So, my performance was kind of like this except replace her hair with a messy ponytail, the hippie dress with jeans and a hoodie, the stage and the band with a plastic chair and Paige holding a flashlight, and the audience of excited teenagers jumping up and down with a village of pretty quiet Akha people sitting around a really big fire. And I didn't repeat the chorus three times.

Easy song, huh?

So after the trip I stopped by the exchange some pictures, so I had my computer and they knew I had music videos so they wanted to watch some. Phra Em was looking at the titles and one was titled (by the record label) "OK HUK". So he said "O.K. hook? What's that?" I said, "No, no, it's Thai! You know it." and I tried saying it in all the different ways I could think of so they would recognize it. I failed. Finally I played the song and he said, "Ooooooh!! Awk hak! Ha ha O.K. hook, awk hak!" Yeah, I know, English sucks, right? He thought it was the funniest thing ever and started asking the other monks if they knew "O.K. hook". Also interesting about this video - the whole time Phra Em watched this video he was waiting to show me something. I kept guessing but he just said, "wait, wait, wait....." And then finally at 3:15 into the video, "Ah. Yes. When I am not a monk anymore, I will do that." Check it out. I asked if he could have someone video it and please email it to me. This kid has been walking around wrapped in an orange robe for the past 9 years.

Next up - What I was doing between November and February.
Then - How I know I'm not in Thailand anymore.

Still my favorite Thai music video of all time.

My super cool, amazing, inspirational sister! (We all know I have two of these. This happens to be about the older one.)

2007-11-28T14:13:00.000+07:00

READ THIS MESSAGE FROM MY SUPER COOL, AMAZING, INSPIRATIONAL OLDER SISTER ERICA!!!!

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Dear Friends,

As some of you know, over the past year I've been working on founding a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing outstanding pregnancy, childbirth and new baby education to families of all income levels. Due in no small part to the advice, support, and encouragement I've received from so many of you, I am proud to announce that Birth Education Beyond the Ordinary (BEBO) is now an incorporated not-for-profit organization in the state of New York!

Our mission
To empower women and families to play an active role in the birth of their children by providing affordable and comprehensive pregnancy, childbirth, and new baby education and support. At BEBO, we envision a world in which women can approach childbirth feeling confident, well-informed, and free from intimidation.

Childbirth can be a complicated process, and sometimes requires that important decisions be made under intense and unfamiliar circumstances (like labor!). By being familiar with her options prior to decision time, the mother and her partner can increase her chance of having a positive birth experience.

So what's the need for BEBO?
Well, childbirth classes offered by hospitals rarely cover a full range of labor and delivery options. They can also be expensive. Independent childbirth classes cover a wide range of options, but are cost-prohibitive for many families. By offering independent childbirth classes on a sliding-scale basis, BEBO hopes to fill the current void.

Things are coming along wonderfully. We have a terrific pool of certified childbirth educators as instructors, and our first class will take place December 8. For details, please check our website - www.beboinc.org.

Now for the tricky part... funding.
I'm writing today to ask for your support. Starting out is difficult; foundations can be reluctant to give grants to organizations with limited programming history, and to get our programming going, frankly, we need money. If you are interested in supporting this brave young organization, please consider making a contribution at the $50 level or higher. If $50 is too much, but you'd like to show your support, please do! Any donation you can make today will contribute to putting BEBO on solid footing for the future.

To make a secure contribution by check or credit card, please visit www.beboinc.org/Contribute.html and click on "PayPal/Donate". You DO NOT need a PayPal account to make a credit card donation. To donate by mail, send a check made out to BEBO to BEBO, 103 Grove Street, Mt Kisco, NY 10549. If you have any questions about the tax-deductible nature of donations to BEBO, please contact me. If you have any questions about BEBO at all, contact me! I'd love to talk more about our plans.

Warmest wishes,
Erica

erica@beboinc.org

P.S. Please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might be interested!

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GIVE HER MONEY, OR AT LEAST FORWARD THIS ON TO PEOPLE WITH MONEY WHO MIGHT WANT TO GIVE HER MONEY!!!!

And an update with that elephant from the last post - Lek raised enough money to buy her and she's now at Elephant Nature Park. So that's cool! You can read a report about it here...
http://www.bring-the-elephant-home.nl/en/index.php

Fat Festival 7!

2007-11-17T13:08:00.000+07:00

There's a lot I owe as far as blog worthy stuff, but I happen to be at a place with really fast internet, so I want to post as many music videos as possible.

See, I went to Bangkok last week in an attempt to 1) stop feeling sad that I stopped working and 2) try to hate Bangkok less.

It totally worked! Through some Couchsurfing people, I ended up the Thai version of Warped Tour and Intonation put together. It's called Fat Festival, put on by Fat Radio in Bangkok. It was amazing. I got to see bands I had seen before and loved, bands I liked but had never seen and new bands I had never heard of before. I also got to meet a group of cool, but not obnoxiously cool, music people! They were psyched to meet an American girl who was into Thai "indie" music and I was psyched to finally meet some freaking Thai people who were into Thai "indie" music. I have to put the word indie in quotes, cause it has a very different meaning here. There are a bunch of cool "indie" bands, but there's also a ton of what I consider boring, lame, romantic pop music that is considered "indie."

But here it is!!!! Bands I saw this past weekend....

I first saw a Japanese band called The Travellers. They were good but I can't find a video.

Lipta - I feel like I had seen their video every day for a month so it was exciting to see them looking exactly like they do in their video. Not too exciting though.

Tor - Big deal because he's "velly haasum!" and he plays a big white piano but songs are cheesy and romantic.

Lullaby - Never heard of them before but really enjoyed them! All I can find is a myspace site that's too annoying to look at. It's a shame. Best thing about this band - they seem to have written their Thai name as เราระบาย which is only really funny to someone who reads Thai because it actually uses the "r" character rather than the "l" character as if they anticipate the lazy "l" pronunciation of the "r" charachttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifter to pronounce the English word "Lullaby". Ironically, this is the only Thai bands I saw this day where I didn't feel like I was falling asleep.
Lullaby's MySpace site

Flure (interesting band, haven't seen before, but want to) and Thaitanium (saw last Halloween) both played that night, but I left before I saw them.

I saw better bands on Sunday.

First band I saw was Paradox. I knew of them, and had wanted to see them, but hadn't yet. Really fun, silly band. They were all dressed up and made the audience laugh a lot when they talked. I could laugh a little. People danced!

Paradox - ผงาดง้ำค้ำโลก (something about saving the world I think)

Buddha Bless - old favorites. I've posted a couple of their videos already. This time they were joined by a Chiang Mai hardcore/rap/rock band called Most Wanted. Most Wanted was great. I had seen them in Chiang Mai and I think I actually met one of the guys during Songkran last year. He ran up to me and Caroline and asked where we were from. He was a little disappointed when I said New York, because he really liked LA (showed me the hand sign for LA) and was really into Mexican hip hop. Songkran is the water festival, so everyone is in shorts and t-shirts and flip flops and this kid was staying true to his style - button down shirt with every button including the top buttoned, socks up to his knees, khaki shorts down to his mid calf and sneakers. With the shaved head and bandanna. He is hardcore. I'm sure there's a name for his style, but I don't know it. I saw Most Wanted again later at a small stage for little bands and they did an amazing cover of Beautiful Girls by Sean Kingston. I tried to video it with my camera phone but it didn't work well.

Here's the new Buddha Bless song from the Gancore Club album which I was not impressed by. Gancore Club is a collaboration between maybe 10 different groups and artists on the same label. I knew two songs and liked them both, but the rest kind fo sucked. Why am I surprised? Here are the two songs I like.

Buddha Bless - Bump Boom Boom

ส้ม อมรา f/ Joey Boy - Play Girl (plays in 7-11 all the time)

I bought a new MP3 player that has a radio. On the van from the airport I heard this song that I liked and recorded (yeah, I can record off the radio! How cool!?!) So I met some of my friends who it was, they had no idea. Finally, at the festival on the first day, one of the music people asked her friend and he knew! It was a band called Slur who were scheduled to play the next day. Oh, how perfect...

Slur - Not So Sure (not the song on the radio, but a fun song anyway!)

The was the last song by the last band I saw on the last day. Everyone was going nuts. Soooo fun...

Hangman - Chocolate

THAI MUSIC DRAMA - Hangman is a new band formed by the singer of a very popular Thai band called Silly Fools. The singer, Toe, apparently left the old band because he didn't want to play in venues that served alcohol because of his Islamic beliefs. The old band, Silly Fools, then went and got a Korean-American guy (born in Korean, adopted at 3 months to an American couple) who looks a lot like the last guy, who they found while he was teaching English in Thailand to be their new lead singer. Their members are now Ton, Rang, Tor and Ben (Can you guess the singer?) and they now only play English songs. It feels a little weird to me.

Modern Dog - This was by far the best group of the festival. Probably of all Thai music. I am in love. I knew them a little bit before, and I think I may have posted a video in the past, but I'm way more into them now. If you've seen Green Day then you'll understand what I mean, but this band knows how to put on a show. Like the perfect amount of audience interaction, nice balance of songs, and just knew what they were doing. It was the only show that was actually packed but everyone seemed to be able to dance just enough. Perfect! And I totally have a crush on the singer, Pod. At one point they invited kids from the floor up on the stage to sing and dance and then that was followed by a older, fatter, white guy dressed in a sailor suit (came up on stage with the masses) singing the next song (in Thai) with the singer on backup. While it was kind of embarrassing for the farang in the crowd, the Thais sure seemed to be liking it. I think why this band is so cool is because they do a lot of different stuff. I'm only going to post one, fairly normal video but their songs are just all over the map, in a good way. They have some normal songs but they can get real weird and experimental too. They're so cool they opened for Radiohead when they came to Thailand!

Modern Dog - ตาสว่าง (Found)

So that was the festival...

Other cool stuff -
Five stages - 3 indoor, 2 outdoor
Nokia had mute rooms where you could go to use your cell phone
Nokia had a stage for small bands to play in a studio and make a real quick DIY demo
Nokia had kiosks with free internet
(I've got nothing against corporate sponsorship)
Green alien guys giving away promotional stuff (surprisingly not Nokia related)
An area for 'zines (handmade, DIY magazines) and handmade notebooks
An area for small bands to promote their own stff
An area for old books and records
An indie film area
No stalls using plastic bags and lots of "I'm not a plastic bag" bags for sale
No smoking, no drinking alcohol allowed
A health and fitness area where you could check how in/out of shape you are (I didn't think my self esteem could handle it)
A gigantic GoogleEarth map of Bangkok on the ground for people to label.
The coolest looking baggage area I've ever seen
A free CD only available to people who bought their tickets ahead of time (not me)
A food court inside with standard Thai food court food (but no kow man gai).
A corporate food court outside with the first Dairy Queen I've ever seen run out of ice cream.
The coolest kids in Thailand by far. Blows the Chiang Mai kids out of the water. Skinnier jeans, bigger glasses, bigger hair, snottier faces. I loved it.

The festival was really fun and reminded me that with all of the crappiness of Bangkok (traffic all day every day, nasty polluted hot hot air all day every day, more expensive and not as good as Chiang Mai accommodation and street and mall food), sometimes it's worth it to be able to join a group of people to jump up and down and sing really loudly at a good show.

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From an old post I never finished (FYI: I stopped working, went to BKK for a week, took a train back, went to the World Sumo Championships the other day and have been replying to emails and cleaning my room since then.)

Cool websites -

http://www.freerice.com - Vocabulary test that donates 10 grains of rice to an international food agency every time you get an answer correct. It's addictive. Watch out. Make sure you really have absolutely nothing else to do before you go there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster - my condition. Life is really hard for people like me so stop laughing at me for not being able to eat pad gra pow and som tam.

http://www.educationburma.net/migrant_learning_center.html - a place my friend Steph volunteers, where I might start volunteering when I finish at AUA.

http://www.sssny.org - A school in Chiang Mai which teaches Shan State (a part of Burma, messy history, whole other topic) youth which aims "To produce dedicated and pro-active Shan State youth committed to social and political change by providing them with necessary skills." They have classes in Human Rights, History of Burma and Shan State, Computer Skills, English Grammar and Pronunciation, Writing Skills, Environment, Systems of Governance and Democracy Studies, International Crisis and Conflict Studies, International News, Basic Video Production and Media Studies, Maths, Basic Science and Health. So they train these students how to go out and make a difference in their communities. I think that is so coooooool!!!!

I went to the graduation ceremony for their school yesterday. It was really inspiring. The first hour and a half was a education and democracy fair where you got to play games and win candy! And for the democracy part you got to vote on what act you wanted to see the teacher's perform. One choice was seeing two female teachers dance, one was seeing a male teacher shave his goatee and I think the last one was have a teacher sing a song. The two women dancing won! Yay democracy!?!

I bought a t-shirt and a book. I wanted to by a CD (they also have a music class) but I didn't decide that until the end and the CD selling people weren't there as I was leaving.

OK - So update with working/life -

I'm clueless. I'm currently writing this entry on a Saturday because I'm not working on Saturdays anymore. WEIRD WEIRD WEIRD!!!! I could have asked to work Saturdays, but I wanted to leave it to chance (chance = my boss)by checking the "Yes, but prefer not to" box on my availability sheet. It was actually a lie, because I wanted to work, but I know that if I don't force myself to quit, I won't. So, I did what I had to do, but told him that if he needed me, I was definitely available. He didn't need me. They have 2 new teachers and Johnny is back from his broken leg. I'm out!

So I'm still working, but only teaching 14 hours a week and for only one more week!

AHHH!H!!!

This is all my decision and a good thing, but it's still weird and scary to think about.

I have to figure out a nice balance of traveling in and out of Chiang Mai, relaxing, in and out of Chiang Mai and volunteering, in and out of Chiang Mai.

Baby Elephant Needs Help

2007-11-16T18:15:00.000+07:00

Me quoting an email from Bert from The Serengheti Foundation, quoting Lek who is at the Surin Elephant Roundup right now (with Jeff! He's back in Thailand!!).
Now... from Bert...

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Hello,

Many of you have asked me over the years to contact you as soon as viable elephant adoption/purchase situations arise. Though Lek "gets close" quite often, actual rescue opportunities are rare. Except for today....

We received the following urgent email from Lek

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EMAIL QUOTE:

Dearest Bert
Hello from Lek. I am now at the Elephant city at Surin province. Every year they have the elephant round up as the elephant show to the tourist who come from all over around the world. Every year I come to check for the elephant situation and looking the needed elephant that needs to rescue.
Yesterday I found one . She is the little baby elephant who look so stressed and the mahout abused her even in front of the tourist. she screaming over and over and he beaten her and force her to performing. We have the camera to film standing so upset all with chains. And one of my volunteer help me to send the picture to you.
You can look from the wesbite below
http://buggytrapoo.multiply.com/video/item/8/Faa_Sai_in_Surin_Elephant_Round-Up

We ask to buy her, Her both eyes going to be blind. Her stressed in the dangerous level.
The owner ask for 650,000 Baht. The volunteer who came with me they start to collect the money from the group but we need much more to purchase her. Please help us fro the rest. We need to rescued her very soon.

Love

Lek

END EMAIL QUOTE
===============

OK then - it doesn't get alot more cut and dry than that. Over the years I have learned that when Lek is in fear that an elephant is in a dire situation, it is the truth. The elephant is in a critical state. We need your help, and we need it right away. We need to raise about $22,000 to purchase this elephant as soon as possible. As always, 100% of all funds donated will be forwarded to Lek (funds will be sent over on Monday 11/19/07 by Intl wire). Serengeti Foundation takes no salaries, fees, anything, and covers all international wiring fees, so every single penny gets forwarded to her. To donate, there are two options:

1. donate online via PayPal. It's easy, at SerengetiUSA.com. The funds arrive quickly, and you get airlines miles so you can go visit Lek !! :-)
http://www.serengetiusa.com/serengetiusa/donation.htm

2. you can send us a check at: Serengeti Foundation - 19100 Hamilton Pool Rd - Dripping Springs, TX 78620.
If you are sending a check, can you please drop me a short email indicating this, so I know it's coming? We'll be fronting those funds to Lek in the wire on Monday.

I hope to hear from many of you - let's make this happen!!! She is counting on us......

Best to you all,
Bert von Roemer
President - Serengeti Foundation

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Ok, now back to Beth. Just putting the word out there. The video takes a while to load but it's pretty sad to watch once it works.

Love you all!

-Beth

Alki in SE Asia, Beth not working - week 4 - long overdue

2007-10-11T13:21:00.000+07:00

Ah. Back in Chiang Mai. It felt good. Even though we got in early Saturday morning we (Saleem, Alki and me, with a little bit of Poom) made the most of.
First stop – the mall, Central. Not my mall called Central with my gym and my khao man gai, but the older, cheaper, kind of funny smelling mall called Central, closer to my apartment.

I made us go see a Thai movie. Thai movies are really ridiculous. It’s like every movie has a check-list of every genre and stupid cliché possible and they just throw try to shove as many as possible into an hour and a half. The one we saw was about a Thai country music band that plays at festivals at temples all of Thailand. Some highlights…

• A random severed leg falling from the sky onto a mat where 5 guys are playing poker – with nothing before and nothing after.
• The band and crew go into a lake called Leach Lake and one guy says it’s safe and it was named a long time ago, but then he walks out with an oversized leach on his back. See, I was predicting that the guy would become ill because the gigantic leach would suck all his blood out and then the underdog guy would finally have his chance to shine, but after the guy got back on the bus with the leach on his back, it was never brought up again.
• A random attempted rape scene that was way over dramatic and after the scene was over wasn’t brought up again.
• Use of cartoon noises after every line of dialogue.
• The costume and makeup ladyboys being ever-so-sassy
• They go to the house of the main character’s mom and steal all the fruit and break the stairs therefore leaving the mother stuck in her house forever and the boy walks off and says see you again next year.

It was ridiculous. One thing that the cheap mall has that my fancy one doesn’t is an awesome karaoke place that I went to for my birthday, so we went there for an hour too. My mall has karaoke, but it’s totally corporate and doesn’t have the themed rooms like the cheap mall.

Sunday we went to Huay Teung Tao, which is a resevoir about 10 or 15 minutes from the city. It’s really nice. It’s on the itinerary for when my family comes. You go, pick an area, park and sit either on the beach, in a hut on the beach or in a hut on the water. All around the water is trees and it’s just cool! And then you order food and eat! And you can rent inner tubes and paddleboats! Thai teenagers come in groups of 20 and bring guitars and sing Thai pop songs.

Then the Sunday Walking Street Market! I can’t get enough of that place. So while my Sunday ritual is walking around the market, Poom likes to experience the Sunday Walking Street by sitting at a bar drinking, so we joined him for a bit. But this Sunday was a Buddha Day when you’re not allowed to serve beer and alcohol so they serve the beer in Hello Kitty cups. Because obviously if it’s being served in a Hello Kitty cup it couldn’t possibly be beer!

On Monday our first mission was to sign up for a cooking class. After an hour long discussion with Alki about food and cooking Saleem admitted he was trying to decide if, while in Chiang Mai he should do a trek or a cooking class. Alki said, “TREKKING? ARE YOU KIDDING??? YOU WANT TO DO A COOKING CLASS!!! I WANT TO GO TOO!!!” and then I said, “Uh, me too?!?”

Because it’s Thailand and everything runs on commission, Poom came with us to cash in on the commission. Pretty much any Thai person can get 10% or more on anything they accompany a foreigner to. Tourism stuff is the easiest, you don’t even need to ask, but for pretty much anything else – a restaurant, a spa, a store, whatever, from what I understand, you just ask and then you get at least 10%. This is another reason it makes it hard to not feel like a walking ATM while living in Thailand. Anyway, Poom was cool back then, and we had to pay the same price anyway, and he had been pretty much driving us around everywhere, so he got our commission. He thanked us with drinks later.

After that, Alki and I got haircuts. They do these intense head massages. It’s really nice. And we also got to look like Asian pop stars for a day. Then I took them to one of my first favorite Thai massage places. Thai massage is so strange because every person does it differently. I had a 19-year-old boy named Num who I had had 8 months ago and I remembered him, but I figured he wouldn’t remember me. But he did. He was good. Alki had a woman who apparently seemed like she didn’t care much and was just doing her thing, but it was pretty repetitive and not very strong. Saleem had the opposite experience. He had an older lady that was just all out. In the beginning, she would do something and ask, “jep mai?” which means “does it hurt?” and I would tell him to say, “mai jep, kap” which means “nope, doesn’t hurt.” But then the lady got more comfortable with Saleem. And slowly her smile got wider and her laugh turned slightly evil. Saleem actually got to a point where he looked like he was about to cry. Alki was totally jealous. She thought her lady was boring. I think that may have been Saleem’s last Thai massage.

Then we hit up Monk Chat. It’s where you can go to temple and talk to monks and ask them anything you want. I went a couple times when I first got here but for the most part there’s a high turnover rate and it’s hard to get know actual people, and without knowing them, they’re kind of boring because they just say what they think you want to hear. That’s why my Laos monk buddies were so much more interesting. When Alki said what do you miss, the one monk said “beer” and at Monk Chat when you say what do you miss they give cheesy answers like, “Nothing, I find this lifestyle very fulfilling.” Oh come on, really?

One monk we talked to was from Cambodia. We asked if he went to see his family and he said yeah and I asked him how he goes back and forth to see his family. “I have to get a re-entry permit before I leave. It’s 1,000 baht.”
“Oh! Me too! Wait, do you have a non-immigrant visa?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Oh wow, me too! I didn’t think monks would have the same visa as English teachers.”

That was probably the most interesting thing I learned that day. Alki and I talked to this Cambodian one while Saleem talked to a different one and got totally blown off by him. I can’t remember the story exactly but it something like the monk asked for the time, Saleem said it was 6pm, the monk said he had to go because he had an appointment at his temple at 6:30, and then someone pointed out that it was actually only 5pm, and then the monk said, “Oh, well, I have to walk and my temple is 15 kilometers away. Good bye.” Saleem definitely felt insulted.

After Monk Chat, it was almost sunset, so we headed over to the park to watch the afternoon festivities. Sunset is my favorite time to go there, but I’m usually at work, so this was a real treat for me. We watched Thai guys play takaw, this Thai sport with a wicker ball that they either use to play a volleyball/soccer game with a net, or stand in a circle underneath a net and they use parts of their body to try to get it in the net. It’s fun to watch. The ladies do an aerobics class to techno versions of cheesy Thai pop songs in all sorts of amazing outfits. Sometimes old men and kids join in too. There’s a track so you also get to watch Thai people run which is something not so common outside of the park and then there are families eating on mats, teenagers holding hands, kids playing on a playground and people walking around selling eggs, fruit, peanuts and massages. We went with eggs but skipped the other stuff. The eggs are just boiled eggs on a stick served with soy sauce. The egg seller guy was from Issan where they speak a dialect much closer to Lao than Thai, so Alki and I said thanks in Lao and he got this huge smile on his face. It was cute.

Dinner was at a Japanese restaurant where my friend Yong works. At dinner we reflected on what a cool day it was and we decided to write a list of challenges we faced during the day. We decided our biggest challenges were…
1) Deciding on a cooking class. (We had gone to cooking class alley with at least 6 choices)
2) Crossing the street.
3) Deciding where to sit while at the park.
4) Not falling asleep during the head massage at the salon.

Tuesday was our cooking class day! SO MUCH FUN!!! We decided on a class that was held on an organic farm in the middle of nowhere. We met in the old city near AUA, and then went to a market somewhere. The market had all kinds of animals and animal parts I didn’t even know people liked to eat! And big bags of MSG too! Oh, Thailand… (Pictures)

Then we kept driving until we got to the farm. At the farm, we first took a tour of the organic farm and our guide explained about all the different herbs and spices, fruits and vegetables they had on the farm. We got to wear really cool hats and aprons and taste everything.

Then we started cooking! Green Curry, Som Tam (spicy papaya salad) and Chicken and Cashews before (and for) lunch, and then Pad Thai and Mango and Sticky Rice after lunch.

I usually don’t order Green Curry or Som Tam because they’re spicy and I’m a wimp, but I got to make wimpy versions of them that I actually really enjoyed! And the other three dishes are three of my favorite dishes anyway, so the whole day was fantastic. Eating all of it definitely went against me and Alki’s “Operation: Lose 10 Pounds” but it was gooooood. Alki even scooped up other people’s extra mangoes and sticky rice to take home.

Wednesday we decided to feel uncomfortably full again, so we went to Pai Sabai, a restaurant, which is really just a rich English woman’s fancy backyard where you can get nice quiches, pies, coffee and bread. Then we walked around Wat U-Mong, which is different from the other temples in Chiang Mai. It’s a big, forest temple so the focus is meditation rather than studying Buddha’s teachings, like most of the temples in the city. There are always lots of white guy monks there. It’s kind of weird. Either way, it’s really pretty and they have tables, so we set up shop and played Halvzies for a while. Slapping on a pile on cards on stone table and arguing over if a pinky counts or not probably isn’t in the spirit of the temple, but no one looked at us any funnier than the standard “white people being white people” funny looks so I think we were okay.

Then I realized Saleem hadn’t been to the best mall in Chiang Mai, so we went to my mall. We bought tickets to see Ratatouille and then split up so that Saleem could go play video games while Alki and I had our own session of What Not To Wear in the Robinson (fancy department store) dressing room.

It was amazing. We learned a lot of stuff about me and clothing and what looks good and not. Unfortunately, our learning led us to the conclusion that nothing in store fit the criteria of what looked, but that’s ok. It was a learning experience.

The movie was good and it made Alki miss Paris.

Thursday Saleem, Alki and I headed up to Pai, the little hippie mountain village 3 hours north of Chiang Mai I had been to one time before right after returning from Greece. It was as beautiful and as I remembered. The village itself is annoying cause I don’t like young hippies who walk into 7-11 with no shoes on (No Thai person would ever walk around with no shoes on and the hippie wouldn’t do that in their own country either) and I don’t like old strung out smelly hippies who corner you to tell you how much better things were in the past. So the village is lame but the area is amazing. So the best thing to do is to rent a motorbike and head out and see it. Saleem and Alki rented some automatic scooters and I treated myself to a 125cc motorbike (my one in Chiang Mai is 97cc. It’s a nice difference). We took off and headed towards the Pai Hot Springs a couple of kilos out of town. I hadn’t gone last time because I was too embarrassed to try to speak Thai to get a reduced price and the 400 baht price for foreigners (it’s 20 baht for Thais) seemed ridiculous.

But I was more confident and knew more and Poom had prepped me on some key phrases, so the three of us drove there and I gave my schpeal to the guy at the gate. “I’m not a tourist, I live here. I’ve been teaching English in Chiang Mai for a year. I pay taxes. Here is my tax card. I can read and write Thai also. I can’t pay 400 baht. Can I please pay the Thai price?” Poom had told me to say, “I have a Thai husband. I’m Thai now.” But I thought that would be a little unnecessary. With the tax card I thought I’d be set, but the dude at the gate wasn’t having it! I said, ok ok, I’ll pay 100 baht. He said 400. I decided 200 was the most I’d pay and he still said no, so I huffed away and got back on the bike.

STUPID!!!!! I wonder if the Thai husband line would have helped.

Anyway, we left. We then went to the Pai Canyons! That was free. It was nice. At the canyons we talked to a guy selling drinks and he showed us another hot spring. He said it was free.

It was 25 kilos away and free, but the one major difference was that the 400 baht hot springs are a temperature you can swim and chill in. The free ones are just boiling water. I forgot the connection with visibly boiling water and extremely hot temperatures, so after parking the bike I stuck my foot in and said, “oh wow, this is actually pretty AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!” I’m an idiot.

Don’t put your feet in boiling water. So we sat and looked and kind of climbed around to try to find an area that wasn’t boiling. Eventually we found a spot. It wasn’t very exciting or relaxing. But the drive out was nice and no one charged us 400 baht.

On the way back we had to find gas. We drove through a random village and people were coming out of their homes and staring. We were like a three person parade. I used my Thai but messed up.

There are a lot of words in Thai that are just English words said with a Thai accent. Or a word vaguely related said with a Thai accent. I thought gas was one of them because the word “nam oi” (nam means water or liquid, oi would be the Thai pronunciation of oil) sounded familiar in my head. So I went around asking where we could find some nam oi. When we started getting funny looks I pointed to the gas tank and they laughed and said “nam man!” oh right. That’s the word for oil and gas. So what’s nam oi? Oyster sauce! So I was driving around town asking where I could find some oyster sauce. Oops.

Right before returning home we stopped at the 7-11 and Saleem realized that he couldn’t turn his bike off. His key had fallen out of the ignition somewhere along our adventure. It’s a common thing and most people keep their keys on a carabineer or a keychain they can put around one of the mirrors in case that happens. Saleem hadn’t known to do that. Oops.

We got back to our guesthouse around 7. The first time I was there I stayed in a room usually allocated for staff members of a massage shop located next to a guesthouse. This was because every place (most bungalow places) I looked at was either full or more expensive than I wanted to pay. This time we had three people so we looked for a place where we could have three people in one bungalow. Your choices are mountain view, river view or city, so we went with the mountain view. We headed in that direction but didn’t find anything we liked. Finally we got to a place that worked. Three mattresses in one room with a shared bathroom with beautiful beautiful views of the mountains and the valleys and all of it. So the thing about this place. When we got there this girl was eating something, so I asked in Thai what are you eating. She looked at me, stared, no smile, and said, “Hello.” And I said, “Hi.” And then she said again, “Hello.” And then I realized she looked kind of familiar so I said, “Oh! Hi!” But still couldn’t place her. Then she said “Hello” in exactly the same voice and with the exactly same stare as the first time. She’s weird.

I realized it was one of my old students. And not only that, she was this overachieving, memorizing the book before class therefore simultaneously confusing and annoying the rest of the class, obsessed with France, freaking everyone else in the class out, old student. Before we went on our adventure we talked a little bit and she said, “I will make you dinner tonight. Do not go out to eat. Come back here.” Kind of like a robot. A little bit nice, a little bit scary.

It turns out that her uncle owns the place and she left Chiang Mai to help him run it because his wife went crazy after some big floods where she lost everything. Kind of sad. We got back for dinner and it was good. Like really good, but kind of awkward too. After dinner we tried to go into town.

“Where are you going now?”
“Um, we’re going to go into town. Probably drink some tea.”
“I have tea here. I can make you tea here. You can stay here.”
“That’s ok. We’re probably going to go see some jazz.”
“Well. I will make you breakfast tomorrow.”
“Oh, wow thanks. But I think we’ll just go into town to eat tomorrow. Probably get some farang breakfast.”
“I can cook farang breakfast too.”
“We really appreciate it, but I think we’re going to go into town.”

The whole offering/accepting food thing is weird. I don’t want to be rude but I also don’t want to be held hostage.

Pai considers itself the, um, Austin, TX of Thailand as in the live music capital. So we went to check out “the scene”, but all we found was reggae band singing Bob Marley songs. Thai reggae bands singing Bob Marley songs is on the list of “Things in Thailand I used to kind of enjoy but now couldn’t care less about and have maybe started to hate”. And it’s been on that list for a while. Definitely before going to Pai. I refused to support the Thai dreadlocks. Saleem and Alki were okay with that.

Friday we did another bike trip in the morning. We found ourselves in a little Chinese village, which was pretty cool. There was a really really steep hill we drove up and I thought at the top would be a temple or a place to eat or something but it just turned from a cement road into a rocky road to a dirt road into no road. So then we turned around and went down with the bikes in neutral. The whole way up we had been getting these, “And what exactly do you think you’re going to find?” looks, appropriately followed by “Told you so” looks on the way down.

Friday afternoon I had to go back by myself so I could get my teaching schedule and materials for the new Saturday term. Ah work!!! The van that was supposed to leave at 11:30 left around 2:30. I might be exaggerating. Either way, anyone having to do anything in Chiang Mai should leave Pai a day early. The last time I went back there was an Israeli couple that was simultaneously puking and complaining the whole way back. They had booked a 9:00am van ride to get back in time for a 1:00pm flight. That was stupid. That van even left on time but I’m sure they missed their flight.

Saturday was my first day back at work in 6 weeks! It was fun. Alki came back from Pai Saturday afternoon, met me at AUA and I snuck her into the second half of my afternoon class. Starting on a Saturday was nice because Sunday and Monday I had off again. Woo hoo!

Oh Sunday. Sadness day. Alki’s last Sunday Walking Street. She left like 4 hours ahead of me so she could do all her shopping. We got foot massages and coconut juice, had dinner at my favorite Indian place with a couple of couchsurfers and went to a restaurant on the river for dessert.

Monday we got everything together, went to AUA to use internet and air conditioning, stopped by some used bookstores, and headed for the train station so Alki could be on her way to Bangkok to head back to Paris.

OH SO SAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So that was it. Me and Alki’s 4 Week Adventure.

Other highlights between then (August 6th) and now (October 11th, 2007)

August 11th – 13th – went to Lampang with Poom to see his Mom for Mother’s Day. I met his… sister (also named Poom, but with a shorter vowel sound and a different tone), 13 year old niece, other sister, brother-in-law, best friend’s mom, best friend’s sister, best friend’s sister’s kids, mom, aunt, dad, step-mom and about a third of his graduating class because it was also the weekend of his high school reunion. That was an experience. The reunion was in two parts. The first part was a small group of friends at a fishing place and the second was a big party at a hotel with everyone. Poom told me that because he went to a Christian school all the guys would be able to speak English, but the girlfriends and wives probably wouldn’t. We walked into the fishing place and it was only guys, no girls and none of them spoke English. That was weird. Eventually another couple came and the girl spoke a little English. Most of his family and friends can’t speak much English. I realized I can’t speak much Thai. It was the first time that I really felt like I actually disappointed people with my lack of Thai.

August 25th – Poom and I broke up. He’s, uh, not really very good boyfriend material. Cool guy, terrible boyfriend. We’ll just leave it at that.
September 3rd – Went on an adventure with Nong. My friend Nong works 13 hours a day, usually 7 days a week so when she gets a day off she makes the most of it. We checked out some caves up in the mountains and then a hot springs complex that I had heard about for a while. The hot springs place has a couple of different areas. I went swimming in one area and watched people boil eggs in another.

September 14th – End of weekday classes at AUA. I had taught Level 1 and Level 11. I made my Level 1 kids sing Zombie by the Cranberries and turned it into an American Idol competition. It was amazing.

September 17th – Lee’s last night in Chiang Mai. I met Lee at a bar pretty soon after moving to Chiang Mai and started hanging out with him a lot when Jeff went home. At first I was scared about Jeff coming back cause he’s kind of America/military hater and Lee used to be in the US Army, but they ended up hitting it off really well and the three of us were good friends. Caroline and Miriam were my girls, but they had boyfriends and didn’t go out much. Jeff and Lee were my boys, and I’d go out with them a lot. So first Jeff left, and then Lee left. He’s in Prauge right now teaching English and will head back to the States to do grad school in January.

September 29th – BURMA RALLY!!!!!!!!!! (New Blog post coming soon)

October 5th – My friend Chem came to visit. He’s Filipino and teaches English in a city near Bangkok. Schools are on break now and he had some time before going home to The Philippines so he came up here to see “The Rose of the North”. On Saturday night I asked his if he wanted some Filipino food and he got really excited, so I brought him to a place I had seen signs for but had (stupidly) been too scared to go to by myself. We walked in and got stared at. (Yeah, the staring thing happens a lot.) But it was the whole place, all at once. Someone walked over and said, “Um. Can I help you?”
“Uh yeah, can we eat dinner?”
“Hmm… just a moment…” We followed her inside and saw there was a buffet set up. Just then this woman comes out and looks at us, “Yes?”
”Oh, I’m sorry. It looks like you guys are having a private party. We can come back another time.”
“No, no problem! It’s my birthday. Join the buffet! Then you can wash dishes, ok?”
“Um, sure?!?! Thanks!?!”

It was the owner, Annie’s, 60th birthday. The place was filled with every Filipino living in Chiang Mai. Now Chem’s gradfather was Spanish so he doesn’t look like the average Filipino, and he grew up speaking English, so when he busted out his Tagalog (which he started learning at age 7) and said, “I’m Filipino!” everyone was shocked and kind of relieved I think. We ate a ton of really good food and eventually the show began. Annie started it off by singing The Carpenters. Then the lounge singer sang some more. Then people started giving Happy Birthday speeches. Since Filipinos are all super Catholic there was a lot of god talk too. And dancers from “Singles for Christ” did a little hip hop dance number with a lot of very suggestive dance moves that I don’t think Jesus would be very happy with. I don’t get it. So having safe, private, pre-marital sex is bad, but teenagers dancing like strippers in front of a room of middle aged devout Catholics isn’t? Come on. Something’s wrong here.

Anyway, I learned how to say, “It’s delicious!” “Thank you!” and “Happy Birthday!” in Tagalog. I met the local Chiang Mai Filipino community who mostly taught English in public schools, taught religious stuff at Christian schools and colleges or were singers at fancy hotels. They all speak English, some as their first language (like Chem), but it’s all with an accent I associate more with Mexico and South America than Spain. It was weird. I’m not use to Southeast Asians sounding Mexican. I hope I’m not being politically incorrect. We didn’t end up washing dishes and we went back again on Chem’s last night to order and pay for a real meal.

October 11th – Today, (right now actually) I have to find out if I’m going to keep working at AUA for the next 10 Saturdays or not. I’m finishing the weekday classes in 3 weeks. Then I’m done.

AH!!! I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Burma blog coming soon.

Grrrrr!!!! Burma!!! (those are angry exclamation points, not happy ones)

2007-09-28T14:05:00.000+07:00

Pardon my French, but shit is really getting bad over there. It started out with a huge oil hike and a few people started marching, then the monks joined and it turned into a big deal, then regular people started joining them, and then it got really big. So then the government imposed a curfew, starting cutting off even more contact with the outside world and shooting people and monks. This is not good. The is very not good.

The last protests were in 1988 when 1) no one knew/cared about Burma and 2) no one had blogs! Now, I can't do much with my blog, cause I'm pretty sure it's only Barbara, my mom, Danny, maybe Liz and Stacey and Erica occasionally, but for you guys, and anyone else who might be reading this, please go to other blogs and find out more.

Educate yourself.

Check out this guy's blog - http://ko-htike.blogspot.com/

He's a Burmese guy that moved to London and has set up this blog and has been taking phone calls, emails and pictures from people in Burma. The Burmese comes up as question marks, but there's some English too.

I'm not poli sci person, but all I know is that Burma is fucked up, but as long as China, India and Thailand (to a lesser extent) don't give a shit, then the military government isn't going to give a shit either.

I'm personally pissed at Thailand for being too freaking "Mai pen rai" to do anything about it. ("Mai pen rai" is the "relax, don't worry, no problem, never mind" attitude they pride themselves on, but I think is totally lame.) So this would really be a nice time for them to do something good where the rest of the world could say, "Hey, way to go Thailand! Maybe you guys aren't as spineless, juvenile and selfish as we thought!" but then again, why do they think that? Cause they had a coup just about a year ago. So we have a military junta in charge here too, although it doesn't seem to be called a junta as much anymore even though it's still the same people. And as someone on thaivisa.com (Thailand expat forum) said, military juntas tend to be friends. They even gave some medal or award to a Burmese military official last year. Fucked up!

Here's more from the thaivisa.com forum - http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=144661

It's mostly old men who sit at their computers all day complaining about everything, but some of it's interesting. They definitely know more about Thailand than me, so I read it occasionally.

And then there's always good ol' cnn.com and bbc.com to get the standard stuff.

And US Campaign for Burma -
http://uscampaignforburma.org/

Since the time when I started writing this, the first blog I posted, reported that Burma has turned off the internet. Turned off the internet! That's ridiculous!

Fuck Burma, fuck China and while we're at it, fuck North Korea.

Asia totally sucks.

Since I got to Thailand (July 2006), I've been trying to figure out a good way to visit Burma without supporting the government. It's really really hard, though. When you go, you have to exchange $200USD into, like, Monopoly Myanmar money which is only only good at certain government run places. So it seems pretty much impossible to visit Burma and not support the government. Danny also suggested visiting China and when I said I was boycotting China because they fuck up too many other countries he noted that with 1.6 billion people causing world problems is pretty much inevitable. I took that into consideration, but then saw a show on the German TV channel I get about how the Olympics are super lame too. I wasn't a fan of Beijing 2008 to begin with and after seeing the show I was really upset. So now I hate everywhere and everyone and I feel weird.

