Snapshots of the last week

• Maeve and I went on a 3-day trek out of Chiang Mai. The other people on the trek were all couples except for a family from Germany that included their 7 year old daughter. We hung out with her a lot. She knew the phrases "poo-poo" "pee-pee" and "hey ladies!". The second night of our trek is was Maeve and I and two guides alone in a village playing cards and drinking beer.
  
• We went on an elephant ride. This was one of the worst experiences of my life. We were side by side on this seat on top of the elephant. Then the elephant would go downhill so we were hanging onto the back of the chair, approaching a vertical position. Then the elephant started picking up dirt with it's trunk and throwing it at us. I thought I was going to die, or at least break a leg.
  
• Today we rented a moto-scooter. It had gears and everything. And people drive on the left here. It was SO much fun. We drove to some hot springs and to a waterfall. The drive itself (all at about 30km/h) was breath-taking.
  
• We took a Thai cooking course. It was wickid.
  
• We were kicked out of our guesthouse. This is very embarrassing. I will admit that we committed a faux pas - we wanted to go on this eco-trek but there was no one else signed up so we posted a note on the Message Board at our hostel. But our hostel also sent out treks of their own. When we came back it was gone and the manager came up to our room and told us that we had insulted the treks that they do and advertised for someone else and could we please check-out of the hostel. We felt really awful about the whole thing until we started drinking.
  

I'm at a computer that has a virus that makes Explorer crash if you go to google...

We finally left Bangkok and got on our way. Now we are in Chiang Mai. On the way we made a 2-night and 1-day stop in Phitsanulok and Sukhothai which had some awesome ruins. Maeve and I rented bikes and biked around them in the blazing heat. Chiang Mai seems really "nice".

Last night we ate and drank a little with an Aussie girl who is biking Thai-Laos-Cambodia-Vietnam-China by herself. V. hard core.

According to Brad, 10 people have died in the last couple of weeks in Ban Bung (the town I was working in) in traffic accidents. He says that they erected a lion statue at the gates of the city because it is supposed to protect drivers. I think that motorcycle helmets would help more! I thought it was very un-chivalrous when I saw moto drivers wearing helmets with three kids on the bike without (or passengers). It turned out the in Ban Bung they ticket if the *driver* isn't wearing a helmet, but it's fine if your 3 year old is looking out over the handle bars with their bare scalp. Bleh.

I picked up some doxycicline for malaria. I'm wary to start taking it because the side effects suck (photo-sensitivity and you can't go to sleep for an hour after taking it because you might puke and burn your esophagus) but it's prob. better than malaria. I've been unsuccessful in keeping the mosquitoes away.

I'm also very excited about Thai Cooking School. If you want to financially support me in my studies I'll make you a fantastic thai meal when I get home.

I picked the top 2 things I'm most excited about seeing/doing on our trip and Maeve is supposed to do the same. Mine are Angkor Wat in Cambodia and trekking in the highlands of North Vietnam. I'm really excited to get going tomorrow!

Today was my last day of teaching. And I was paid for August which means that I'm in the black for this trip (except for my plane ticket). That is a good feeling.

In Thai the word "kwi" means buffalo. And buffalo is a really insulting thing to call someone because buffaloes are fat, lazy, ugly and smelly (just go with me on this...). It's a swearish-type word. So when I yelled "Quiet" in class, this sounds like "Buffalo noise" in Thai. So all the kids would burst out into hysterical laughing.

Since Thai is a tonal language (words are one syllable and there are 5 different tones - high, middle, low, rising and falling) and tone of your voice really matters. So using ones voice to be the enthusiastic-camp-counsellor does not translate. More often, this happens: kid: "I'm eln year old" me: "eleven?" kid: "I'm eleven? year old". This week, with Maeve, I tried to do some sort of act-out-the-verb circle game and used this to reinforce third person singular (adding the 's' to the end of the verb). So in my camp counsler voice to get everyones attention I would say "Sheeeeeeeeee... swims" "Heeeeeeee... dances" in an oscillating tone. The kids were imitating the oscillating tone and laughing. Last night at dinner I told this story to Brad and he burst out laughing and assured me that "He" in a rising tone is a very rude word for vagina. So I was possibly getting a room of preteens to say "Cunt dances", "Cunt sings" etc. Ha ha ha...

