Laura's Year in Asia = Fun Stories

This is Miranda, Nuch, and I hooking up some sweet, sweet Karma from the Saturday Buddha.

Swimming in the waterfalls (ANTM eat your heart out) where you aren't allowed to wear a bathing suit!

Our bicycle trip to/from Sriwiangsa school each day.

Heather's 'Samui' to the power of 3. (still no silver coins from Julia though!)
That seems to be all I can upload right now.... Later ;)

Look how smart my kids are! Basically the little brats are fluent already.

ugggggghhhhh

Just getting over the first big sickness. I knew it was coming, especially living in such a rural area. You can't follow any of the "traveler's code" of not using local water, not drinking anything with ice, not eating fruit that is already peeled, not eating street meat, etc. But I figure what doesn't kill me makes my iron stomach stronger.

Today is parent's day at Sriwiangsa. Ummmm that means Miranda and I have to meet all the parents, which is extra awkward since no one speaks english and just likes to stare at us. We just finished the assembly, where about 500 Thai parents sat looking at us on-stage trying to talk about ourselves in broken-simple English. Now we have to wait around in the 45*C heat to meet & greet them, although i'm not sure how that is going to work since .... THEY DON"T SPEAK ENGLISH!

It was sunny yesterday in Wiangsa, so Uncle Jai and Pi Pian came over, knowing how crazy white people are that they love to sit in the sun, and brought us some beach mats and beach chairs. We sat outside in the garden fending off scorpions, gekos, ants, chickens and butterflys and tried to get a bit of a tan. We called it 'Koh Jai'. But since its so fricken hot out you just can't sit outside for more than 5 minutes. Next weekend we're trekking around the national parks, going to waterfalls and river rafting. So hopefully I'll catch some sun then.

http://www.bangkokpost.net/News/24May2006_news00.php

Here are some pics from one of our random trips to Nan, the provincial capital about 20km away. The Wats, the market fruits, and the bus we take to get there(I think the pop is about 4000 people)

I don't know if I can explain how much it rains here. I thought after living in Vancouver on the wet-coast, and living in Cape Town (basically the only place it balls-out rains in Africa....) I would know what rain is. But Wiang Sa is a rainforest if I've ever seen one before. In the past 24 hours it has rained over 55cm. YES Centimeters....not millimeters...Just to let you know the all-time BC record at Tofino is 48.9cm(http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0010745)

It's like Mother Nature just gave up trying to control the rainfall and just let it dump. I didn't know there was this much freshwater in the world. The raindrops are the size of timbits and hit you at a rate of about 200 drops/second. I came to school today wearing my goretex jacket, a rain poncho that all the locals have, and my umbrella....still arriving soaked to the bone. The rice paddy on our property is now a 5ft deep lake, and the football field at the school is now the swimming pool. I didn't fall asleep last night until 2am because the sound of the rain on our tin roof was deafining.

Well its 12:04and i'm off to teach grade 5 how to write their name, birthday, interests and phone number. That is if the classroom isn't flooded. A teacher just told me that the Nan river just overflowed its banks, so there actually might be some flooding in the area, but no one seems overly concerned....

...So all you who are jealous about me being in Thailand, just stand under a hot shower on full power for 24 hours and see how tanned you get.

Weekends are weird in Wiang Sa

Yesterday we showed up at school thinking we were teaching english club, but found out that it has been cancelled and moved to Tuesdays (good for us b/c now we don't have anything to do on Fridays - LONG WEEKENDS!) One teacher tells us (that's how it works here, people tell us/don't ask us) we're going to Nan with her. Well we get in her 4x4 with another teacher, and that teachers niece who is adorable. And drive to Nan, go to the national museam with its famous black elephant tusk from 200 years ago. Then we do the Wat circut. I will never get tired of Watting (my new verb for going to all the wats) they are so beautiful with the red and the gold and the intricate INTRICATE detail. I've got some stunning pics i'll put up soon. We then drop the kid off at the city playground and go to the market where the teacher Noosh keeps asking us "you like?" and of course we have no idea what the heck these flourescent-spikey fruits and veggies are, but to be polite we keep saying yes. And she keeps buying us them. We have eaten everything from things that resemble lychee nuts to Durien!!!!!!!!!! ewwwwwww. and these waffle things that ....

oh man a teacher just randomly came in and gave Miranda and I these crepe things wrapped in power-ranger tissue paper and said "EAT YOU" just an example of the randomness