I wish there were something I could do. I know Craig and Caroline don't buy products from China, and I applaud them, but isn't everything kind of from China? I don't really know any Olympians to ask not to go. I wasn't planning on watching anything anyway. I'd like to help Burma somehow, but I have no idea how, and the only Burmese people I know live at Elephant Nature Park.

I feel overwhelmed.

I know a lot of this was rambling but that's kind of what my brain feels like right now.

Music Videos!!!!

2007-09-17T17:26:00.000+07:00

YouTube is back again and I couldn't be happier!!!!!

Enjoy! (Beth and Alki Week 4, still coming...)

I'm over the lame Thai love songs. Well, like the really really lame, slow ones. So these are a little different from the really slow, slow lame love songs.

Super cute video...
Ab Normal - Jeet

Playing in 7-11 all the time....
Bodyslam - Yaa pit (Poison)

Totally badass emo hardcore whatever...
Retrospect - Mai mee ter (I don't have her)

And today at the mall I saw a Thai girl (her her tattooed farang boyfriend), hobbling up the stairs in crutches and HIGH HEELS!!

Alki in Southeast Asia, Beth not working! Part 3 pictures

Alki in Southeast Asia, Beth not working - Part 3!

2007-09-07T16:07:00.002+07:00

Monday - We crossed the bridge to Thailand and eventually made our way to the Thai Immigration Area. That was annoying. It was hot. The lines were long. Everything is outside. We got to Nong Khai and decided to stay for a night. Nong Khai is part of Isaan, the northeastern part of Thailand. It’s hotter, flatter, drier, slower, poorer and the food is spicier. This is where there really into eating bugs too. Most people just jump right on a train or a bus. We watched as these two British girls tried to sort out their money. Even though we were technically in Thailand the tuk tuk driver agreed to accept Lao Kip. They ended up giving up and gave the tuk tuk driver the rest of their Lao money. “Here, a tip, I don’t know. Is this enough? I can’t count this money.” The tuk tuk driver was more than happy to take it all.

We made our way to this hippie guesthouse place. The way down to the guesthouse has turned into a litle hippie village. The tuk tuk dropped us off at the driveway and we walked down past a bookshop, a tea shop, some yoga and meditation places and there was even an older woman with white hair sweeping her porch. Pretty much, you check in and get a book and then whenever you use any of their services you write it in your book. To order food at their restaurant, you write your order in the book. When you want to rent a bike, you take a key and write it in your book. Kinda weird. Kinda hippie. I’d love to know how many people cheat the system. Monday night we didn’t do much. I think we walked to a 7-11 and had dinner of microwave pizza, yogurt drinks and potato chips. It felt to be good to be back in Thailand! Alki went to some floating bar thing at the guesthouse, but I went to sleep.

Tuesday we rented bicycles and rode to Nong Khai’s one tourist attraction. It’s a sculpture park by some kind of crazy guy. I’ll see if I can find an article to help explain it better. It had Buddhist and Hindu statues but they were all kind of strange and more interesting than the normal ones you see all over the place. It was fun. The weather was nice and we took lots of pictures.

On the way back I saw a sign for duck lap, which is a super Isaan food. We parked our bikes and ordered duck lap and sticky rice. It also came with this really gross looking soup. The soup itself wasn’t gross, but the organs and things in the soup were pretty gross.

All in all, I’d say Alki and I did a pretty damn good job of eating all this crazy food. Sticky rice does make everything better. And lap happens to be one of those dishes that comes with a plate of cucumbers and string beans which always makes everything better. We, of course, provided endless entertainment for the group of family and friends who ran the shop with my “A-for-effort” Thai. Luckily, I’ve gotten pretty good at talking about food and Chiang Mai. The shop was really just someone’s house with a food stall in front. They were sitting in front of their house, so they sat us at a table in front of their neighbors’ house. I think after the lap we decided we deserved an ice coffee break. We found a café with a pool table playing “Rockstar” so we hung out there for a while. The walls were evenly divided between posters of the king and cars.

That afternoon we got a bus to Khon Kaen. It’s yet another “Gateway to Isaan” city of Thailand. This is the first time when a city had two bus stations and we thought we were in the close one but we were in the far away one. Damn!

And I had to pee.

We started walking towards town and eventually gave in to the bladder, ran into a khao tom shop, used the bathroom and then decided to eat there. I could read the menu but still didn’t really know what to order.

The entire staff circled around our table. We got Tom Yam Kung as per suggestion from the one staff guy. When it arrived it was this whole big deal with different sized spoons and bowls. Everyone was still staring. There’s a lot of stuff in Tom Yam Kung and I think a lot of it you aren’t supposed to eat so I wasn’t sure if you’re supposed to the stuff you don’t want in the bowl or if you’re supposed to feed yourself from the bowl. It was really confusing. We did our best, paid out bill and left as soon as possible.

Eventually, we checked into a not-very-interesting hotel and tried to walk around at night but got sucked into a fantastic internet café and hung out there until it closed. It was air conditioned, had really comfortable seats, really fast internet, no weird smell and was only15 baht an hour! Amazing!

We didn’t even bother to see if Khon Kaen had any tourist attractions.

The next day we were back on a bus heading toward Phitsanuloke!

The bus rides in Thailand are something else. There are 1st, 2nd and 3rd class buses. We usually ended up in 2nd class, which means the bus technically has air conditioning, but there’s no guarantee that it’ll work. You are assigned a seat but it’s not always available. And you may or may not pick up 50 random people who will squeeze into the aisles. For entertainment, you’re provided with Thai country music videos. Over and over. Every song is about a girl from the country who moves to the big city and has some terrible job with a terrible boss, but it’s all worth it when she can return home with yellow t-shirts for her grandparents. Or it’s a video with one singer surrounded by a stage of 12-year-old boy looking Thai girls wearing itsy bitsy shorts and halter-tops, doing “sexy” dancing. But in all honesty, it looks more awkward than sexy in my opinion. That’s what I don’t get. If Thailand is this country of “conservative” people, who wear shorts and t-shirts to go swimming and are too embarrassed to buy condoms, and ashamed of their sex industry worldwide image, why would they dress up these girls in no clothing and tell them to dance with themselves on stage? I understand if it’s a Thai hip hop group that’s trying to imitate America or something, but this is Thai country music. Not badass at all. And it’s one thing if it’s in a music video, but at the Sunday Market there are usually dance groups from local schools and there are like 6-year-old dance troupes in the same tiny shorts and halter-tops doing moves from Ludacris rap videos. I just don’t get it. Thailand is a conservative country. I’ve decided that’s bullshit.

Anyway, the bus ride from Khon Kaen to Phitsanuloke was 6 hours of terrible, terrible music videos.

Phitsanuloke was the second time we thought we were in the close bus station but we were in the far away one. This one it was way further away than in Khon Kaen. We walked around lost for a while and eventually an ice cream man offered to bring us into town. So we said thanks, cool and hopped on the ice cream cart sidecar. Not the safest transportation I’ve ever been on, but it was fun. He drove us to one of the big tourist attractions. We were so happy, we planned on buying 2 ice creams (50 baht) and then leaving a 50 baht tip, which is about the same price as a tuk tuk would have been. We said thanks. And then this guy, we’ll call “fucker” came over and told ice cream dude to charge us 300 baht for the ride. WHAT???? I pretended I didn’t understand. This was too ridiculous. Then fucker broke out his calculator and typed in 300 and gave it to the ice cream man to show us. I said, “No! This was free. You didn’t say we had to pay!” Mind you, the 6-hour bus trip from Khon Kaen was 150 baht. A 10-minute ride into town is not worth 300. Thinking back, we should have just taken the ice cream, left the 100 baht bill and walked away. Fucker then said “Ok, ok, 200 baht.” I said “No! Who are you? Where did you come from? I don’t know you. I know him. He didn’t say I had to pay. I thought he was a nice person.” Eventually I left 150 on the ice cream cart and we stormed away. Things like this don’t usually happen! I was so upset. Fucker followed us and said, “Tuk tuk? Tuk tuk? Where you go?” I think I actually “Go away! I don’t like you! Go away!”

I don’t yell often. Before that guy, I can’t think of the last time I yelled at someone. But this guy really really really really really pissed me off. We decided to hate all the tuk tuk drivers and walked the rest of the way into the guesthouse area town. We found a nice place to stay.

Since Poom was coming down to meet us, he and I got our own room and Alki was left to fend for herself. So she did whatever any normal person would do. While we were choosing which rooms we wanted, she turned around to the complete stranger waiting in line behind us and said, “Um, hi. Would you want to share a room with me?” They have fan rooms with 2 beds and shared bathrooms in the hallway for 220 baht. It’d be 110 baht for each of us.”
“Uh, sure.”
“Ok, cool! What’s your name?”
“Saleem.”
“Nice to meet you, roomie!”

The three of us headed up to the 4th floor where the cool (read: cheap) kids stay. Saleem ended up being really cool! (And gay, which made the whole room sharing thing a little less awkward seeing as Alki likes to wear as little clothing as possible at all times.) First night in Phitsanuloke was made up of food, internet and meeting up with Poom!

The next day was our “being productive in Phitsanuloke” day. We woke up and went back to the place of the ice cream man/fucker incident. It turned out to be this huge golden Buddha thing, which was a pretty big deal in Phitsanuloke. It was fun going with Poom because he actually knew what to do with all this Buddhism stuff. We copied him and did the praying thing. Then we did this thing where you hold a cup with about 20 or 30 different wooden sticks. You hold the cup at an angle and shake it until one falls out. Then you check the number and go to a board and pick up the piece of paper with your number on it and it has your fortune. How much fun is that? I don’t think churches or synagogues have anything that fun.

On the way out we saw this weird looking flower that looked like a bouquet. Poom bought it. Turns out it was lotus seeds! (He knew that. We didn’t.) They tasted like boring almonds, but they were really fun to peel and eat.

After our morning of being good, we went to the mall of Phitsanuloke. Alki looked at cameras, I bought a new case for my phone, Poom got his shoes fixed and then we all drank coffee.

Phitsanuloke is one of the only places where you’re allowed to have houseboats in the city, so we thought it would be a good idea to eat lunch on a houseboat. Turns out the houseboats are really far away. And not popular for lunch. The three staff members stared at us the whole time and then it took us 30 minutes to get a tuk tuk back to the guesthouse area.

That night we went out on the town. Phitsanuloke night market, dinner on the river, then moved to another riverfront establishment for some whiskey and Halvzies! So much fun. There were some guys playing Thai songs and after recognizing a few, I tried to request one of my favorite Thai songs by one of the artists they were playing, but… the guy didn’t know my song. So sad.

The next day Alki and Saleem decided to be supertourists. They headed out to Sukkhothai, which is one of the ancient capitals of Thailand about an hour from Phitsanuloke. It’s not that I wasn’t interested; it’s just that it was soooooooooooooooooooooooooo hot. And they were going to rent bicycles and I thought I would die. Literally. So Poom and I stayed in Phitsanuloke. Our mission for the day was to plan our return to Chiang Mai. We went to the train station but all the trains were full. While we were at the train station I went to the bathroom and Poom had a cigarette. One of the soldiers there called him and told him he wasn’t allowed to smoke. But when he called him, he addressed him as “nenh’ which is the name for novice monk. How funny! This tattooed, pieced guy, well past his teenage years, in normal clothes, still looks like a novice because he had just gone to the barber and had really short hair.

After the train station we went to the bus station. It was confusing and frustrating. A lot of times when things are confusing and frustrating I think it’s because I’m a foreigner and I don’t speak Thai. Like, surely they’re saying something that makes sense; it’s just that I don’t understand. But after going with Poom and watching him get just as confused and frustrated I realize it’s not me, it’s Thailand bus stations. At one point he said, “I don’t understand. I want to go to Chiang Mai. They have buses that go to Chiang Mai. I have money. I want to give them my money to go on their bus, and they won’t take it. I don’t understand. That’s bad business.”

And it’s not like there’s one bus company that was confusing and frustrating. There are like 4 different companies and all were equally unhelpful. Pretty much the answer we got was “come back later”.

We headed back to town and walked around some more and stopped when we saw a cute coffee shop with a closed front door. Exciting! (Closed front door = air conditioning.) We hung out there for a while. Then asked the lady where the best massage in Phitsanuloke was. She said Big C and that she was heading that way and would give us a ride. For free. Nice! An actual nice person, not a mean nice person like the ice cream man.

Big C is another huge mega-mart place that surrounds itself with a mini mall. The massages there really were fantastic. At one point Alki called and said that it was so hot she was sure she had melted and was now only a liquid. I told her I was getting a Thai massage in air conditioning.

After the massages we went back to the bus station to try again. After running around a lot, again, we found some people willing to take our money. We told Alki and Saleem the plan, went back to the guesthouse, got all of our bags and got back to the bus station to meet them and get the hell out of Phitsanuloke.

The bus ride was again long, strangely air-conditioned and had a terrible soundtrack. And I think someone peed on the bus.

After a nauseating bus ride, around 1am Saturday morning, we got back to Chiang Mai. Alki threw up. We were home! We dropped Saleem off at Spicy Backpackers, a super cool hostel in my neighborhood, ate noodle soup, then went to sleep.

That wasn’t a full week, only Monday – Saturday morning, but it was the third chapter I’d say.

Last chapter – Chiang Mai, the malls, cooking classes, movies, Warm Up, Pai, back to work….

Alki in Southeast Asia and me not working - Week 2!

2007-08-31T12:42:00.000+07:00

Sunday, July 15th – Showered and laundered. Although we had only said goodbye about 3 hours earlier, we missed Wendy and Jamie so much we had to have dinner with them. Poom, Jeff and Nong came too! (Poom is a really cool Thai tattoo artist I met at a bar the night of my birthday party. We were friends before I left, and then we started dating, but recently realized that wasn’t a very good idea, so now we’re back to being friends. He’s probably been my closest friend here since Jeff and Renata left.) Staring at the menu at the resturant made us all really miss the buffet at the Park. After that we were all kind of dead and exhausted. We said goodbye, Alki and I got foot massages, which I think I feel asleep during, and then we went home.

Monday – Jeff called and asked if we wanted to go to Laos on Tuesday. He had mentioned this before but I didn’t think it was really going to happen. But Monday we went to a travel agent and bought tickets for Tuesday. This is when we realized that Alki’s ATM/credit card didn’t work. There’s a 3% charge for using a credit card so we walked to the ATM to get cash out and it didn’t work. And then she said fine, I’ll use it as a credit card, and it didn’t work again. Then we tried a bunch of other ATMs and nothing worked. Her bank is in France. So after a lot of Skype-ing France and 5,000 different numbers for her bank, she found out that the talented office staff at Elephant Nature Park had charged her credit card three times so it was maxed out. Eventually, Monday night I think, she got the money back and it worked again. Phew that was close!

Tuesday – Poom drove Jeff, Alki and me to the airport. It was tearful. Jeff left Laos to come back to Chiang Mai to go back to Bangkok to go home. Indefinitely. So this was the last time Poom, Jeff and I were in Chiang Mai together.

While we’re at the airport Jeff asks if we have passport photos. I happened to have a bunch because of all of my visa and work permit paperwork. But I completely forgot I would need them for Laos, and therefore forgot to tell Alki. Damn! But, this is really bad, don’t repeat this to anyone, since I had so many from different times, with different hairstyles, I took a recent one with my hair pulled back and Alki took some of mine from when my hair looked more like hers. I said it jokingly but Alki said yes let’s do it. She’s the bad, immoral one; I’m just too weak to stand up for what’s right. In all honesty, we checked to see if there was a photo booth in the airport and there wasn’t and Laos is so ridiculous I wouldn’t be surprised if they sent her back or something. So the plan was to scatter ourselves so it wouldn’t be too obvious. But that didn’t work because we were somehow the first ones off the plane and got so excited that we were like first and second in line. But being white in Southeast Asia is like being Asian in Kentucky or something. White people all look the same. No one said a thing. We got through even though I was scared I was going to scream out a confession or puke in the immigration line at the time. Oh, and Laos is the only place where I’ve seen Canadians wishing they were Americans. Laos visa for an American – 35USD, Laos visa for a Canadian – 42USD. Ha! Of course, my American dollars were in my bag so I had to pay with baht and they use an exchange rate from 5 years ago and I think I paid over 42USD. Oh well.

So lessons for Laos – 1) have passport photos (turns out it’s like $1 to get them to take your picture there) 2) have American dollars 3) be American.

I can’t remember much about Tuesday. This was Jeff’s last Southeast Asian adventure before going home, so we let him do as much as he wanted. He bargained with the tuk-tuk dude, he decided on a guesthouse, he spoke his Thai and did his thing. Thai and Lao aren’t exactly the same, but they’re similar and because no one’s going to translate things into Laos (like TV shows, movie, books, etc.) most Laos people grow up listening to a lot of Thai, but speaking Laos and seem to be confused about the similarity between the two. I listened to a lot of conversations that went like this.

Every Lao person Jeff spoke to in Thai - “Oh you speak Lao!”
Jeff - “No, I can speak Thai. Not Lao.”
“Oh, it’s the same. If you speak Thai, you can speak Lao.”
“Not really. It’s close. But it’s not the same.”
“But I understand everything you say.”
“But I don’t understand everything you say.”
“Really? But it’s the same.”
“It’s close. Not exactly the same.”

Tuesday night we checked out the night market, which is like a calmer, more interesting version of the night bazaar in Chiang Mai. It’s weird bargaining in American dollars. I don’t like it. Baht is more fun. They have kip (10,000 kip = $1), but they try to get dollars for everything. We ran into a cool table with two Lao guys behind it. It’s called Big Brother Mouse and it’s an NGO that writes fun, education stories in Lao for Lao kids to get them excited about reading. They do books in only Lao and in Lao and English. So they sell the books for you to either bring home as souvenir or give to some Lao kids by yourself or buy books and donate them back for them to hand out. They make trips to schools and orphanages and hand out the books. High school and university students do all the stories and artwork. At this counter we also got a booklet called Stay Another Day in Laos or something. It turned into our bible. It had lists of “do good” projects, stores and businesses all over Laos and what you can do to find out and support them. Much better than Lonely Planet.

That night we went to an internet café and as we were leaving these three kids came in and told us that there had been three incidents of girl’s getting their bags stolen in the past three nights and that the police, tourist police, guesthouse people have all been completely useless. That wasn’t anything I had heard of while I was there last time. Oh yeah, I was in Laos in January 2006 and it was weird to be back. It’s so nice to come back to a place that you know about already. It saves so much time!

Wednesday was superproductive day #1. We walked around in the ridiculous heat all morning, and then headed out to the waterfalls in the afternoon. We shared a tuk tuk with 2 couples. One couple was nice. One couple was mean. The mean couple had to get a bus that was leaving at 5pm so they wanted to leave at 4pm. We were told we would stay until 5, but that was okay with us. The dude of the mean couple walked away from the tuk tuk driver saying, “Don’t fuck us over!” and stormed off. Mean mean mean! So we walked around, went swimming, checked out some bears and were back at 3:50. We saw the nice couple. They said they had been sitting there since 3:30pm. We saw our tuk tuk driver. We didn’t see the annoying couple. We waited. The tuk tuk driver was scared because he didn’t want to leave without them and fuck them over and I don’t think they hadn’t paid yet either. We waited until 4:40 I think. Drove all around looking for them. What jerks!!! They left and didn’t tell anyone. The tuk tuk driver was sitting in his tuk tuk the whole time. They could have at least told him! On the way there Jeff sat in the front with his new best friend and Alki and I sat in the back with two other couples, playing immature games where we talk about boys while ease dropping on the other couple’s conversation.

“Have you done Vietnam?”
“Oh yeah, it was great. Really nice. We were there for 3 days. Have you done Angkor Wat?”
”No, not yet! We’ll be there for two days next month.”

I don’t like the phrase “done” when referring to traveling. And I hate when people go to some place for 2 days and then say they have “done” it. I wouldn’t even say I’ve “done” Thailand. What does “done” mean? Like you have a checklist and then you can check it off when it’s done? Also, the nice couple was traveling for a couple of weeks. The mean couple was traveling for 18 months I said. And they were young. How do young people travel for a year and a half? I figured it out. They fuck over tuk tuk drivers. Excuse my language, but those people really made me mad.

Anyway, our freaked out tuk tuk driver eventually drove us back to town after we did our best to explain that the people were bad and he didn’t need to look ro worry about them anymore.

Back to the waterfalls. Bright blue water. It felt like a movie. And somehow the first pool we went to we only shared with a German couple. The other levels with swimming areas had a lot of people, but we got to play by ourselves! As friendly and outgoing as Jeff, Alki and I we’re also really snotty and we think(/know) we’re so much better than everyone, so we didn’t want to have to talk to other people. Lao people, ok, western foreigners, no way. But the German couple was okay cause they took our picture. Actually we’re only against annoying, smelly hippie backpackers. There was a "bear sanctuary" with maybe 15 bears. But it was pretty small, like the size of the playground at Neighborhood Park and made me feel weird.

After we got back from the waterfall we headed to the Royal Ballet Theater and watched some dancing. It was similar to dancing I had seen in Cambodia and I was exhausted, so I fell asleep. Oops. After the show we went to the market and got sticky rice and grilled chicken on a stick. I love sticky rice and grilled chicken on a stick. Jeff tried to be cool and buy “interesting” food but it turned out to be “really spicy” and “kinda gross.” I wasn’t jealous.

After eating we started drinking. One thing that everyone in Thailand knows about Laos is Beer Lao. It’s apparently the best beer in Southeast Asia. I didn’t care, but Jeff and Alki were excited. So we decided to go “convenience store” hopping on the way to the fancy, expensive bar. First stop, night market. Small can 80 cents. Second stop, 1st convenience shop, large bottle 90, 3rd stop, 2nd convenience shop, large bottle 80 cents! Then we got to the bar. It’s called Hive. It’s as cool and trendy as anything in New York City. (I think. I have very limited experience in “cool and trendy” of New York.) As we walked up a tuk tuk driver asked if we wanted to go to a disco. It was a young kid and Jeff proceeded to make best friend #3. Best friend #1 – guesthouse boy, best friend #2 – waterfall tuk tuk driver. Tuk tuk dude’s name is Leh. He said he was 23, but he looked 16. We said we’d come find him when we wanted to go to the dance club. We kept our word, like good westerns and headed to the dance club with our new friend. Jeff invited his new best friend inside and we tried to have fun. But there weren’t many people and then the electricity went out. Jeff was convinced that it was some plot to scam us out of money, but I was pretty sure they would have preferred if the power stayed on and we stayed longer and bought more drinks. Jeff can be a little pessimistic sometimes. So Hive Bar and the dance club I did last time. Then, something new that wasn’t there last time – a bowling alley. Weird! It’s the only thing open after midnight in Luang Prabang, so while all the Lao people are going to sleep so they can wake up early and give alms to the monks at 5:30am, western backpackers go to a bowling alley with their tuk tuk drivers. There are only 5 lanes and a ton of people so really it’s a bar, not a bowling alley. We stayed there for a while like good little backpackers, but it really wasn’t that much fun. Jeff took off to try to speak Thai with the girls behind the counter and I sat trying to translate flirting between Leh and Alki.

Thursday was unproductive day. We went to a cafe/bookstore with really comfortable full-length pillows and after eating breakfast I fell asleep while Alki read. I eventually woke up and we went to another place in the Stay Another Day booklet. It was called Kopnoi, which means little frog. They have a bunch of expensive clothing, fabrics and books, but they were having an art exhibit on sticky rice! Sticky rice is so cool. I didn’t learn as much as I wanted about sticky rice, but the photographs were really pretty. I think it was about this time we realized we weren’t sure if Jeff was dead or alive. He had disappeared at the bowling alley and we hadn’t seen or heard from him. Alki and I decided to walk back to our guesthouse calling “Jeff? Jeff? Anyone see Jeff?” I can’t remember much else from Thursday. Probably a lot of coffee and internet. Thursday night was Jeff’s last night so we had a nice little dinner at an Indian restaurant and then probably checked out the market a little bit more.

Friday was superproductive day #2! One of the “things” to do is to watch the alms giving in the morning. Alms giving is when the villagers line up along the street and give food, gifts, money to the monks walking by. As far as I know it happens everywhere, but in Luang Prabang it’s like a big deal because there are so many monks and novices in such a small area. So Friday we woke up early and headed out to be good little Buddhists. Personally, I read not to buy food from the street vendors and if you really feel like it will be something spiritual for you, you should by from a market. I didn’t feel like I knew what was going on, so I was happy standing back and watching it. Jeff wasn’t. He bought some stuff from the first vendor that ran up to him. She didn’t go away. She called her friends over. Jeff was pretty much harassed non-stop for the hour we waited. Some monks and novices walked by and Jeff handed them some stuff. I tried to take pictures but those damn ladies were in the way! After we didn’t see any more monks we went to eat and drink coffee! There we discussed whether or not to climb Mount Phousi (yeah, “pussy”). It’s a small little hill that takes about 15 minutes to walk up. Maybe even 10, but we were all pretty tired. We decided to suck it up and do the “hike” up the “mountain.” When I went last time, I went around sunset and it was packed. Going at 7:00am was a much more pleasant experience. We stayed up there for an hour and had a Luang Prabang photoshoot. I love digital cameras. Jeff doesn’t. So he didn’t have any pictures of anything of the last 2 and half years of him living in South East Asia. So being the good people Alki and I are, we burned a CD for him of all of our pictures. Then lunch at a fancy restaurant with sandwiches with sundried tomatoes and pesto and then back to the guesthouse to say goodbye to Jeff.

AHHH!!!!! Leh, our trusty tuk tuk dude/Jeff’s best friend #3/Alki’s potential future husband met us at our guesthouse and tried to get Alki and me to come to the airport. At first we thought we had more important things to do and then we realized that wasn’t true at all. So we hopped in and all went together.

The airport was really sad. This is Jeff leaving! Jeff is the only person I knew in Chiang Mai when I got here! My first friend! Caroline and Miriam were my good friends too but I always knew they were temporary. And Renata leaving was really sad too, but she lived the life of having lots of foreign friends, mostly speaking English and eating at nice restaurants when she went out and having a kitchen. Jeff was more my style of not having a lot of friends, trying to speak Thai to everyone and eating on the street. He was supposed to stay! I feel like it’s like outliving your parents. It’s just not supposed to happen. I didn’t want to see him go. I was so sad and flustered I dropped my camera in a mud puddle while trying to get back in the tuk tuk.

Back at the guesthouse we decided we cannot wallow in our sadness, we have to go out and freaking carpe diem. We rented some bicycles and set out to see the town. It was so hot and walking around took so long, it was really stupid of us to wait this long to get bicycles. We biked around for a while and found a temple with some novices. We totally freaked them out. Most of them had only been there a couple of days and were only staying for a week, so they were really, really, really shy. Then we headed to town and went to the Big Brother Mouse shop. In the Stay Another Day booklet it said visitors could come and help proofread books. This is my dream come true. There is so much weird English around here the thought of correcting it filled my heart with joy. So we went over there, but they didn’t have any proofreading tasks for us. The task we had involved looking at really strange .jpegs they pulled from the internet, and then giving them a one word captions so that they could eventually be put in an English alphabet book. I asked if they wanted nouns, verbs, adjectives or what, but he said anything was fine. Here’s an example of a picture. A woman in a superhero costume is ironing a green sweater while smiling. What one word can you write for this? I’ll see if I can find more examples in my journal. They were all kind of weird pictures that could easily be captioned with 8 different words.

After we left there we headed up to the Red Cross to get massages, which was also in the Stay Another Day booklet. I thought it was going to be a Thai massage but then they told us to take off our clothes but didn’t give us any ones to put on. Woah! An oil massage! I don’t usually get those, but it was nice and $3 and the money went to the Red Cross! Next we went over to my old temple. I was nervous. I knew that the two novices I had kept in touch with were both in Vientiane and I was scared the novices would be as lame as the other ones. They were all hunched over a book when we got there. I recognized two of them immediately. And they recognized me. It was alien kid and little guy! I think I probably have pictures of them from last time. Alien kid turned to little guy and started whispering, pointing and smiling. Then alien kid started talking to me.
“You from New York?”
“Yeah.”
“You come here last year?”
“Yeah.”
“You friend with Nenh Thong and Nenh Nan! I remember you!”
“Cool man! What’s up dude?”

They all know “what’s up” from movies and I don’t really use it with my students, so it was fun to use it with them.

I think he looked really cool in front of his novice (nenh) posse.

Eventually we got the rest of them to talk to us. I had told Alki how much fun the kids at this temple were I was really happy we had time to come by and see them. She had already lied to her friends and said that she had talked to a bunch of novices, so it was about time. We read one of the books we bought from Big Brother Mouse and ended up putting our email addresses in it and leaving it there for the novices to read. It was a book with silly rhymes for each vowel sound in Laos, but the English translations didn’t rhyme so they were just random and funny. I think Alki wrote some of them down.

Friday night dinner was with our tuk tuk boy Leh. We went back to the market for more grilled chicken on a stick and sticky rice. While we were eating chicken we saw April (a friend from Elephant Nature Park) and her new slow boat posse! (The “slow boat” is the other way to get from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang. It’s a long mini van ride and then 2 days on an uncomfortable boat down the Mekong. Nice scenery, but really really uncomfortable.) We said, “Yo, we’re going to a bar. Come with our boy Leh, he’s the best tuk tuk driver in Luang Prabang.” They were planning on going there anyway so they jumped in. Full tuk tuk! The tuk tuks in Luang Prabang are different from Chiang Mai. There are two kinds. One is a big bike with a cart on the back that can 4 or 6 people and has open sides. The other kind I guess is called a jumbo. It’s like a mini truck. It can probably hold 8 or 10 westerners or 20 Lao. This is what Leh had. We still called it a tuk tuk, but he called it a jumbo. So back to Hive bar, then back to the dance club (way more fun with more people and electricity) and then back to the bowling alley. We got home late and had a minor run in with what was possible the Laos Opium Mafia, but we were just freaked out for a little bit, no one was hurt. It was just weird.

Saturday I think we went to our fancy coffee shop, Joma, did internet, I bought a slightly ridiculous but I think kind of cool hill tribe skirt, and then headed to the airport. Luang Prabang was nice but 1) I had been there before 2) Jeff left 3) the Laos Opium Mafia was scary, so we left and went to Vientiane.

The flight was nothing interesting. We got to Vientiane and got a cab to the city center and walked around trying to find a guesthouse. We tried one but the cheap rooms were full. Then we found a cheap one with a shared bathroom. It was good enough. They didn’t have a safe though. I was exhausted and went to sleep but Alki wanted to explore so she went out and rented a bicycle.

This is when tragedy struck. Alki rented a bicycle, left her American passport as a deposit, got her bicycle, put her bag in the basket and took off to explore the city. A guy on a motorbike, wearing a helmet came up near her, slowly, and Alki, thinking all people in the world are good and nice slowed down because she thought he wanted to talk. He didn’t want to talk; he wanted to steal her super cute green bag she had bought at the Sunday Market in Chiang Mai. And he did. He stole her bag with her Greek passport (she has two, she came into Laos with her Greek one), that one ATM/credit card, her notebook (oh shit, she probably can’t look up funny lines from the vowel book) and her camera. She tried to yell and scream and follow him on her bicycle but nothing worked. She tried to go to the police station and they stared at her and said to tell her guesthouse.

She came back to the room, woke me up and we went down to talk to the guesthouse guy. He got really upset but couldn’t actually do anything either. He gave us a map and showed us the tourist police and the American embassy and let us use the internet for free. She called the American embassy and said come on Monday and we can help you. The problem now was that she had entered Laos with her Greek passport, but was now going to have to leave with her American one. After realizing we couldn’t do anything else until Monday we went for a walk, bought some Pepperidge Farm cookies and found a Mexican restaurant to eat at. The taste was much more Indian than Mexican and the margaritas sucked, but we were in a nice location to watch the 6pm aerobics class and watching other people do cheesy aerobics moves always makes everyone feel better.

Sunday morning we checked out of sketchy place ($5) and into ridiculously nice place ($15). It was sooooo nice! Traveling with another person is so much cheaper. It’s great. We had a beautiful, clean room with comfortable beds, a beautiful, sparkling clean bathroom with toilet paper and fantastic water pressure and free use of the computer, free breakfast and 20% massages at the place next door. It was amazing. I felt like I was staying at a 5 star hotel. Sunday morning I got an email from Nan with the name of his new temple. We decided to walk there. The directions made it seem really close but it wasn’t. We walked for a very very long time, and this was without even knowing if he would be there or not. While we were walking there we saw a couple of buses with novices drive by. I kept my fingers crossed that he wasn’t in one of them.

He wasn’t! He was there! We showed up. People looked confused for a little bit and then out walks Nan, “Hey, what’s up?” Easy!

We spent a long time there. A lot of them spoke English but never see any tourists because their temple is so far away from the town. There were more actual monks there than at Nan’s last temple in Luang Prabang and while he’s not a monk (he says he doesn’t want to be one) he was getting a little too old for the Luang Prabang temple. Alki talked to one kid who said he was really sick when he was young and his mom promised that if he survived he would become a monk, so now this dude’s a monk. Alki asked if there was anything he missed and he said beer. He was cool. Seemed very normal and real. A lot of times when you talk with novices or monks at a “monk chat” session they sound like they’re repeating a speech. It’s nice to hear honest, personal answers. We went to their little service and sat Buddhist style in the back while they did their chanting stuff. I love hearing the chanting. It gives me the “Philip Glass” kind of listening satisfaction.

Sunday night Thong finally called me back.and we met up for dinner. It was crazy. When I saw Thong last he was a 17-year-old happy, smiling boy in an orange robe and a shaved head. Now he’s a 19-year-old university student with a huge head of hair, trendy club clothes, and a fancy camera phone with Akon ring tones. Thong offered to bring us out to a Vientiane dance club but we were a little too tired and went back to our fancy hotel.

Monday was Alki’s “figure out how to get out of Laos” day. I did want to go with her, but I had this vision of them faxing the immigration papers from Luang Prabang and realizing she had used my picture and things getting really messy so I let her go out by herself and I said I’d meet up later. Around 1pm, I hear from her and she was in her last step of getting her exit visa! I pick up some food from another “Stay Another Day” business, a restaurant called Makhpet run by the Puan Mit (close friend) organization (http://www.friends-international.org/laopdr.html) which is the Laos chapter of Friends International (http://www.friends-international.org).

I think I’ve written about the Friends restaurant/store in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and the drop in center I went to with Mono in Siem Reap. Pretty much the restaurants employs former street kids to teach them about business, the store sells really really cool things (bags, purses, wallets, backpacks and more) made from recycled materials made by the parents of street kids to give them an income so their kids don’t have to be street kids and profits from the restaurant and store go back into the organization to provide health care, education, training, shelter, love all that good stuff to street kids and their families. So I picked up food from there, bought a toiletries bag made out of a Thai rice bag, then went to meet Alki at the Department of Foreign Affairs. We ate and waited and ate and waited, and soon enough Alki was able to walk out with an exit permit! By the way, Alki is luckiest robbery victim ever. Not many people have two passports. If my passport had been stolen I would have had to go to the Embassy, convince them I’m a US citizen, wait for a new passport and then do everything Alki did. Alki got to skip that whole first part. And after Thailand, she was heading to Greece with her family so she could get a new one there. So easy!

We headed back to the Friends restaurant to finish our food. (We hadn’t been given utencils so it was kind of hard to eat the spicy chicken salad.) They were so nice and so friendly! And they even gave us more sticky rice for free! Thong called and came with another friend. We looked at the shop and I think it was cool because there is often so much good stuff going on, but it’s all aimed at westerners. So getting actual Lao people to learn about this place was pretty cool. Thong and his friend seemed genuinely interested. We bought some more stuff and headed back towards our hotel to get our stuff packed to get ready to leave Vientiane. Thong’s friend had taken his bike and then somehow gotten arrested so Thong had to get to the police station and we had to get to the bus station. We said goodbye to Thong. We got to the bus station but had missed the bus, so we had to get another tuk tuk to the border. The driver was nice and didn’t pull any sketchy stuff. We stopped and picked up a Lao lady whose bike had broken down. We gave her the second book from the Big Brother Mouse.

We got to the border, waited in confusing lines, waited for a bus, and finally said goodbye to Laos.

Phew… Week 2 completed! Two more weeks with Alki!!

Pictures from home - http://www.flickr.com/photos/wigramroad/sets/72157601449996418/
Pictures from Elephant Nature Park - http://www.flickr.com/photos/wigramroad/sets/72157601449393758/
Pictures from Laos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/wigramroad/sets/72157601775393486/

Haven't edited or written captions yet, check back later.

Alki in Thailand/ Beth not working!! (Part 1)

2007-08-13T18:56:00.000+07:00

June 19th – July 6th – Home! A little weird, but weather under 90 degrees, Nathan’s Hotdogs, YouTube, Boston Market, Arkansas, Christian bluegrass gospel services, carpeted ranch suburban houses, Cracker Barrel, $7 microbrews, sports bras, Hanes’ tank tops, Danny, Christi, Laura, Zach, Zach, Hayes and brothers, sisters, nieces, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and gradnmas are things you just can’t get in Thailand, so it was nice to be home. One thing that was strange was that Starbucks is now associated with Chiang Mai more than America in my head. Starbucks is supposed to remind Westerns of home, but since I was never a huge Starbucks fan pre-Thailand and just before leaving Jeff and I were going there a lot, when I walked into the Starbucks in the Westchester mall I got teary eyed and started missing Jeff and the Chiang Mai Starbucks at Tha Phae Gate on Sunday afternoons watching the walking street market.

July 6th - sat in seat 34F for about 17 hours. I sat next to a French guy who runs a restaurant in New York, but takes a couple of weeks off every year travel around Southeast Asia and was really excited because this year he was going to be volunteering at an orphanage in Cambodia.

July 7th – arrive in Bangkok. Take a van to Khao San Road to stay for the night. It takes 2 hours. It took about 40 minteus to get back the next morning. I hate Bangkok and its stupid traffic.

July 8th – back to the airport to meet Alki!!!!!!!!!! The party began immediately. We boarded a plane for Chiang Mai, arrived in Chiang Mai and went to the mall. Woo hoo! Am I a good tour guide or what? It was a special day. The big Northern Thailand battle for my, yes “my”, breakdancing group. But first, the food court! I got kow man gai and savoured every bite. Alki got some vegetarian food but overestimated her spicy tolerance and started crying in the food court. Then we watched my boys practice for a bit and then went downstairs to the competition. There was actually a point when we were all standing by the elevators together and I freaked out, grabbed Alki and we took the escalator instead. I decided I never want to talk to them. Only watch them breakdance. Because first, they’re probably really young and I don’t want the question to even come up and second, they probably don’t speak English and after an awkward English/Thai conversation thing can never be the same. So I’ve decided I will watch and support, smile occasionally, but never talk. As far as the competition, it was really crowded and we couldn’t see too much, so I got to see my group perform and they were good, but I didn’t stick around to see if they won. Next stop: Mad Dog Pizza. Not my favorite place, but we went to meet the Chiang Mai crew: Lee, Tai, Jeff, Nong and Poom. Alki got a $1 beer but was more impressed with my $1 mango shake. Then the Sunday Market! I’ve been here almost a year and I never get sick of it. Alki had been awake for 2 days straight, but she is a trooper and was up for it. We didn’t last long, but long enough for foot massages.

July 9th – July 15th – Elephant Nature Park! So I counted it out and this was my 6th visit to ENP. That’s kind of weird. Not many do that. It was slightly embarressing and I felt really awkward at first. It got better. So even though this was my 6th visit, this was the first time I was “volunteering” since January 2006. Things have really changed! There are people in charge who have lists of project and put together schedules to get those projects done! Totally new. Last time I “volunteered” I sat on the deck and played Sudoku for 80% of the time. I’m going to do my best to remember the schedule…

Monday – day tour, no work

Tuesday – planted trees in the morning, did something with bamboo rafts in the afternoon. That was weird. We took a cattle truck to some middle of nowhere area, put these huge, bamboo rafts in/on the truck, climbed on them to get back in/on the truck, drove back ½ way to the park, took them out, and rode them back to the park. Strange, and I don’t think anyone knew why we were doing it, but it was fun to stand in the truck, sit on the rafts on top of the truck and ride them back in the water, so we didn’t really care.