Smattering of pictures. The last ones are very funny pics of me in traditional Thai costume. (Use username: jennsfriend, password: password. (ha ha thanks jenn) if you need a user/pw. I don't know if you do or not...)

The story behind the last bunch (because you might be wondering) is the time I went with the teacher friends to Chonburi and went to a Thai dance studio where everyone was like "Yay, dress up the Canadian" and then we took pics with my digital camera.

Maeve is here!!! I was more excited about her getting here than I was when I myself came. She has an awful story about how they wouldn't let her get on the plane with just a one-way ticket. This is directly because I specifically said, "Don't worry about just getting a one-way ticket. I didn't have any problem with it and the Lonely Planet says that even though you can't enter Thailand with just a one-way, they never check it." Too bad they wouldn't let her on the plane in DETROIT. So she ended up buying an extremely expensive refundable ticket and they let her on the plane. But I'm sure her blogged version of events will be funnier than this.

I am currently uploading pictures to ImageStation for you all. So I must blog while I wait. I'm in Bangkok right now, enjoying highspeed. There is a Starbucks just off of Koh Sahn which directly contributed to me actually coming to Bangkok. It's beautiful and air conditioned and there are leather couches and stained glass windows. I am totally off coffee since they only serve the crap(-Nescafe-boycott-)instant stuff. But just like alchoholics are always alchoholics, I will always be addicted.

I got a short coffee. My body can't handle the tall. I feel wired. It cost 50 baht. My lunch of pad thai cost 15 baht.

I also had to come into Bangkok because I finished my last english book last night (In the Skin of a Lion). The school director gave me a pile of the crappiest english books. I read one, Digital Fortress by the guy who wrote The Da Vinci Code. It was hysterical. It was about how the NSA is (valantly) trying to put a backdoor into the world's encryption standard which would allow them to (justly) read everyone's email. And those pesky EFFers are always on their backs! If only they knew the terror attacks that they are able to stop. The technology in the book does not make sense (actual plot revolves are SkipJack, where the main SkipJack flaw is that the NSA guy stuck in a line of code that lets only the NSA decode anything. And this was only discovered by one guy during the public review of the code...).

Yesterday was a holiday. It was the Queen's Birthday. It's called "Mother's Day". So it's like Mother's Day at home but it's also a big celebration of the Queen. Her picture is everywhere. So Happy Mother's Day mom!

It was weird having a Thursday off work. Today does NOT feel like a Friday. I'm going to work until the end of next week. Maeve gets here on Tuesday night. I'm taking Wednesday off and then teaching on Thursday and Friday. And then I'm outta here. But I still have to talk to Maeve about to where...

Wednesday night, Tam, Brad, Nan and I went to the movies. We went to see "Mor Jeb" which translates to "Dr. Pain" but in the subtitles was called "The Ex-terns". (Yes Jackie, it DID have english subtitles. V. exciting.) It was a pretty bad buddy movie but everything about it was so Thai that it was really fun. Most of the movie took place as a rural residency for the med students. So a lot of the jokes were about different Thai dialects (ex. -- "Why hasn't that patient come back?" -- Patient is dancing in the hallway -- "Your word for 'return' is the same as her word to 'sing and dance'"). There was a Buddhist monk who had stomach ulcers from his pre-monk drinking days. There was the 'sexy scene' where the girl emerges from a swimming pool, but she was dressed in a conservative bathing suit. And at the end of the movie the doctors get their jobs through a lottery system. (My province, Chonburi, was the province that the star wanted to get but ha ha ha didn't.)