Wednesday – planting grass, collecting grass. Planting grass wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t what we think of grass, it was some big plant that elephants eat that we were told is “grass”. Alki tried to make it a stretching exercise, but ended up pulling her hamstring. I worked on my Asian squatting skills. Collecting grass was actually really painful because the whole area was covered with these prickly plants that stick in your skin and clothes and are really painful but are too small to get out. I decided to be on wheelbarrow patrol so I only to wheelbarrow (can this be a verb?) the grass from the prickly area to the grass truck. There was construction on the road so there was a group of about 20 people who laughed/smiled/stared when I had trouble getting my wheelbarrow through rocks, sand and mud.

Thursday – went to the local school, went to the Haven. The school trip was weird. We could pick between sports, art, English, and kindergarten. I went with kindergarten but so did the Mormon mom with 4 kids who had worked at a preschool. But they spoke English in her old school. She was talking to them like they knew English and then was getting frustruated when they weren’t paying attention to her. If I were in their position I wouldn’t have paid attention either. Then the Haven! The Haven trip is a hike up a mountain with the elephants and then you get to the middle of nowhere, eat an amazing meal cooked by Pom and hang out by way of candle light, while the elephants are free to go wherever and eat whatever until the morning when you head out with the mahouts and try to find them. It’s a really nice trip. Jeff was also getting ready to go home and wanted to spend some more time with his mahout buddies, so he came up from Chiang Mai and he had a photoshoot with his elephant boyfriend Boo Pa. He said even though he’s worked with ENP for 2 ½ years he didn’t have any pictures of him with an elephant. So I took care of that. That night the mahouts did a little concert with all these recycled instruments. The flutes were made out of different gauged pipes and drums from plastic buckets. They played some really interesting (maybe Karen hill tribe? maybe Burmese?) music and then Christmas carols and hymes.

Friday - walked back from the haven, and painted a wheelbarrow. I think other people went to do other, more labor-intensive things, but with some well-reasoned logic or maybe just some puppydog faces, Alki, Jamie and I got the wheelbarrow job. Unfotunately, the day after we finished, they were used once and went back to looking like they did before we started. It was fun though. And I got to paint my fake Crocs!

*** Yes, I know I’ve been a Crocs hater for a while, but I’ve got to admit, they are comfortable, and I was doing planting and shit shoveling, both activities where you want your feet covered, but also be able to wash your footwear easily afterwards. And my fake Crocs really came through for me. And furthermore, I’ve decided that it’s cool that a really ugly style is popular based on the fact that they’re comfortable and useful. So now I’m not a hater anymore. But I’ll still never wear Uggs. They're stupid. ***

Saturday – Kitchen help, and mudfight! Once again, Alki and I figured out how to not do grass planting or collecting. I peeled potatoes and watched them turn into french fries, cut zucchini, onions, tomatoes and some other vegetables I didn’t recognize, rolled (and ate fresh) spring rolls and spoke really terrible Thai with the kitchen staff. It was great. In the afternoon I was really scared I was going to have to do planting. Luckily it started to rain and everyone decided that we couldn’t possibly plant in the rain. But then this 12-year-old German boy who had been to the park before pointed out that it would be a great time to have a mud fight. Boy was he right! There’s a mud pit that the elephants roll around in during the dry season and when it rains it gets pretty muddy! I don’t think I’ve ever been in a full on mud fight before. It was so much fun. I did get hit in the eye once, but nothing too bad.

Saturday night was something kind of weird. The son of one of the contruction workers at the park killed his wife and then killed himself and we (the volunteers) were invited to the funeral. We were told that the townspeople wanted us there and it wouldn’t be weird. I personally thought that other staff members from the park would be there but they weren’t. It was weird. First stop was the living room where the casket was with a little 6th grade science fair type display of his life through pictures. We walked in, sat down, were totally freaked out and then out came someone with a video camera to film us. Weird, weird weird. Then we went upstairs where there were a bunch of monks praying and some people. We came in, awkwardly sat down, tried to copy the people who were actually praying, and after about 7 minutes, awkwardly climbed out of the tiny room. Then we went to the house of one of the park’s kitchen ladies. We were served hot chocolate and water. Her 15-year-old son was ironing his school shirt. I think everyone felt weird. The other volunteers realized that there were more pictures of the King and his family than the woman’s own family. I talked (in Thai!) to the woman’s 24-year-old daughter and had a slightly less awkward time than the rest of the volunteers who mostly just sat and admiring pictures of the King’s and his family. After the house experience, we were shuffled back into the truck and feeling almost normal, but then the driver ran over a cat so when we got back to the park we were all back to being freaked out and feeling weird.

Sunday – Elephant walk, Elephant watching. Sunday was our day off. The walk was just around the park grounds. It was nice. My 6-year-old Austrian friend Lucas came with us. After I listened to him tell me about all the different elephants, I asked him how many languages he spoke.
“One.”
“Really? Only one? And what language is that?”
”German.”
“Really? Only German? But I don’t speak German, and I understand everything you say. Do you speak English too?”
“Nine.”
Funny kid. He was traveling with his mom.

Sunday afternoon we did absolutely nothing. There were different vans that were going back to Chiang Mai at different times. Alki, Jamie, Wendy, Helen and I decided to go on the last one at 5:00pm. And at 1:00 (when the first people left) we set a mission to sit and watch elephants for the following 4 hours. We accomplished our goal. It was great. All week Alki had been saying, “Let’s do yoga!” and Sunday afternoon we finally did it. We even got some of the mahouts to join us! The mahouts are so cool. I got to see my buddy Kopi again. He's really come a long way with his English and his hair styling. My other little buddy Mongkhun was visiting his family or something so he wasn't there but I told his friend to tell him I said hi. Alki and I taught Kopi and friends how to play Halvzies, but changed the name to "Slap slap!" Alki also taught him useful English expressions like, "Your mama's too slow!"

Sunday night we got back to Chiang Mai and headed to the shower and then the Sunday market for another foot massage. I love the Sunday market. Alki loves it more.

Phew! So that was Alki’s first week in Thailand. Three more to come!

Ah!!! I'm home!!!!

2007-06-23T06:04:00.000+07:00

I'm not even going to being talking about how weird it is being home.

I'm just going to post videos I've been missing.

Youtube's gone and probably not coming back in Thailand so I got to use my time wisely here.

1) Blackhead - เพียงกระซิบ
This is an old song by a band who is waaaay cooler now. I think every Thai cover band plays this song and I love it. I call it the "Puff the Magic Dragon" song.

2) Big Ass - พรหมลิขิต
I was told the name of this song means "destiny". This is also a big song. This is supposed to be a hardrock/nu-metal band, but this is them showing their softer side. And I'm not sure why the band is called Big Ass, but one person told me it's because the singer has a Big Ass.

3) Pang - Gra-Dok Lin - ป้าง กระดกลิ้น
This video is just really funny. Nice little song too.

4) Slot Machine - ผ่าน
Will be played by every band in a club. I like it. Someone called them the Thai Killers! I can kind of read the kareoke fast enough to sing along too! I may have posted this already.

5) Four Mod - Dek Mi Pan Ha
Thai girls at their silliest! Four and Mod are off to Japan to get all those "serious" Japanese to losen up and have some fun! You go girls! Woo!

6) Modern Dog - ตาสว่าง
Modern Dog is a Thai alternative band. I like them a lot actually. There's one song I really like but I don't know the name. But this one will do for now. That's not really the singer by the way.

This is another song with a video done by a student. The song is called "Happiness is..." and it's instrumental. I like it. Enjoy.

7) Calories Blah Blah - ทางเดินแห่งรัก
I had big hopes (ha ha - "big) for this guy but he's actually pretty boring. But I respect him for his name.

8) Isan Hip Hop -
Don't know. I've put Joey Boy, Thaitanium and Buddha Bless up before. Those are the three big groups for Thai Hip Hop. (BTW, super hip Beth was at Warm Up last weekend with Joey Boy and Buddha Bless. I walked by and stared but didn't dare say anything.) This group isn't famous as far as I can tell. I just found on YouTube and decided to post it. The rapping sounds pretty traditional and they use traditional instruments in the background I think.

9)Stone Metal Fire หินเหล็กไฟ - หลงกล
So the Thai name is Hin Lek Fair, but in English that means Stone Metal Fire so they use two names. Most bands just have one. Usually a stupid English name like Big Ass, Armchair, Potato or Calories Blah Blah.
Old rocker dudes. Long hair, sunglasses, power ballads - the whole thing.

10) I want to add a 10th, but maybe tomorrow. There are a couple of videos I know I want to post but I don't know their names. Check back soon.

Take Coins Hear

2007-06-06T15:55:00.000+07:00

Hey,

I'm 24.

So there was a birthday miracle on June 4th! YouTube was back! But see that "was"? Yeah, it's gone again. I had looked for an article about why it was back, like who caved with their demands, but nothing! And now I know why. Well, not really, but I know that's there was nothing because nothing really changed!

Ok, so in the past month...

I saw Buddha Bless! I think I've posted two of their videos in the past. I saw them once with Caroline at the Bemore Hitz concert, but we were really far away. This time we were super close! I don't know how it happened. It was a small club and we were definitely put at a table that had been reserved for someone else. It had a typed name on a piece of paper right on the table, but once we were placed there Dipper crossed it off and wrote "D I P P E R" in a purple gel pen he had in his pocket for some reason. We kind of looked at it and said, "Well, they gave us the table, so it's not really our problem, right? Yeah, yeah, I'm sure they know what they're doing." Nope. Eventually, the people showed up and pointed and said, "But that's our name. It's on the sheet. Right there. Typed. It was just crossed out with a purple gel pen. Who's Dipper?" We all just kind of looked at each other. I'm not sure how, cause it was pretty packed, but they got moved somewhere else and somehow we got to stay.

The show was great! So in Buddha Bless there's Red Guy, Yellow Guy and Green Guy, and they were all there in their respective colors. They did dances like in the video and it was just perfect. It was Joe (AUA), Stephanie (AUA), Jeff (ENP) and me on team Farang and Dipper and a couple of other Rambo stuntdudes on team Thai. After the show Dipper went to the bathroom and when he came back he said we should go meet the dude. I said no way, it would be way too embarrassing. He was sitting with this table of way too cool for school people. Dipper said that they're both Thai and he just talked to him in the bathroom, so really it was okay. It was weird, because I was so nervous. I can't remember when I've been that nervous about meeting a musician. I tried to do something with my disgustingly sweaty hair, but it ended up going over too far so I look stupid. The picture is on flickr.

NEXT...
I went to a breakdancing demo competition at my mall! There's a breakdancing crew that Miriam, Caroline and I used to watch/admire/slightly stalk. They're called Junk Footz I think. They are cool! They listen to cool music, they wear cool clothes and they can hold themselves up on their forearms and spin on their heads and stuff! They practiced right outside my gym, so we could watch them while on the elliptical machines. It was great. But those times are over. Miriam and Caroline are gone, and California WOW finally "opened" so they moved all the ellipticals, and now they only have treadmills in the front window. And I'm way too gross to be in the front window when I'm on a treadmill. And for a good couple of weeks/months I think I stopped going to California WOW altogether.

Besides the point. I saw them and the super nice, perfect English speaking girl who taught Miriam some moves, talked to me and told me there was going to be a demo thing. Two day event.

Saturday - demo day. I saw Thailand's best DJ, MC, B-girl team and B-boy team all in action. I think they're all from Bangkok. They're sponsored by a soda water company. They did their thing, and it was okay, but after, the Chiang Mai boys did their thing! I didn't even know they had a thing! For weeks or months or something, Miriam, Caroline and I watched these guys do some stuff, but for the most part, stretch. It would be 2 minutes of some ridiculous move and then 10 minutes of stretching.

So to see them with a full choreographed routine last week really just came out of nowhere. I was never expecting it! Leader dude, headspinner guy, yellow shoes guy, cocky/red shirt guy, young guy and other guy were all in the dance thing. The rest of the crew is the girl, skinny/khakis guy and a bunch of other people that don't have names from me.

I was so proud of them. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to be proud of them, because I've only ever talked to the girl and she wasn't actually in the dance group, but I was.

Sunday - competition. So, a 1-on-1 breakdaning battle for all the breakdancers of Chiang Mai. I think it started with around 70 B-Boys(and one B-Girl, the girl!). The first round was kind of boring because it was really obvious who the winners would be. But the second, third and however many there were after that got really interesting! The skills are always amazing to watch, but I was much more exciting about watching the attitudes! Thais are so often so careful to not come off as selfish or too proud, that it was really cool to see them just going at it and being really funny without any words, just moves!

After 7 rounds the final winner was a Junk Footz dude - red shirt/cocky guy! Well, I guess he deserves to be cocky.

So after the competition I talked to the girl again and she I told her I wanted to take her up on her offer to teach me. She gave me hers, and then I called it right away so she would have mine too. We had finally exchanged phone numbers! Kinda...

When I was leaving work this past Saturday, I text messaged her to see if they were at the mall. No answer. And then when I got to the mall, I saw their spot had been taken over by a suitcase sale and a fruit shake stand. No problem, I had her number. But when I called, some girl named Oi picked up and said she didn't know who Thon was. And then I remembered that the first day I thought I had given her my number, we never confirmed it because she didn't have her phone with her. I just figured she got my call. And then I got a call back from that number which I missed cause I was in the bathroom, but I had thought it was weird cause we had just spoken 2 minutes ago and Jeff was still outside right near her. Damn. So now I realize that I never had her number, just this girl Oi's who now thinks I'm some strange farang obsessed with breakdancing. And what if that was just her polite way of telling me not stalk them anymore? Eek, I don't know...

Ok, so that was a big breakdancing competition in anticipation for the real team battle July 8th. That's the day I meet Alki in the Bangkok Airport. Ahh!

LAST...

My birthday (weekend)!
Saturday...

8:00 - work 9am - 4pm, 2 awesome classes. Level 1 and Level 14. The Level 14s are so cool, they blow my mind every week. They just talk in English. We do some activity that sets up the topic, and then I ask them what they think about it and they're just off! Honestly, there are more interesting than most of the students in my UW classes. And then I give them a project to elaborate on whatever the discussion we just had was and they go at it! It's amazing. I only have them one more time before I go home... I'll miss them... The Levels 1s on the other hand are just that. Level 1s. Everything is slow and since they only meet once a week it takes them half of the three hour class to remember "What is your name?" Not too many disucssions about the evironmental impacts of globalization in Chiang Mai with the Level 1s. Last week I got the question, "Are you like ice cream?" Think about that! Ok! So what is the answer to your question? "I like ice cream" Ok! Great! And which word is the verb in that sentence? "Like?" Very good! So if there's no verb to be, we don't use "Are you..." So, DO...YOU... remember the question word we use with verbs that aren't verb to be? "Do... you...?" Yes! Fantastic! So... what is your question again? "Do... you... like... ice... cream...?" Ahh there we go! Great job!

Yeah, it's slow. I teach two Level 1 classes during the week right now, but seeing them 4 days a week makes it a lot less painful. There are actually two levels below Level 1, (called A and B) and I can't imagine doing one of those. Especially for a Saturday class.

4:00pm - airport to buy tickets to get back to Chiang Mai in time for the breakdancing competition (and the Elephant Nature Park pick up). The airline I wanted has amazing internet deals, and then doesn't accept credit cards... Interesting, huh? Oh Thailand.

5:00pm - mall, no breakdancers (see story above), worked out anyway.

8:00pm - mugata! It's a bbq on your table. You pay 100 baht ($3.00 maybe?) for a buffet of all the uncooked organs and fat you could want and then bring it back to your table to cook. You put a piece of fat on the top, and water and vegetables around the bottom so it all drips down and becomes a really delicious soup! It was extrememly hard to find the chicken. Pork, no problem, liver, blood, no problem. Anything that looked remotely similar to anything I had seen before - problem! It's ok. At one point I scooped myself a dish of some nice, clean looking white chunks, thinking it might be fish or something but when I got back I was told we already had some. It was straight up pig fat in little white squares. Wow! It (the experience, not the food) was great. They also had unlimited fruit, ice cream, desserts and two bands. It's on a corner right near me and I used to pass it everyday just wondering what exactly happened in there, and I'm happy that I finally know. And I don't think I ever need to go back! The bbq part is fun, but there are chains in the mall that have chicken and are worlds more sanitary. I think the way they get you stop yourself is by never clearing dishes. Eventually your table becomes too hard to deal with, you give up and call it a night.

Next, karaoke! After months of trying my hardest to get people to go to karoke, it finally happened. We got the jazz room and sang all the greatest hits. Very loudly and very out of tune.

Unfortunately, karoke closes at 1am, so after that we did normal Saturday night things which weren't as fun.

Sunday...

Met Renata for brunch, did my first crossword puzzle since I was maybe 10 or something. We had to make some things up, but I think we did pretty well.

Then more sleeping, then being lazy in Starbucks with Jeff. Dinner was low key.

Monday...

Morning birthday call from Erica!

Then - day of being productive! Saturday night my camera started acting weirder and weirder. I deleted most of the bad pictures (keeping some for proof), but only 1 out of every 10 pictures came out. The other 9 would be completely black or completely white. Then on Sunday it just stopped taking pictures all together. This camera's been through a lot and most stores I asked about fixing it just laughed and the only guy that gave me a straight answer said it would take at least 2 weeks and be about $100, which seemed like a ridiculous amount to spend on a camera being held together with sparkly green and purple tape. So, new camera...
And my phone has started hanging up on people... so, new phone!
And I haven't had an mp3 player for... a really long time... so, new mp3 player!
And I heard that I can get internet through my phone line with my cell phone number or something, so I wanted to ask my cell phone people how that works... internet??

First stop - Tesco - didn't buy any electronics, but bought the DVD of "I'm a Cyborg, but That's OK!" (the really strange Korean movie I watched dubbed in Thai).

Next - the mall - no working out! Only shopping! I tried to find out more about the internet stuff, but I was just told to call customer service becuse they can speak English. I looked at phones but none really did it for me. But after my effort, I had one of my favorite meals in the world. Kow Man Gai from the Airport Plaza food court. It's boiled chicken on oily rice with some orange sauce and a couple of cucumbers to make the plate pretty. Sounds pretty simple, but oh, so good! I ran into a tuk tuk driver that works by AUA. He's the guy who always tells me if I look fat or skinny. It was weird to see him in mall and not on the corner in front of his tuk tuk badgering tourist, but then he told me I was looking fat, so it felt completely normal again. No electronics, no internet, just Kow Man Gai.

Next - met my private student, Ink! First I had canceled with him, then he told me he was going to Bangkok to apply for his visa to England for the rest of the week and I realized I didn't really have plans, so I said we could meet, but then when I was at the mall, I changed my mind again. But when I called him, he said he wanted to meet because he had something for me. So we met, and he brought his sister and presents for my birthday! How cool! A really nice green Thai bag with a whole bunch of goodies inside! A notebook, a really nice bracelet, some very good chocolate ball things and a bunch of hair pins. I asked his sister if she could teach me how to use them but she said she had no clue either. We had some coffee and talked for a bit and then I took off.

Next - met up with old friend Max. Max has been one of my longest friends in Chiang Mai. And he's good at helping me with big purchases. (He helped me with the whole motorbike thing.) So we meet up and we take off to look at more cameras! I am one fun girl on my birthday, huh? I decide I like the Canon, but it's pricier than the other ones, so I'm still a little hesitant. Then we go to a place out of town and they have the same camera but with 6.0 megapixels and not 7.2 so it was 2,000 baht cheaper! Woo hoo! I bought a new camera. It's beautiful.

Next - the park to take full advantage of my new camera. I'll post those pictures next. They are beautiful. The park is just nice. All these Thai families and teenagers sitting, eating and playing badminton. This is when Max told me he was disappointed that Miss America had black hair and darker skin because Miss America should have blond hair and white skin because blond hair is softer, more beautiful and "gives good feeling" more than black hair. I can talk to Max and try explain how silly he sounds, and he'll listen, but I don't think he ever really gets it.

Next - birthday dinner. Noodle soup from my favorite street stall with Max and Jeff.

Next - birthday ice cream with Max, Nong and Jeff at the original Bud's on the other side of the river, not the new fancy one on my street. I was trying to keep it real, you know?

Next - birthday rain! It's the rainy season now so when it starts to rain it rains really really really really hard for about an hour and then stops. So we sat. It's really nice to sit somewhere watching really heavy rain and not have to be doing anything or getting anywhere.

Next - home! Watched the first half of "I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK". It's really violent. And not in a people shooting each other and dying kind of way. I can handle that. But in a in-the-first-scene-she-slits-open-her-wrist-inserts-electrical-wires-and-then-plugs-them-into-a-socket kind of way. So I watched half. It's like a whole new movie with the English subtitles.

SO THAT WAS MY BIRTHDAY!

And because June 4th in America rolls into June 5th here I got to enjoy the birthday emails/facebook wall writings and myspace comments for a half a day afterwards too!

This birthday was really great and I think it may have been the first time I honestly wasn't sad or disappointed by anything. And probably the first time I didn't walk around making people acknowledge my birthday. Saturday night I probably did that, but by Monday I didn't feel the need to like I usually do. It was nice to be so happy after Saturday night that the rest of it was just felt like extra awesomeness.

SO THANKS TO ALL MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY WHO MADE THIS THE COOLEST BIRTHDAY EVER!

Pictures from May
Pictures from my birthday

May something!

2007-05-19T21:20:00.000+07:00

I have no idea what day it is. It's Saturday. I know that. Saturday Mid-May.

Interesting things.

1) English show!!! Last night I watched an English lesson show called Chris Delivery. http://www.chrisdelivery.com/ Little skits with people speaking English (but repeating themselves in English and Thai several times, along with English and Thai phrases on the bottom of the screen) along with Amelia Bedelia Thai characters who just never understand.

Some highlights from a skit about preparing for a housewarming party -
She asks for the remote so she can turn off the air conditioning because it's a "house warming" party.
She walks out the door when he says, "Make yourself at home."
She starts doing cheerleading cheers when he says "Cheers."
She asks why they would serve "Korean Rice" if it's supposed to be a Thai dinner party because he actually suggested "Curry and Rice."

And when she goes to the store to get food she comes back with all the wrong ingredients!

coconut milk - chocolate (cocoa), peanuts (nut) and milk
lemon grass - a bag of lemons and a handfull of grass
flour - a bouquet of flowers
some dessert - a bag of sand from the desert

This show was great. It's pretty heavy on the advertising, but I don't mind. Like what you say when you have to take your Yamaha Scooter to get gas, or how to "Write it Right" with your new Pental pen, learn a new vocab word with your "Talking Dict Phone", or, like in the party/food skit from before, how to order from McDonalds when your misunderstanding friend gets the wrong ingredients.

It made me so happy. I just realized they have episodes online. You should watch them. This guy also has some books that I found just after writing that post about English/Thai and it had a bunch of the same things I wrote about. In the book (and in the show) he talks about the things that Thai people think they know, which are actually kind of off. Or a lot off.

------------------
RAMBO 4!!!!

This is the most excited I've ever been for a Sylvester Stalone movie. Rambo 4 was shot in Thailand, right outside Thailand. I met a bunch of Thai stunt guys and a couple of Thai wardrobe guys too. So cool!

I saw a bunch of pictures from the shooting and cast/crew parties and it was kind of weird in that the pictures from the set look like every Thai village I've been to, but then you see the party pictures and you're reminded that they're all Bangkok actors who are just in costume.

Kind of strange. I got to see pictures of Sly's stunt double.

One of the Thai guys, Dipper, told me that Thai people think I'm very beautiful because my skin is white. I said that sounded a little silly to me, but thanks, and added, "But they also think I'm really really fat." His response in English was, "Nevermind! I don't like slim girls."

Thanks, Dipper! Again, English in all it's greatness. "Skinny" has the ability to sound unattractive. "Slim" on the other hand, doesn't really have that ability.

------------------

Thai noses.

Something I've just started noticing are Thais and noses. My friend Yong said he liked my nose. I like my nose too. He said that he didn't have a nose. He definitely does. I might even call it a big nose, it's definitely a wide nose, but what he meant by nose was a bridge. Some Thais don't really have bridges. It's flat between their eyes. It's strange to notice now. But, the weirdest part, is that some girls (maybe guys too?) get nose implants to give themselves a bridge. And I guess the most attractive nose is like a big Jewish/Greek nose. Strange.

-------------------

My first earthquake

There was an earthquake in Laos that I kind of felt last week. It was my first earthquake. But it wasn't actually that exciting because I didn't know it was an earthquake. I thought I was dehydrated and dizzy. I was standing in the teacher's room planning a lesson, started looking at the ground, thought it looked like it was rolling, but figured it was me. I also felt like I couldn't keep my balance, so I sat down and kind of looked at the floor more, trying to get my eyes to stop acting so weird. I was in a room with 10 other people and no one said anything.

Then about 5 minutes later boss John came in and said, "You guys feel that 'quake?" And everyone said, "Oh an earthquake! That makes so much more sense. I thought I was just dizzy."

Here's an article - Laos hit by powerful earthquake

Apparently, there was also an earthquake in December, but I was a concert and didn't feel/notice/know. Earthquakes are interesting.

----------------

My gym

I'm not mad at California WOW anymore. They open at 8 so I can go in the morning and be productive all day. The mall opens at 11, so I get to go in and out through the loading dock which gets me all kind of funny looks. The facilities are nice, the locker rooms are beautiful, the TVs have 2 music video channels. I have a membership card now and it says "Beth Charpenties". I almost thought this made sense, because the letter for the "r" sound in Thai looks like an English "S", but then I remembered that I definitely wrote my name in English and an English "R" doesn't really look like an English "S" at all. I wasn't sure if they might care that my name is spelled wrong, but when I showed her, the girl said, "If you no serious, then it ok."
I decided "I no serious, so it ok."

Thais have a weird concept of the word "serious."

---------------

May

It's hot, but it's started raining again which is nice. I've got a couple of more weeks and then I'm going home for 2 weeks. (New York people I'll be having a belated birthday party. There will be ice cream.) And when I get back I get to meet Alki at the airport, and then go to Elephant Nature Park for a week. This is great. We're not sure what we're doing after, but it'll be good! I know it!

--------------

Please do not dump some tissue into waters - English is tough! (Part 1)

2007-05-04T14:46:00.000+07:00

English is tough!

"R" - I've decided it's more of a vowel than a consanant. It's so close to other things that we easily accept as vowels, but with this addional weird tounge action.

rabbit/write - consonant
draw/cry - consonant

No problem there. But check these out! Say them! Notice your lips and tongue!

car/bar/far
air/care/bear
oar/more/sure/door
ear/beer/fear
super/faster/number

sort/court
bored/chord
form/dorm
burn/fern
church/birch

By the way, can you check out these spellings? They don't even make sense! Thai is like 95% phonetic. They have 44 consonents, but each letter only makes one sound, or at most one sound at the beginning of a syllable and another one at the end, but it's consistant! C, J, G?

Anway, English words adopted by Thai go like this -

airport - "eh-paw" (we don't really pronounce the 't' either)
summer - "sahm-muh"
beer - "bia"
court - "caught"
bar - bah (like ball, without the 'l')

"V" - There's no 'v' in Thai. They have an 'f' sound, but anything English with a 'v' is changed into a 'w'. A popular album is called "Tongchai Willage", at Bud's I sometimes order "wanilla" and all the cool CMU kids drive "Wespas".

Make a 'v' sound for 3 seconds. It's weird. Now imagine doing that for the first time ever.

"N/L" - They have a letter like 'l', but when it's put at the end of the syllable, it's pronounced like an 'n'. It's just Thai and it works fine for Thai, but when you have English words that end with an 'l' this is what happens...

email - e-men
football - footbahn
central - sentron
Nepal - Nepan
volleyball - wolleybahn

Sounds we need new letters for

PH - does p + h = f? no way!
TH - does t + h = -th? not at all.

And to make matters worse, the major transliteration system in Thailand that uses the h to distinguish between the hard 'p' sound, between b&p, and the soft one, as in "puppy". So the city that pronounced like "Bpai" is spelled Pai, and the place which is pronounced more like "Puket" is often spelled Phuket, and then tourist laugh because it looks like "fuck-it", and it also happens to be a place with a lot of prostitues and ladyboys.

Same with -th. 'T' is used for the hard 't' sound between d&t, and 'th' is used for the soft sound as in 'toilet'. So the signs that should be read as Ta Pae Gate, say Tha Phae Gate and I've heard more than one English speaking tourist call it "Tha Fae Gate". I wonder if one of those English people who use 'f' instead of 'th' would call it Fa Fae Gate?

So bringing it back to the Thai students learning English. They see English all over the place in Chiang Mai, but it's Thai English, it's not really Western English.

Consonant clusters that makes sense They have some in Thai (with 'l's and 'r's), but 'l's and 'r's are so annoying to pronounce they're barely used. We were taught them in AUA class, but no one says them in the real world.

bpla - bpa
glai - gai
krai - kai

As much as I try to explain, my kids think that because in Thai they're not that important, in English they're not that important either. Here are some words they can't even distinguish between each other.

crab - cab
plant - pant
break - bake
free - fee

In Thai you don't really pronounce the last consonant sound. We do, but just a little bit, but here are words they pronounce the same.

nice - night
rice - right
find - fine
pink - pin
anymore - animal
single - singer

'L'/'R' - hopeless!

I gave them the sentence, "Turn right at the light, right?" in telephone and it was nearly impossible. Extrememly entertaining though.

One time I heard a 2 minute story from a really bright kid about a lat that couldn't get out of a liver.

Difficult boy's names from the textbook -

brain - one syllable, thing in your head
Brian (bry-yin) - boy's name

dinosaur - prehisoric animal
Dino (dee-no)- boy's name. Luckily there's popular scooter called "Fino" and they all know that, so I write Fino, they say "fee-no!" and then I erase the f, write a d and they say, "awwwhhhh! Dee-no!"

Accents -

For some reason all English words that make it into Thai get a stress on the last syllable. So they think they're speaking English when really they're still speaking Thai.

staw-beh-RII
com-pu-TUH
A-meh-li-KAH
pep-SEE
ham-buh-GUH
wan-ni-LAH

Scary vs. Scared -

This one is pretty entertaining.

"This is no fun. I am boring!"
"The horror movie was great! I was very scary!"
Students with a better vocabulary - "I tripped while I was walking. I was really embarressing!"
"I saw a dog go the bathroom on the street. It was digusted."

Fun vs. Funny -

They use funny where they should use fun all the time. One time a group asked me for the superlative for fun and I got so excited and when they finished their story it turned out they actually wanted be using funny. I've tried to explain it with "Did it tell jokes?" It's kind of harsh because I consider my students pretty funny but they don't necessarily tell jokes. I started with, "Did it make you laugh?" But Thais laugh all the time, even without humor, so that didn't work. They also use fun to mean they enjoyed it or had fun.

"Last weekend, I went to Robinson (a mall) with my friends. It was funny."
"The most interesting place I've been is Doi Suthep Temple. I was very funny."
"I went to a horror move. I was very scary. It was funny."

Going, Doing -

In standard Thai fashion they first say...
"go-ING"

"do-ING"

"Well, try this - 'GO-wing'"

But you didn't realize we use a 'w' in there, huh? Me neither until I heard them say it!

Iceland, island -

"Samui is an...."
"ICELAND!"

Close! Usually one kid knows it's supposed to be "i-land", so I write the both on the board and then get them to the world map and we talk about Iceland, and I get them to try to say Rjeykviek or however it's spelled. That's fun.

"Which one is a country?" "ICELAND!"
"What is Samui?" "I-LAND!"

French fries -

So in Thai fried chicken is said as "chicken deep fry" so when it gets to English is either "chicken fry" or "chicken fried" on a good day. They all love KFC, so I try to get them to remember K-F-C, and it works for a minute, but then they see french fries and everything goes out with window.

Every restaurant with an English menu spells it french fried. Like chicken fried, right? They're deep fried like chicken so finally, English makes sense!

But it doesn't. Cause they're french fries. We do something called Sentence Auctions where they get to put money on sentences and bet if they're correct of incorrect. It can get really tough. One correct sentence I used was, "I'll have a hamburger and french fries, please" and every group confidently put $500 (highest bet) on it being wrong! I was scared they were going to say, "I'll like" or "I'd have" or something like that, but then they all said, "French fried! French fried! Right???"

Oh no. So I have to draw a picture of McDonald's french fries and say, "These are friezzz." And then draw one lone fry, "and this is a... fry." The name actually has nothing to do with them being deep fried! And the French part is confusing even for me. Is it supposed to be capitalized or not?

So English is ridiculous.

Thai isn't easy, but it makes sense. There's an order to things. Check this out...

tam - do
ahahn - food
tam ahahn - cook (v)

sa-at - clean (adj)
kwam - the essence of (used to adj. into nouns)
kwam sa-at - cleanliness (n)
tam kwam sa-at - clean (v)

rahn - shop
rahn ahahn - restaurant

rong - building
rian - study/lean (v)
rong rian - school

jing - true (adj)
kwam jing - truth (n)
jing jing - truely (adv)

dee - good (adj)
dee dee - carefully (adv)
jai - heart
jai dee - good person (adj)
dee jai - glad, happy, excited (adj)

ngan - money
tam - do
tam ngan - work

nang - sit (v)
tii - place, place to (n)
tii nang - seat (n) (not chair, but seat number like on a bus or plane)

mai - stick
jim - dip
fan - tooth
mai jim fan - toothpick

gai - chicken
pad - stir fried
med ma muang - cashews
gai pad med ma muang - chicken with cashews!

Ok, enough for now!

This is all from the top of my head. I have a lot of stuff written down in notebooks from observing in class and I've also been recording a lot of my student's writing to figure out what the toughest stuff is and because their mistakes are just so cute.

HOW CAN I USE BEING INTERESTED IN THIS STUFF IN AMERICA?

WHAT CAN I STUDY?

WHERE CAN I WORK?

AHH!!!! HELP!?!!?!?

Thanks =)

April 16th - May 1st

2007-05-01T14:53:00.000+07:00

Monday, April 16th - started Summer Term 3 at AUA. (2-three hour classes 5 days a week)

Wednesday, April 18th - first real rain since October. We start class at 5:15, lose power at 5:40, emergency lights go out at 5:50. At that time we were doing fake restaurant scenarios with waiters and customers, so the candle lit room actually added some atmosphere. But by 6:30 we were all pretty uncomfortable. Where there is no electricity, there is no air conditioning! Ahh!!! We usually have a 15 minute break, we let them stay out until we got in trouble (about 7:10) because there was light and a breeze outside and none of us knew what to do in a dark, hot, humid room with 20 miserable Thai kids.

Luckily Thais are obsessed with ghosts and one girl lived in a haunted room, so she told her story in English for pretty much the whole time. Every 15 minutes or so I would let her speak Thai for 30 seconds. But oh man, she was a rockstar! I was so proud of her! This girl is definitely not the strongest student in class, but she was just going off. It was so cool to watch. The rest of the class was genuinely interested and asked questions in English the best they could. That took us until the light came back on at 8:10 and then at 8:15 class was over.

Thursday, April 19th - We had a teacher's meeting where the director said, "If this happens again just stay in the classrooms." Craig pointed out, "It's really hot, humid, dark and uncomfortable for everyone. Isn't it possible to be outside if it's light enough?" The response, "Well, right, of course use your common sense. But stay in the classrooms." Let me clarify. Sometimes when someone says something like that the "stay in the classrooms" would be said with a wink, like "I'm just saying it because I have to, but you know what to do when the time comes" but that really wasn't the case here.

Friday, April 20th - As a thank you for handling Wednesday "so professionally" we had an ice cream party on Friday. Miriam, Caroline and I take ice cream very seriously. I think Miriam and me a little bit more than Caroline, but she can hang. So while talking about this ice cream party, we tried to get excited but we knew it was just going to be some crap ice cream, like Wall's or Magnolia. Then Sioabhan (pronounced Cheh-vahn) walks in with a a Swensen's bag. Oh my god. We were so impressed. Swensen's isn't as good as Bud's but it's like the different between Carvel and Good Humor ice cream. But then, out of the Swensen's bag comes Wall's and Magnolia ice cream. Miriam and I gave each other, "We knew it was too good to be true" look. There were also Oreos, but who in their right mind is going to eat Oreos without milk? I ran to 7-11 to get some. When I got back there were only two left but the director (my boss) said that if I went through the effort of buying milk to eat them with it was okay if I had the last two. That was nice.

After work was bowling, which is usually a Thursday activity, but somehow Thursday turned into a (Bud's) ice cream night and bowling got moved to Friday night. Bowling is so much fun. And my bowling place has a 3 games for 100 baht ($2.75?) promotion this month. Not as good as the 4 games for 100 baht promotion from last month, but still pretty damn good!

At bowling, Caroline and I came up with a really fun game with one of my Thai phrase books. She tries to read the Thai (transliterated into English) and I see if I know what it means! No one else thought this game was fun. We decided to keep playing, but it was hard to find a place to go. We settled on a posh bar across from a posh club and ordered Sprite and played until it closed.

Saturday, April 21st - Went to California WOW for the first time in a while with Caroline. WOW!! It was amazing! It looks like all the pictures on the website now. And the locker rooms! Wow! You know that feeling when you get to a hotel and you see all the stuff you've never needed but you're excited to see it there? That's the California WOW locker room. Maybe it was just q-tips, hairdryers, big mirrors, and cushiony stools, but it was really cool. The machines and stuff were nice too. They now open at 8am so I don't have to wait until 11 anymore. I'm finally happy to be a member there!

Later Miriam called and asked if I wanted to go to Tesco Lotus. The answer is always yes. Dressing rooms, set prices, air conditioning, no weird faces for having a 1000 baht bill, it's great! She had never been there and she heard Caroline and me talk about it all the time. I decided to go to "other" one. I had been to it once but had no idea where it was. I looked at a map and it looked liked it was on the super highway. But the superhighway sucks. It's fast, scary, all under construction, and therefore really confusing. It took us an hour to get there. We were there for about 3 hours. We decided to try a Thai pizza company and it was terrible. The cheese had been squirted on. The sauce was sweet and there were pineapples on the vegetarian pizza. I was okay with it, but Miriam refused. She doesn't like sweet stuff or pinapples on pizza. It was okay though. We went to KFC where I learned that the first KFC in Thailand opened in 1983 and in 2000, there were 250 stores in Thailand. How interesting! It was also Miriam's first KFC experiencel.

I knew there was an easier way back to town, and upon finding it and heading in the right direction (no scary super highway this time!) I fell off my bike. I was merging from a shoulder to the road and waited too long and the road was bad and blah blah blah. It doesn't matter. I thought the bike could do something it couldn't do, so it said no and fell over, I fell over and then Miriam fell on me. I skinned my elbow and my knee and a little bit on my foot, and, luckily, Miriam only scraped the side of her toe. I knew owning a motorbike came the inevitable accident. I just hoped it wouldn't be too bad. This wasn't too bad! I fell over, I got up, I was ok. My bike was ok. Miriam was ok. We went back to Miriam's and I tried to clean the wound a little bit. This was the night of Renata's classy birthday party and I wanted to go there, so I stopped at a pharmacy, got some stuff to clean my wounds and made my way to the party. I did my best to clean it, put some Neosporin on it, and proceeded to play cards and eat fancy foods like pita, olive dip, dried apricots and apples.

We played spit and Egytian rat screw and I even did a round or two of halvzies (with about 1/3 of the real rules).

Sunday, April 22nd - Called Mom and told her I was in an accident. By the way, the Thai word for accident is "ooh - bah - tee - het", one of the most fun words I've learned yet. Earlier in the week, Miriam announced we needed another ice cream party and Sunday at my apartment was it. It was changed into a "Cards and Ice Cream Party" after Renata's party. It was fun!! Joe (fellow AUA teacher) misunderstood and brought whisky, but that was ok too. After some people left, the rest of the party made our way to a pizza place where we continued to play cards.

Monday, April 23rd - Miriam showed up to AUA with a halvzies bruise on her right under-forearm from playing at the pizza place. I've never felt prouder. I still had my nasty elbow. I showed some people and was told, "Beth, that's gross. That's infected. You have to go to the doctor." Damn. I bought alcohol to clean it but when I tried it on my knee (minimal compared to my elbow) I screamed louder than I can remember, so I didn't actually clean my elbow at all. So the infection shouldn't have been that surprisinging. I noticed the nastiness, but I thought it was residual Neosporin. But Neosporin isn't green puss.