Yesterday Tam got his sister to teach me how to cook Thai food. It was so much fun. People here don't have kitchens. There is literally no place to rent an apartment with a kitchen in Ban Bung. Tam's kitchen had an outdoor part, so all of the food is actually prepared outside. We made 'Gang Krati Gung' from scratch. It is prawns and pineapple in a red curry sauce with coconut milk. (Did you know that there is 'head coconut milk' and 'tail coconut milk'. We bought both in the market in plastic bags.) Some of the ingredients came from the garden and I could only write down the thai name for the chili peppers. It felt like barbequeing because we were outside but we had a wok full of curry on a gas burner.

After that I went to Brad's and watched movies for the rest of the day. I'm not that excited about this weekend. I am SO excited about Maeve coming on Tuesday.

It is Matt's birthday already, here in Thailand. Happy Birthday Matt!

There's a girl that I've met a couple of times. She works at an english bookstore in Bangkok. Last night she brought me a bunch of magazines. Vogue, In Style, YM, Ranger Rick and a crossword puzzle one.

Thai people are very nice. Here is another example. Last night at the market I saw the girlfriend of one of the b-ball guys. I say hi. I say that I like her shirt. She answers, "Oh, I got it in Bangkok. I will buy you one next time I am in Bangkok". And I'm like, "Ummm... Thanks.". Sometimes it is hard to be independent. I feel awkward about asking movie times and places and how to bus there because I'm not fishing for a ride; I really want the information for Independent Natalie.

I guess the big news is that Maeve has finally bought a ticket to Bangkok and we're going to travel together until I start work. (US Visa update - My TN visa was rejected for pre-approval which means that I could come home to Canada and risk getting rejected at the border or I can just wait for my H1B. Now that Maeve is coming I'll wait for my H1B. The date I've been given is October 1.) Now I have to go back to the school and quit. And I am immature enough to now be killing time blogging about quitting than actually quitting.

After yesterday's I-love-Thai-food post, today I had a roast beef sandwich and it made me extremely happy. Actually a student gave me a deluxe roast beef sandwich with Swiss on French bread and a bag of Lays. It was such a thoughtful gift that I think only a North American could have thought it up. (There is no beef here and no cheese and the chips were not made from fish). I actually don't know who gave me the present since the student was just a go between. And it must have been pretty expensive and from Bangkok or Pattaya. From what I could gather it was from a grade 10 or 11 student. I will investigate more.

Food

I have been here almost a month and I still love Thai food. I will never get sick of it. I rarely miss food from home. I was thinking about it today and I think that I miss cheese a little. There is no cheese here. And I'm scared to try the pizza here because I think the cheese will be disgusting.

Thai people eat Thai food for every meal and late night snack. I do not like Thai food for breakfast. Every morning I bring my own peanut butter to breakfast and the cook makes me two pieces of toast and green tea. Today I bought a second jar of peanut butter and a box of raisin bran (this entailed a bus ride and a moto-cab ride and then back again to get to the big Tescos).

It took me a good week to realize that the cafeteria food (that I eat at lunch) is not good Thai food. I usually snack before dinner. I either buy a 3-pack of Oreos, a pack of Werthers or meat-on-a-stick. At the end of the school day a bunch of street vendors wait outside the school. The meat-on-a-stick vendor is the best. I usually get two chicken wings (on a stick) and pork with hot pepper and pineapple (on a stick).

Dinner is the best. I go and meet Brad and friends at the basketball court and we moto over to the market. This is usually about 8. The sun sets about 7. The "market" is actually what I would call an open air food court. There is an actual market that is much more market-like than what we call the market. Anyway, it is a large, high ceilinged structure with industrial fans keeping us cool. Everything is spotless and flourescent-lighted. We sit on plastic stools at a stainless steel table. There are about 30 vendors all selling food. We always sit next to the candy-and-drink lady. (I teach one of her two sons. They are both very fat and the one that I teach is a trouble-maker.) We get a big bottle of Pepsi and everyone gets a glass with crushed ice.