Also at AUA today was a notice about wearing a crazy, brightly colored, patterned - sometimes called Hawaiian - shirt on Friday. (But no t-shirts.)

Miriam came to the hospital with me on Monday and tried to distract me as three people held my arm to clean it. It was painful but I didn't scream. They told me to come back tomorrow to get it cleaned and re-dressed again and gave me antibiotics and said everything would be covered by my card. I asked if I could get a topical cream instead of oral, but he laughed at me and said it was too late. The bill with dressing and antibiotics was about $25. I thought it was supposed to be free, but $25 seemed pretty minimal so I didn't question it.

Tuesday, April 24th - Went back, got it cleaned and dressed again and then paid 160 baht. I didn't get it. They said it was going to be paid for by insurance.

Wednesday, April 25th - Tried to figure out what was going on. Turns out, the nurse saw my card and wrote that I had a card, but since I hadn't shown the cashier, she didn't know I had insurance so I had been paying for everything. But the card only covers when I see a doctor and then the follow up, so I had to see a doctor on again. The nurses dealt with my elbow first, so when he came in, he looked at my newly cleaned and dressed elbow asked, "What happened?" "I fell off my motorbike." "When?" "Saturday." "Ok," and then walked out. Then I went to the cashier, showed the card and didn't pay anything. Interesting. They told me to come back on Friday.

Thursday, April 26th - back to Thursday bowling night, but I was out of commission. I did bring my computer to try to use their wireless internet, but they turned it off early.

Friday, April 27th -
1) the hottest day of the year
2) Hawaiian shirt day (I wore my brightest shirt, an orange polo, but Ben was the winner/only participant)
3) the last day of the crazy, billion hour summer terms
4) Craig, Caroline and Miriam's last day teaching

AUA provided a nice meal for the combination of reasons 3 and 4. The director got Oreos again and even bought me my own milk. That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever done for me. I almost cried. We had goodbye speeches for Craig, Caroline and Miriam. Them leaving is really going to kill me. Besides being my good friends, passionate ice cream eaters and spit players are hard to find around here.

Fridays are traditionally celebrated at Salsa Kitchen which is tough because it tastes good but has the tendency to make people sick sometimes. But for the last Salsa Kitchen, we all went. It was also Chris (Jeff from the Elephant Park's friend) birthday, so everyone was out! First Salsa Kitchen, then Heaven Beach, a bar in the backpacker area with all the reggae Thai boys with Thai girlfriends who have no shame in hitting on white backpacker girls. Jeff, Chris and Lee like it because it has a pool table. Max and Johnny (new AUA teachers) finally came out and met up with us too. They're funny. Max is from England but has lived in America for the last 8 years and I can understand him with no problem. Johnny on the other hand, is from Northern Ireland, and I can't understand a word he says. Ever. Max needs to translate. They're young and fun and cool, but I don't know if they're really going to able to replace Miriam and Caroline in terms of ice cream and/or card games.

I forgot to go to the hospital.

Saturday, April 28th - SPA DAY! Miriam, Caroline and Beth's last hurrah. We decided on a place called Urban Spa. Thailand has two sides. The foreigners like the beautiful, traditional side with silk skirts, intricate hair styles, and really slow wais (the bow with the hands in front of your nose) and then there's this cartoon (they think modern?) world that the Thais love. Urban Spa is more of the second kind. It looked like a cracked out hospital. Brightly colored closets, metal beds, and cartoon character slippers. The counter in the front actually looked a lot like the new Bud's (Ice Cream) shop. But it was cheaper than the other places and we got sick of walking around looking for a place. We got a $30 package which included a 1-hour Swedish massage, a 30-minute steam room and a 30-minute body scrub. It was really nice but we had to get split up which was not the point of the outing. Miriam said, "Oh I'll be fine, really! I've got my book!" I said that I wasn't sure if she'd really be able to read it. Caroline and I kept her in our thoughts by thinking about how she would be able to read her book in all of the various positions of the massage. Turns out she only read during the steam room. We were given disposable paper underwear which they called "drawers". From a list of words for undergarmets, drawers is the last one I would choose for women's underwear. Go Thailand!

Saturday night - My first real Indian meal! So, Indian and I don't really get along, but Miriam really likes this one restaurant near the Night Bazzar so I sucked it up and tried yet again. I went with a set meal which came with rice, 3 bowls of stuff (I think some lentil thing, some other yellowish thing with chicken and butter chicken), a little thing of the yogurt and some crisy bread. I liked it all except the crispy bread! I got plain naan and a real lassi and loved it. The yogurt helped the other yellow stuff not be so spiced, and everything else I think I actually enjoyed. It was amazing. I'm very proud of myself.

Nice meals are usually followed by Bud's Ice Cream, but it closes at 11, so we had to come up with another plan. There's a Haagen Daz in the Night Bazzar, but we usually we skip that option because it's ridiculously priced. However, someone suggested a walk, and our walk somehow led us to Haagen Daz, and it was everyone's last night together. One scoop with no toppings is 130 baht, plus a 10 baht "dining-in" surcharge, bringing the final price to 143 for one scoop of ice cream. Remember, you can bowl three games for 100 baht. A night at a guesthouse is starts at 80 baht. A gigantic plate of Mexican or Italian food is 120 baht. Filling my motorbike's gas tank has never been more than 80 baht. And this one scoop of ice cream is 143 baht. We tried our best to take advantage of all of the dining in privileges, but they didn't even have a bathroom!

Eventually they closed and we had to find another spot. Johnny and Max were waiting for us to tell them where we were going to go to drink, but we ended up making our way to McDonalds (The Night Bazzar area is so silly. The main intersection has a McDonalds on one corner, a Starbucks and Haagen Daz on another, and a Kodak store with a huge screen on top, trying to be like Times Square or Tokyo) where I bought a 15 baht water, thereby allowing me and my group of 6 to sit at their tables.

First we played 3-on-3 Mastermind. Here's how to play Mastermind. Pick a 5 letter word (ex. crazy) and then the other team guesses 5 letter words (no double letters) and you say how many of those letters are in your word.

night - 0
horse - 1
phone - 0
right - 1
great - 2
racks - 3

So that was fun. We play this game with 4 letter words with our kids. It's fun.

Mastermind, a couple games of halvzies and then McDonalds finally kicked us out we called it a night. Max and Johnny were still waiting for us to tell them where we were drinking. "Water at McDonalds??" did interest them.

Sunday, April 29th - Met Craig, Caroline and John Locke (there are 4 Johns at AUA) for breakfast and said goodbye. C & C are in Bangkok for a week, then China, then Nepal, then India, then Rome, then Germany, then England?, then NY?, then Boston for grad school in September.

Miriam and I had another Tesco date but with our own bikes and at the easy to get to one. We both bought a pair of brown Thai schoolboy Scouts Day shoes. Miriam said she was going to wait until she got home to wear them, but I busted out with them on Sunday night. My Thai friends pointed in shock and said, "Schoolboy! Not teacher woman." I promised not to wear them to work.

Sunday night I met up with a couchsurfing friend named Melik who I had met before my Krabi trip. He was having a birthday dinner/party. He's one of those people who's good at everything. You kind of admire them, you kind of hate them. I think it might be called jealousy. He graduated from Georgetown, is fluent in like 5 languages, has lived in a 15 different countries and used to make a lot of money in money stuff in NYC, but now lives here enjoying it while he works on books. Or something like that. I didn't know any of his friends but they are all real people. Like writers, owners of important things, stuff like that. I didn't know this was going to be the case beforehand. I was wearing my schoolboy shoes. It was kind of awkward. We went from the restaurant to one of the woman's apartments and it was by far the nicest apartment I've seen in Chiang Mai. Real floors, a kitchen, 2 living rooms with filled bookcases and nice, comfortable couches, a separate bedroom, everything. I feel like I'm not doing a very good job of describing it, but it was just unreal in comparison with where me and my friend live. Melik's real birthday is on Monday so he got everyone drunk and then got them to promise they would come bowling and karaoke-ing on Monday night.

Monday, April 30th - Went to lunch with my Thai friend Yong at a BBQ place in the mall. I've seen this BBQ thing for a while now, but I felt like you need 1) friends 2) someone who knows what you're supposed to do 3) no other plans. This was the first time it came together. They put a big grill on your table and then surround the grill in water, like a mini moat, then you just order tiny dishes of a bazillion kinds of meat and fish and vegetables and either grill it or drop it in the water, or drop in the water and then grill it. It was fun! We got the buffet so we got to try everything. A dish of rice each, 2 dipping sauces with garlic, lime and pepper for the dipping sauces each and then we shared 4 different kinds of chicken, 6 different types of pork, 2 different kinds of tofu, 4 or 5 vegetables, and 2 or 3 fish things. It's kind of sickening to eat that much meat, but it's so fun that you don't realize it. And then the water turns into a pretty good soup. And the buffet extended to the ice cream too! It was nothing special (Good Humor I think), but you know, a nice thought.

After recovering from lunch, I met up with Renata. She's been here for a while and knows the "Ugh! Everyone's leaving!" feeling all too well. It was nice talking with her. I have a lot of farang guy friends here, but I think she's the only farang girl friend I have now.

Monday night, I stayed true to my word and met up with Melik and company. He got a strike while talking on the phone with friends in Dubai. He's that kind of guy. I did alright the first game, a lot better the second game, but then decided to go for a 6 pin average for the third game. That was a lot more fun. I think I'll do that more in the future.

Then karaoke. It was fun, but both activities were bittersweet because I didn't really know these people and I wanted it to be my old crew! I'm pretty sure I was 7 years younger than the youngest person (Melik) and I think 28 years younger than the oldest. You can see how that could be weird. I knew all the songs they chose, and could sing along, but I really wanted to do Britney, N'Sync, and oh god, Hanson, but I wasn't going to let any of them know that. I sang along to The Carpenters, ABBA, and Petula Clark and kept my mouth shut. Melik drunkenly harmonized perfectly to every song.

Tuesday, May 1st - I have this week off and I have no plans. So far, Monday - eat a lot of meat, Tuesday - sit in an internet cafe all day, Wednesday - who knows? Melik offered to learn Halvzies and spit and said, "It's fine, I learn card games in 5 minutes" so I might take him up on that. Other than that, I've got to make some decisions about the internet situation in my apartment and go to the post office to send packages I've been meaning to send since February. And catch up on my AUA "Professional Development" work.

Still no YouTube in Thailand. I'm thinking it's never coming back.

And CONGRATULATIONS to Maisie for being an official walking person!

Pictures - here

*** I posted two blogs today, read on if you'd like ****

Songrkran!

2007-04-25T10:30:00.000+07:00

So you read the little tips for Songkran Festival, right?

Well, here's the deal. Songrkran is the Thai New Year. It used to be based on the moon, and then they decided that was too confusing, so then the new year started on April 1st, and then they decided that having two different years (Buddhist year/AD year) starting at different times was too confusing, so now the new year starts on January 1st. (Right now it's 2007 and 2550. I was born in 2526. Cool, huh?)

So this New Year thing is a time when everyone is a big cleaning time. You take out all the Buddha statues, parade them around town and people get to pour a little water on them to contibute to the cleaning ritual, you clean your house and then old people are supposed to sprinkle a little bit of water on your shoulder to clean you.

This has turned into a country wide water fight which is convenient because April is also the hottest and driest month of the year.

Ask any Thai and you'll find out that Chiang Mai is "the" place for Songkran.

The set up...
Team one - people on the street with buckets of ice water, hoses and water guns.
Team two - people in the back of pick up trucks with garbage cans full of ice water, buckets and water guns.
Team three - everyone else.

The goal...
Pour as much water on anyone and everyone in sight. Smile. Laugh. Repeat.

Exceptions...
None.

Water used...
Dirty moat water
Dirty moat water with ice
Tap water
Tap water with ice
and
Any of the above mixed with power and/or dye.

Location...
First and foremost the moat (aka the only way to get around downtown), but everywhere else too. Little sois, big major roads, everywhere.

The time...
As early as you want until sunset.

Friday - Ao Nang. It was pretty tame. Most stores (even tourist ones!) were closed. Lots of people selling water guns and powder, a "parade" with one float, and the occasional pick up vs. people on the street fight. You kind of get soaked once and then it's not that big of a deal when it happens again. The only time it's a real pain is if you actually have to get something done or get somewhere. Or, the worst, if you're on a mission to head somewhere with air conditioning.
I walked around a little, watched the parade, and then in fear or traffic or something asked the woman at the guesthouse where I was staying how long she thought it would take to get to the airport.
"Up to you!"
"Up to me? Can it take 10 minutes?"
"I don't think so."
"Ok, well when should I leave?"
"Up to you!"
"Should I leave now?"
"Yes, you can leave now."

Ok. So I left at 10 for a 3:30pm flight and got to the airport at 11am. A little early. But on the way there I was in a songtaew (red truck in Chiang Mai, but they're white in Ao Nang) getting soaked the whole way, so I had plenty of time to change my clothing, dry out the other ones and watch the Thai TV that, because it was a holiday, was just playing music videos.

By the time I got back to Chiang Mai Friday's festivities were over which I was thankful for. From the older teachers at AUA, I was pretty much terrified of Chiang Mai and it's drunken, Songkran-ing people. But Friday night was pretty normal!

Saturday - Chiang Mai!

Met up with Sabine for breakfast. Dry. Next walked to meet Caroline and Craig at Central Kad Suan Kaew. Again, the first few steps you get a little wet, and then you run into a ten year old boy who gets you completely soaked and then you're soaked for the rest of the day.

THE WATER DANCE PARTY!!!!

So in my four years of college, I never went to Cancun or any of those places where they have foam parties or parties with big water hoses or anything. And to be honest they usually involved bikinis and beaches, and we know how I feel about that stuff, so it never really got me down. BUT OH MAN!!!

Thai style water party, no one's in bikinis, just whatever clothing you've chosen to wear that day. We met some gangster boys in long jean shorts, pulled up socks, sneakers and flat brimmed hats who ran up to us and said, "WE LOVE LA!!!! WE LOVE LA!!! WE LOVE MEXICAN RAP!!" and did some hand sign for LA that I can't remember now. Caroline, Craig and I said, "Wow! That's great! Um... I hope you get there someday?" All their friends felt the need to tell us also, so I eventually said, "Pppsshhhaaa!!! New York's where's it at, yo!" which was folled by a confused look and back to the LA hand signs. So the gangsters were cool, their happily Thai dressed friends were cool, and everyone else was cool too. Sabine wasn't having any of this madness, so she went inside the mall, and Craig sat contently on the steps and watcheds, but Caroline and I danced our little hearts out to Black Eyed Peas and Gwen Stefani while getting soaked with hoses sponsored by Johnny Walker. We met some girls who seemed to only know how to say, "VELLY GOOT!!!" (very good) accompanied by high 5s which I think Caroline and I introduced to them accidentally. It was fun. I think my favorite thing about soaking wet dance parties is that I, an awkwardly dancing sweaty farang, now only needs to be an awkwardly dancing farang cause you can't notice the sweat!

Another thing that made it nice is that the breakdancer boys who Caroline, Miriam and I used to watch at the mall on Saturdays were there, helping out and not dancing, so they got to see us make fools of ourselves which I felt was fair after we've sat for hours watching them. Speaking of Miriam, she was back in the States for a week deciding whose invitiation to study Philosophy she wanted to accept (MIT won over Princeton, Rutgers and NYU for those interested).

Around 2 or 3, the dance party started getting a little too crowded to dance, so Craig and Caroline called it a day, but I met back up with Sabine and ventured into the city to see the real mayhem. All of the cars are going at most 4 miles and hour, so we decided to hitchhike. We could have walked faster, but we were lazy and this was more fun. We first jumped into a blue VW van with a bunch of really cool Chiang Mai Uni kids. They handed us water guns and we got to soaking people. If you haven't used a water gun in a while it's hard to realize how much fun it is to soak people with a water gun. They're soaked already, so you don't feel that bad, and they're doing the same to you, but oh man, shooting a water gun is a lot of fun. More than you'd expect. More than I expected.

But traffic was so congested the blue van wasn't even allowed to make it to the moat, so we jumped out and walked for a while. The moat was nuts. Kids in the moat, intricate pulley system to get water from the moat the street. Food sellers were still out, accompanied by the evil ice sellers. I'm not sure where the fun in ice is. They didn't throw ice, but they'd put the ice in the water so that the water would be, um, freezing. During the heat of the day it was shocking but not too unpleasant. But by 3 o'clock it started being painful. We decided to go visit my friend at his Japanese restaurant and hitchiked through the inner city. The not ice water was fine and felt nice, but the ice water, ah! I think I turned blue. It was bad. We finally got to the resturant. Sabine had a Heinekin, I had some miso soup. After that we decided it was probably time to head home. We got a tuk tuk (opted for one with a roof) and we sat in it as the normally 10 minute drive took over an hour. Getting soaked with cold water along the way.

After thawing for an hour or two, I went out again at 7 with jeans and a sweatshirt and a sincere hope that no one would still be out and I was let down by one truck with teenage boys. GGGGGGrrrrr....

I had my super fun day on Saturday which was really hot, but Sunday was overcast, which makes a water holiday a lot less fun. I stayed at home for a while, met up with my friend for lunch and then went to the Songkran parade. This was cute. This was people pouring little cups of water on people, much fewer hoses and buckets. It was nice. I still got wet, but not totally soaked.

Sunday night there was a closing ceremony thing at Wat Prasing (wat = temple). Jiw is my friend who works with all the international/study abroad students at CMU (a lot from Wisconsin). He's cool and a very good bowler. Sunday night he went to Wat Prasing to be a good Buddhist and do his things. It looked like they included buying special nice smelling water, pouring it on the Buddha statue, lighting incense and candles and then buying a flag and pacing in a flag mountain. (See pictures)

It was nice. And no one was getting anyone wet. There were also two stages. One with a 7 year old girl singing traditional Lanna (northern Thai) songs and one with girls in skanky green dresses dancing to cheesy dance music. I have yet to understand the cultural significance of those performances but they're all over the place. We finished the holiday with the traditional Lanna meal of Ceasar salads brick over pizzas.

So that was my first Songkran!

It was really great. I had a blast. My students talk about Songkran all year and I'm really happy I got to "play Songkran" (Thai translation) this year.

Pictures here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/wigramroad/sets/72157600162936989/

Oh, Thailand....

2007-04-23T23:32:00.000+07:00

I) What I see when I go to YouTube.com
II) Swiss Guy
III) Songkran Festival - Lesson 1

------------------------
I) What I see when I go to YouTube.com

ขออภัย
เว็บไซต์นี้เป็นเว็บไซต์ที่ไม่เหมาะสม
กระทรวงเทคโนโลยีสารสนเทศและการสื่อสาร
โดยได้รับความร่วมมือจากผู้ให้บริการอินเทอร์เน็ต
และบริษัท กสท โทรคมนาคม จำกัด (มหาชน)
จำเป็นต้องปิดกั้นเว็บไซต์นี้
หากมีข้อคิดเห็นอื่นใด หรือพบเว็บไซต์อื่นที่ไม่เหมาะสม
โปรดแจ้งผ่านดวงตาข้างบนหรือ
ict.cyberclean.org

( Sorry! the web site you are accessing has been blocked by ministry of information and communication technology )

--------------------------

Thailand blocks access to YouTube

The Thai government has banned access to the YouTube video-uploading website after it broadcast material critical of the country's king.

Communications Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom said the site was banned after a 44-second film showing graffiti over the king's face was aired.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 79, is revered and it is forbidden to insult him.

The minister said a ban came after the Thai government asked YouTube's owner Google to remove it and they declined.

The contentious film also shows feet being placed over the king's face - an offensive act to Thais, who consider feet dirty.

YouTube 'disappointed'

"It's a serious case of lese majeste," said Mr Sitthichai, referring to crimes of offending the country's monarchy. "We asked Google to remove it some days ago, but they refused to."

The minister said access within Thailand would be reinstated once the film had been removed.

YouTube's head of global communications, Julie Supan, said: "We are disappointed that YouTube has been blocked in Thailand, and we are currently looking into the matter.

"The internet is an international phenomenon and while technology can bring great opportunity and access to information globally, it can also present new and unique cultural challenges."

The profile of the YouTube user who uploaded the movie onto the site lists the US as his location.

The ban follows the jailing for 10 years of a Swiss man after he pleaded guilty to charges of insulting the Thai king.

Oliver Jufer, 57, was arrested last December after drunkenly spray-painting posters of King Bhumibol Adulyadej in the northern city of Chiang Mai.
------------------------------
II) Swiss Guy (I'm pretty sure he was pardoned and deported)
------------------------------
Swiss man jailed for Thai insult

A Swiss man has been jailed for 10 years after pleading guilty to charges of insulting the Thai king.

Oliver Jufer, 57, was arrested last December after drunkenly spray-painting posters of King Bhumibol Adulyadej in the northern city of Chiang Mai.

Earlier this month he pleaded guilty to five charges under Thailand's draconian lese majeste law.

Judge Phitsanu Tanbukalee said that Jufer received a reduced sentence because he had admitted his guilt.

"This is a serious crime, and he was sentenced to four years for each of five counts, for a total of 20 years," he said.

"Because he confessed, the court has reduced his sentence to 10 years."

Jufer is believed to be the first foreigner ever imprisoned for the offence.

Others have been charged in the past, but later expelled from the country rather than jailed.

Sensitive issue

Jufer, who had faced a maximum sentence of 75 years, has lived in Thailand for more than 10 years.

He was recorded on surveillance cameras defacing the portraits on the king's 79th birthday.

Earlier he had tried to buy alcohol but been refused, since such sales are sometimes banned on important days. King Bhumibol, the world's longest-serving current head of state, is a very popular figure in Thailand.

The case has highlighted strict laws in Thailand which forbid any criticism of the monarchy.

Such is the sensitivity of the issue, says the BBC's Jonathan Head in Bangkok, that it is receiving little attention in the Thai media.

Most Thais feel a deep reverence for their monarch. But they also fear discussing the institution because of the severe penalties for criticising members of the royal family.

Jufer has a month to lodge an appeal against the sentence, our correspondent adds, but his best hope now is probably a royal pardon.

----------------

III) Songrkran Festival - Lesson 1

TIPS TO PLAY WITH WATER IN CHIANG MAI, THAILAND

On April 8 2007

To friends as travellers,

You might have come to Chiang Mai before but here is my experience as a local to share ideas and make you enjoy playing water or actually is called " splash water". You will also know that people start playing water from 10 - 15 April every year.

People from most part of Thailand come to play water in Chiang Mai where people play or fight with water to each other. What you should prepare yourself are:

1. Always wear sunglasses to protect both your eyes from getting infected with blackened (Dirty) water and the hot -bright sun. The high-pressured water pump devices are currently prohibited and strict. A plastic bucket is alright.

2. Only use clean water through pay-in coin water tabs you may find if you are keen to somebody's health is around the Tapae roads and the popular Tapae gate in good spots you can easily find.

3. Walking to the destination is suggested as you will see huge people around the city playing water along the city moats and traffic condition can be as bad as everyday life in Bangkok. To make matter of worst, the "water fighter' will not allow you to pass their territories but with big splash of water they only offer you.

4. Wherever you go, it is inevitable soaked you are without complaints. You therefore should prepare extra clothes to get change if you aim for going to the cinema or the shopping mall. Wearing in a raincoat will look funny or you might be attacked in the scenario called " Water battle" you will never forget.

Have fun and get ready to be soaked!!!!

Tongmaejo

Ton Sai!

2007-04-12T14:24:00.000+07:00

Hello!

I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Ao Nang, in the Krabi province, with fast computers, Skype, air conditioning and a promotion for Internet Buffet which means up to 14 hours for 100 baht! Woo hoo! This is extremely exciting as I'm coming from Ton Sai with slow internet for 3 baht a minute. Ooo-eee!

After a ridiculous couple of weeks at AUA (10 or 11am until 9pm, 5 days a week)we got a week off. I didn't really have any plans and when Tim, a friend from Chiang Mai, said he was in Krabi and kind of half seriously/half jokingly suggested I come down, I decided I would. Everyone says it's beautiful, it's known for it's amazing rock climbing and Tim promised the air was nice. So I bought some plane tickets and headed off.

After landing in Krabi, I made my way to Ao Nang (where I am now) via an airport taxi. I shared it with a German whose name I can't remember. He was a huge guy. I thought he was with these two other people so I asked if they were going to Ao Nang by chance and he said yes. This was good because the taxi to Ao Nang is 600 baht, but split 4 ways, it wouldn't be a big deal. Turns out he didn't hear the "are you guys" part of it, and it was just him, so the cab was 300 each, but that's ok. He's been to Thailand like 6 times but only the islands. He was heading straight to Koh Phi Phi (actually pronounced Pee Pee, but decided to go with a nicer spelling) to party. He likes to party. We got to the boat dock and said goodbye.

Then I took a longtail boat to Ton Sai. It's a beach for rockclimbers, rockclimber hippies and other people who look good walking around in their bathsuits and it's only accessible by boat or by foot from the adjacent beach. Pretty cool I guess. It's in a sad state right now though. The area is really nice and huge resort villages are popping out nowhere, and Ton Sai is the next to go. So all of these little bamboo hut climbing shops, places to eat, convenience shops, cafes and reggae bars are all coming down. And not only are they getting kicked out, but they also have to clear the area. So these bar owners who've had their little places running smoothly years have to take apart and burn it all. (They're into burning things in Thailand. Hence the trouble in the north.) So there's kind of a depressing vibe going on there now. Piles of bamboo and everything else to be burned everywhere. But being Thai, not too many people seemed too upset about it. They seem to all have friends with bamboo bars, climbing shops and convenience stores on other beaches, so they'll go there and probably start working without being asked and hope to get paid for it.

Anyway, I got to Ton Sai, met up with Tim and his friend Adam (rockclimbers and walk around in bathing suit-ers, but not hippies), got a bungalow near them and went to sleep. I seem to have a bad habit of staying up the entire night cleaning the night before an early flight. I don't know why. It's weird. It's happened since I started college. I always assume I'll make up the sleep on the flight, but that never happens. There are three kinds of bungalows available and I got a second tier one. Bamboo, wood, concrete. Fan on the ceiling, with a nice bathroom, and the electricity worked from 6pm - 8am. So I slept, woke up, had dinner with Tim and Adam, a drink on the beach with Tim and then back to sleep.

On Sunday Adam had to do a visa run to Malaysia so that meant that Tim couldn't climb, so he took a day off, which was good for me, cause I had someone to hang out with and show me around for the first half. Yay Tim! Ton Sai is a good place for rockclimbing but the beach isn't that great, so we headed off to Railay Beach. This is one of the places that's been taken over by huge resorts. Fancy stuff! There are two ways to get to Railay from Ton Sai. One is walking through/on/over rocks, but you can only do that at low tide. The other way is climbing up and over to the other beach. I'll see if I can find a map that explains it better. So Sunday morning, we climbed. It's kind of fun. It's all jungle around there. Huge green trees and rocks. And when you finally come out on the other side you seriously feel like you've snuck into the rich people's world. You go from dreadlocked backpackers to German families not wearing any clothing. The beach is beautiful and it's surrounded by huge limestone cliffs. It's great. Thai (or possibly Burmese) people walk around selling overpriced drinks, pineapple, beach mats and massages. Their friends and family huddle in the shade of the trees of the resorts. The farang are out in full force. Topless. It's just weird. The Thais are walking along the beach with long sleeves, long pants, hats and scarves around their necks (not Muslim scarves, just laborer scarves, I can't explain) and the Europeans are barely wearing underwear.

So getting to the beach I realized (again, this happened in Koh Pha Ngan last year) that I'm not really a beach person. I don't really like salt water, sand, sun or wearing a bathing suit. Damn it. But I'm here and I figured I may as well make the most of it. So I did the whole thing. Wore a bikini, went swimming and then laid out in the sun in hopes of getting skin cancer, I mean a tan. So that was Railay. Fancy. There are free bathrooms with toilet paper and running water, and all the signs are spelled correctly. It really doesn't feel like Thailand. But oh well.

Then we were off to Pranang Beach. It's kind of between Railay East and Railey West. Maybe it should be called Railay South? I liked this one a lot more. Still with the topless Germans and Swedes but also with Thai people just out for a swim. I think there's more shade at Pranang, and maybe that's why there were more there. I went in the water again and met three sisters who were shocked when I could (pathetically) speak Thai. They were 11, 15 and 16 from a town about 20 minutes away. Oh yeah, what do Thais swim in? Whatever they're wearing. Shorts and t-shirts usually, but if it's jeans and a frilly top that day, then that's what they'll wear in the water. I like their style. On the beach were the people selling stuff and then also three ladies set up with little corn/chicken/spring rolls shops on their mats. It was amazing. Little grills and everything. And behind Pranang Beach there are rocks, no resorts, so when the water gets boring you can watch the rockclimbers! Oh! And monkeys! I guess it's kind of bad cause the tourists feed them and I know that's not good, but it is kind of exciting to see monkeys. Especially when they steal someone's 50 baht pineapple.

So Pranang, water, sun, the whole thing. Tim said something about me "looking a little red" and offered some sun block and I put it on. He was being nice. I was bright red but had no idea. Tim took off in the afternoon to come to Ao Nang (where I am now) to do some internetting and "sort out his life." I stayed in Pranang, but moved out of the sun. A little later "Climber Dude" arrived. Tim and Adam had talked about him earlier. Thai guy, best climber they'd ever seen, 5 feet tall, but 7 feet tall when he puts his dreads straight up. He was pretty amazing to watch. With all the limestone all over there are also a ton of stalactites and this dude just jumped up, put his feet over his head, climbed up, jumped over to another one, jumped over to the wall, climbed in a hole and then bouldered across the wall, and then jumped down. Effortlessly! Absolutely amazing to watch. And even better when you watch other people try to do it afterwards and you see how difficult it really is. He has a whole routine and most people on the beach kind of followed him to his two other sites but I played it cool and read my book. After he had stopped for a while he came over and gave me a flyer for a party at a bar on Railay. I said sorry but I was staying on Ton Sai so I had to go back before it got dark out. He asked my name and I asked his and when I checked the spelling in Thai he huffed, turned around and walked away. That was a first. He eventually came back and said, "Why you speak Thai?" In Thai I said, "I'm an English teacher in Chiang Mai." I think I threw him off. I walked back to Railay with him, he bought me an iced tea, I drank it then climbed through the rocks back to Ton Sai. Climber Dude's day goes like this - he works at a climbing school in the morning (people like me who are interested and maybe know a little but can't go by themselves go with climbing schools), then comes to Pranang to impress everyone by climbing at about 3, then he goes to Railay Beach to impress everyone with his frisbee skills around 5:30 and finishes it off by impressing everyone by running back and forth on the shore with his 3 foot dreads behind him at sunset. Tim said the first day he saw him he had a guitar and sat for a while after climbing impressing everyone with his guitar skills too. He pretty much stars in his own movie all day everyday.

So I got home from my big day trying to be a beach person and what do I get? The worst sunburn of my life. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO painful. SOOOOOOOOOOO red. And because I had worn a bikini for the first time, possibly ever, I was burned all over. Scalp, face, eyebrows, nose, chest, shoulders, stomach, arms, legs, back. Damn. How did I not see this coming? I don't know. But it sucked and I felt like an idiot.

I met up with Adam and Tim and their friend Tui, one of the shop owners taking her shop apart (could also be spelled Twee) and had dinner at our bungalow's restaurant. I got chicken and cashews. Tui ordered a bunch of Thai stuff which was cool cause I'm always too nervous to order strange things, but I like tasting them.

Monday! Time for rockclimbing??!?! Adam and Tim offered to take me out for a day which was extremely sweet of them. Except that I'm not good, they are. They weren't extremely sunburned, I was. They seemed fine with the first part, so I tried my best to get over the second part. It's possible I would have gone out with a climbing school, but with the sunburn I didn't really want to do much, and I didn't want a group of people saying, "You can do it, Beth! Just get your left arm a little bit higher!" First stop was to a shop to buy a hat. Mission for the day - stay out of the sun. We went to Railay to go to one of the easy spots for me. Problem with the easy spots is that Climber Dude's climbing school already had them! Booo. So we had to start on something kind of tough. The rockclimbing in Ton Sai and Railay is just amazing. It's everywhere. Everything is limestone and most things have hooks and bolts or whatever so you can climb on them. So we found a spot, near the easy spots, but it was right along the water, and the water had eroded the bottom, so the beginning was really hard. I tried, but... no. Couldn't do it. Adam and Tim did it and then we moved into one of the easier ones. I eventually found some routes I could climb. And then Adam and Tim found ones that were interesting for them. It worked out well. When Climber Dude was done with his climbing school he looked over and said, "Ajarn!" which is the nice way to say teacher. I think it means more like professor or something. I say, "Chan bpen kruu" which means "I'm a teacher", but then sometimes people refer to me as Ajarn. It's fancier I think, so I'll take it. Anyway, I got to introduce Tim and Adam to Climber Dude which was nice. I remembered his real name (Nu), but I could tell he didn't remember mine. I didn't ask, but he only referred to me as Ajarn, so it was just a guess. Tui met up with us for lunch, and again, ordered a bunch of Thai stuff I'd be way to nervous to order. I love hanging out with Thai people! In the afternoon we went to another spot and I did one more climb. I was happy just to watch, but I think Adam and Tim felt bad that I sucked. My main goal was really just to stay out of the sun. But climbing was fun too. Monday night, Tim, Adam and Tui took off for a free dinner on Railay and I met up with some climber people Tim had introduced me to earlier for dinner. There were some English teachers from Japan, a hippie couple with a one year old named Mango, and a bunch of backpackers. Everything in the south is at least double the price it is in Chiang Mai. Pad thai, noodle soup, fried rice, mango shakes, everything doubled at least. It killed me. Bottled water and accommodation too. Grrr... Anyway, the best deal in town is a 40 baht unlimited salad bar. It works for the climbers, the hippies, and people who happen to really like cucumbers. Guess where I fall. So that was dinner. Some salad and a lot of cucumbers. Pretty exciting actually.

My original plan was to stay in Ton Sai for Saturday, Sunday and Monday, but leave Tuesday cause... I'm not really a climber and I felt like I should be in a place with people of my kind. Not Railay definitely, but that German guy was going to Koh Phi Phi and he definitely wasn't a climber so I thought maybe that would work. I was also out of t-shirts, so I had to put on a tank top and I was still really burned and everything seemed wrong. Tim and Adam were going off to climb stuff and I packed up and checked out but decided to take one last walk around Ton Sai to say goodbye.

While I was walking around I realized that the beach wasn't really all climbers. There were lazy girls reading books too! They were mostly part of the "people who like to walk around in bikinis" group, but they were sitting in hammocks, in the shade, reading books, so I admired that.

Damn it, I can do that! I found out the price to go to Koh Phi Phi was the same price as my bungalow for the night, and at dinner the night before it sounded like while yeah, it was really pretty, it was actually more expensive and finally I realized that the German guy hadn't been that interesting. A 30 something year old German investment banker who likes to party. I think I rather be surrounded by people who like to rockclimb than by people who like to party. Even more, I didn't really care who I was around, because my only mission was to read my book outside while staying out of the sun. That's what I can't do in Chiang Mai. It's disgusting to be outside and I barely ever make time to read. Therefore, it didn't make a whole lot of sense to go to Koh Phi Phi. So I did my walk around Ton Sai, enjoyed the jungle, helped out some kids who had just come off the boat (two climbers and a girl who was definitely there to read her book in the shade and probably wasn't going to walk around in a bikini) and checked back in to my bungalow. Tuesday morning I sat, drinking a mango shake, reading David Sedaris on a beautiful Thai beach with amazingly talented rock climbers just behind my book. It was great. Sitting next to me was a kid named Gabriel, from Portugal/England/Wales/Ireland (hippie parents, raised on communes and stuff!) who I had helped out when he had gotten off the boat. So he moved over to my table and we talked for a bit. I felt like I had been such a burden on Tim and Adam, it was nice to meet someone new. The climber/hippie people I had eaten with were also cool, but they were all out deep water soloing that day. I hadn't minded being alone, but I guess company was nice too. Since I finally knew more than someone, and the mango shake wasn't going to last forever, I said we could head over to Pranang to see Climber Dude and the monkeys. The show usually started around 3. We made plans to meet up at 2 to walk over. Back to the book.

Then a kid comes over and says something like, "Oh, I can't help but talk to people who are reading a book I've read. David Sedaris is great, huh? My friend's dad works at his publishing company and I met him in New York just before I came out here." Oh god, he's from Westchester. I was right. Not just Westchester, but Ossining. Weird. And not just an Ossining kid, but an Ossining Walkabout kid. He was a youngen, just finished Walkabout in 2006 and doing a gap year while he deferred from Colorado College. I hate 90% of "gap year" kids I meet. Usually they're British, but I think American ones might be worse because they think what they're doing is so novel. If you want to be travel around the world for a year on your parents' money and think you're the coolest person alive for it, that's fine, I realize teaching in Thailand for a year isn't too much different, but at least wait until after college.

I put him in place. I had overheard a little bit of a conversation he had been having with a group of other climber people. One guy said he was from Vancouver and an English guy said, "Where in America is that?" and a big America/Canada discussion followed and there was something about what percentage could place Maryland on a map. So when Zach, Ossining '06 kid, asked, I told him I had gone to school in Wisconsin and then asked if he knew where that was. He said he had been there before. His first guess was the top left state of the four corners. Nope! I said the city I lived in was about 2 and 1/2 hours from a very major US city (Chicago). He guessed Denver. I said that Denver was actually just as far a drive from my city as Ossining was (16 hours). He said, "I know this isn't right, but Dallas?" I said no. I asked him what time of year. He said summer. I said I would help him out and I said it actually bordered Canada and gets a lot of snow. Next guess, "Oklahoma? Wait, is that a state?" I said Oklahoma was a state, but Oklahoma City was the capital, so he was close, but I wouldn't really call Oklahoma City a major US city, and I was pretty sure Oklahoma bordered Texas. I asked what he did when he was there and he said he was hiking some mountain range I had never heard of. Wisconsin isn't really known for their mountains. I asked if he was sure it was Wisconsin and then he realized it was Wyoming he had gone to. He said he forgot there was more than one state that started with W. I didn't mention Washington or West Virginia. I said not to worry about the location and just try to focus on MAJOR US cities. Not LA, not NY, not Dallas, and not in the south. Blank. He asked if I would tell him what letter it started with. C!

Chicago? Yeah!

So that was Zach, from Ossining. To be fair, his volunteer project was getting kids from the Ossining Children's Center to rockclimb at a new climbing gym in Valhalla. That's pretty cool. He came to Pranang with me and Gabe. On schedule, Climber Dude was there. The monkeys had taken the day off. After Climber Dude did his thing Zach and Gabriel tried. Zach couldn't get hold on to the stalactite, but Gabriel did a pretty good job! The problem was once you get up, you have to get down. So he got up, got further up, went over to another stlactite, got down a little bit, and then had to drop down. Eek. While I was watching Gabriel, Climber Dude said/asked, "You, me, we eat dinner tonight?" I said, "Ok, I'll eat dinner with you if you can answer one simple question." "Ok!" "Ok, ready? What's my name?" He was hopeless. As expected. I realize that Beth is difficult for Thais, but I had given him my Thai name too, so there was no excuse for that. I told him my Thai name and my English name and watching him try to pronounce Beth was amazing. I wish I had video of it. This master-of-everything cool was just incapable of saying Beth. Bes. Bet. Bek. Besh. Bech. Best. Besk. I usually say "Beth" and exaggerate holding my tongue out while pressing it against my top teeth so they can try that, but he was just not having it and kept going trying to somehow replicate the sound without having to look so stupid. It was great. So I said no dinner. The real reason was that unless you pay for a boat, it's scary to climb back to Ton Sai in the dark.

So on the way back from Pranang, Gabe and I said goodbye to Zach (he was staying on Railay) and I noticed a tour group of college kids from what sounded like Long Island. And guess who was leading the pack... Russ Alexander. This name probably doesn't mean much to most people, but he is/was the guy pretty much in charge of Study Australia, the organization I, um, studied in Australia with. He was the orientation dude, the go to guy for Sydney people, and tour guide for breaks. Wow. He was busy tour guiding and then rushed off to the next site so I didn't stop him but I stopped some kids not paying attention in the back of the group. "Is that guy's name Russ?" "Yeah." "Are you guys study abroad kids in Australia?" "Yeah" "Wow. I was you 4 years ago." Really it was 3 1/2, and I did a Learn-to-Surf trip for break, not the trip to Thailand, but four and Thailand was easier to say and sounded cooler. I don't think they cared. Walking back to Railay one of the fancy resorts had a sign with all of the guests checking in that day and it said, "Welcome Study Australia!"