The food is so good. I have my favourite dishes which I can't pronounce but I point to the main ingrediant and communicate that way (or get Tam to do it). I've had phases of meals. I started out eating a fried rice dish. It comes with mango (a bitter shavings from a hard non-juicy mango), sweet pork and egg which you stir up together (Khao gluck ga pi). Then I became obsessed with some red curry with meat and basil leaves (Pad Kraprao). Then I ate Brad's favourite meal which is mussels and fried rice flour and sprouts (I got very sick and thought that it was a bad mussel but it might have just been some weird fruit I ate). Just this week I discovered a Chinese meal of fried noodles and other stuff (Pad see eew). On top you sprinkle sugar and it's not spicy. (All of the names come from Tam. Last night at dinner I got him to transcribe these foods.) Every meal costs 20 baht (30 baht = $1CDN). For 5 more baht you can add a fried egg or a few prawns. The pop usually costs about 20 baht. It is 1 baht for the glass with ice.

Last night I went out with the young-hip teachers at work. There are 3 really attractive girls and a couple of gay guys who are all friends and my age. We were going to some market but ended up going to a Thai dance studio and then KFC. The guys live above the dance studio.

Anyway I was whisked into full Thai costume and makeup for a photo shoot (in the dance studio). I'll get the resulting pictures online as soon as possible. It was a crazy fun time.

Tomorrow I'm going to Cambodia to cross the border and then come right back (because my Thai visa expires on Tuesday - so I've been here almost for 4 weeks). I only realized this morning that I need a photo of myself for Cambodian immigration but hopefully it's all taken care of. It would have SUCKED to go all that way and have forgotten something so necessary.

This will also be the first weekend that I haven't gone and done something. I'm going to/from the border tomorrow but on Sunday I don't have any plans. I found out that the nearest bigger city, Chunburi, does have a movie theatre but that they don't play english movies with subtitles, they play them with dubbed Thai. BOO. Although I possibly committed myself to shopping in Bangkok for dance costumes.

Last night Jackie and I were talking to a friend, Guy and he was telling us about this crazy ethnic food that they had at his work. It was pork on bread. It involved a fridge and cutting it in half. We were like, "Is it a sandwich?" and he said that it was a sandwich and it was disgusting.

It's fun having Jackie here. She came to all of my classes today and spent the last 10 minutes playing "Jackie says". In the teaching-the-teachers class, the principal specifically asked me how to pronounce "I love you". Hmmmmm...

Koh Chang was fun. We did leave at 3am from Ban Bung. The Thais drank until then and Brad and I went to sleep at our respective houses. We rented some van for all of us to get there and back.

On Sunday I pushed the issue of figuring out when we were going to leave. There is a lot of group-think with the Thais. One of the guys figured he had to get back on Sunday or he would lose his job and I was worried that the idea that we should all go back a day early would be pushed. (A drunken Tam mourned the loss of his friends). Anyway a reasonable plan was put into place. We were going to leave Lonely Beach to make it to the ferry at 3:15. At 3:15 we were still missing 3 people. Then Pod mentioned that he had the number of a taxi but that it would take a half an hour for it to get there. Brad and I were very on edge because we were obviously on our way to missing the ferry (making the van driver wait another hour for us). Brad said that the Thais have no concept of time. I think it might have to do with the Thais having no responsibility in their lives. You might see it as a Buddhist-eastern zen thing. We did make the 5pm ferry.

Also, on Sunday night me and the 3 girls (it was actually Brad, I, the Thais and a Chinese couple who spoke english and not Thai) played Jenga. When you made the tower fall you had to take a shot of beer. This was a big deal because none of the other girls drank. I was drinking many beers during this but didn't have to deal with the shot-of-beer punishment because I'm a Jenga master.

I also had my first and second Thai massage. On the beach. $6CDN for an hour.

The weather was really crap the whole time. I kind of liked it in the same way that I like the rain and mist in England.