We eventually got to Railay, watched Climber Dude play frisbee for a bit then walked back to Ton Sai. Back to the salad bar, this time they had one plate of potatoes which were a real treat, and then back to my bungalow to read my book at night, because I didn't actually end up getting time to read it during the day.

Tuesday was good. But I was really ready for a day of sitting by myself, in the shade, reading my book, so I tried again Wednesday. It worked! I read outside in the shade with a banana milk shake. It was perfect. Tim and Adam were taking a "rest day" so I met up with to go to Pranang because I didn't want Climber Dude to think I was trying to stalk him. I was definitely stalking, but I think I was just stalking the sport in general, not any specific person. He wasn't there that day but there was a group of kids from Malaysia. One thing that's been really cool about being here is that there are a bunch of Southeast Asian countries that I forget exist and they seem to have really good rockclimbers who come to Ton Sai in groups of 20. Malaysia, Singapore, Phillipines. I feel terrible but I hadn't really ever thought about those places before. Malaysia and Phillipines sound scary and Singapore sounds too strict, expensive and messed up. But all the people were really cool and interesting! Well, from what I heard. I only talked to the Malaysian ones, but they were so cool! It makes me feel like a jerk for having had no interest in going there. I think I have to get better at rockclimbing so I can go to Malaysia and ask those kids to show me the good places to go. Or look for the guy I talked to on MySpace. Ha ha. MySpace.

Ok, so Wednesday evening Tim, Adam and I had a final dinner. Gabriel saw us and joined. Then we went found Tui and had a final drink on the beach then went to sleep. It was nice.

This morning I checked out for a second time, grabbed a boat to Ao Nang and have been sitting in this unlimited internet for 100 baht cafe since. It feels good.

Gabriel was in town looking for a dentist so we ate lunch but I was so worried about someone taking my computer where I already uploaded my pictures, and downloaded Skype and Quicktime, that I made for a really anxious lunch partner.

All in all, it's been good. It definitely took some time to get adjusted, but I that's just what seems to happen when I try to go to the beach. It's pretty and all, but the sun, sand, saltwater, I'm just not that into it. And the sunburn and the superfit people walking around in bathing suits definitely didn't help. But I'm happy I got out of Chiang Mai, I'm happy that I went to a new place, I'm happy I didn't run away to Phi Phi and I'm happy that I spent all day today at this internet cafe. I'm trying to do what I can't/don't do in Chiang Mai and this is it. I even called Grandma (but she didn't pick up).

I posted pictures....
Random Feb/Mar/Apr Chiang Mai pictures
My spontaneous weekend in Cambodia with Mono
My Ton Sai trip!

I never posted a blog about my Cambodia trip. Or about what Parkour is. Or the Mennonite missionary bowlers. Or other stuff I probably said I would. But I guess if you're interested, just ask.

I'm going to try to call Grandma again.

Rapping cartoons, my new place and life saving Thai teenagers

2007-03-30T10:04:00.000+07:00

I'm not really sure what this thing's deal is. But he does songs with all sorts of other pop stars. It's kind of strange.

My new place - a huuuuuge room on the 8th floor of an apartment building one soi (little street) over from my old house. It's a huuuuuuuuuuuuge corner room with an octagonal bay window and two balconies. One faces my old house where I can watch and hear the construction, which I kind of like, but I can be happy I'm not right next door. The other side faces Doi Suthep, which is the mountain of Chiang Mai. It's really pretty and there's a temple on the top that's all lit up at night. It's awesome. But I've actually only been able to see it one day. I had no idea I was even facing that direction until that one day because the smog is so bad. Once it starts raining (btw, that article about the storms wasn't true. Still haven't had a drop of rain since October), I think my view will be really cool.

I also have TV that goes between having only Thai public television (3,5,7,11) and having Thai public TV and like 6 cable channels. Sometimes I get the international Korean, Dutch and French stations which is cool. The Korean and Dutch ones have a lot of English shows. But the French one is always in French. I sometimes get Disney Asia also which I love. The cartoons are always dubbed, but usually not too difficult to follow, but the shows with actors are just subtitled. So I watch a lot of Lizzie McGuire and That's So Raven when I have the chance. I got to say, I'm pretty impressed by Disney Channel Asia. They have a lot of Asian oriented shows, ads and contests and I think if I were an Asian kid it would make me feel good about being Asian. And they use real Asian kids speaking heavily accented English and not just perfect English speaking kids that look Asian. I like that! Sometimes I get Boomerang which is an offshoot of Cartoon Network that only shows old cartoons like Scooby Doo, the Flintstone and the Jetsons. Those are all in Thai. Even the theme songs!

I have a mini fridge, an air conditioner, a table, two chairs, and a bathroom with a huge sink counter, hot water, good water pressure and a bathtub! Standard bathroom is a toilet with a sink with a plastic 6inch shelf and a shower head that gets everything in the room wet. I actually have a bathtub and a shower curtain. This is what we call "Hi-so" here. So it's all very exciting. And it's 1,500 baht less than the house I was in before without all this cool stuff.

The other people in the building are mostly Thai uni students. Some older people and a couple of families. It's fun getting on the elevator with them. It's interesting cause I want to speak Thai, but I'm pretty sure they want to speak English. So when I get in the elevator I ask "what floor" in Thai and they'll answer in English. Or vise versa. And then we all giggle. Or they shove themselves in the back corner and stay as far away from me as possible.

There's a nice parking ara, a laundry shop with little kids running around all day, a mini restaurant I haven't been to and an office with a really nervous guy and a very excited girl named Well.

Oh, I don't have internet because when they guy came to install it he looked at my computer and said, "Mac. Does not support." I tried for an hour to see if I could figure out what I could do to make it work. It seems wrong that an internet thing couldn't work because it's a mac. You know? He had this adapter he needed to use and the adapter doesn't work with macs. I asked what it was called he said "ah-daap-TEUR" and I asked "ah-daap-TEUR a-rai?" like what kind of adapter and he said "ah-daap-TEUR U-S-B" It's a USB cable adapter for some internet thing. I knew that much. It said HPNA on it and I think that's the important thing.

The best part was when he thought I didn't understand that it didn't work so he called up Well and she tried to explain. "No use... computer... you. Ah-daap-teur no good you computer." I told her I understood her and the computer guy which was confusing for both of them because I kept trying to ask questions. If I understood I should have stopped asking questions.

BUT... after all of that I got a call from a very good English speaking person who said he was the manager of the place and that this has happened before to an Australian guy living in room 1003. And he got a direct line from the phone company and that I could do that too. It was very easy because the building was set up for it and there were extra phone lines. And he was sorry that his computer guy couldn't help me. I asked him his name and he said, "You can call me the captain." Which was weird but I told him I really appreciated him calling me.

So instead of going to phone company and saying I want internet, I thought I would try talking to the Australian guy so I wouldn't have to go through the same crap I'm sure he did. So I left a note in his little mailbox slot thing outside his door. Two days later, no answer. Then I thought maybe he just didn't check his mailbox slot thing so I put it in the door so he would have to see it. But three days after that still no answer. So I went back up to his room and I saw it was still in the door. So now I'm thinking the Australian guy doesn't really live there anymore. One day I met another farang in the elevator who was staying with his friend who's Australian but he has a PC so it's not the same guy.

So for now, I'm going to look for an HPNA USB Adapter for Mac and see if that works. I tried at a the big computer store in one of the regular malls and they said to go to the computer section of the department store and then he looked at the sheet I had "HPNA USB Adapter for Mac" and he said, "You must to go to Mac store at Airport Plaza." ("You must to" and "You should to" are big here, probably due to "You have to". Can't blame 'em! English is tough!)

I've seen the Mac store in Airport Plaza and it sells laptops and iPods. I'm positive they don't have HPNA USB Adapters. There are several huge computer malls in Chiang Mai so that's my big plan for this weekend. Exciting, huh? The thought of trying to talk to TOT (Telecommunications of Thailand) by myself is a little much. And I've heard from other people it take about a month for anything to get done through them.

I love my neighborhood. It's far from being all Thai, there are good number of foreigners, but they're mostly people that live here. Like married dudes with families, study abroad kids and teachers and NGO people. The married dudes here don't freak me out nearly as much as inside the old city. The ones around here ususally look like normal guys who speak Thai, have stable jobs and their wives don't dress like hookers. In the old city there's a much higher percentage of fat, retired and unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt wearing creepy guys with angry, skanky dressing wives. So I like my apartment, me neighborhood and maybe one day I'll get internet and everything will be perfect.

Ok - off to work!!!

Here's one more video I saw last night and really liked. (I don't get my beloved Pop Channel at my new place, but after midnight on a lot of the public stations they play kareoke videos!)

Get ready, these are like the coolest kids in Thailand. They rip off like 5 different songs but their English in the beginning is great and they save an old woman's life by dancing in the streets of Bangkok. How great is that???

I'm a Cyborg but That's OK

2007-03-28T14:58:00.000+07:00

Woah. Korean movie dubbed in Thai, with no English subtitles (only an English name). Caroline and I decided to go for it. I thought it was going to be a cute romantic comedy about crazy people falling in love in a psychiatric hospital. But didn't realize it was by the same director as Old Boy. It was odd. Really really really really odd. Scary, strange, confusing, absurd, all of it. I can't wait until it comes out with English subtitles. But I really don't think it will make any more sense. It starred Rain who is this huge Korean superstar loved everywhere in Asia.

Happy Birthday Dad!

2007-03-26T09:19:00.000+07:00

To the coolest 60 year I know...

Happy Birthday!!

Love,
Beth

2007-03-23T11:07:00.000+07:00

On youtube yesterday I wanted to see if they had this. And they did. So you get to enjoy it. It's a 2 minute "We Love the King" clip they play before every movie. Everyone has to stand and show their respect for the King. First a little white kid says to stand and then a little Thai kid says it, so everyone has to stand.

I can't even begin to imagine what would happen if someone didn't. I don't think they would get shot, but I bet they'd get beat up after the movie.

By the way, the biggest movie in the history of Thailand is out right now,
King Naresuan. It's a trilogy about the first king of Thailand. Or something. My students say stuff like, "It makes me love the our first King," and "It makes me feel proud to be from Thailand." But that grammar is way too good. More likely, "Make me love our King number 1," and "Movie make me feel I proud about Thai" Close enough!

King Naresuan 1 - released Februrary 1st.
King Naresuan 2 - released February 15th
King Naresuan 3 - released sometime in December.

I saw 1 and 2 and loved them. They have English subtitles. The first one is when he's a little prince living as a hostage in Burma. But at the end he says I'm out of here, so in the second one he's a real guy. And in the end of the second one he's decided to fight Burma. So in the third one he'll become King of Thailand. I think.

Here's a trailer with music...

Here's a trailer with Thai....

Here's a trailer that some kid put to a Linkin Park song...

I can't imagine ever going to see an American movie like this, but this is just something special. I think I'll buy it before I come home.

Gross!

2007-03-18T12:15:00.000+07:00

From an email from the U.S. Embassy that I got on the 16th.
_________________________________

Warden Message

March 15, 2007

This message alerts American citizens living in or visiting northern Thailand to the need to take appropriate health-related precautions due to the unhealthful air quality northern Thailand is currently experiencing. Air quality experts report that excessive trash burning, brush clearing, forest fires and other factors have resulted in severe air contamination in the areas surrounding Chiang Mai. According to the Pollution Control Department of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, air pollution levels in Chiang Mai have exceeded the maximum acceptable level since the beginning of March. On March 14, the level of particulate matter in the air exceeded the “emergency” level. Measurements at or near the “emergency” level are expected for at least the next several days.

Health professionals warn that during periods of unhealthful air quality, people with respiratory or heart disease, smokers, elderly persons, and children should avoid prolonged exertion and stay indoors when possible. In addition, everyone should limit activity and prolonged exertion, both indoors and out. This includes exercising in air conditioned fitness centers, since any additional strain on the respiratory system during periods of unhealthful air quality should be avoided.

Medical professionals also note that cloth masks or bandannas are generally ineffective in reducing smoke inhalation. In order for a mask to work, it must filter fine particles. More functional masks are available at pharmacies, such as the N95 respirator mask available for about 50-55 baht per mask. One size does not fit all. Please choose a correct fit and follow all instructions to ensure proper effectiveness. The recommended maximum use time for most respirators is 7-8 hours.

Day-by-day particulate matter (PM 10) and air quality statistics are available in English on the Pollution Control Department website at http://www.pcd.go.th/AirQuality/Regional/Default.cfm and at the consulate’s website, http://bangkok.usembassy.gov/consulcm/index.htm.

Contact Us

American Citizen Services (ACS)
U.S. Embassy Bangkok
95 Wireless Road, Bangkok 10330, Thailand
Tel: 011 (66) (02) 205-4049 Fax: 011 (66) (02) 205-4103
E-mail: acsbkk@state.gov
Home Page: http://bangkok.usembassy.gov/embassy/acs.htm
U.S. Consulate Chiang Mai
387 Witchayanond Road, Chiang Mai 50300, Thailand
Tel: [66](53) 252-629 ext. 2104 or 2138
Fax: [66](53) 252-633
E-mail: acschn@state.gov
Home Page: http://bangkok.usembassy.gov/consulcm/services/acs.htm

----------------
An article in today's issue of The Nation, an English language Thai newspaper from Bangkok http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2007/03/18/headlines/headlines_30029572.php
----------------
And now enjoy some China Dolls and Buddha Bless. China Dolls are a Chinese-Thai group that Miriam and Aaron just showed me this morning. This song sounds a lot like the Greek children's song I like. And Buddha Bless, Thai hip hop reggae, I love it. I've already posted a video from them in September, but this one's different and I just saw them on the 9th at a this concert with a bunch of cool (Thai) bands. The adventures of that night are coming up soon. The tickets were free but you had to be lucky and read Thai. Guess which one I suceeded at.

Also coming soon...
- the art of parkour and my weekend in Cambodia
- bowling with Mennonite missionaries
- why English is ridulous
- writings from my students
- why Sundays make me love Chiang Mai
- why my ridiculous AUA schedule combined with the pathetic value dollar makes me feel funny
- why I don't have internet in my new place

No, no, I love Thailand

2007-03-11T13:41:00.000+07:00

I really do love living in Thailand. Here's why.

1) King Naresuan 1, 2 & 3
2) I went to Cambodia for the weekend last weekend
3) I got to see an amazing concert on Friday
4) I was born in 2526 Buddhist Era
5) I get to watch breakdancers while I use the elliptical machine every Saturday.
6) I get to notice things like Thais won't eat at foreign resturants because they're "too expensive" but they have no problem going to Pizza Hut and Sizzler at the mall which are way more expensive than the normal places.
7) There are ants crawling out of my computer, which I just don't understand.

My California WOW Experience experience

2007-03-09T15:09:00.000+07:00

Oh, and I promised to tell about my gym. Here I go.

My friend Ann (Thai Christian missionary, runs the coffeeshop, didn't realize how Christian she was until I saw her myspace page) started going to this gym and gave me a card for 5 free visits. She said the place was nice and I was looking for a gym to join anyway.

I get a call at 9pm for a girl named Posh telling me that she heard I was Ann's friends and she really wanted to give me the special price, but the promotion was going to be over tomorrow, so I needed to come in that night. I said I couldn’t make it that night, but I would go in the next day to take a tour of the gym.

I met Posh the next morning said she convinced her manager to let her give me the special price because I was a friend of Ann's and she worked really hard, but I could only get it if I signed it today. I said that a one year contract wouldn't work because I don't know what my plans are after June 19th and I know I won't be living in Chiang Mai for another year. She told me that I could transfer the membership or I can cancel it if I show an international flight ticket. And the last two months deposit would be refunded too. Posh gave me a very convincing speech and the place was kind of exciting/danceclub-ish and the monthly fee was less than 1/2 of the gym right by me. So I said fine. Paid the joining fee, the first month and the last two months and got a pink slip saying I was a member. But I didn't get a card, I got one of those 5 free visit cards that Ann had given me. Ann called me and said she was psyched that I joined and she couldn't wait to go with me. In a month. When she got back from Malaysia and Singapore.

I went back the next day, showed the pink receipt, they were confused, they asked for the 5 free pass card, and they took that instead.

I gave Caroline one of the 5 free visit cards and when she came with me, I realized she and I were doing the exact same sign in procedure. There was no difference between a "member" and a "free trial person". I asked when I got my membership card, the girl behind the counter said when I finished the 5 free visits.

I finished the 5 free visits, psyched to get my membership card and Posh said, "Great! See you when the gym opens!"

WHAT???? So I knew the gym was under construction. They have 15 treadmills, 4 elliptical machines, a couple of steppers, 3 or 4 reclining and upright stationary bikes, and maybe 15 weight machines. During the schpeal from Posh she showed me the floor plan and said it would all be opening March 1st. She never mentioned that memberships don't start until the club opens. So back to our conversation.

"What? When the gym opens? You mean in March?"
"Yeah, just a couple of weeks. Can you do that?"
"No. I started coming to the gym, I need to keep going to the gym. You never said I wouldn't be able to come to the gym. I bought it for now."
Posh pulled me aside.

"Listen, we're not supposed to do this, but here are some more (5 free visit) cards. Can you just wait 2 days before coming back?"
"Wait, so no one in this club right now has a membership?"
"No, memberships don't start until the gym opens."
"And so right now this is all free?"
"Yes."

Hmm... it feels like a stupid way to do stuff, but she gave me enough cards to easily last until March 1st so I waited the two days and went back. Caroline's been coming with me occasionally, and Miriam came for her first time on Saturday, so that's nice. That's a plus side. I have all these cards and they only accept free trial people so I can bring whomever I want.

So obviously it's more fun to work out with friends and Renata was looking for a gym, so I told her to join mine. But she's also only here until June. When I got there I asked for Posh and a girl named Ann said Posh wasn't there. I asked when she was going to be back. "In, maybe, 6 months."

WHAT??? Posh, the only sales person that can speak English took off for six months!?!?! I was sure she was confused. Posh wouldn’t do that to me! I tried in Thai to see if she was getting days/weeks/months confused but she wasn’t. Uh oh.

Ann was really psyched about helping but her English sucked. Her nametag said Ann, she introduced herself as Ann, but when she wrote her name down she wrote A M M. And when Renata was trying to ask about alternatives to a one year contract she was totally clueless. She just smiled, nodded and kept circling the same numbers. Renata, smartly, was concerned by this and decided to pass on the membership.

This reminds me. Jeff and his friend Chris came to look at the gym too and he asked a question to some real pretty girl, in Thai even, and she was clueless. He then pointed out, "Of course she's dumb, she was hired cause she's pretty. You can't talk to the pretty girls. Where's the fat chick? They're the only ones who ever know what's going on." He's kind of right. My girl Posh isn't 95 pounds. Jeff's statement sounds kind of harsh, but this isn't the only place to hire 90% good looking people, and 10% people with a brain. (Even if it's a manipulative, lying Thai brain.)

So Posh is coming back in 6 months and most people who work there don't have a clue what's going on. The gym isn't really open, but I can go whenever I want and bring friends and March 1st the gym is going to open. Fine.

Then I got a call from a non-English speaking person calling from "Ca-li-fon-EE". I didn't know what she was saying, but I figured she got my number from the 5 free visit card sign in sheet so I kept saying, "I have a membership already" in Thai. Eventually through help from her friends she said, "I want to appointment with you."

Oh awesome. She wants to appointment with me. Sure, why not. We made plans to appointment at 11 the next day.

(Posh told me the hours were 8am - 10pm, but apparently that's for when it opens. Right now it's apparently 10:30am - 10, but the mall opens at 11 and whenever there are people who want to appointment with me they'll never do it before 11, so I think it really opens at 11. Thank god I don't have a job with real hours.)

I get there at 11, and it turns out it's my free personal training session that comes with my membership. This is actually kind of exciting because it means someone's noticed that I've paid for a membership. But she doesn't speak English. Now I know some Thai, but we decide it's better if I go with an English speaking guy, conveniently named Guy who speaks English… kinda. If the goal of speaking English is to transfer information, then he can speak English. If the goal of speaking English is to know how to talk to someone in the context of their culture then he's pretty worthless.

Some key points brought up by Guy:

"You weigh too much."

"You have too much fat."

"Your health is very poor." On the fat caliper chart I scored "very poor" which was below "good", "average", "fair" and "poor". Oh boy.

"Your heart is very bad."

Ok. That's a lot for a Western girl to handle. Especially when she's pretty sure she's healthier than she's been in a while. The weight stuff - whatever. It's nothing I didn't know. I don't think my health is very poor, but I would agree that I have more fat in my body than I need. That's why I came to the gym, right?

The heart thing, on the other hand, scared the shit out of me, but he said my heart was very bad because my blood pressure was too low. I didn't know that could even be an issue. But I think he thought it was an issue because my "resting pulse rate" was kind of high. It was, I can admit that, but I can also think of 4 things why it was kind of high.
1) I left my house kind of annoyed at one of my roommates.
2) I drove through Chiang Mai traffic to get to the mall and had just come from the motorbike parking lot, which is definitely a highly stressful place.
3) I walked into the gym with 10 people talking at me in Thai, and me not understanding any of it.
4) I had just been seated at a table with the first pair of fat calipers I had ever seen.

So yeah. I had some stress factors working against me there. And resting pulse means pulse after sitting relaxed for 10 minutes. So pretty much his measurements were bullshit. Whatever. I've checked my pulse since and I'm fine and low blood pressure is only a problem if you display symptoms, which I don't, and therefore I'm fine.

Trying to lighten the mood I pointed to the poster of the porn star looking spokesmodel for the gym and said, "So if I train with you I'll look like her?" His answer, "I don't think so. She is very beautiful. You would have to lose about 10 kilos (22 pounds) to look like her. She is very tall and doesn't have fat."

"Oh."

So after my 10 minutes of walking and then a couple of the weight machines Guy and I sat down to have a heart to heart.

"You are fat. You need to lose weight to be healthy. How much do you want to weigh?"

"I don't know, Guy. What do you think?"

"I think 57 kilos is good for you." (In Australia I was 64, right now I'm usually around 61, that day I was 61.5, but we rounded up to 62 for good measure.)

"Yeah, cool, sure, 57, sounds good."

"Ok, and what fat percentage do you want?"

"Hmm... up to you!” (“Up to you!” very very very common Thai phrase which usually doesn’t mean that at all.)

"Ok, I think 20% is good. (Calculates) That means you have to lose 10 kilos of fat and gain 5 kilos of muscle. (Laughs) That is very, very difficult."

"Yeah, it sure sounds like it."

"And in how many months can you do this?"

"Um, I have no idea. What do you think?"

"I think three."

"Three, wow. That's amazing."

"Ok, so how many sessions do you want? We have promotion now. 36 sessions for 25,000 baht." (25,000 baht, a little more than my monthly salary at AUA)

"Hmmm, sorry. I don't get paid enough at AUA to do that. I think the membership is expensive enough. Thanks though."

"Ok, 5 sessions, 5,000 baht. Special price." (5,000 baht can buy round trip tickets to Cambodia.)

"Hmmm, sorry. I think I'm just going to do this on my own."

"Really?"

"Yeah, thanks for the health advice though. It was really helpful."

It was hard saying goodbye. Less so to Guy than to all of the measurements he had taken of me. I've never had the circumference of my calf measured before. I don't know where that chart has gone off to now, but I'll sure miss it.

So I think that was Thursday and Friday I decided to start losing my 10 kilos of fat and went to the gym with Caroline.

When we started going we were using the empty yoga room as our stretching room. The lights and the air conditioning are always on, there's no one in there and it has a lot of space and a nice floor. No one's ever said anything to us, but then last Friday a guy came in and said this room wasn't open yet.
"It's not open? When's it going to be open?"
"It will open when the gym opens."
"Oh, March 1st, right?"
"Hm, not sure. Maybe the end of next month."
"End of next month? Posh told me March 1st."(Silence.)"Uh, ok, so where should we stretch?"
"Well, the front of the gym is open."
"Right, we saw that, but we didn't see a place to stretch there. Is there a place to stretch there?"
"Hmm... I can make an exception for you for today. But this room isn't open yet. Don't be in here for a long time."
"Ok, 5 minutes. We're just stretching."

We stretched, and got on the treadmills. These treadmills are brand new, really nice and they have little weight pads on them. So when you select a program there's a prompt that reads "Please stand on the weight pads for measurement."

I watched as the prompt came up and two people, one in a personal trainer's outfit looked at the screen blankly and pressed the ok button over and over. The machine responded with. "Cannot get reading. Please stand on the weight pads for measurement." I pointed to the big foot shaped gray pads and the guy finally stepped onto it. I don't blame them. It sucks that no one is going to make a (quality) treadmill with Thai script. I was confused because I wasn't sure if it was in English or metric but at least I could read everything on the screen.

So Caroline and I watched this and similar pathetic attempts with cardio equipment. Then we realized that these were all people who were going to be working at the gym. They were giving fake personal training sessions to each other. The gym is pretty empty. When I was there with Guy I was the only person working out. But that day it was packed trainer people.

So Caroline and I decide to keep doing what we're doing but every time we're on a machine one of the trainer guys comes over and adjusts parts of our bodies. I understand they're trying to help but it gets really uncomfortable really fast. And maybe if it were just one person trying to lend a helping hand it would be okay, but it's one person after another trying to “help” while 15 others are stopped and staring.

Caroline tried to help and block their path but every machine we went used someone came over to try to help. The worst was the triceps machine. One guy came over to move my elbow two centimeters to the left. Another guy came over to count to three (in English, I had to try really hard not to laugh) with me. And I think there was one more but I can't remember what he did. Finally I finished and the last guy there said, "Stretch, very important. Like this." I'm all about stretching my triceps but at this point and time I was distgustingly sweaty and the armpit area of my shirt was pretty gross and not something I wanted to display to a group of 16 personal trainers in training. (Remember, Thais don't sweat. Only farang.) But they were all staring and waiting and demonstrating how to do it. I knelt behind one of the machines and stretched while whimpering to Caroline about how uncomfortable I felt.

And then, for the icing on the cake, one trainer guy with a ponytail comes over and says, "You have very big triceps!" and then laughs. I'm fairly certain he wasn't actually talking about my muscle strength as much as the circumference of my upper arm. It's probably 3 times the size of the average Thai girl.

Last note about Friday - during the PT session with Guy we went through and did all the machines, finding seats and weights that worked well, which was actually helpful. But he wasn't writing anything down which I thought was weird. I found the card the he wrote it all on afterwards but it was all wrong. Ah, that's what the other guy did at the triceps machine. The seat was on something like 3, the third guy made me to move it to 1 which really was a lot better for me and on the card from Guy it said I should use seat 5.

I think that was my penalty for not signing up for PT - a completely useless workout card.

So Friday sucked, but determined to make the most of the free gym time with friends Caroline and I went back Saturday with Miriam making her debut appearance at California WOW. It was great. Outside the gym were a group of breakdancers which is hard not to just get drawn to. So Miriam and I walked over and sat down. There was a Thai girl with the group who came over and asked if we were international (high)school kids. "Uh, no, we're English teachers." She ended up being 36 (but could have easily been a high school girl), and speaking perfect English because she had lived in the States for 12 years. She offered lessons and Miriam took them.

This was amazing. Miriam, who had a kind of sheltered childhood experience, is now ready for anything. She is out to make the most out of every experience possible and is never ashamed to ask questions. She's truly an inspiration I love it. First rocky road ice cream, pork ribs, mainstream music and now breakdancing.

It was needless to say, amazing to watch.

Then we went to the gym and stretched in our yoga room, did the elliptical for 20 minutes and the bikes for 20 minutes. Caroline and I were both too traumatized from the previous day to go near the weight machines.

For a laugh, I did a Posh update. It's a different answer every time.

"Is Posh here?"
"Jah sah momeh peas" (Just a moment please) "Oh sorry. Today Posh day off."
"Ok, she has the day off. Cool. Will she be here tomorrow?"
"Jah sah momeh peas" "Oh solly, she not here tomorrow."
"All right. And do you when she will be back?"
"Jah sah momeh peas!" "Uh, maybe next week. Not sure." (Another popular Thai phrase.)

Whatever. Going to the gym is better than not going to the gym. If I call Posh there's a chance I can find out her version of what's going on.
---------------------

Ok, can’t call Posh because I broke/lost my phone and all the numbers in it. But that’s ok, cause it would have been worthless. She quit. The guy who had previously yelled at me for stretching in the yoga room finally told me. His name’s Kris. He speaks pretty good English. Back to the story…

So Miriam and I decide to go to the gym some day after March 1st. By this time I’ve finished my two 5 free visit cards and went to start my new one. Desk girl Pla stops me and says, “You finish card already.” “Um, Yeah.” “Ok, only one.”

“Oh, only one. Ok, well, I’ve paid for a membership, and I want to work out, so what do I do?” (With a huge, fake smile - the key to getting anything done with Thais. Getting angry or showing frustration will freak them out and you’ll never get an answer. Dad, brace yourself.)

“You come back when gym opens.”
“Oh! Posh told me the gym opens on March 1st, right?”
“Oh, sorry, maybe end of month.”
“Oh, the end of the month. Ok, so now, I use the card?” and hand her back the five free visit card while smiling as much as possible.

“Eh…” she runs and gets Kris. I completely understood what she was saying, but I didn’t like the idea that I paid for a membership in the beginning of February and I have yet to be able to do anything that Caroline hasn’t been able to expect be told that I’m fat. And I figured if I smiled and acted confused enough she’d just give up and let me start the 3rd card. But she stood strong. I was surprised.

So then I met Kris. He was the guy who told Caroline and me that the room with the lights and air conditioning on wasn’t open yet. I said I was confused because when I signed up with Posh she never told me there were going to be two months where I wouldn’t be allowed to use the gym when I was signing up. And then once she did explain it to me she said it would be open March 1st. And all I wanted to do was work out and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do because it seemed like a bunch of money was the only thing I could do and I had already done that. Smilesmilesmilesmilesmilesmile.

I showed him my contract saying I had paid, but Posh hadn’t written how much I had paid and “this was a problem.” Well I know how much I paid, Posh knows how much I paid, couldn’t you just call her?

“No, she quit. She’s left. She’s not here anymore. “

Woah! Well not really woah. I guess I kind of expected it. All of that day off, tomorrow, next week, in a month, in 6 months was total, excuse my language, bullshit. At least Kris was honest.

“This happens a lot with sales people. They make a lot of money and then leave. You can never trust any sales people.” Thanks Kris. Would American companies say that about their own employees?
“Well what do I do now? Who can I trust?”
“You can trust me. I’m not in sales. I’m in Operations. I deal with all of the complaints about sales.”

“Well Posh said I could cancel my membership if I showed an internatinoal plane ticket. I’m leaving and that’s the only reason I agreed to the one year contract. Is that true?”
“Uh…. Well, yes, I think we can do that. It would have to go to Bangkok and it might take a while.”
“So that won’t be a problem? You’ll help me when I need to cancel it?”
“It won’t be a problem, yes I’ll help.” Woo hoo straight answers!
“Thanks! And what about now? I want to work out. I’ve paid a lot of money, and I’m in my gym clothes, what do I do?” Smilesmilesmilesmile.

He explained that they didn’t want to start people’s memberships yet because the gym wasn’t open so it wouldn’t be fair. But I said, I didn’t care, I would love to have my membership started today and I just wanted to work out. And if I couldn’t start it today I wanted to cancel it so I could use that money to pay a gym where I was allowed to work out.

That freaked him out and he got some forms for me to fill out and he said he could start my membership.

And then he asked about my friends and if they wanted memberships because a lot of them have been using the 5 free visit passes. I told him most of my friends were leaving in June and if there were a way to pay monthly until June I would have at least 6 people for him, but no one wants to sign a contract with a sales person that is going to lie to them and then take off. He said that was fair. And I mentioned all of my friends think I’m really stupid for signing up because no one’s ever given me the same anser twice about anything I’ve ever asked. He said that was fair. They do have monthly memberships but it’s more than 5 times my monthly payment (5,000 baht monthly, 849 contract). Miriam and I talked for a while (without Kris) about how stupid that was, cause if you think about who is in Thailand, young English teacher and NGO expats are by far the most likely to use a gym, especially one like this where they are most definitely trying to replicate a danceclub. Thais aren’t going to use it. Besides that day with the trainers there have barely been more than 5 other people there. And most of them are in jeans and flip flops or mini skirts and stilletos. Thais haven’t completely grasped the work out thing. That Saturday that Caroline, Miriam and I went all the reclining bikes were actually taken, but Caroline pointed out that she’s never seen anyone do any of the machines for more than 3 minutes so we could probably wait, and she was completely right. A minute later, they were off to the treadmill for their next 2 minute workout. And most of the older expats are fat old men who don’t give a crap about going to gym or if they do they would go to a gym run by farang who know what they’re doing and not a place with neon posters of Thai celebrties saying things like, “Thanks for the healthy!” So you’re left with the young expats who would be more than happy to pay monthly, like 1000 or even 1500, but are way too cool to sign a one year contract for anything cause they got to go back for grad school and whatever.

Ugh. Whatever. It’s done. I have a new slip of yellow paper and when I went with Caroline yesterday, I saw my boy Kris, pulled out the yellow slip of paper, smiled as wide as I could, he laughed and said I could go in, which distracted the girl at the desk from noticing that Caroline was signing in using a new 5 free visit card. We came up with a new plan. Use the weight machines when we don’t see any trainers around and sprint for the bikes as soon as we see them. It worked well. We saw ponytail/“big triceps” guy eyeing us just as we were finishing the chest press thing and were out of there before he could “help” us.

Oh California Wow Experience. An experience indeed.

P.S. I'm not bitter, just observant.

It's hot in Thailand, but not in Antartica!

2007-02-28T00:08:00.000+07:00

Today was the first day back in the 3 cold showers a day routine. Yuck. Wake up, shower, do errands, eat breakfast/lunch, shower, go to work, eat, come home, shower, go to sleep.

Today it was 97. May I point out it's FEBRUARY??? I think this is still technically Thai "winter".

This isn't abnormal. It's been and will continue to be in the high 90s for the next 4 months. And then it will cool off to the mid 90s, but it'll start raining for a couple hours a day for the following 4 months and then in about November, it will go back to high 70s/low 80s, that beautiful hoodie at night weather.

So to even out this ridiculous Thai weather I've been looking at jobs in Antarctica. So yeah, there are a bunch of scientists and whatever, but there's also a support team of about 1,000 people, recent high school/college grads, travelers, professionals, and even retired people who work in Antartica for 4 months (October to February) to wash dishes, clean toilets and all that other fun stuff that has to be done. And you're with 999 other people who think that scrubbing toilets in Antarctica would be a fun way to spend 4 months. So the application process sounds pretty intense and you have to apply about 8 months in advance, so I'm thinking I'll apply next year for the 2008-2009 season. Wish me luck! Danny's said he's in. Anyone else?

I'm working on my California WOW write up. It's long and oh so Thai. I'll post it tomorrow.

And happy birthday Alex, although I'm pretty sure he doesn't read this.

I suck

2007-02-16T12:16:00.000+07:00

Sorry. That whole "Shorter, More Frequent Posts!" didn't work out at all.

In list form, interesting things since January 28th...

1) I went to Ratchapreuk again, this time with Katie and abdolutely loved it. (The first time I kind of felt "eh" about it so I hadn't tried very hard to go back. I forgot to bring my camera, but Katie brought hers and I'll put the link up when I find it again.

2) I met Russ and then he moved into my house. Russ is a friend of Mike Kurtz' from Amherst. He's mad cool, yo! He's a writer and photographer and he's been to Thailand before so he's back to do get stuff done and learn Thai at AUA. He's renting this little room across from my room. It's fun. He has internet in my room, I have a bathroom in mine, so we share. Look at his pictures. They make Chiang Mai look good. Chiang Mai pictures start on January 29th I think.

3) Jeff and Lee came back! Yay! It's nice to have friends now.

4) Katie left. This was sad. This is the first long term Chiang Mai friend I've had to say bye to.

5) Last Friday and Saturday were both ridiculously fun. Fridays my friends and I meet up at a place called Salsa Kitchen and bring anyone else we know. So last week was big. It's was Katie's last Salsa, but it was also the first Salsa for Jeff, his friend Chris, Lee, Russ, Reneta's boyfriend and two of her friends visiting from home, and then a couple of other people who brought new people too. So it was big. Maybe like 15 or something. So after way too many burritos, fajitas and nachos, a good group of people made their way to Warm Up. Warm Up is a big club on Nimmenhamin (my new road) very popular with Chiang Mai University students. There are some tables outside, a dancy dance club with really fast music and a DJ, and a big room with hip hop and hundreds of bopping Thai uni kids. And, it's right across from my soi (minor street off of a major street). The problem with these really fun Friday night things is that I work on Saturday. Bummer.

Then Saturday was awesome too! Russ, Jeff, Chris (Jeff's friend from home that's here for a couple of months) and I got some pad thai. Then we met up with Tessa, a couchsurfing.org-er. Couchsurfing is a website to connect travelers. People make up a profile and can either host couchsurfers or couchsurf. I haven't actually hosted anyone or been hosted, because I've alwasy lived in tiny rooms and now there isn't any room in my house, BUT, I have on my profile that I'm down for meeting up for coffee or a drink. I usually meet about 1 a week, and, more often than not, they're cool. Sometimes they're weird. But Tessa was cool! A hippie girl from Seattle who has been traveling for a while and is going to New Zealand and then maybe Africa?? Crazy. She's into all things good for the earth, permaculture and some other words I've forgotten, but I've got friends that are into that stuff too! Renata's friend Ashley works on this farm in Mae Taeng (same town as ENP) that does all that stuff and makes mud houses or something too? Oh, I'm not sure, but organic, sustainable, good for the world stuff. It's fun to hear about. And Jeff gets really excited about that stuff too. So then we headed over to The Couch. If you read Russ' account of the night he gets all the info wrong, so listen up.

There's an area with a ridiculous amount of bars that exist only to honor Bob Marley with beautiful Thai guys with dreads who have a new farang backpacker girlfriend every week. Probably in addition to their Thai one. So these bars can be a bit much to handle sometimes. Lots of young, drunk backpacker kids.

BUT, behind all these bars is this little gray room with a couch and some instruments. And outside there's another couch. So you can sit outside or inside and watch people play. Jeff and I went there early on and realized that when we ordered with the guy who worked there he was just walking to the minimart right next door and buying it and then bringing it back and serving it. They didn't have a fridge. So from my understanding is that there are a couple of musician guys who throw in 1,000 baht a month and then they have this room where they all play and chill out and 1/2 way run a bar. There's no name on it and they don't have a name for it. Whenever I talk to Thai people about it they say, "Pii Puen's bar!" The guy who is there most often's name is Puen, and pii is how you talk about friends or people older than you. So Jeff and I have tried to explain that they should name it "The Couch." So we tried with Puen, but he didn't know the word couch. We pointed to the couch and said "couch."

"Oh, so-FAAAH!" (In Thai the stress always seems to be on the second syllable)
"Yeah yeah, couch means the same as sofa, so you should name it The Couch."
"Oh. The Sofa Bar!"
"No, no, no. The... Couch."
"Ok ok, sofa same same cuch. The Cuch Bar?"
"No bar, just The Couch. Couch. Cow - chuh."
"The Cow-chuh Bar?"
"The Couch."

This was several months ago. And they still don't have a name or a sign, and all my friends know it as The Couch, so I think I've accomplished my goal. This name'll spread.

Back to Saturday. Tessa, Chris, Jeff, Russ and I went to The Couch to have a drink before meeting up with Sabine and friends. (Sabine - a German working for a human rights NGO in Thailand, but is leaving in a week or two I think.) But the couch was too much fun and Sabine and friends were at a bar playing some soccer match, so I went there to tell her we were at the couch and all the cool kids were coming there. So she waited for her other friends and then came over. I also got in touch with another couchsurfing dude, named Tim, who was in that area and came to The Couch with his friend Murphy and a Thai guy named Jack. Then, on the way back to The Couch, I ran into Ben, Renata's boyfriend. He was by himself. He came to the couch and Renata and her friend from Oregon soon followed. Russ' friends Jiw and Aom (CMU kids) came and somewhere in there Ashley showed up. The Couch was rocking. But there were three minor problems. First Puen wasn't there because he had to go get a new string for his guitar. He left some 15 year old kid in charge of the bar. Fifteen year old kid didn't speak English and had a tough time understanding it. Second, I'm faily sure The Couch had never had this many people at it. There weren't really enough seats or glasses. That was a first. Third, the cool thing about The Couch is that there are usually random Thai and farang musicians walking in and out and playing music. And it's stuff that's not just Jack Johnson and Bob Marley. But because no one else was there I think they were just playing a John Mayer CD which wasn't that impressive. But oh well.

(Oh, FYI, any white guy that plays guitar and sings that isn't Eric Clapton is Jack Johnson. This is a conversation from November with Puen...

"You like Jack Johnson?"
"Well, I do, but this is John Mayer."
"This Jack Johnson!"
"Do you have the CD case?" "See, this says John Mayer. He's different than Jack Johnson."

"Not Jack Johnson?"
"Right. His name is John Mayer."
"Jack Myr?"
"John... May-yer"
"John... May-yer. Ok! Thank you!"

And then two minutes later his friend comes in and says, "Oh! Jack Johnson!" and Puen nods his head with excitement, "Jack Johnson!")

So pretty much the 15 year old is freaking out and I just tell people they should just go to the mini mart cause the boy looked liked he was about the cry. He didn't care where the drinks were coming from, he just didn't want to have to listen to people speak English to him.

We got out of there and made our way back to Warm Up and got a table inside at the hip hop room with all the boppy uni kids. SO MUCH FUN. I can't even describe it. I guess I never went to dancey clubs in Madison or New York, but man, they are cool. Well this one is at least.

So after Warm Up we made our way to Discovery which is like Warm Up on crack. It was intense, and really late. But I did get to see a Thai cover band playing all those songs I miss from my TV watching days.

So that was Friday and Saturday. SO MUCH FUN. And Sunday was a big lazy day of nothing. And it felt good. And Monday was my first Monday off since coming back to work. And I even went to the gym.

Oh man, I haven't even talked about my gym yet.

http://www.californiawowx.com

Next post.

LOOK AT RUSS' PICTURES - photos.russjuskalian.com (Chiang Mai pictures start January 29th)

STUFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-02-12T22:18:00.000+07:00

"Ok, Russ, what's been happening that I should be writing about?"

"Me."

"What?"

"Me."

Oh right. So Russ is here. He's a good friend of Mike Kurtz' from Amherst. I think we had met once at a party in Amherst. But anyway, he's been to Chiang Mai a couple of times and is back again. This time he's taking Thai classes at AUA for a couple of weeks and then is off to do other things. He's a writer and stuff so he can be away and still get paid. Good for him.

I met him on a Monday I think, and then that Thursday I offered to help him look for a guesthouse where he could stay until Monday when he was going to move into the guestroom in my house.

The search was pretty unsuccessful and I ended up offering him the extra bed in my room. (I don't really have furniture, so I had been using the extra bed as a dresser/desk/table). It was kind of intense. To share a room and bathroom with someone you just met. We also had 5 other people staying at the house at the same time. It was pretty nuts. I never really realized it before, but the door to my bathroom isn't a real door, it's a piece of wood with a bunch of slits in it, so nothing's really private. It's not just my bathroom door, they're all like that, even the one in the kitchen, but it's just weirder if someone who isn't you is using it.

So, I'll be honest, that first weekend was kind of weird. BUT, once the 5 people left and Russ moved into the guestroom everything changed. First, I actually knew him, which was better than not really knowing him. Second, I got to move my stuff back to the bed. I think I had just thrown it back on the floor. (Beth throwing stuff on the floor??? No way! I know, it's hard to believe)

Ratchapreuk -

I tried to do the flower festival with Jeff and Paeng but something never clicked. I think I was sick or just getting over being sick or something. And I remember sleeping on a lawn and then on bench, eating overpriced noodle soup and the drink place being out of water. And something with rubber trees. But we missed all the cool stuff!!! Luckily, I got another pair of free tickets (THANK YOU AE!!) and Katie and I went and tried again, the second to last day it was open.

IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!!!!!!!!!!! We went to the big orchid exhibit which was pretty amazing. I forgot my camera, but Katie took pictures and I'll put the link at the end. Then, after the orchids, we went to the international gardens. Most were pretty pathetic, but some were amazing! Actually, Morocco was amazing. The gardens weren't as much gardens as much as big ads for the countries, but that was fine. In "Morocco" there were Moroccan couches on a Moroccan rug with a Moroccan guy serving Moroccan tea and coffee for 20 baht. (Katie in a nutshell - she grew up in London, but she's Irish, and don't call her anything else or else she'll beat you up. But she's been living in France for the last couple of years and she speaks French)

Russ - Fun
Ratchapuek - Fun

Shorter, More Frequent Posts?

2007-01-28T11:08:00.000+07:00

I'm trying.

Last night I went to a bar I used to go to a lot and met the girlfriend of the guy who works there. Most English speaking Thai guys who work at the bars in that area are pretty lame and have a new farang backpacker girlfriend every week, usually in addition to their Thai girlfriend. The worst story I've heard is from a girl I met here who lived with her Thai boyfriend for several months only to find out that he was also living with his Thai girlfriend of a couple of years. I don't even know how that's possible. But this guy, Kaek, is actually a good, nice guy and he's talked about his girlfriend for months so it was cool to finally meet her.

But I messed up. A couple of months ago, he was playing this mix CD someone gave to him and guess it was around the same time he had been talking about his girlfriend. So as she and I were talking about music I said, "Yeah, that mix you gave him was really good!"

She never gave him a mix. I felt really bad and said I don't even know if it was his or someone else's. And I just remember him showing me the case but I have no idea who it was from. And then I said, "Oh no, I remember what it was. It was a letter he got from you he was really happy about. That must be what I was thinking of." But she still didn't know what I was talking about.

But she's a German girl named Francesca who has just been in Laos and I'm absolutely positive the letter Kaek had showed me was from his girlfriend, a German girl named Francesca who was in Laos. But maybe I meant email, so she thought some other girl had sent a letter in the mail or something? I tried to clarify, but had to stop myself cause she wasn't looking any happier and I guess it was possible that the letter or email he was showing off was from a previous girlfriend or something? I don't know.

So that was awkward. They're both really cool and out of all of the Thai boy/farang girl relationships to potentially mess up, this was the last couple I would have chosen. I apologized and said I have a terrible memory and I'm sure I'm mixing up a bunch of stories from a long time ago. She and I still made tentative plans to meet up again, but damn, I felt bad. And I'm sure Kaek wasn't too pleased either. But he's Thai, so he didn't show it.

And the someone decided that 7:00AM, Sunday morning is a good time to start bulldozing.

I disagree.

Last week when I was sick all I could hear were two people breaking concrete with hammers all day. From 8 in the morning until I went to work it was just this loud, persistent hammering.

But now they've now moved to Level 2 and got the bulldozer out. Right behind my room. It's so loud. I've never cared about/noticed noise before, but I really just want to live somewhere where I never have to hear motorbikes, tour buses, fake Vespas, bulldozers or airplanes flying 10 feet above my head. Oh yeah, right now I'm living really close to the airport. But, as always, I might be moving, so we'll see.

-----

On a more positive note, since having internet in the house I've been able to catch up with Thai music. Not as fun as watching new videos on TV, but I can listen and read the words and stuff.

Check it! Here's a good example - http://www.ethaimusic.com/lyrics3/662.htm.

This is my boy Sek Loso. Thailand's "Rocker" guy. It's a love song. Surprise surprise. But it has the Thai script, English transliteration (Thai written in Roman letters) and then the English translation. And then on the left you can listen to the whole song! I think a majority of the videos I've posted have English translations here. Some just have the Thai or just the Thai and the transliteration, but with whatever it has, it's cool. I will learn Thai!

----

It's noon and the bulldozer just stopped and I can actually hear little birds chirping!
I'm going to try to take a nap.

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

2007-01-21T17:36:00.000+07:00

Hey - I know, I know, I know. It's been too long. I'm so sorry.

Here's...
1) Chiang Mai w/ Stephie
2) the week in Greece with my family
3) Back in Thailand -> Pai trip
4) Since starting teaching again -> getting sick

It's 18 Microsoft Word pages. Pace yourself.

CHIANG MAI w/ STEPHIE!
So since the last post - I moved in with my friend Renata on the 15th.
I finished working at AUA for 2006 on December 16th.
I had a bunch of free days I didn't know what to do with on 17th, 18th and 19th and on the 20th I went down to Bangkok to meet Stephie! Woo hoo!

We came back to Chiang Mai that day, went to Elephant Nature Park on the 21st, stayed one night (better than a day, but would have loved to stay longer of course), got back to Chiang Mai on the 22nd, bought some DVDs at the Night Bazaar, walked along the Saturday "Sunday Market" (a special market for people from Chiang Mai to sell their own stuff, known as the Sunday Market, but, because of the Flower show, now happens on Saturdays too) and then Sunday had a nice breakfast, Stephie got a haircut while I packed, and then took off to the Chiang Mai International Airport to get to Bangkok to get the 11 flight to Athens.

The International Terminal in Chiang Mai is absolutely beautiful. Brand new for the Flower show, but 95% of the international flights are just the flights to Bangkok that connect later.

We had a little trouble getting a red truck to the airport, so we figured we'd just do a domestic flight to Bangkok and then do all the visa stuff in Bangkok, but when we got to the counter the domestic guy wouldn't let us check in. He said to go to the International Terminal and I said, "I don't think we have time!" and he pretty much laughed in my face. When we got there we saw why. It was completely empty. We walked up to the Thai Airways counter, there was one other person there. Walked to the airport tax counter, we were the only ones there. Walked to immigration, we were still the only ones there. We had been so surprised and confused about the lack of people we actually forgot to fill out the leaving slips, but the guy just laughed and waited as we filled them out at the counter. EMPTY! We were at our gate in the International Terminal in less than 15 minutes from getting to the Domestic Terminal
The guy at the domestic counter was right. We definitely had enough time.

The flight to Bangkok was fine. The new airport is really nice I guess but their signage is terrible. They have arrows that point up to the sky that don't mean go straight, they mean, find the nearest escalator, which is probably behind you, and take that "up." I don't think signs in America work like that. Steph and I, both reasonably bright human beings I'd say, walked in the wrong direction for about 1/2 hour. We knew after about 5 minutes that there was no way that we were going the right way, but we really wanted to see where this arrow was going to lead us. And they had "people movers" (treadmill/flat escalator things), which are really fun, the whole way, and we had nothing better to do. But they were only going in one direction, so the walk back took a really long time, but it did face us back in the opposite direction so we saw the escalator on the way back.

The flight was fine. We didn't have individual TVs which is always a disappointment on really long flights, but it was fine. It was a pretty empty flight so Steph and I both got our own rows. But I was stupid and jumped to the first row of the section (we were in the second) and the armrests there don't move like the ones in the other rows so Steph had a row to herself to sleep on and I had a nice window seat with a lot of room to put my stuff. Also nice. Another bummer about the first row is that you're actually too close to the TV to see it. But I don't think I was interested in the movies anyway. I got to listen to some Thai pop music which was nice. I've really been missing it lately.

GREECE
Athens
So then GREECE! First off, their immigration people suck at keeping their inkpads inked!

My Greece stamp is just pathetic. You can barely see it. And I heard poor Maisie had the same bad stamper for her first stamp! That's just not right.

Steph and I got to Greece and realized we didn't know anything. It was weird. Steph had written down the name of the hotel and emailed before we left, but we got there and said, "Huh, so we're in Greece. Their stamps suck. So what do we do now?" I was still convinced Mom and Dad were going to meet us (for no reason other than I thought they'd want to). Steph was smarter than that. She went out to figure stuff out while I guarded the luggage. She asked where to get a taxi, if they had meters (maybe not) and how much it was supposed to be The answers were, "There's a stand outside with metered taxis with a sign with average prices for common destinations." We were both blown away. A sign with average prices??!?!? WOW! The West is great! We almost forgot that Greek cab drivers probably wouldn't take Baht of Rupees so we got some Euros and headed out on our way. Our driver was really nice. He was a bit hesitant when we, two kind of dirty backpacker looking kids, said we were going to one of the top five Athens hotels, but when we explained our parents were already there he agreed. Twenty minutes later we were at the Electra Palace Hotel. And Dad was there to meet us. And pay the guy in case we forgot to get money, which we almost did, but then didn't.

Woo hoo! Athens! But more so.... Woo hoo! Family!

The pictures will tell more than I can. I'll try to recap...
12/25 - Christmas! We ran into a huge Christmas festival with ponies, balloons, candy houses, skinny Santa Clauses, more balloons and some lottery tickets! Then we walked down a strange street market of fake stuff and Incan music. I don't know what to make of it. Then we walked around the area a bit, led by a very nice dog who even led us back to our hotel when we got too cold. He knew exactly where we wanted to go. It was weird. I think he wanted a tip for showing us the way back but we only had coins. No food. He waited by the door of the hotel for a while and we all crossed our fingers that he'd find some more nice people and wouldn't be waiting for us when we left again for dinner. He wasn't. At night we headed over to our , "No, you don't get to order, you'll get what I give you" first grilled meat dinner. Lots of grilled meat. This time in little rolls with some pita. Right on.

12/26 - Steph, Alex and I ventured out and ended up having a way cooler day than expected. Much to Erica's dismay. The pictures will explain. We saw the guards at Parliament doing their thing, which is a strange march like thing in an even stranger outfit. Alex stole oranges from Parliament, we walked around making fun of Greek people's leather jackets, mini skirts and stiletto, we stopped at a coffee shop where we learned that the only difference between hot chocolate and hot chocolate Vienna is that the Vienna has whipped cream. I noticed that Greece is the first place where hot chocolate is more expensive than cappuchino. We went on the Athens metro which was very nice! Very clean, much better signage than the Bangkok airport. We took it to an area by the water with a whole bunch of Olympic stadiums. All closed but interesting I guess. Then we walked around some park area and found a huge bouncy playground. It was empty, but not closed (as most things in Athens were). Steph did some talking and got the three of us in. Woo hoo! That was fun. We took the tram back to the hotel, stopping at a fish restaurant along the beach. The area was pretty dead, but you saw all the potential it had for being really exciting in the summer. Oh well. I think dinner this night was room service. It was damn cold and everything was closed. It was hard to work up the energy to leave the room at night.

Santorini
12/27 - Athens to Santorini. Maisie in an airport! This was my first time seeing her in an airport. My iPod had broken, so I gave it to her to play with. I think she liked it. And by liked it, I mean, she liked (putting) it (in her mouth). But hey, that's what babies do. It's cool. The flight was fine. I had been under the impression we were going to have a private propeller plane to the island, but it was a real plane, much bigger than the American Airlines Madison --> New York plane. Our hotel place in Santorini was amazing. The nice thing about going to a summer only place not in the summer is that the fanciest places all have reduced rates, so we stayed in a really nice place. The rooms are all kind of built into the cliffs, like all those "Greek Isles" pictures you see with the white buildings and blue water. To get to it you have to walk up and down a lot of stairs and through little alleys and stuff. It was fun. I was kinda hoping a donkey would carry our luggage, but it was ended up being a nice Georgian (country, not the state) boy, named George, who carried a lot of it.

Santorini was really nice and cute and beautiful and everything, but oh so closed! We walked for quite a while trying to find some place to eat. We eventually found the same place as all of the other people who had been on our plane. Being the only place open, you'd think they might have a waitstaff of more than one, but no. The owner was the waiter. He didn't let us order. He said he knew what we wanted. "Some nice salads, some bread, and a nice chicken." It was kind of weird. We did get manage to get a pizza and some pork too though. No grilled vegetables though. Erica tried and got the response, "Vegetables? What do you think's in the salad?" Ok. He also took the liberty of serving each one of us oil, vinegar, salt and pepper for the bread. Nice, yes, but then when poor Stephie asked not to have pepper, he was very insulted and decided she needed to hear an important story. It went like this...

"Um, no thanks."
"No pepper? Why not?"
"I don't like pepper."
"Have you had it before? How do you know you don't like it?"
"Yeah, I've had it before, that's how I know I don't like it."
"Well, let me tell you a story. I thought for the longest time that I didn't like octopus. And my friends would try to get me to eat it and I wouldn't. And then, one time, when I was completely drunk, my friends gave me octopus. And guess what?"
"What?"
"I loved it. I eat it all the time now. And I never would have known if my friend's hadn't made me eat it when I was drunk."
"Oh."

Erica: "Is anyone here drunk?"

And then before Stephie had a chance to get back on defense, there went the pepper into her oil and vinegar.

This guy also broke a glass and spilled water - both remedied by putting a new tablecloth over the old one. I'm sure he was on crack.

I think we skipped dinner this night, but went out for coffee later and found a place with crepes. Those were good, but I realized I don't like Nutella as much as I thought I did. I much rather have Hershey's Chocolate Syrup in any scenario I can think of.

12/28 - We decided we should do a tour to really see and "experience" the island. It was iffy if we would be able to find a tour guide (keep in mind, I think the population of all of Santorini was maybe at most 100) but the Erica worked hard and the guy at the hotel eventually set up a for a 2 hour tour in with a van with enough seats for everyone. Nice! Turns out the guy was really just a guy who happened to have a van with enough seats more than a tour guide. His first question, "Where do you want to go?" Silence. "Red Sand Beach?" Sure. So after the silent, very pretty, ride, we get to the red sand beach and dude said, "I wait here." So we hung out as RSB for a while. I was in a ridiculous amount of pain from something going on with my foot caused by wearing my shoes. It sucked and hurt a lot, but oh well. So I hung out on the top with Mom and Alex, Stephie, Erica, Mike and Maisie went on a little adventure down to the beach with the red sand. And Steph and Alex made it all the way across the beach to a random door in the cliff. It was closed.

Then back in the van! And we went off to... the beach with the black sand! I think it was called Black Sand Beach! Also nice, not as much walking, so I got to see the water. Then back in the van. Where to now, Tour Guide? Steph tried to ask for someplace but he said it was closed. So she asked for another place and he said it was far away, but didn't give any other suggestions, so we said whatever, dude, far place it is. It's called Oia and Erica and I are pretty confident it's where Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (or ... of the Traveling Man) was filmed. I bet if we had stayed there, our luggage totally would have been carried by donkeys. But, I also bet, if we tried to stay there we would have been really cold, because all the hotels there were probably closed. But it was really nice. I think. We saw "the shot" from the van and asked the guy to stop so we could take pictures but my guess is it was the politeness that killed our chances. Tour Guide Steph sitting in the front asked dude, "Could we stop someplace to take pictures?" to which he answer, "Yes. Pictures. I know." If Steph had said, "Mr. Mean, Not-even-tour-guide guy, can you stop right now so we can take damn pictures?" maybe he would have understood better. I don't know. He took us to the bottom of the cliffs and said, "Here. Pictures." It was also nice, I guess. But it was pretty much impossible to get any kind of picture that could capture how cool it had looked from the road on the top of cliffs. On the way back we were in a rush, (because we had gone to the far away place, against his wishes), so we didn't dare ask him to stop.

Lunch this day was actually not bad! I mean, well, mine was. I got a "Spinach Pie" which were 5 grease puffs with green goo that couldn't have possibly been spinach inside. But, as far as waiters/owners listening to what we wanted to order, he was very accepting of our own orders! That's probably because what was ordered was a lot of grilled meat, a lot of grilled fish that came with salads. It also came with Santorini wine. Dad asked if he could substitute anything else, but the guy got insulted and said that he made the wine, so it wasn't just any wine, it was special. And, he had more of it than anything else and it was cheap for him to give it away with the set meals. So Dad got the wine.

I think it was this day when I took a bubble bath in a jacuzzi bathtub. I had never done that before. It was pretty nice! Among other things, water pressure is definitely lacking in Thailand. And bathtubs don't really come around much either. So that was a very nice treat!

Erica and I also watched Maisie stand against a table with fruit on it for a pretty long time. Her toes were sure working hard. She went back and forth from standing on her toes to standing on her feet and then back again. She also started taking tinsy little bites of pear. Each one actually. A tiny tiny bite out of each pear on that table.

Dinner this night was take out from a Gyros stand. At this point, I had had more than my fill of grilled meat, and they were out of falafel, so I got just a pita, but even that was sopping in grease and oil and made me miss Thailand and their rice. Erica really liked the Tzsiki from there though.

I think it was this night we realized that all the stuff that's not open during the day (pretty much everything) was open at night! Not everything. But if 90% of stores, shops, restaurants, etc. were closed during the day, only 75% were closed at night! Pretty exciting if you ask me. We also found a cute little supermarket where I tried to sneakily take pictures of stuff but when the battery ran out and gave a really loud sound telling me, I got some mean looks, Santorini style. Ah! We also used the internet this night which was exciting. It was really fast. But super smokey, like most places in Greece. Damn those Greeks and their cigarette addictions. Gross.

12/29 - Santorini --> Athens.

In the morning we went to another supermarket to, you know, get gifts like sponges and stuff for friends and family back home. Alex also took pictures with the Christmas ostrich standing outside a Christmas store. But wait, it's days after Christmas, why are people still caring about Christmas? I don't know is the answer. But up until the day I left people were loving everything Christmas.

When we got back to Athens, my rice day finally came. We got back to Athens and found a Japanese restaurant to go to. I was so happy. Thank you Stephie for looking into it when I was too cranky and grumpy to do anything except complain.

At night Alex, Erica, Steph and I made it to one of the many coffee/dessert, but no food, places. We went all out and got cappuchinos, huge waffles with ice cream, baklava, some caramel thing, and some really good chocolate thing. The waffle and the chocolate thing came over with sparklers on them which was pretty exciting.

12/30 - Acropolis day! We went to The Acropolis. It was interesting. I liked watching Erica and Steph read about the significance of different things. I'm not sure who pointed it out but we also saw where Yanni had given his famous performance. I also tried to take pictures of ridiculous fashions wish I thought was going to be easy because it doesn't look rude to have your camera out and be taking a lot of pictures at The Acropolis, but for some reason the pictures didn't turn out as well as I had hoped they would. Oh well. It was cold, and because of the foot thing, I was wearing flip flops. I can actually say, I'm fairly certain I was the only person in Athens wearing flip flops that day. After Acropolis-ing we ate lunch at the inexpensive part of an expensive restaurant. Milk shakes - 7 euros. It was ridiculous. The drinks especially. Yesterday at lunch my friend Caroline pointed out that the best deal in Thailand might be the fruit shakes for less than a dollar. I agree. They're damn good. Then I went with Alex to look for sneakers but totally miscalculated how long it would take to get there and after taking the tram to the stop, pretty much turned around to go back and meet Steph and Erica to tell them I was too tired to actual do what I had said I would be back for. They went out and found a really cool, small Russian Orthodox church that was holding a service. I slept. For dinner, we finally found a fun, reasonably priced place to eat with good, friendly service. And music eventually too! What a relief. Athens had really not been impressing me much, but this restaurant was exactly what it was had been looking for. I would have been down with a plate or two being broken, but, hey, our waiter was nice and let us order what we wanted, so that was enough for me to be happy. And the woman at the table next to us had glitter in her hair which also made me happy. We liked this place so much we stayed for coffee and dessert too! But that was also an attempt to stay there until the music started. We got there at 8, when it was completely empty, "to get a table before the crowds" but the music didn't start until 10. But by then it was packed, so it is good we got there early.

12/31 - New Year's Eve Day! Today was an attempt to recreate the fun day from pre-Santorini. It worked!!!!! We got everyone on a subway, to the same place, and we Erica finally got to do the bouncy playground obstacle course. It was, needless to say, fun. Then the tram ride which didn't go as well as planned. It was supposed to be a nice, peaceful, pleasant ride along the beautiful Athens coastline, but people got hungry and people couldn't care less about coastlines if they're hungry. So we got out, but every place was closed or only served coffee and dessert and club sandwhiches. So eventually we gave in and went to a coffee place that had club sandwhiches and mini pizzas and had lunch there. And then back to another place for dessert and coffee. Steph finally got one of these cold hot chocolates we'd been seeing on all the menus. Like an iced coffee, it was an iced hot chocolate, which sounds kind of like chocolate milk, but it somehow wasn't. It was good. I got a hot one. They were both quite beautiful. I should have taken pictures. Then we got back on the tram continuing along the coast, and about 15 minutes later, got off, and caught the next tram going in the other direction back to town. It was planned that way, don't worry.

Getting back to the hotel was kind of lame, when we turned on BBC and it said stuff about bombs going off in Bangkok. That sucked. I didn't like it. I think we also watched a bunch of promo ads for Greek kids' music with this little 10 year old kid wearing a suit and playing a piano and then a bunch of little kids singing songs running around in leotards and tights looking like reindeer and chickens.

We went out and tried to get New Year's Eve chicken gyros but we ended up with a New Year's Eve beef gyro plate and beer. Steph ordered Stella for the first time. Erica tried to go Greek and order Mylos or whatever it's called, and got a funny look for it. We ate, drank, and then walked around to find something cool going on. Syntagma Square was the big place to be, with music and everything but we walked around more to see if there was anything else going on. We found another square that had stuff going on, but there were only groups of young leather jacket wearing Arab men. No women, no kids, no white people. I think we stood out. Alex guessed that there was probably some cute Arab girl who was going to performing there later.

We ended up back at Syntagma and watched the guards do their funny march again. When they stopped marching, they just stood still. Protecting Parliament and stuff. But then after about 20 seconds people started taking pictures with them. So Alex did too.

There were some fireworks. Not after too long, we went back to the hotel. That was it for me.

1/1/07 - I thought my flight was at 4:30, but it was really at 4, so my overly cautious 1pm departure turned into a 1pm on the dot departure. But it was all fine. It was weird to see a Greek guy at the Thai Airways desk, but I guess I knew it would happen. As I was going through security the entire flight crew came through so the whole line waited for about 10 minutes for each member to go through. I couldn't believe how excited I got. Thai Airways staff are kind of a big deal in Thailand. Flight attendents and pilots are two of the top profession that kids in my classes want to be. It's one of those worldly jobs you can only get if you speak English well. Knowing the status that Thais give to them, I kind of felt they were celebrities coming through. And I got to hear people speaking Thai to each other and they kind of did the Sawatdee stuff to some of the people in line (who, if not going to Thailand, were probably pretty pissed they decided to show up to go through security in this group of 30). But oh man. It was exciting.

As with the Athens flight, the Bangkok flight was pretty empty. I got my own row again, and I was in a normal row so I could put the arm rests down. I don't remember what the movies were. I watched this whole episode of "True Hollywood Story: America's Next Top Model" because in the preview they said they were going to talk about the Thailand immigration problem, but it was actually cut out, so I watched the whole thing for nothing which was lame. The food was good though and I got to try to read Thai newspapers again. It's not easy.

BACK IN THAILAND
Chiang Mai
My flight took me from Athens to Bangkok but I had to get another flight to Chiang Mai. I tried going to Laos but it didn't work. That's ok. I bummed around Chiang Mai, trying to figure out what else I could do, and then Friday morning I went up to Pai, a really cute little super hippie town overflowing with backpackers, but also a popular destination for Thais. I actually first hear about it from Thais but then soon found out it was Lonely Planet's off-the-beaten-track gem several years ago, and is now a standard part of many a beaten track. So, like everywhere else in the world, it's not what it used to be, but it's still pretty cool is you ask me.

My bike in Chiang Mai is 97ccs which is pretty wimpy in comparison to most bikes around. So in Pai I decided to rent a 125cc for a day and see if I noticed a difference. I did. It was pretty cool. Pai is up in the mountains so it's just absolutely beautiful and all I did the first day (after a nausiating 4 hour mini van drive up there) was drive and look and stuff and be happy that I'm in warm, beautiful, nice, delicious Thailand, and not Greece anymore. But I did miss my family obviously. It was unbelievably nice to get away from Chiang Mai. Pai was a reminder that, minus the elephants, the things that I love about being at the Elephant Park are pretty much available all over the place once you leave the city. The beautiful jungle, mountains, bamboo shacks, people on bicylces, little dirt roads, all of it. It's rural Thailand. I think I had been forgetting that because I only associated that stuff with the park. A lot of places were full already but I stayed in a room above a massage place that they were pretty hesitant to give me. They said it was a Thai room because it had a hard mattress, a light and nothing else, with a shared bathroom, but I convinced them that I was more than happy to stay there for 100 baht ($2.50). The other option, which I almost took, was to stay at a 400 baht ($10) and had cable.

On the van ride up it was only a French mother with her two kids, a Canadian kid named Ethan who was studying in Australia, who was nice and tried to talk to me several times even though I was being super grumpy and anti-social. But that was really stupid of me. And at night, when I realized I was going to eat dinner by myself, I got mad at myself for having been such a grump. But luckily he walked by the restrauant where I was eating, and I ran after him and apologized for being a grump and asked if he wanted to hang out and he said yes. I explained the whole just getting back from Greece, family thing and said sorry for being a grump. He was cool with it. Pai is up in the mountains so it was pretty freaking cold up there at night. We got tea at an outdoor reggae bar with a bonfire. And made plans to meet up Saturday to check out some waterfalls and stuff. The area around Pai's got a lot of stuff to look at and play in.

After the first freezing night, I brought my stuff down to say thanks and pay, all ready to move to my room with cable and my own bathroom (I hadn't showered), but they were all sitting around a table eating breakfast and told me to sit down. So I did and they fed me all sorts of crazy stuff. Sticky rice, which is always good, and huge pieces of pig. I'm reluctant to use the word pork, because I feel like pork means someone put in some effort to make it indistinguishable from it's former self, and this was very... distinguishable. It was pig. It was cooked and all, but it was the most straight up pig I'd ever seen. I ate it. There were some really spicy vegetables that I had some of, as to not be rude, but absolutely hated and had to work hard to say no to the second time, and lastly, a lot of snails. Little snails you sucked the stuff out of. That was a first. I probably had ten. So after breakfast, they noticed I had my bag and said, "Where are you going? Are you leaving?" And I said, "Um... no! Sorry. I'm going to go bring this back upstairs!" The cable would have been cool, but I felt like if I'm going to eat snails and this is going to be that kind of trip, then I should go all out and stay in the Thai room. And they were cool and some of the other more expensive guesthouses were snippy when I asked if I could get a discount because I would only be using one bed in the two bed rooms. So, I stayed. There was a Thai guy named Jack that was staying in the same hallway above the massage place and he said he wanted to go see stuff today and said I should go with him. Which is cool, but could have been kind of awkward if we were alone. But, I had my plans with Ethan, so we went to meet him and the three of us went out on a ridiculously awesome adventure.

1st stop - "everything beautiful!" So on Friday, Ethan had tried to go to hot springs but when he got to the place on the map it turned out it was a Thai National Park which means it's 400 baht for foreigners and 20 baht for Thais. (Because I pay Thai taxes I found out I'm supposed to have a card that entitles me to that 20 baht price, but I've never gotten it, so I didn't have it.) So he never went and really wanted to find some, or failing that, some waterfalls. So Jack said he knew were to go for hot springs, but asked if we wanted to see "everything beautiful." Well hell yeah. Who wouldn't? Although it did kind of sound like something a drug dealer would say to a high school kid. But it wasn't anything with drugs. It was a place. But it turns out the place was in a national park. So we biked like 35 kms, and got to the sign that said 400 baht. I didn't even have 400 baht on me, and neither did Ethan. Jack felt bad, he said he had never been there, he had just heard about it and knew where it was, but didn't realize it was a park and we'd have to pay. Hey, Mai Pen Rai! Ok, back to those hot springs!

2nd stop - Hot springs! Free ones! Or one. I'm not sure how to really use the term "hot springs." After going back into town (35km) and then back out in the other direction we drove and drove and drove and then made a left at a tiny blue sign all in Thai (most signs are huge, green, with Thai and English). We go down these steep narrow dirt roads for 5 kms and then, there is it. A little pond with like 20 boys slinging mud out of it. I asked Jack what they were doing and he said they were working. Their job was to clean the hot springs. It was kind of weird showing up there. Ethan and I could have easily been the first foreingers these kids had seen. And I was the female for miles. And we were there to go swimming. And they knew that. It was awkward. I went in Thai style. Fisherman's shorts and t-shirt and just kind of kept myself submerged for as long as possible. It was only a little pond and not that deep, but really really really warm. The boys pointed out a bigger lake or a river or something that was close by, but it wasn't warm. It was cold. So I don't know if it's a hot spring, or if a little pong can be a hot springs or how to say it. But it was really nice and really relaxing and was probably the closest thing to a bath I'll get in Thailand. The hotsping(s) were really nice, but getting back out on the bike while soaking wet wasn't. I had all my layers with me, so I changed the top layers, but I had nothing to change into for the bottom. But, we weren't headed home just yet.

3rd stop - Jack asked if we wanted to go to see caves. He had been there a bunch of times before and really loved it and you rent a guide and a raft for up to four people for 550 baht so it wouldn't be as much as a national park. I was on the fence about it, but Ethan said sure, so we went. Again, drive and drive and drive. We stopped at a little rest stop and got coffee which was fun. I really liked our little group of three. Jack had the Thai knowledge that we didn't and I had the Thai language knowledge to understand stuff and explain it to Ethan. Jack speaks English too but there were some things he needed to explain in Thai and I could totally translate. Cool, huh? I can understand a lot better than I can speak which is cool, but also kind of frustrating because you usually show people you understand by responding but I get stuck. It's ok though. But yeah, Jack, Ethan and me was a good group. We finally got to the caves and started our next adventure. So this place is called Lot Caves and it's a Thai tourist attraction. There were only a handful of foreigners and I don't know what they did because our guide at least, definitely didn't know any English. She was nice and Jack knew the speil front to back so he tried his best at English and I filled in the gaps where I could. So 550 baht gets you a guide with a latern and a raft for four people which is pulled by a very tiny old skinny man. There are like 25 of them just sitting waiting to pull your raft. It's kind of weird. But you float to the first cave and then get out and walk up huge steps and walk around caves. The guide points out stuff like, "Look, it's looks like a crocodile!" and stuff like that. One thing I couldn't understand were these really long wooden rounded pod like things. They looked like really skinny canoes. Jack tried to tell us they were coffins discovered in the caves but they were like 15 feet long. And when I asked why they were that long he said people used to be taller. I truly doubt that. But they're old. I just did some googling and it sounds like they're 2000 years old. When Thai people were 15 feet tall. Just kidding. Oh, also, this is where Thailand's most beautiful prehistoric painting had been until it was wiped out by a village kid during a graffiti cleanup action. Oopsies! I have a picture of the picture of what it used to look like.

So caves, caves, caves and a lot of bat droppings. The third cave actually smelled so bad I walked around the whole thing breathing through my jacket. But it was cool anyway. And to see Thai people being tourists instead of just foreigners was pretty cool and quite refreshing. And being pulled on a raft by a very skinny old man was an experience I didn't ever see myself having. So that was cool too I guess. Although I felt really weird the entire time.

So finally we were ready to return home. But we were hungry. So 10kms back to the main road.

4th stop - Food! It was good. We were really hungry. We also passed this area with a lot of lights so we went to check it out and it was a bouncy castle, but we weren't allowed on. Lame.

Then - the ride home. It was freezing. I had on my almost dry, except for the crotch of course, shorts and a couple of layers on top. Ethan changed back into his jeans and put on his sweatshirt. Jack, the Thai guy, had on shorts and a t-shirt. The same shorts as he swam in and the same shirt he used to dry himself off. I tried to give him one of my layers but he declined. Eventually though, he turned onto a dirt a road and we went into a village looking for a blanket for him to drive with. I thought he was going to ask where a store was, or find the blanket maker or the village or something, but he just pulled into the first area of houses with lights on and asked if he could buy a blanket from them. In this area all the houses are build on stilts and stuff so they said don't worry about it and threw down a blanket for him to use. How cool is that? I have no idea how common that is. But neither Jack nor the family seemed to think twice about any of it.

Eventually, we got back to Pai. Again, I'm staying at the cheap place with a shared bathroom and by then it was sooooo cold, that I couldn't imagine the idea of getting out of the shower. I just didn't have enough clothing for how cold that was going to be. So for the second day, no shower. Ethan, Jack and I went out later that night to celebrate us all getting home in one piece. We drove back over 50kms in the dark on nasty winding, steep mountain roads. But we were safe and went slowly so it was fine. We went to the first bar which was a bar Ethan and I had tried going to the previous night, but he didn't have tea, so we left. But this night it was fancy drink night so we all got fancy drinks. As we were sitting by the fire (all the outdoor bars have to keep warm in the winter somehow) a bunch of Pai police officers came and hung out with us. The bar keeper guy gave them all sodas. They were nice. Then they had to go, but Ethan made sure to ask for a picture with them before. It would have been better if you could have seen their uniforms because their shirts said something funny that I can't remember now, but alright moving on. We kind of went bar hopping around Pai and ended up watching this really good singer/songwriter play Thai songs. That barely ever happens. It was exciting. I asked Jack who sang each song but he didn't know any because he usually lives on the beaches in the south and only knows the Western pop music they play in clubs. But he asked the singer, so I got some names. The night was cold and the bed was uncomfortable and my hair was geting pretty gross, but Sunday morning I finally said goodbye and got the van back to Chiang Mai. In the van with me this time were a bunch of Thai collge girls and an Israeli couple who were throwing up the whole time. But at the same time complaining that they had a 1:00 flight to catch. They were annoying. But I'm pretty sure the Thai girls hated them more even more than I did. The van was supposed to leave at 9 and most likely it had taken them 4 hours to get up to Pai, so how could they think leaving at 9 was a good idea for a 1:00pm flight? And leaving on time? Oh come on. This couldn't have been their first day in Thailand. They should have known better.

So on the way up there and on the way back, you stop at this little shop to eat food, drink and go to the bathroom. I decided to get a banana. They gave me two. The first one was really good. For the second one, the first half was good but then I tasted something crunchy. I just kind of swallowed it and didn't think anything of it and took another bite which was fine, but then I realized that this whole section of the banana was all messed up with a bunch of black stuff. I stopped and looked at it for a while and then the shiny stuff started swirming out of the black stuff. They were little worms. Tiny little ones. I was really grossed out. I then stopped eating the banana and got back on the bus. That was the first time food I've been given obviously bad food. I can't believe I kept eating after the first crunchy bit. I know this is bad timing, but I really don't think this had anything to do with the stomach problems, which are, by the way, fine now.

I got back to Chiang Mai around 2, after dropping off annoying couple at the airport and showered and slept and tried to psych myself up for going back to work. Boo...
But Sunday, I did get to meet up with Em (friend who I met at ENP last January, who was back for another visit) who was just about to start her week at the Park, so that was cool.

SINCE STARTING TEACHING AGAIN
Starting this term at AUA wasn't nearly as exciting as starting any of the previous ones. I think being in Greece with family, and then in the mountains sleeping on hard mattresses and eating snails, and then watching my friend Katie hand in her resignation, it was just hard to get psyched up. Also, this for this weekday term instead of 5 weeks of 4 days a week with 1 week of 5 days a week (plus Saturdays), it's 5 weeks of 5 days a week (plus Saturdays). So 6 days a week is tough when all I can think about is figuring out when I'm going to be leaving. I decided if I'm going to be in Chiang Mai, then I'm going to make the most of it and enjoy being in Chiang Mai. So I think every night after work I went out with friends. That was a bad idea. Because my Saturday, the day I was supposed to move, yet again, I was exhausted. I didn't move. I stayed home and watched movies with Renata, my roommate I hadn't seen since Sunday since she leaves for her real school job before I wake up and goes to sleep before I come back from my not real school job. So Saturday I chilled. Sunday, Craig and Caroline hosted a big breakfast thing which was very cool, and filling. And finally on Sunday, I packed everything into bags, then into a tuk tuk and moved to my new place.

On Monday, I was a mess. My throat had been hurting and had gotten worse. My tonsils were totally pussy and my glands were totally swollen. But I had to go to work. I thought taking a shower adn everything would help but it didn't. I got to work, and fell asleep on the table I was working at. Then I woke up and had lunch, came back and fell asleep again. Then I went to the pharmacy. I told the pharmacist that my throat was really bad and she, without taking a step, grabs two packages of Ammoxocylin and gives them to me. For $2.50. I KNOW TAKING ANTIBIOTICS IS NOT GOOD, AND ESPECIALLY NOT GOOD IF YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW IF YOU HAVE AN INFECTION OR VIRUS, but I was so desperate, I think I had convinced myself it was strep and these $2.50 antibiotics were the only answer I needed. I also got some cough drops. I taught Monday. I shouldn't have.

Tuesday I woke up and fell back asleep. I couldn't move and my stomach hurt. I tried again and went to take a shower but that didn't work out well and I fell back asleep after shoving as many whole wheat crispbreads in my mouth as possible because I realized I hadn't even in over 15 hours and I had started taking antibiotics. It wasn't pretty. Finally I woke up again and went to work. I taught Tuesday. I shouldn't have.

Wednesday I finally went to the doctor. He told me I had bronchitis and endosomethingitis which was the stuff in my stomach and gave me new antibiotics and told me to stop taking the other ones. And some decongestants for the bronchitis. The doctor was a recommenation from John, the director of AUA who's lived here for 25 years, but the whole idea of a clinic is kind of weird. All clinics have their own pharmacies, so they've not that much different in that say what you want, we'll give you antibiotics, except that in the clinic, a guy in a nice suit will talk to you in a room first and check you out and stuff. But the price for the medicine and the visit are all in one, so it's like, if he doesn't prescribe something from his pharmacy, he won't get paid. Or something. I don't know. Wednesday I taught, and I actually had a doctor's note to take two days off if I wanted, but that seemed silly now cause the two days I should have taken off were Monday and Tuesday. So I taught Wednesday, but that was fine.

Thursday and Friday, same same. Nothing dramatic. Woke up early to teach on Saturday. Took last night and today very easy. My nose is still a tiny bit stuffed. I'm not coughing anymore and my stomach's fine. I still have a couple of days of antibiotics left. But I'm staying away from them next time I'm sick. Unless I get a culture telling me it's a bacteria and not a virus. I don't want Superbugs to come and kill us all.

There are a bunch of hippie healers and people like that in Chiang Mai, so I think next time, I'll try that end of the spectrum and see what happens. But in the meantime... more sleep!!!!

PICTURES
Elephant Nature Park with Stephie and a couple of extras. -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wigramroad/sets/72157594491479882/

My best 362 Greece pictures -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wigramroad/sets/72157594491669382/

Pai -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wigramroad/sets/72157594492185241/

And I'm going to sleep now.

December something

2006-12-12T12:57:00.000+07:00

Hi!

So since the last update....

Thanksgiving at Craig and Caroline's! Really fun. It was AUA teachers and then friends and stuff. I brought Max (Thai friend, taught me how to ride a motorbike, helped me buy a bike, who brought his friend Aaron), Lee (from Michigan, manages a shop that paints miniature toy soldiers or something like that), and Mike (from Louisiana, met on couchsurfing.com, living in Chiang Mai for a couple of months doing Muay Thai training). Awesome Thanksgiving food, plus Thai food, tried to play football but they had just watered the lawn, so it was pretty messy. And I ended up getting sick. But oh well.

I bought a motorbike. I went with Max to a motorbike market where people bring their bikes and sell them. It's kind of sketch, but it seems to be how it's done. So it's a second hand bike. I have all the papers for it. There seems to be insurance on it somehow. I've been told having a NY license is good enough. But it sounds like foreigners don't usually get stopped unless they aren't wearing a helmet. And I always wear my helmet, so no problem there. So the bike is interesting. Three times I've started it and then it's stopped. Countless other times it's started fine, but the three times were pretty frustrating. The first time I was with Max and he just did something and then it started ok. The second time I left it on the side of the road (right near AUA) and ran into my friend who did the same thing and then it worked. We brought it to a shop, but by then it was working so everyone looked at each other and didn't know what they were supposed to do with a bike that worked so I just took it back. Last night after work though it wouldn't turn on. For real. And so this morning I had a legitimate reason to take it to the shop. I ran into my friend Prajak who of course had a friend who worked at a shop so we went there, asked what was wrong, walked down to another shop, bought some $1.25 thing, walked back to the first shop, gave it to them, they replaces something, installed a new something and now it seems to work fine. A teacher at AUA is neighbor's with a guy that runs a real Honda shop and she said she and her Thai husband would take me to go there and have them do anything that should be done, done. But, even with it's little quirks, the bike it awesome. I live in a whole new Chiang Mai. I really like it. It's made a lot of things a lot easier.

The King's Birthday! (Also Father's Day). We had off from AUA for three days (the regular Sunday and Monday, and then Tuesday!) so I spent the first two days looking for a new place to live. No luck. Everywhere is full. But the third day I decided to do something good and cool and fun. I went to the park. I realized later that I went to the park on December 5th last year too. For the first time ever. One year. Woah! Anyway, I went up with my friend Ae who is from Phuket but in Chiang Mai while she's working at the Royal Flora Expo. She's the English announcer for the main entrance! "Welcome to Royal Flora Expo 2006. If you have tickets already, please proceed to...." She's a friend of Pang, who is a Thai guy who worked at ENP last year, but then finished his internship, traveled around Europe for a while, went back home to Phuket, and then came up to Chiang Mai to work at the Flora Expo. So Pang had to work, but Ae had heard so much about it from Pang, Jeff and me that she decided to come up with me. We took the motorbike.

The park was nice. It was strange just being there for a day, but it also made me really happy that I live in Chiang Mai, that I could go up just for a day. Ae really liked it and the day trip is free for Thai people, so she's said she's going to try to get a bunch of people to go when they finish at the Flora Expo. When we were up there I talked to a couple of kids from India and I was asking about language and stuff and they speak English. Period. I guess I always assumed the Indian accent was because English was their second language, but they both said English was their first language, and that they only know a little bit of Hindi but couldn't think of any time when they would use it. So the Indian accent is because they were taught English by people with the same accent. That totally blew my mind. Sorry if I sound really naive. I really didn't know.

The park visit was a little bittersweet. The same morning that Ae and I went up there, Jeff went home for two months. Tear tear. Chiang Mai just isn't the same without him. But I'm hanging in there. He had a bit of a falling out with the people at the apartment building where he had been living, so he'll be looking for a place when he gets back. We may look for a place together.

So my newest living situation - Renata's house! Renata is a friend of Adrienne, who I knew from The Cat Empire/MySpace stuff who was teaching at AUA when I got here. She was only there for one term and now just went back to Australia (she's from Michigan, but was living in Australia, hence the TCE connection). So anyway, she met Renata in Starbucks and when Renata's roommate left, she moved in. And now she's gone, and I'll move in. But only for a bit cause her boyfriend's coming in February.

But Renata is super cool and she's got a nephew so we can sit and get all gushy about missing our niephlings (someone told me that a word once, but I don't think it is) without having to bore other people! And she lives a bit out, but with the motorbike - no problem!

So! I again, will have a place to live for a little over a month while I look for a more permanent place. I decided I want a place that has a sink counter. Right now I have a plastic shelf about 6 inches above the sink and I can't wash my face and I've decided there are many things I've fine with living without, but not being able to wash my face easily is not one of them. So I want a sink counter. And I want a room where I can fully open the doors of the closet. Again, not a very demanding request. So yeah. TV, mini fridge, internet, air con, I'm fine without all of them. But sink with plastic thing above it and a room too small for the closet doors to fully open, no. I won't have it anymore.

Ok, last thing. The other night I met Lee and Mike at a bar called Sticky Rice Blues Bar where this Harley couple walked in. Generally, I'm not a fan of Harley people, but this couple was awesome. They had lived on a boat for ten years in different marinas and then came to Thailand, bought a bar called Pirate's Cove, bought a huge macaw parrot, and ran a bar in Thailand for a year. They said they had a blast, but they decided to sell it and are now moving on to something else. Robin and Kevin. Robin is from Texas and has the best accent ever. Kevin is from Washington. Robin's Kevin's third wife, but, as she put it "in the military, that kind of thing'll happen." Oh yeah, Kevin was in the Navy for a while. So anyway, they came to the bar, (I guess they're regulars there, which is funny cause they own their own bar, but it's Thailand, they're not so competitive around here) and started telling their bartender friend how they've just sold the bar, but they're having a big pig roast right before they go. And then invited the bartenders, their friends, Mike (who seems to hide his southern accent until he starts drinking with other southerners), Lee and me. So the next night we hit up their party and it's like this crazy group of people I've never seen before in Chiang Mai. They were all like bad asses. But jolly bad asses. It was cool. So many people come to Thailand and try hard to be Thai and buy the Thai clothing and really understand Thai culture, blah blah blah and I'm pretty sure these people don't give a shit about a Thai cooking course, or Buddhism or anything. They're just in Chiang Mai cause they like it. So they were fun.

Hmm... Ok, the last thing. It's December something, but I was sweating yesterday and as soon as I go outside I'll probably start sweating again. It's the last week of my second term. Four of my five classes have to/have had to take a test. They have tests every four levels and I tried to do a lot of review with them, but I've seen the test and it's a really lame test. The listening section is with really fast speaking British people, who I can barely understand, the questions for the reading section make sense but none of the answers do. Let me see if I can remember.

In the reading, "I went to the floating market and bought lots of different kinds of foods. There is one fruit called durian that's very smelly but taste delicious!"

So then the question is "What did Sue do at the floating market?" and the correct answer is "She ate fruit." How could you assume from either of those sentences that she ate fruit at the market? The answer could be "She called her mom" and it would make just as much sense. Well, sure she could have, but that's nothing you would get from reading the passage.

So this is what my kids have to deal with. Lame AUA test that every teacher complains about yet nothing will ever be done about. I sat and listened to the listening part and I wanted to cry. And then seeing their faces after the test, oh god, heartbreaking. Seriously. I requested not to teach Level 4 next term cause I can't handle the hope that these kids have in me to help them through the test that just makes no sense. Another teacher took the test while he was proctoring and said, "Yeah, I failed. I've failed the Level 12 test before, but this is the first time I've tried the Level 4. It's tough." Not in a challenging way, in a completely ambiguous way.

But yeah, my Saturday classes had their test last Saturday, my 6:10 class had their test yesterday and my 7:20 class has their test today. And then Friday will be the last day for the second weekday term, and then Saturday is the last day for the Saturday term. And then vacation!?!?!

I don't really have any big plans yet pre-Stephie coming. But once Steph gets here we're going to live the high life. Thai food, Thai massages, Elephant Nature Park, motorbike rides (we'll rent her a helmet), markets galore and chillin in the super cool living of Renata's place.

Ok! Off to AUA!
Here are pictures!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2006-11-24T11:29:00.000+07:00

Ok. I'll try this again. I'll remember to save as draft often.

So I had an awesome Thanksgiving yesterday. Wednesday night had been an AUA teacher's birthday and we stayed out kind of late. So the 10am phone call from Mom kind of caught me off guard, but it was very nice.

Eventually I got up and made my way to the supermarket to get some cranberry sauce. I bought 2 cans of the jellied stuff and 2 little glass jars of stuff that hope is nicer than the jellied can stuff. I haven't had it yet.

So then I went to AUA to do some awesome lesson planning and then stopped at the guesthouse to change into my teacher clothes. My three lessons went really well, which was nice, because I had been like the past few days had been less than awesome. But yesterday was good.

After class I went to a Thanksgiving Day dinner at the coffeeshop with wireless run by Thai and farang Christians. I've mentioned it to some of you. I got there kind of late because I had to work, but they had saved me a plate of turkey, stuffing, some green beans thing, and there were still a lot of mashed potatoes left. It was exciting.

I think what was so cool about this year's Thanksgiving was being able to remember so vividly how I felt last Thanksgiving. Pretty much last year I was really sad, and this year I was really happy. I have a job I really like which gives me more than enough money to live a much more comfortable life than in the States, the whole friends situation is starting to come together, the housing situation is strange but interesting and I just like living here. Wednesday night we went to a popular backpacker bar and watching all the people travelling and talking about the same stuff over and over it felt really awesome to feel like I have a reciprocal relationship with Chiang Mai, and I'm not just a backpacker, getting as wasted as as many different countries as possible in my 6 months abroad.

And, definitely the most exciting news of Thanksgiving Day - it got cold enough to wear a hoodie!!!!!!!! I've been waiting for this since the day I got here and last night, after dinner I stopped by my room and PUT ON MY HOODIE!

This morning I woke up and while it's kind of too warm to actually be wearing it I'm wearing it again. I don't want to take it off now. But because it's like 75 and not 90 I've already seen Thais on motorbikes with huge, knee length, goose down coats, which is quite a sight.

Ok - so my Thanksgiving was cool. And after dinner I convinced Jeff to come celebrate the wearing of the hoodie at a little blues cafe nicely located between our two apartments. I had leftover watermelon and carrots from the Thanksgiving Day feast which I got to share with people. And then at about 2, I got another phone call and got to talk to Mom, Erica, Dad and Alex kind of, which was pretty cool. So it was a good day. And while obviously it was missing the extrememly important "being with family" component, Stephie will now be here in less than a month and we'll see everyone else in about a month. Awesome!

So some people's Thanksgiving was not as awesome as mine. So Monday night I got to the guesthouse and, as always, there was a table of Micha (owner) with his German buddies. They usually ask me to sit down and have a beer with them and I usually say no, but then I decided I would, if they would turn off the Shania Twain and put on German music. This is where the Rammstein and Enigma discussion came from. With Micha, Fritz, Wolfgang and Thomas. So that was Monday night.

Tuesday night, same set up, but I said no thanks and went to sleep. That night at 5am there started being a lot of screaming and yelling and crying, in Thai. Really loud. I've never heard a Thai person produce such loud sound. Then there was some sound with a lock, the gate and then a motorbike zooming off. At about the same time the angry German voices started. And then other German voices trying to calm down the angry one. And then the boy at the guesthouse knocked on my door thinking it was the girlfriend's room and when I answered (5:15am) he said, "Oh! Solly!" (Solly - Tinglish for Sorry). It was loud and messy and the Germans dealt with it by sitting around at drinking at from 5:30 to I don't know when. It was loud and I couldn't get back to sleep. And I actually took a pillow and put it over my head, like people do on TV. I realized that night/morning that I can hear everything that goes on there from the street through the restuarant, by each room in the hallway, to the Thai resturant behind the German place. It's noisy. And usually I try to keep myself entertained until I'm really tired so I can just come home and go to sleep and I don't notice. But Wednesday morning sucked.

Wednesday was quiet. No one opened the restaurant, no one unlocked the gate, none of Micha's buddies were at the bar, and it was just dead. I have a key to the lock on the gate, so I can just do my own thing, but it was weird. Wednesday night, was Katie (from AUA)'s birthday so we went out, and at the bar we were at I saw Micha. With a girl who was clearly not Toy, his Thai girlfriend of 6 years who he runs/ran the guesthouse with. It was some Thai hoochie! And when I got back at 5am that night (not normal, trust me) he was just re-locking gate, with the Thai hoochie. So sleazy! Thursday morning some Thai guy started came by and starting saying, "Hello, anyone here? Where is everyone?" in Thai and I went out and said, "I don't know. Sorry. I have no idea." I finally left my room at about noon and still, everything was dark, closed and locked up. At four I came back to change into my teacher clothing and finally there were people, but it was the girlfriend with all of her stuff packed, piled on the tables of the restuarant, and the boy, a Thai guy, probably gay, named Eak, who was my favorite person there, with all his stuff packed. He worked at the resturant and lived in one of the rooms and we played the "I'll try to speak Thai, you can try to speak English and we can laugh at each other's inability to actually communicate!" It was fun. He was probably the girlfriend's cousin or nephew or something so once she's gone, he's gone too. He said he doesn't know where he's going, but he has to find a new job now. It was sad to say goodbye. Micha kind of creeped me out even before the whole incident, as did the girlfriend, but Eak was just a sweet little guy. Thursday night at 10 it was still, closed, locked up. I'm not sure if this is better or worse, but this morning the gate was open and the lights were on, but Micha was passed out in a plastic chair in the restrauant.

The whole thing is weird and it makes me really not want to live there anymore.

And Stephie's coming! And I want to have a real place to live by then. That's my goal.

So Happy Thanksgiving yesterday. Sunday will be Caroline and Craig (from AUA)'s Thanksgiving thing which should be fun. They have a turkey, stuffing, and a football and I have 1 can and 2 jars of cranberry sauce. I might try to orchestrate my own parade for everyone. We'll see how it goes. I'll try to take pictures.

I do want to say that I've decided that I don't like movies where people who aren't living in an English speaking country are speaking English. Without a TV, I've started buying and watching DVDs from the night market. And watching Chocolat and Memois of a Geisha, it just seemed so sad that the characters weren't just speaking French and Japanese. Actually Chocolat does have a French option, but it was filmed in English and the French is just dubbed and looks stupid. What's cool about getting all of these DVDs in Thailand is they all have Thai subtitles that I try to read and sometimes they have it dubbed in Thai. Which is strange because I can then hear Memoirs of a Geisha in Thai, but not Japanese. And I guess there aren't many people available for voice overs because with the Thai soundtrack all the characters in Memoirs sounded exactly like the Thai dubbed cartoon characters.

Oh - last thing about the night market DVDs. They are three kinds. One kind is exactly like a DVD you'd buy in a store. The second kind is a guy holding a camera in a theater. The third kind is a DVD with a nice picture on it that doesn't work when you put it in a DVD player. So far I've gotten The Office Season 1 and 2, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Termnial, Matchpoint, Chocolat, all of the first kind. Dave Chappelle's Block Party and Scoop, of the second kind, and then Scrubs season 1 of the third kind. But I just found this out last week when I tried to watch it. Two months later. But I went back and the guy who sold them to me remembered me and when I said they don't work, he said "Ok, I'll switch for you! Solly!" And he came back with three new discs. This time 1 of three of them work, but it's still better than zero! And I can go back again and keep trying. And when I asked about the Borat DVD and if it was real or a dude with a camera and he said, "Right now, maybe not 100%, wait and later, will have 100%" Alright, honesty (maybe)!

Damn Spell Check and Pop-up Blockers!

2006-11-22T14:58:00.000+07:00

I just spent 4 hours at an internet cafe writing a really long blog entry and then tried to spell check it and somehow deleted the entire thing and now I have to go to work.

This is extrememly upsetting. I'm fine. The German place is strange, but I need to move. It's good when I talk about polka, Rammstein and Enigma, but bad where there are really loud fights at 5 in the morning. I have a 19-year-old French boy in one of my classes and the 17 girls in the class are going nuts. Hair thingys are really expensive. I'm getting a motorbike and then hopefully a real place to live. I ate some spicy soup last night and I'm not sure if I liked the taste or the challenge, but I ate more than I expected. I got a haircut today and I like it.

It's still hot here and I have a hard time saying the month "November" because I'm sweating as we speak. But I was in a Starbucks last night and they have their holiday menu up with gingerbread mochas and $5 bags of Christmas cookies.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. One of the AUA teachers is doing Thanksgiving on Sunday, with kickball too, which should be fun. No parades though.

I posted some more pictures a couple of days ago. Enjoy.

http://flickr.com/photos/wigramroad/sets/72157594377080500/ - open for everyone
and other one only open to people who have me as a friend or family. You'll see it when you sign in.

Fireworks and Elephants! (not in the same place, phew!)

2006-11-06T20:43:00.000+07:00

Tomorrow I'm moving to a tiny room in a brand new German-Thai guesthouse. I'm going to try something new. It's about half the price, and there's no TV, no fridge, no internet and barely any floor space. My plan is to stay there a month while I look for a more permanent place. So tonight is going to be my music video/pb&j/upload pictures/post a blog night. But I'm really tired, so I've only gotten through the first two. And I should pack. Pictures may have to wait.

So this week has been Yee Peng Loi Krathong Festival which is a Buddhist festival held during the week of the full moon in November. It's terrifying. There are three main characteristics of the festival. First "Loi" means to float and Krathongs are these really pretty little floating things made out of banana leaves, candles, flowers and incense and you're supposed to light them and then put them in a river or canal and then watch all your bad luck float away. That's not the terrifying part. In the North (Yee Peng is a special Northern Dialect name for the festival) there's also a tradition of lighting these mini paper hot air balloons into the air. It's pretty cool looking. Tons of lanterns taking off into the sky, some with sparklers at the end, not little sparklers like that go out in 10 seconds but big sparklers that make it look like a there's a shooting star pushing up a huge orange cylinder. It's cool, but not just as it's going up with the sparks are falling on people. This is where it starts to get scary. The third part of the festival is to buy as many things as you can that you can light, which will either make a deafening noise or shoot fire, or if you're lucky, both. Usually it's little kids, teenagers and old men. They light stuff, throw it and then giggle. It might be towards the sky, it might be towards the river, or it might be into a crowd. No one knows. Ok, to be fair, I saw a couple of 30 year old women lighting some too.

So, all day, from 9am - 3am, since last Tuesday, Chiang Mai has sounded like a war zone. Some are just little firecrackers that I'm almost getting used to, some are the real screechy ones, some are huge fireworks, some are like huge fireworks but with only the sound, some sound like gunshots (another fun game - throw some gun powder into a can and then throw matches until it goes in!) and some sound like bombs. I guess I've never actually heard a real bomb, but this is the closest thing I've ever heard to a bomb. Huge, rumbling, long and really scary.

This past week has been soooooooooooooooo much more terrifying than the coup. Oh gosh. And about the hot air balloons - they get stuck in trees and powerlines all the time. And I watched each one thinking, "Oh no, this is it, there's no way the tree can't catch on fire" and then it didn't. And same with the powerlines. I don't understand why things that aren't supposed to work out seem to work out here (minus the flooding outside Bangkok and the ridiculousness happening in the South). And with all of the shooting off of things on fire I didn't see anyone hurt. I don't get it, but I guess I should just accept it.

Next, I finished my first term of English class. My classes were so cool, I'm going to miss them. Fun anecdote - on the last day we played a game called "Change Chairs" where you say "Change chairs if..." and then person left standing after everyone's found a new chairs says the next sentence. So in one of my classes someone said, "Change chairs if you're a boy!" Then one of the boys said the ladyboy, "You changed chairs!" and he said, "Because on the outside I'm a boy, but inside I'm a girl!" It was cute. He's not a full ladyboy, just on his way. He wears the boy uniform for his school, but a lot of hair gel, sometimes a little make-up, speaks with a high voice, giggles all time and always has a purse.

Last thing for now - EXCITING ELEPHANT NEWS!!!!!!

This is an editorial from The New York Times, about a study by Ossining's own Josh Plotnik, elephant researcher extraordinaire!

----
November 2, 2006

Horton Sees an Image

To the very short list of animals that can recognize themselves in a mirror, i.e., humans and apes and possibly dolphins, scientists have now added the Asian elephant, or at least three female Asian elephants in the Bronx Zoo. Faced with the presence of an enormous, and rugged, full-length mirror in their enclosure, the animals displayed clear signs of grasping that they themselves were the origin of the images in the glass. One elephant, named Happy, was even able to touch a mark on her own face that was visible only in the mirror. It is still not known whether male elephants are as self-aware.

Such tests appear to mark a boundary between animals that display some form of consciousness and those that don't. But what they really do is raise questions about the value we attribute to consciousness and our inevitably human definition of it. It is always us setting the rules. How many tests set by elephants could
we pass? Can we even pass the very simple test of allowing them to survive in the wild? The clear implication of the mirror test is that animals who pass it are somehow closer to us and thus more deserving of our protection. But as the fate of chimpanzees makes plain, we are no more likely to save species with a proto-
human form of consciousness than animals whose mental life bears no resemblance to our own.

We keep probing the animal world for signs of intelligence, as we define it, and we're always surprised when we discover it. This suggests that something is fundamentally wrong with our assumptions. There is every reason to value other life-forms as much for their difference from us as for their similarity, and to
act accordingly. That may be the only intelligence test worthy of the name.
----

Cool, eh? Nice work Josh!

Enjoy the video, sorry I could only find the 30 second demo, the full song is great. You'll just have to trust me. It shouldn't be hard.

Watch the whole thing.

2006-10-28T21:03:00.001+07:00

What's your favorite part? Mine's probably the old guy pole dancing. Enjoy.

October 22nd

2006-10-22T16:17:00.000+07:00

Hey. Sorry it's been a while. Here are some things I've been thinking about, noticing, etc.

1. A majority of pens in Thailand suck. For about a week I bought a pen a day trying to find one that actually wrote every time you put in on paper. I had to go to the stationary section of the fancy department store to find a regular pen that worked every time I put it on paper. This whole pen catastrophe was very unexpected, but I'm happy I learned from it. Also on the topic of pens, I've learned that most Thais don't know how to use rollerball (like the one in the picture, have to hold at an angle, not ballpoint) pens. I gave my rollerball pen to 5 Thai people and watched them all think the pen was broken. It was awkward. I handled it by giving them a different pen and trying to remember that maybe Thais just don't do rollerball pens. I didn't feel like lessons on pen holding should be part of my Western influence in Thailand. I spend a lot of time trying to explain the idea of indivduality ("What food do Americans eat? Hamburgers, right?"), and trying to convince them that most things in movies aren't the way they are in real life (I watched the Woodstock '99 DVD which spends more time on topless girls than on the music and spent the entire time saying, "America's not like that! Those are kids who are very drunk and on a lot of drugs! I promise you - you don't normally see topless girls everywhere!") and why black people aren't bad (again, from movies, and they're not ashamed about their feelings because they have no reason to be). And that's why I figured I could skip the pen issue.

2. There are a bazillion ways to tell time in Thailand. Let's say you want to express the idea of 5pm - you have 6 options. No joke. And, even with that, or maybe because of it, there's "Thai time", which means anywhere from 15 minutes to 6 hours later than what the proposed "Western (and Japanese) time". Japanese are exempt from getting made fun of when it comes to food, sweating, anger and voice volume, but they're included in the getting made fun of for caring about time too much.

3. Quick Thai lesson - Glai (mid tone) = far away. Glai (falling tone) = near. Got to love Thai language. Also, at first there was a mall, and everyone called it Central (pronounced Centron) and then a NEW mall opened! And guess what it's called? Central (Pronounced Centron). They both have more official names but no one uses them. In my class I have Tang-mo 1 and Tang-mo 2, but the malls don't even have numbers with them.

4. Ice coffee is really cheap and really good and available from 1) any coffee shop 2) any restaurant 3) 7-11 (cans and ice coffee dispenser, like a slurpee machine) 4) ice coffee stand near the food stalls and, my favorite, 5) ice coffee bike man! He drives around on his motorbike with his ice coffee dispensing sidecar.

5. Thais really do take this King guy pretty seriously. In my Thai class we were learning about how to give directions and, in an attempt to be clever and funny, the Belgium guy took out some postcards he had just bought and put added them to the little town we had constructed on the floor of the classroom. But one of them had the King on it and Tuk (like "took" but with that hard "dt" sound), our teacher, flipped out! She said, "NO! YOU CAN NOT!!!!! NO NO NO! NEVER!" No having the King touch the floor. Or postcard of the King touch the floor. And then she told us that she's understanding about it but that Thai people would flip out if anyone did that in front of them. But her freak out was the most serious I've ever seen a Thai being, and Thais are really proud of their non-freaking out nature, so pretty much, I'm terrified of how upset a Thai person must be to actually freak out, and I guess I won't be putting any postcards of the King on the floor anytime soon.

6. I got my first Thai paycheck. I made $241 for three weeks of work. Yay! And that's the lowest it'll be because I just started my two 3-hour Saturday classes and next weeknight term I'll teach 3 classes instead of 2. The paycheck wasn't actually a paycheck as much as a pay slip because they do direct deposit. Still cool!

7. The skirts I bought in Bangkok don't really fit that great but I've come up with a solution - paper clip the skirt to my underwear! Then the back won't slip down at strange angles and show my underwear. It's like a belt! And my shirts are long enough to cover the paper clips. The day I started doing that I also did some last minute tailoring on my shirt with some masking tape. I've become quite resourceful. A month ago I also had a minor ant infestation which I solved quickly with a good dose of ultra power Listerine. I bought it by accident, but it came in very handy.

8. In my weeknight classes we're working on past tense, so I gave them this sheet of paper with a bunch of pictures and they had to work in groups to write a story. There was a boy and a girl and a danceclub and the guy passing out (in the official story he wanted to look stronger so wore a bunch of jackets and then passed out - a premade story, not mine) and most of the groups wrote grammatically correct, but pretty boring stories but one group wrote this whole thing where the woman turned out to be a ladyboy and that's why the guy fainted. It was awesome! Hearing them using the past tense while using their imaginations was such a cool feeling. In my first class I have a lot of trouble getting them to say anything that's not already written in the book. If the past tense chapter happens to revolve around what did you do this weekend, then, despite all my efforts, they go back to "I went shopping" and "I slept" but the second class gets all creative and sometime even uses new grammar to make fun of each other which I think is just great. It's not real making fun of, it's more someone asking about someone else's girlfriend or boyfriend and then the whole class goes, "oooooooooooooooo!!!!!" and then the person asked covers their face and giggles, but then answers using the past tense! It's cute.

9. Thai's have a different directional concept. Everything is from the speaker's point of view. So if someone tells you to "Go left of the chair" that means go so that the person speaking (facing the chair) will see you to the left of the chair. So you better stand to the right of the chair. And, Tuk explained that "North, South, East, West aren't Thai ideas." Between this and Thai time, I'm really excited for my Dad to visit. And poor Stephie and her left/right problems. Or, maybe, she's just been using the Thai directional concept without knowing it this whole time.

10. I've been going to my yoga class when possible and it turns out for all the things I can't do (the list is very long) I can sit in the lotus position which apparently is difficult for even people who are good at yoga. I think it's because my thighs are so fat, my feet have a lot of area to sit on. Either way, my teacher actually said, "Nice work Beth" for the first time. Usually he only says my name when he's saying, "For those of you who aren't flexible (pause)Beth(pause) you can ..." or "Beth, you look like a donkey. The motion should be slow and controlled. Use your abdominal muscles. If you can't do it, it's because you don't have any." That was when I was trying to a headstand against the wall. The only girl in class that day (there were only 2!) was a super pro who didn't even need the freaking wall. That's ok. I also realized yesterday another reason he's kind of strange is not only the spandex, overbite and extreme rudeness, but he also rolls his "r"s and exaggerates all his vowels. Like he's in a movie mocking English accents.

10. Shopping is still funny. I go straight for the L, XL, or XXL if they have it and still 9 times out of 10 it's still too small.

Ok - enough talk. Here's some music I've been enjoying lately.

Fool's Garden - Lemon Tree - Not Thai, but I first heard them in a Thai bar. When I asked, a Thai person told me it was The Beatles. I had a hard time believing that. So I found the video but I couldn't tell where they were from and if the song was current of 30 years old. I did a bit more research and decided that they're Czech and it's a current song.

Here's the actual video for Fool's Garden - Lemon Tree
If anyone has more info, I'd love to hear it.

Here's a live version. Not as cool as the video, but it's what was on YouTube.

Bird Thongchai - HUGE deal in Thailand. I dig this song. I bought he album. The rest of the songs are slow love songs. I guess I kind of knew that before I bought it.

Leaving Thailand again. Here's a Japanese group called Depapepe, two guitars no vocals, and they have a bunch of slow songs and then this fun little happy number. The only video I could find was off of their website. It's only 30 seconds, but if you're up for an adventure here are the directions.

1) http://www.sonymusic.co.jp/Music/Info/depapepe/
2) "Discography"
3) "Single"
4) Second one down - Japanese name, but says Lahaina on the cover once you click it
5) Video icon for track 1

It's nice.

Back to Thailand for you dose of love songs, but with a twist. Farang love song! Actually, Farang and Japanese love! In Thailand! They're both reading The Notebook! How cute! Yamin & The Dogs. (Quick Thai lesson - "yuu nai hua-jai" means "in my heart". See how many times you can hear it.)

New strangest video yet!

2006-10-06T22:45:00.000+07:00

The band is called Same Same, their album is called Meaning of Happy. Sounds Thai enough, right? But they're white and they've somehow managed to score the first western pop meets luk-tung (traditional Thai) singer duet. Nice work, guys! How'd you do it? Wait, who are you? Are you really singing in Thai? What's going on here?

Ok, so, remember The Moffatts? A country band made up of 4 brothers under the age of 12? From Nashville? I hear they had a huge hit in 1994? Well, apparently they had a second pop/love album in 1998 that no one in the West cared about, but did just great over here. So the idential twins (Same Same, get it?) eventually came to Thailand with a deal from Sony BMG Thailand and recorded an album, did tours of Bangkok high schools and made it on to my Thai pop TV channel. Strange strange strange. They just left to go back to Canada to write some more ( I know, I know - you thought they from Nashville, right? Yeah, me too. Nope, Canadian Nashville posers!). But they'll be back to Thailand to record their album hopefully early 2007! Oh, and the crazy street the woman is walking on with the dancing guys is Khao San Road in Bangkok. Boo!!!!

How does this compare to Jonas and Christy (the farang duo who sing luk-tung)?

Pictures from Chiang Mai, the coup, Lamphun and Lampang!

Elephant Nature Park on Animal Planet

2006-10-04T22:55:00.000+07:00

October 8th at 5:00pm on Animal Planet.

The first 20-25 minutes are about Lek, the Park and the elephants.

I can't watch it here, so you should. And then tell me about it.

I'll write more later. Things are really busy. I leave my apartment around 9:30, go to Thai class from 10 - 12, eat food, come back to nap/check email/get changed into teacher clothing/start lesson planning and then head back over to AUA between 2 and 3, work on lesson plans/have meetings/observe other teachers, teach from 6:10 - 8:25, then eat dinner, come home, go to sleep. It's kind of a lot. I don't really have much time. I really want to go to the elephant park this weekend but I also feel like I'm way behind on AUA stuff (I'm in the training process so I have a lot of assignments) and should get caught up with that. They usually advise new teachers not to do the Thai class their first term but I was really anxious so I convinced John to let me do it. Right now I only teach Tuesday through Friday. Saturday classes start on the 14th, which is why I wanted to go to the park this weekend but I don't think I can. And I still have Thai class on Monday anyway.

I'll put pictures up soon. I have a lot waiting. I'm really tired now though. My Thai teacher makes fun of me everyday cause I'm always yawning.

---------
Here's a conversation I had with Erica about Thai names...
---------
me: ping, yim, ying, non, pot (somewhere between how we'd say pot and put), air, ew,
11:38 PM nui, nut, nat, koy, ta-mong 1 and ta-mong 2
team, pele, golf, tahn, ahmy, mag (sometimes mack), big
11:39 PM som, ann, field, fame, nitnoy, ton, por, tar
these are my kids
and gun
11:40 PM ehcharpe: no way
big probably isn't big, huh...
11:41 PM me: nope!
ehcharpe: where do the names come from?
11:42 PM me: sometimes it's the first syllable of their last name, or a syllable of their name (which are super long), but they can also just make them up out of nowhere
ehcharpe: sports seems like a big influence
me: pele and golf i don't think are from their names
ehcharpe: yeah.
11:43 PM team? field?
11:44 PM me: field isn't really field, it's probably more like fio, but for someone reading an english name to say it right they should just say field.
if we read fio then we'd probably say it in two syllables
and her name is just one
but if you say field, you'll say it in one syllable
11:45 PM and you never really pronounce the ld part anyway
just put your tongue on the roof of your mouth.
ehcharpe: interesting
11:46 PM me: another one of my friends names is nee-oo, or nio, or neo, but again with the one syllable, so he says his name is neil and then foreingers can say it right
11:48 PM and team could be spelled teem or tiim or teme, because it could all be the same sound but someone probably said, oh there's an english word like that, spelled like this, so you should spell your nickname like this.
11:51 PM ehcharpe: so i'd be err, but i could also be air b/c it's a nice word and the sound is about the same?
11:52 PM me: exactly
my air is a boy by the way
-------

REMEMBER TO WATCH ANIMAL PLANET SUNDAY OCTOBER 8TH AT 5:00PM!

AND ADD THEM ON MYSPACE www.myspace.com/elephantnaturepark

I'm earning money!

2006-09-27T00:33:00.000+07:00

Last week I...

...had a strange, free tuk-tuk ride to a bunch of handicraft shops where you can see how things are made and then are shuffled into a big showroom where you're supposed to buy stuff. I got to see how silks, laqurewear, fancy jewelry with gems and huge, fancy umbrellas are made. My driver guy said he needed to take people for a project for his class in college, so he didn't charge me anything (and bought me water and offered ice cream too) but I had to fill out how I felt about all the little places. I'm sure he got commission for the places he took me, but I think it worked out fine and he dropped me off at the mall which was the only thing I had been planning on for the day.

...visited Wat U-Mong, this really cool jungle temple. It was raining so I didn't explore too much but now I know how to get there so I can go back. There are a ton of wats all over Chiang Mai (I live within a 5 minute walk of at least 10), but this one is a real forest meditation temple. I'm excited to get back and run around more. Or, I mean, mindfully walk around while reflecting life.

... sang Thai pop karaoke at the mall, in a little not-so-soundproof plastic booth surrounded by other not-so-soundproof plastic booths with middle and high school kids singing Thai love songs. About $0.25 gets you two songs, plus sometimes a bonus one if you get a high score. I have no idea how the thing comes up with a score. It's totally unrelated to accuracy, maybe it's volume. I don't know. I found my favorite Thai ska band. They're called Skalaxy and they have a great song called "What ska is?" If they had gone to AUA, the song would have been called "What is ska?" or "What ska is" but hey, I'm just happy Thailand has a popular ska band!

... visited Lamphun, an "ancient city", but didn't have a good guide book, and the tourism office was closed. On a Saturday. But found a temple and talked to some novices. Their English wasn't nearly as good as the Laos novices. I did learn that they like hip-hop and rap music. Also wandered around a food market and saw lots of crazy food being sold by people sitting on the ground. Pictures coming soon.

... finally saw some good coup stuff! Well, not that good. But I finally saw some soldiers and a couple trucks and hummers. I still haven't' seen a tank, but Jeff saw one by the American Consulate. I went the next day but it was gone. Most of the soldiers are just hanging out under a pop-up tent, half of them sleeping, some eating, some talking to girls. During the Sunday market a helicopter flew overheard with the door open and you could see the soldiers with their guns. So that was weird, but still didn't feel scary.

... felt the effects of the coup. All of the TV stations are back EXCEPT my station that shows all the good TV shows! And they just started showing Ed and 7th Heaven! And I'm missing it all! Ugh. I don't think it's on purpose. My guess is someone just forgot to switch something back and now I have to suffer.

... watched Mean Girls dubbed in Thai. Most Western TV is just subtitled and only cartoons are dubbed, so this caught me off guard. It really made me want to watch it in English though.

... had a two day seminar at AUA where I met most of my fellow teachers. It was interesting. Since I was new people didn't expect too much from me and I was exempt from a lot of the embarrassing things.

And today...

... I started teaching! I teach two level 2 (out of 12) classes at 6:10 - 7:15 and 7:20 - 8:25. The classes are very different. The earlier class is split evenly between boys and girls and they seem very bright, excited and really well behaved. The later class is 12 boys and 5 girls. They seem to laugh whenever I say anything, constantly talk in Thai and they like to hit each other. Hmm.... it should be interesting. They're all very outgoing and they like speaking English so I just have to make sure to keep it interesting. Today I put the class into teams so they could earn (meaningless) points and when talking in Thai affected their score they seemed to care. So that's good to know. At the end of class one student stayed after to tell me that he really wanted to win. I said he would have another chance tomorrow. He said he was... (forgot the word, ran to the board, drew a face with a frown and tears, I said, "sad?" and he said "yes! sad!")... sad that he didn't win.

We played "get to know you" games today. After they did a mini-interview with one of their classmates, I did a game where I drew a picture of myself and then put 6 random answers on the board and they had to figure out the questions. I put New York, elephants, 36, Steve and Charlie, 310, June 4th (Where are you from? What is your favorite animal? What is your shoe size? What are your pet's names? How much baht do you have in your wallet right now? When is your birthday?) After hearing a bunch of guesses I drew pictures of turtles, an arrow to my foot, and a couple of rectangles with smiley faces and they eventually got it.

I had a good time. I think they did too. The names are really going to be tough. No joke - Dit, Bit, Pit, Mit, Nit, Nat, Nut, Not, Noi, Nui, Noy, Naw, New, Ew, Pang, Ping. Their real names are usually 10 syllables so their nicknames are usually just one.

Tomorrow is big. I have to...
1) open a bank account
2) prepare for my training session
3) start my Thai class!
4) plan and teach my Day 2 lesson!

Something like a real life is slowly coming together! And I'll earn my first Thai paycheck in 3 weeks!

What a week!

2006-09-25T18:20:00.000+07:00

I've had quite an exciting week. A couple of highlights...

My first Thai karaoke experience! -
Karaoke in Thailand can mean anything from middle and high school kids singing Thai pop/love songs in a less-than-sound proof booth at a the mall to, well, um, dirty things. My experience was the first kind. I sang my little heart out to Palmy, Ice (didn't post a video, but it's a good one), tried to find Laolom and Am Fine but had some trouble (the entire book is all in Thai!) and took a chance on a song called "What Ska is?" by Skalaxy. I now have a favorite Thai ska band.

My first military coup experience! -
I already wrote about my first impressions. Here's some follow up. The 1991 coup wasn't non-violent. It was really violent. Ooops. Karaoke is spelled the way Danny said, not the way I had been spelling it. So since that entry I've also seen more military presence. Still not scary. Usually it's just a pop up tent with maybe a dozen or so soldiers.

I'm pretty sure a Thai military coup is the best military coup a girl could ask for.

2006-09-20T18:02:00.000+07:00

So I'm under martial law. But if I didn't have CNN I probably wouldn't have known.

I'm fine. Chiang Mai is fine. Bangkok is fine. Thailand seems pretty much... fine.

Last night I was with some friends at a bar watching a Thai classic rock cover band. On my way out of the bar I pointed out that it looked like the kids in the tattoo shop were watching CNN. Seemed a bit odd. And then I saw the older Thai hippie guy who had been drumming. I went up to him to say, "Good job!" and he started pointing to the television and sounding really upset. Here's what I got out of my conversation with him -

"Soldiers everywhere!"
"Army say to Thaksin - GET OUT!"
"TV Army all same same!"

Wha??? I figured it was worth going home and checking it out.

So going home was kind of strange.

I turned on the TV and it was the same thing on all of the Thai channels. And guess what it was....

KAREOKE! Of course. It was "We love the King" song after "We love the King" song. There was even an English "We love the King" song. I tried to video it with my camera. Pretty low quality, but I'll post it. And the radio was in sync with the TV for a surround sound effect in my apartment. Occasionally there was a person in a suit with a "We love the King" yellow shirt saying stuff. In Thai. I didn't understand.

I checked out the internet and CNN and figured out what was going on. A coup. Sounds scary, but I can't imagine a better country to be in during a coup.

Here are some reasons why everything is fine -

1) People have been hating Thaksin for a while.
2) This is the 17th coup in 60 years. The last one was 15 years ago, and it was non-violent.
3) It's military led and the head of the military is cool with the King and all the soldiers are wearing "We love the King" yellow. (This morning Erica told she read that yellow was declared the offical "Anti-Thaksin" color which seems equivalent to a group in the U.S. declaring that on October 31st all of their supporters should dress their children up in costumes and send them around the neighborhood knocking on people door's asking for candy. Kind of cheap shot, but no one's really going to have a problem with it.)
4) There were tanks outside government houses in Bangkok but the whole "takeover" happened without a gunshot.
5) CNN was showing shots of people calmly taking pictures of the tanks on their camera phones while the soldiers were probably posing for the pictures.
6) I'm 400 miles from Bangkok, and even further from Hungary, where there is some seriously scary stuff going on.

So I went to sleep reflecting on my first coup experience. Calm and musical I would say.

My friend Stacey put it nicely, in response to my news of "nothing interesting to report here besides some "We love the King" kareoke."

"I never would have thought a military-led upheaval could go so smoothly."

Exactly.

When I woke up I checked cnn.com and read that all international news channels had been cut off in Thailand. Ah! Scary!! Then I turned on the TV and watched the same story on CNN.

Hmmm...

And I heard the exchange rate dropped drastically, which I actually got excited about, but it's not even back up to 40 baht to a dollar (which is the conversion I use in my head), so I'm not even impressed. And it's already on it's way back up.

And Thai TV, with all of my Thai pop channels, is back. Thank goodness.

They declared today a holiday so banks, schools and the stock exchange weren't opened. I had a training session at AUA scheduled and that went on as planned. The electricity went out at one point but the director said, "Oh, I can promise you this has nothing to with the coup - happens all the time." And sure enough, it was back on in 30 seconds.

I have to yet to meet a Thai who doesn't totally dig the King, trust the military, and either dislike Thaksin or just not care about politics. So while a coup may have been a bit drastic, it really seems everything will be fine as long as Thaksin doesn't come back and try something stupid. And it sounds like even if he were dumb enough to try something he wouldn't be successful. Let's recap: his opponents are... the city of Bangkok (more specifically the urban middle class, intellectuals and pro-democracy activists, so Chiang Mai too) and the military. His supporters are... poor rural farmers. I really don't think he would get too far.

In other news...

The orientation I had today at AUA was really cool. AUA has a ton of really fun supplemental resources to go along with very well put together books they use. And each 30 hour course only goes through 4 units of the textbook so teachers can get creative with how they're teaching and the students really get to practice and understand what they're learning. I'm really excited. I'm glad I'm at AUA.

I made my first iMovie with some of the video clips from Cambodia.

It's a first draft. I have more dance party clips on a CD and I'm going to try to add those to it. And then maybe one from the elephants! Enjoy!

Yours safely,
Beth

Cool Stuff From Other Places

2006-09-13T22:24:00.000+07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERICA! Good luck to Maisie on her first swim lesson!

Pictures
Caroline's pictures (My PEPY roommate!) from our trip. Note: I look slightly evil in a couple of them, but I'm not an evil person. One I was yawning (not yelling), one I was trying to look sexy (not angry and disgusted) and the other ones I can't explain.
Beau's pictures from our trip to Argentina (mixed with some very nice Madison pictures).
Gregg's pictures from our week at the Elephant Park and Koh Pha Ngan. (You have to either have a Snapfish account or register for one.)

Blogs
A friend from Madison who was deployed to Iraq for 5 weeks this past summer.
My sister Steph is living in a small Indian village, near the Nepal border.
My friend Maija is living on a sailboat with her boyfriend.

Chiang Mai
Elephant Nature Park has a new, organized, informative, attractive website! YAY!!!

After going to the gym with Joy, I (stupidly) decided to also go to a yoga class at Chiang Mai Yoga Sala. I was inflexible, weak, in pain and drenched in sweat the entire time, but I ended up buying a 6 class pass anyway. I was actually on my way to a different yoga place, but couldn't find it, ran into this place, saw they also had a class starting at 5 and ran in there instead. But the first place's class was a 1.5 hour Beginner class, and this place's class was a 2 hour Vinyasa class (it doesn't matter what Vinyasa is, it just matters that it's not "Beginner"). Ow. There were 7 people. I was the only one who hadn't been there before. Five foreigners, 2 Thais that I think worked there. Two people who this was their second day and the other two have been going for a while that sometimes also go to the 6:30 - 8:30 super intense class. My Vinyasa class was just intense, not super intense. Ow.

Chiang Mai weather

Map of the Old City neighborhood of Chiang Mai

Here's my adorable little neighborhood, surrounded by a moat. The brown parts are pieces of the wall that still exist. I live on the sidestreet on the southside of Wat Lamchang, right off of Raipakinai Rd (northeast quadrant of the map). You can also see AUA and the billion temples I'm surrounded by.

This is how my neighborhood fits into the rest of the city

I'm fat, The Cat Empire in Chiang Mai, Thai TV

2006-09-10T14:31:00.002+07:00

I met up with Joy (travel agent turned friend from last time) and we went to the bar her friend Sherrie works. Sherrie saw me and said, "Oh, I know you from before! Yeah? Last time you smaller, right? This time you bigger? Yeah?" And then waited for an answer. Then she brought me over to a wall of pictures and showed me a photo from Joy's birthday party from January. Cool! "Yeah, you bigger now." Thanks Sherrie. It's not rude, it's just Thai.

Later, a DJ a reggae bar played "Hello, Hello". I absolutely freaked out. It was a version I had never heard before. I ran over to the DJ and started asking him a billion in English, really fast. I forgot I was in Thailand. He just smiled and shook his head because he had no idea what I was saying. Then I tried speaking slower and he just kept smiling and shaking his head. Oh well.

This morning I watched TV and found an international channel that shows The Office, Arrested Development and Sons & Daughters! Nice! And also such hits as Desperate Housewives, Rockstar Supernova, One Tree Hill, Kevin Hill, Boston Legal, 3rd Watch, JAG, and Two and A Half Men, which they advertise as "America's Most Watched Comedy". That can't be true, can it?

I forgot the best/strangest one!

2006-09-09T21:59:00.000+07:00

Jonas and Christy!

She's from Holland, moved to Thailand when she was 6.
He's from Sweden, moved to Thailand when he was 9.

I think they both had solo albums and now just teamed up for a joint album.

Weird!

Awesome Thai Pop, Vol. 1

2006-09-07T19:53:00.000+07:00

Thai songs are either...

about girls with bad boyfriends...
(Am Fine - Maa Rak Thammai Dton Nee. They do a lot these)

about guys who want girls...
(Golf and Mike - side project of G-JR I think, the English is fantastic!)

20 piece boybands that show their stomachs and try to sing in English...
(G-JR - Showtime, see also Super Junior - U)

and occasionally...awesome!
(Palmy - Tick tock. I love her. Half Thai/half Belgium I think. Unfortunately, as with any other song I've liked, the rest of the album is slow, boring love songs.)

(Same sad story for Laolom. I got excited after hearing this song, but then heard the rest of the album and it sucked.)

My actual favorite song is by a guy or a group or something called Sen Hui (album - Dum Jung) but I can't find his song on the internet. This was the first time I bought an album only to find out 11/12ths of it sucks.

More -

Buddha Bless. Thailand's reggae/hip hop group.

And last, some of my favorite other names of Thai rock bands -
* Armchair
* Big Ass
* Bodyslam
* Fly
* Modern Dog
* Silly Fools
* Blackhead
* Zeal
* Fahrenheit
* Stone Metal Fire (SMF)
* Clash
* Potato
* Pancake

In other news - I think I have a job at AUA. There's a long orientation process, but if I get through it all right I'll have a job. Not full time at first, but that's fine. My interview was yesterday with the director. He's originally from Hastings, and his 17 Thai/American son just moved to Peekskill to live with his aunt and be a junior at Walter Panus High School. The last time he was in America he was something like 5 years old. Anyway, he's been at AUA for 25 years and was really cool to talk to. It made me feel a lot better about the place and the job. The kids are motivated, there are a ton of resources and a lot of training for the teachers. Today I observed a class which was fun. The students were mostly high school girls. Tthey were really eager, tried hard and had a lot of fun. I'm feeling good about the whole thing. I am, however, back to the problem with clothing. The dress for women there is nice, but not business like, like the clothing I have. Kind of like Mom-type clothing. Maybe all moms, but specifically my Mom. The flowing skirts, post-hippie blouses, and brown or black sandals. Ok, nevermind, it's probably a pretty general look. Either way, I look way too serious with my business clothes. And the only other clothing I have is scruffy, backpacker clothing (fisherman's pants, t-shirts, flip flops). LUCKILY, Adrienne said she could go shopping with me on Monday. She's been so helpful! Thank you MySpace and The Cat Empire!

Have fun with the music. Volume 2 - coming soon.

Chiang Mai - week 1

2006-09-05T22:26:00.000+07:00

Saturday - Khao San ridiculousness. Couldn't find the insect guy.
Sunday - Said goodbye to my parking lot guesthouse for the last time! Gregg went back to LA, I went to Chiang Mai. Went to the Sunday Market right outside my hotel. Stumbled upon Chiang Mai's breakdancing/BMX club. My new mission is to figure out how to be friends with them.
Monday - Went around looking for places to live. Tried to figure out what kind of job I want. Lots of different options. Two main ones right now - AUA (Language School) and an internship with the Visiting Schools program of the most prestigious International School in Chiang Mai. Wrote messages to people I knew from MySpace that are in Thailand.
Tuesday - Called AUA guy, arranged an interview for tomorrow at 10. Got a reply from a girl from America, who had been living in Australia (fan of The Cat Empire) who had messaged me when she was thinking about living in Chiang Mai. She's now living in Chiang Mai and is currently working at AUA. Had lunch with her. I learned more about the job.
1) Mostly rich high school kids who are in class for 12 hours a day. School, then Physics or Chinese or something, and then English. Education is really important in terms of spending time and money, but not important for the value of learning. They're happy to come to class and play on their cell phones and then openly cheat on an exam.
2) You teach three classes a day, Tues - Fri from 5 - 8:25 and then Saturday classes too. There is a week off between terms but there are usually meetings Thursday and Fridays and then the Saturday classes too, so you can't go too far.
3) There's a group of not that cool older guys with Thai girlfriends/wives who have been there a while and then usually some younger people who usually don't stay long. (She's been there since April and next term is going to be her last.)
4) AUA teachers can take the AUA Thai course for 500 baht, usually the price is 33,000 baht.
5) The director, who I'm meeting tomorrow, is a really nice, helpful guy, from NY, in his 50s. He reminders her of her dad. I thought that was nice. He also said that the contract is a contract but they don't sue if you leave, they understand other things come up, and you don't have to feel bad about it.

So that was helpful, but I'm not sure if what I learned made me want to teach there more or less than before. It's not like any other job would be better. There are other language centers but they're either terribly run or have even richer, snobbier kids. And there are so many teachers here that the anyone who applies for the actual school jobs have all done their time at one of the Language Centers first. And International Schools won't hire you unless you have the credentials you'd need in whatever their home country is.

I also checked out more info about the other job with the International School. It's 25 kms. away. The girl, Adrienne, said that from what she know about the school, it's a really good school and the teachers who work there eat, sleep and breathe the place. So it's kind of like it's own world. And the job wasn't excactly what I initially thought it was. The Visiting Schools program is like a tour guide for school groups. And they go to elephant parks and hill tribes and I think that stuff might make me feel too weird. They have some leadership and environmental stuff too but it's not like the job I got excited about in April, which was purely experiential environmental education on a boat on the river. Much cooler than bringing them to an elephant show and asking what they thought of it.

Enough about jobs.

I decided on a place to stay for a month today. I've been staying at my standard $17 a night hotel for the past two nights but tomorrow, after my interview, I'll be moving here. I was thinking about staying near the University, in an effort to pose as a uni kid, but Adrienne said she highly recommended taking the AUA Thai course and with that, plus lesson planning, plus classes, she was there from 10-8:30pm and it was nice living close to home in the beginning. I only have to pay month to month so I can always change my mind later.

Last thing - this is an email to Juria (from the PEPY trip) that I thought I'd share:

"It's so strange. I think I love it, but this never ending sweatfest is getting annoying. I've personally gotten over being upset by it, but I feel like the sight of sweat pouring down my face is offensive to the people I have to interact with. And it's never when I'm walking, it's only when I stop. I just got back from putting a deposit on an apartment for a month and the woman told me I looked like I had just come from jogging. No, just a slow walk, but I'm covered in sweat from it. And it's like 7pm. The sun's not even out anymore.

Oh well. Besides that, everything is awesome. I have an interview tomorrow with a well respected language school and just put a deposit on an apartment and now I just have to work on the making friends part. (So far I've been unintentionally really successful at making friends with tuk tuk drivers and random Thai men in their 30s and 40s sitting at cafe sidewalks drinking Sang Som and soda, but the younger ones are a bit more difficult.) So yeah - friends, and maybe the finding a job part if the interview tomorrow doesn't go well."

Last strange event. As I was walking over the internet cafe I was called over by this group of two Thai girls and a boy. People say "Hello hello" all the time and sometimes if I feel like it I'll talk, and usually it's just because they're friendly, maybe drunk, or just want to practice English. No big deal. I get to practice Thai, they get to practice English. It works out. This afternoon I spent 1/2 hour with my laundry lady today as she ironed my clothes. I tried to tell her she didn't have to but she insisted. Fine. Anyway, I go over to the group of kids (seeing as I'm trying to make friends with people my age) and they start talking to me but the girl wasn't smiling at all, very un-Thai. Especially to call someone over and then not smile. The boy is smiling though. Then I realize the other girl is sitting, tucked under her shirt, sniffing glue. Something was weird. So after like 2 minutes of talking with them she says, "You like him." I said, "huh?" "You like him. I know. You buy him tonight." Oh my god. "Um, no thanks. Bye." And she says, "He hungry. He have no money. You buy him tonight. You like him." I left and started played Tetris on my phone as I walked by other groups of kids, probably my age, possibly selling themselves.

Woah woah woah woah. So that was a first. Hopefully a last. I guess I knew there's a market for Western guys buying Thai girls, and Western men buying Thai guys, but Western women buying Thai guys? I think I'm just creeped out because these kids are relying so heavily on prostitution that they ask they've resorted to asking me.

Anyway, besides scary girl pimp, her glue sniffing friend and the gigalo, everything's been really cool. I had a conversation about Steve Irwin with an older Thai guy drinking whisky and soda on a cafe sidewalk. He just kept shaking his head, sipping his whisky, saying "Tam mai(Why)????? Mai kow jai(I don't understand)!!!!" He was really upset by it. Especially because they were the same age. He explained that 44 is way too young to die and you're not supposed to die until you're 80, or 90, or 100. Life's tough, man. He eventually got over it and we talked about food. I also made friends with a girl who works there. Her name's Ning, she's 23. She can't say Beth (the -th sound is hopeless here), so she asked me if I like Thai food. I said yes, she asked what Thai food I like, I said chicken with cashews, and so she told me my new Thai name would be med mamuang - the Thai word for cashew.

Now to sleep so I'm ready for my interview and big move tomorrow.

Oh yeah - any suggestions as far as employment suggestions, let me know.

Chiang Mai, Elephant Park, Koh Pha Ngan - Take 2!

2006-09-02T16:43:00.000+07:00

I'll add to this later, so check back if you're interested, but very quickly (I know, I know, I always say that), here's the rundown of the past week.

Thursday - Phnom Penh --> Bangkok, got in late at night.
Friday - Bangkok - met up with Katy from PEPY group, hung out with her all day, had dinner with a woman she knew who has been working in Phnom Penh for the last 4 years, talked about working in Cambodia. Very interesting.
Saturday - met Gregg at BKK airport, flew to Chiang Mai, did Chiang Mai stuff.
Sunday - Tuesday - went up to Elephant Nature Park, had an amazing time. Lots of changes from last time I was there. The underweight one week old baby with a messed up leg and really unhealthy mother unable to produce her own milk is now a playful 8 month old boy with a happy, healthy mother producing her own milk. Seeing the actual difference ENP has on these elephants really made me appreciate its existence and realize how important it is for these elephants. There are 30 elephants right now, mostly the same ones as last time except for a couple that were on lease that were taken back and an elderly elephant (around 90!) who unfortunately passed away a couple of weeks ago. It was really nice to be able to go back and start at a point beyond "Oh my god, I'm surrounded by elephants!" I paid more attention to the individual elephants and tried to learn their family groups and everything. And the mahouts remembered me! I figured Mongkun and Kopi would, but the other ones did too! That was really cool too. I also helped in the kitchen this time. I cut up tomatoes and some other vegetable I didn't recognize. It was a lot more trying to be helpful and less taking pictures. Saying goodbye this time was the easiest yet. I live here! I'll be back soon!
Wednesday - Chiang Mai --> Bangkok (via Sukkothai, weirdest stopover ever) --> Samui, then a boat to Koh Pha Ngan. We ate dinner while watching Wedding Crashers and then chilled on the beach, meeting some Frenchies and Israelis.

Thursday - Saturday - There's only so much of Haad Rin a sane human being can take, so on Thursday we went to Haad Salad where Lisa (dutch girl from TEFL course) was staying. It was kind of like Mae Haad, but I didn't work at a bar, so not exactly the same. We didn't have time to make it up to Mae Haad, but it just gives me a reason to go back again later. No problem!

Saturday - Samui --> Bangkok --> Discovery Lodge - back here for a night. I just picked up my TEFL certificate. I got an A! YAY!!! I'm really happy. I would have been fine with whatever I got, and I heard from someone that Steve (grader guy) has only given one A in the past 7 years, which I can't imagine is true, but either way, I decided in my head I was probably going to get a B, so getting an A feels damn good.

Speaking of jobs, TEFL, blah blah blah, before I left for Cambodia I emailed the recruiter guy at AUA Chiang Mai to ask if they would be hiring because the website hadn't been updated yet. He said he didn't think so, but I should check back when I got back from Cambodia. I didn't because I decided not to freak out and try to plan the rest of my life while at the Elephant Park or islands, but then he emailed me. Oi. He asked if I was still interested. This totally threw me off. So while Gregg was drinking on the beach at 10am, I worked on my resume and then sent it off to him.

I don't know what to do. I like kids. I like teaching kids. I like not being in cities. But I feel like to find a place that is perfect is going to take forever, and if it's a real school then they only hire at certain times and they only have certain breaks and all that stuff. And as of right now I don't actually have any real experience teaching English, so I should probably just take what I can.

So we'll see what happens. I emailed my resume and said I would call when I got back to Bangkok when my phone had service. But today I called and it rang four times and made the fax machine noise! Ahh!! I emailed him and said I tried calling, it didn't seem to go through right, and he can try calling me if he doesn't hear from me.

Their next term starts the 18th and from what I've picked up, there's a 4 day orientation on the last week of the previous term, which would mean either Monday (4th) or Tuesday (5th), so I don't know how all of this could work out, but it's Thailand and stuff that seems like it shouldn't be able to work out very often does.

So we'll see what happens! But I think this means I'll only stay one night here and then head back to Chiang Mai so if we do talk on the phone, he says cool, then I can be there already. And Bangkok sucks anyway. It's like a billion degrees here right now and I'm living in a parking lot again.

Peace out friends and family! I'll post the pictures I have soon. But they're all pretty similar to the ones from last time, so don't get too excited.

Tonight's Gregg's last night in Thailand so we're going to go to Khao San and find some grasshoppers and tarantulas for him to eat.

Bangkok - boooo, Siem Reap - yay!

2006-08-25T16:16:00.001+07:00

Back in Bangkok for a day.

SIEM REAP WAS AMAZING. The entire two weeks was just so cool. The people (PEPY group, guides, locals, other foreigners), the food (seriously), the landscapes, the sites and the work. The entire experience far exceeded my expectations.

Interesting things

1. I used a parasol for the first time in my life.
2. I ate the local specialties and loved it. Fish amok, lok lak, ice coffee with condensed milk. Fish amok is, well, fish, in kind of a coconut curry thing. Yeah, that's right, I ate curry. And liked it. And continued to order it. We had a lot of set menus which was really good because it forced me to step beyond my "chicken with cashews" comfort zone.
3. Thai language actually came from Khmer and Khmer is just totally nuts. The script is way more squiggly and the vowels are even stranger. But, here's the cool part, no tones. I can count to 100 and have the "hello, what's your name, my name is..., nice to meet you" conversation. Khmer looooooooooves its vowels. "Kn'yom ereek erie-eh da (or sa, not sure) banh jue-aup ne-aik" might mean nice to meet you. Cambodians also REALLY want to practice their English and speak English, which was fun. We met one kid who just came up to Abby and me and said, "Can I walk with you? I want to practice my English." We said sure. He spoke really well, except got a little tripped up with "film" because it's a lot easier to say "flim." Abby was nice about it and said, "So what do you want to do, go watch the flim? Ha ha ha ha. Where's your friend? Watching the flim? Ha ha ha ha." I'm nicer so we went through the sounds. "fffff" "iiiiiii" "llllll" "mmmmmmm" "ffff-iiiii-llll-mmm" "ff-ii-ll-mm" "flim" Oh well. He'll work on it. Otherwise he spoke really well. Another thing. Abby sounds kind of mean, but it totally works in Cambodia. They're like insta-friends who you can automatically joke around with. It's really fun. I guess a lot of the time they're hoping to charm you into spending money on them somehow (tuk-tuk drivers, street kids, people outside stores) but I think they also like being friendly and talking to foreigners. A security guy at the airport, as I was putting my bag on the scanner, said, "Where you come from?" and anytime I smiled at people they would always smile back. It's really cool. You forget how uncommon that is until you see a foreigner and realize you don't really ever smile at them, because if you did it would probably just be weird. At the immigration booth as I was leaving I had to take a picture (everyone does) and I gave a huge smile and the officer laughed. I told him that I was in Cambodia and everyone smiles in Cambodia and he said I was right, Cambodians love to smile.
4. I was part of a group and loved it. And they were mostly JETs but it was cool. And the two couples weren't annoying and couple-ey. I had a roommate who I had a ton of fun with and met people I'll definitely be keeping in touch with.
5. The airports are amazing. It was my first time in Phnom Penh airport, so I can't compare, but the Siem Reap airport was just stunning. Completely redone from last year. Very strange. Not the arrivals part (domestic was even funnier than the international from last year - just a room with a table where the bags were put), but the departures part, it was crazy. If anyone googles Siem Reap International Airport and finds nice pictures, post a comment. It was beautiful. And they had ANZ (Australia New Zealand) Banks all over the place, with international ATMs. Also new from last year. I can't believe what a difference a year makes, but I guess it's good.
6. Almost everyday I was completely drenched with sweat and/or cement and/or mud and couldn't be happier. The sweat would seriously take over my entire shirt and my face looked like I was taking a shower, but I was more than happy to be like that. Not when we were walking around the temples - then it was really annoying. But working or playing with kids the sweat felt like a true achievement.
7. The street kids are something else. "Hello, where you from?" "Um, the moon." "Oh the moon? I'm from the sky. You buy my postcards. 10 for $1" "No thanks." "Buy my postcards, 10 for $1." "No thanks." "Buy my postcards, 10 for $1. Good price for you." "Buy my water, $1. Buy my water, $1. Buy my water, $1. Good price for you." "Ok, I buy your water, $1, you buy my postcards $2" "Um, no thanks. Maybe tomorrow" "Can not do tomorrow! Tomorrow I go to school!" "You don't go to school, you sell postcards on the street. If you go to school, why aren't you there now?" "Today holiday! Tomorrow I go to school." "I think you're lying." "I no lie! I promise! (holds out pinky)" "Hmm..." "Buy my postcards, $1." "Sorry, I don't need postcards." "You send to your boyfriend." "I already did." "You send one more." "Hm... no." "You send to your mother." "She's got enough." "Buy my postcards, $1." "No thanks. I'm ok." "Why you no buy?" "Because I don't want to." "Why you no want?" "Cause I don't need them" "Why you no need?" "Because!" "Why because?" "Sorry, I'm not going to buy." "If you no buy, I wish you no boyfriend." "That's not nice." "If you no buy, I wish you no dollars." "Oh, come on. You're being mean, why would I buy from you now?" "If you no buy, I wish you no son." "You're mean. I don't want to talk to you anymore." "I see you later, you buy my postcards?" Or, they don't have postcards and they just walk around with dead looking babies and say, "Money for baby... money for baby..." and point to empty bottles. The postcard kids are usually really cute and happy and playful. The ones with the dead looking babies are sad and really dirty. They tap your shoulder and stare and when you move they follow and pull your shirt, stare and point to the bottle. Very strange, but the worst was that we saw one kid with one baby one day and then a different baby the next day. And when the babies are awake the kids walk around happy. Don't get me wrong. The kids are really helpful. They've shown me where my friends have gone when I've gotten distracted on multiple occasions and usually they're just nice and happy and fun to talk with. Most of the time, even if you're not buying they'll talk to you and ask questions, and then just say goodbye as soon as they see someone who looks like they might buy.
8. Not all NGOs get along. A lot of them hate each other and think they're doing eveything wrong. I guess that's probably a worldwide thing.
9. There were more Japanese in Cambodia than in Japan I think.
10. I loved it and hope to return in the near future.

Also...
- I thought I left my glasses in Bangkok and freaked out for a good two hours. Called the guesthouse, wrote emails, called Lisa who was still staying there. They were in a compartment I hadn't checked in my bag.
- I locked my keys in my bag
- I left the keys at the top of the bag and could pull the zippers apart enough to get the keys out.
- I hurt myself when I heard the ice cream man coming in a small silk weaving village. I heard the noise, jumped, or leaped or something onto ground that wasn't the same level as what I had been on.
- One morning when we went to the temples for sunrise we went to one far out where people usually don't go for sunrise. The people who were supposed to open the gate didn't and because it was before sunrise, our dude almost ran into it. He didn't. But while swerving to miss it he flew off his bike and the tuk tuk went on top of his bike. We were ok, but he was on the ground. No helmet. We were afraid he had a concussion or something but he was fine. Not completely fine, but not willing to admit it to us. Scary scary scary. We bought him water and said he could go back if he wanted, but his only response to all of our freaking out was, "No problem, no problem" as he was holding his head, showing us his ripped pants, the cut on his elbow and making the "aawwwwww" face.
- Traffic goes in 4 directions on one street at all times. Sometimes five or six. The way to get from one side of the street to the other is to drive into oncoming traffic until you can merge across into the correct lane. Madness. That's why a lot of them don't wear helmets. It's all madness and helmets constrict their vision. But, plus side, I saw traffic lights for the first time this time. Frequently ignored by tuk tuks and motorbikes, but the cars seemed to take notice.
- I saw Angkor Wat for the second time and got to enjoy it a lot more than the first time. While posing for a group picture Helen said, "Smile, you're only at Angkor Wat twice." I thought that was really funny. Who goes to Angkor Wat twice? We did get to see a jungle temple way out in the middle of nowhere. And got to climb all over it. Tourists probably won't be able to do in the near future. Ha ha.
- There are geckos everywhere. They're my favorite apartment mate. Way cooler than ants, mosquitoes and cockroaches.
- Hair growing out of a mole is lucky in Cambodia. Therefore the luckiest is he who has the longest mole hair. And let me just say, tourguide Ta is one lucky guy.
- Cambodia doesn't really get the "ice cream milkshake" idea. It's ice, milk, and then maybe a scoop of ice cream, but the ice shaving really have a way of ruining the whole thing. Just don't get your hopes up like I did. Over and over again.
- PEPY is really, really cool. The whole trip, experience, attitude was really nice. Especially after Bangkok. It was a good balance of working, playing, seeing, learning and eating and sleeping. I'm so excited to see what the future holds and hopefully be a part of it.

Now I'm in Bangkok. Writing a blog. Figuring out life. Packing.

Phnom Penh

2006-08-18T21:28:00.000+07:00

Suas Dtai! I'm in Cambodia and loving it. I leave Phnom Penh tomorrow and wish I had at least one more day. I've had such an amazing time here.

Short version:

Me to Steph - My trip mostly consists of learning about really depressing stuff and then meeting little kids and taking pictures with them.

Steph to me - Glad that things are good in Cambodia even though things are bad in Cambodia.

Well put, Steph.
In addition to my first statement I also built a huge water tank out of cement, kind of.

Long version:

I don't feel like making paragraphs. So this'll have to do.

- RDI (Resource Development International) is one of the coolest organizations I've heard about in a long time. I was so impressed with all the stuff they're doing and I hope I can figure out some way to work with them in the future. They do the super serious stuff like the water purification and how to deal with animal waste so it doesn't cause disease for the humans (just to name a few, I could go on and on) but then to get all of their messages across they use kareoke and puppets and really cool media that people actually pay attention to! Check their website here! We got a tour to see all of their projects and I was just walked around with my jaw dropped. It was really really cool.

- CCF 1 (Cambodian Children's Fund) is such a happy (and sad at the same time)place. You see the kids there and they are look ecstatic all the time. They love life, people, talking, playing on the computer, doing their hair and everything else they do. We went to CCF (boys and girls (age 5 - 13) and got to sit in on their drama class. THESE KIDS CAN ACT! Oh my god. They were doing improv scenes (I think) and there was one scene where a girl died and her friend was kneeling by her side screaming her name. I started crying. And the whole scene was in Khmer. I couldn't believe it. Dane (American, English teacher in Japan, on the trip with his Japanese girlfriend) and I did a scene (in English) and when we sat back down a bunch of kids were saying, "Good good!" and then one kid said, "It was not good, it was Iceland!" Ok not really, he said, "excellent!" but I heard Iceland and was confused for a minute. But overall it was just so amazing to think about the things that we've always taken for granted that these kids are learning for the first time. Health and hygiene is a very very very unknown concept for these kids. (Remember, 80% of them were picking garbage and living at the dump) Most come in with lice, scavies, diarrhea, salmonella, and a ton of weird diseases I've never heard of. And then CCF has to cure all of that so they don't give it to the rest of the kids. Personally, when I heard "Medical Center" I thought of a nurse's office, which, technically I guess it is, but it's waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more important than any nurse's office in a school or anything. In addition, they have to teach them how to use their own toothbrush, brush, etc. All of this stuff is very very new for them. So you go there are you're totally blown away by how eager they are to learn, to talk to you, to give you hugs and it's really easy to forget that these kids can by 13 years old and have picked garbage for their entire lives, may or may not have a family and have probably never been to school. Two girls there were the youngest daughters of a mother of 4 who had sold her first two off for prostitution and had just been caught for trying to sell the last two. She's now in jail and her daughters are at CCF. AND EVERY KID THERE ARE SOME EQUALLY DISTURBING STORY. It's intense.

- CCF2 was built for older girls to give them vocational training. Girls have way less value in Cambodian culture and, because of prostitution and the rest, are in need of more help. So CCF2 is just for girls and has vocational training for the older ones. We went there tonight and got (absolutely hideous) makesovers from the girls in beauty class. Blue eyeshadow, bright pink lipstick. It was applied quite well, they just need to work on their coloring. Don't worry, I have pictures. The girls there (and at CCF1 also) also have culture class from 6-8 where they either learn about Khmer instruments, dance, and just general culture stuff. Their dancing is awesome! So as soon as you walk into CCF2 you have like one or two girls grab you, give you a hug for like 5 minutes and then hold your hand for the rest of the time you're there. It's quite surreal. But again, as with CCF1, each girl we saw was just SOOOO happy to be there.

- Rainy season is no joke here. We went to the work site Tuesday, worked for an hour and a half and then it started raining. When you're working with cement you're not left with many choices. Wednesday it rained a little bit but we still worked and then today we finished just in time before the biggest rain I've seen since getting here. I really wasn't impressed with Bangkok's "rainy season" but Cambodia's convinced me that it exists. Rainy season is no joke.

- Oh yeah, we were only at the work site for three days. We were in a tiny village outside Phnom Penh. We drove up to two huge piles of sand and one of rocks. First we moved to rocks over to the area, then we made cement and started making the foundation. We were grassroots, yo! Manual cement mixing. We had enough time to get the foundation laid down and then it started raining and we called it a day. Construction is pretty boring, but you know what isn't? Hanging out with kids! School was out of session but as soon as the kids see a van of foreigners drive up they were all over us! And not begging for money! The boys started helping and then the girls got in it too! I was so proud of them! We were just passing buckets of cement down a line and then they would run the empty buckets back to the top of the line. So cool! We also learned some names, some Khmer and some hand games. Wednesday was also really fun. We got to know the kids better, and one of the mother's actually invited us to her house across the street. The 12 year old son went upstairs and put music on and we had a huge dance party. So fun. She's the "English teacher" for their school and knows about 10 English words. So we said those 10 words over and over. I had such an awesome time on Wednesday I was kind of sad that we weren't going back on Thursday, but we went back today and everything was still fun! Katy (Australian, English teacher in Japan)brought a soccer ball and we had an intense game of soccer (kinda) at like 8 in the morning (while waiting for the cement). I say kinda cause it was 3 against 3 but without any goals. Every one seemed happy enough just trying to pass it to their teammates and keep it away from the people who weren't on their team. How un-Western, huh? Katy started saying, "Let's set up some goals!" but it never really caught on and then we realized maybe we weren't being very culturally sensitive and we don't NEED to have goals all the time, sometime just having fun is just as good. I was so sad to say goodbye to them all today. Of course, I have a billion pictures and I'm hoping to get a ton printed up to give to them. After a while I just gave my camera to one of the older boys, a 12 year old named Ro-Tua (I think) and told him to go nuts taking pictures. He really dug it. THESE KIDS LOVE CAMERAS! And digital is so satisfying because then I can feel like I'm taking it for them and not just for me. As soon as they see a camera they put their arm around their friend and start smiling and then race to the camera to see the finished product. It's a really handy tool to have. I'm planning on getting a lot of the pictures developed and sent back to the village when the RDI people go back to 1) finish the tank (we couldn't) and/or 2) do the whole education aspect of it (which we didn't get to do because school was on break). They also taught me Khmer! So that was cool too. We had Dance Party 2.0 today too which was a nice way to say goodbye. One thing we saw today that we hadn't seen any other day were a bunch of orphan kids. You see these kids like Li-asa (you'll see a ton of pictures of her) and you think "aww, her clothing is so old and ripped, and she's getting covered in mud as she plays in the rain, and she's not even wearing any shoes. How cute and poor Cambodian villge of her" and then you see a family of 4 kids, half of them not wearing any clothing, not speaking, with infected cuts and scrapes all over them and the inflated stomach like in the Sally Struthers commercials, looking like they haven't washed in a week, staring at you as you eat your lunch and then you think, "Woah, I guess Li-asa's living the life of luxury up here." Turns out their parents are both dead and they live in a shack together. Or something like that. We gave them the leftovers from our lunch and they took all the utensils too. Scott (CCF founder) is actually going to go up there tomorrow and see what their deal is and maybe bring them to CCF.

- So since we were only at the site for three days here's what we were doing the other days. Sunday - killing fields, genocide museum, which used to a torture prison, which had used to be high school. Pol Pot was a, excuse my language, fucking nut. I can't even get into it right now. Informative, depressing, powerful, emotional, intense. Monday - Royal Palace (could have skipped, not into that stuff that much), then Stoeay Machey to see the dump. It's literally a dump with about 100 dumps a day. People just stand around waiting to go through and get what recyclables they can. They all have a little village there which is all just on garbage. We had to walk over a strange combination of sludge and plastic bags. The kids seemed super happy, very different than the pictures on the CCF website but they all had weird things wrong with them and occasionally there would be a really sick one and or a tiny girl bald in spot with raised purple spots and then you realize, oh right, they live on a dump. I have a ton of pictures which can explain it a lot better. In the afternoon we went to, I don't know, maybe an old capital or something? I wasn't paying any attention. There were kids there and I was hanging out with them. There was a group of about 15 boys and they tried to be tourguides, taught Khmer, played in the rain with each other, showed off their breakdancing skills, smiled for pictures, and spoke in English. There was one kid in particular, Tu-nah I think, that I was talking to and he was so cool to hang out with. He was 12 and really smart and funny. When I saw the bus I was kind of bummed because he and his friends had been so interesting so I was saying, "I got to go, bye" and he says, "$5 for school?" and then it was all over. I said "Oh. Um... I'm sorry. I can't." And it just got weirder and weirder. I felt so used! So then I was thinking "wait, so did you just put on an hour long act to get $5 from me?" It's really kind of frustrating. They seem to genuinely have a good time and I can't decide how I'm supposed to feel. You're not supposed to give them money because then it encourages begging and the money definitely won't go to school, but then what are his options? How else is he going to possibly have a chance to go to school? (Schools cost money here) CCF can't just take everyone. But then you also don't want to raise a nation on begging from Westerns. ARGH! It's really frustrating.
Oh and on Thursday we took a boat ride to a silk village where they tried to toally rip us off on silks but we also got to see horse and cow drawn carriages which was interesting. And then we took cyclo tours of Phnom Penh. Cyclo = a bike with a seat with a wheel on either side instead of a front tire. It was with an NGO that helps smokers or something. I don't completely understand. There are a lot of NGOs here. They all had non-smoking shirts. IT WAS FUN! We went around town getting really confused/happy/excited looks from people. It felt very similar to what I imagine the obscure country singers feel during the Thanksgiving Parade.

Ok - I'm tired. I have a flight tomorrow to Siem Reap.

Last thing - being with a group. It's been interesting. I was totally freaked out at first. I'm one of 4 non-JETs (English teachers in Japan) and the sight seeing with a bus and a tour guide just felt so weird. But, by today I'm feeling a lot more comfortable. It's nice to be with a group of people sometimes! I can ask their opinions about what color scarf I should get and talk about Justin's new album and be with people with senses of humor much more similar to mine than the TEFL people.

So that's me! I'm doing well.