....anyways the waffels had corn in them. Weird. Then we go to the street markets for dinner that consisted of hot dogs deep-fried on a stick and sliced to look like something from a Dr. Seuss book. And some other meat on sticks. And some of those mini cocktail weenies wrapped in noodles and then deep fried. There goes my plan to loose weight in Thailand. After washing those down with a couple Fantas, we get ice cream. WITH CROUTONS, PINK NOODLES AND BUTTER on it. so so so weird. We came home to our poarch which turned out to be the late night local hangout for every creepy-crawly insect, amphibian, and lizard in the rice patty. We counted 6 geckos smaller than our palm and 10 bigger than. The biggest was one about the size of my whole arm. A few coackroaches, and bugs I can only describe as beetles with spider legs.

Then today we're just hanging around waiting for our laundry to be done and Uncle Jai (our neighbor/homestay host who makes us dinner and does our laundry) comes over with coconuts/mangos from our garden. The coconuts he had just sliced the tops off and put a straw in so we could drink the milk! Very cool afternoon snack. Then "honk honk" Noosh is back to pick us up on her motorcycle and take us to school to pick up our bikes we left there before our Watting adventure. 3 people on one motorcycle is interesting even if you aren't following Thai driving rules (none at all) Now we're here at the school using the internet with the Thai radio station on in the background that just played one of the bigger hits in Thailand right now by the band "Same Same" who are just the two Moffat twins from that good ol' victoria pop band The Moffats! Haha

Well like I said, just another weekend in Wiang Sa

So here are some pics of my last few days. Karaoke in Bangkok, Our arrival in Nan, our House/Jungle garden, and our school/assembly/teaching desk in the english staff room...

http://http://area.obec.go.th/nan1/

If you check out the link above you'll see the Thai Ministry of Education's (OBEC)Website. Staring yours truly and her fellow Gappers who are stationed in Nan. I really don't know what the rest of it is about since my Thai is still horrible, but the second set of photos is sure our visit to the ministry right after we arrived at the airport. Apparently the newspaper is going to print today, so we'll get a few copies of that soon.(like ummm all of them)

Other than that life has been pretty interesting. I basically bombed my first teaching class, since they just threw me in there, "GO TEACH YESNO?" (yes no is one word in thai which makes it so confusing to agree/disagree) i didn't know the grade/english level/names or even have a thai teacher to help me. We played 'head and shoulders' for about 40 minutes. Turns out they were grade 5.

"I was singing old macdonald when they wanted to hear Coolio" - quote from our training class in bangkok.

Its 9:42 and i just finished teaching a kindergarden class which was awesome. they're so much fun. we played ball games and learned our ROYGBIV, which actually was ROYGIBPP cuz i wanted to do pink and purple. So fun and so cute. I'm glad i have 3 kindergarden classes a week! I'm also teaching Pratom (grade) 1,3,5, a computer skills class (yes my technological skills are coming in handy megan) and we run an english club that the older kids come to and do skits and fun stuff. We're also planning a province-wide english camp for the first weekend in June, which is going to be crazy.

Last night we got home and had a full night of trying to kill bugs. And when I say bugs I don't mean little wimpy Canadian bugs, not even the ones you find in Manitoba. These are monsters. "Prehistoric Dinosaurs" - Jade. With coackroaches and random flying beatles as big as my fist, Miranda has to kill them as I can't bring myself to squish something that looks the size of one of my old corgie dogs. We also had a couple lizards enter the house, not those cute little geckos that were in our African shower. These are massive mini-dinosaurs that make the scariest clicking sound. Our neighbor who makes us dinnner and washes our clothes heard our screaming and came over to fill the cracks in the roof with toilet paper (which i'm convinced dinosaurs can eat through) I still tucked my bednet in extra tight.

Well........

First sorry no pics yet. there are computers here at my school but i forgot my usb port at home. so i'll post 'em tommorow

What a few days. I can't believe its only been 2 days since i was in Bangkok pretty much dominating that city, but alas here I am in Wiang Sa. Ok so I guess I have to start from the beginning:

So our last night in Bangkok together, all of us (with some of the old Gappers who are traveling around Thailand now) went to this other area of Bangkok where we hadn't been before. To get there we took our fav. transport Tuk-Tuks!!! We are sooo good at bargining now "MAING PAAAA means too much" and we try to cram at least 6 people in them for the full effect of tuk tuks. We only had to bribe one police officer the whole time there, so we considered our week of tuk-tuks a success.

We found a karaoke bar and basically dominated it for 6 hours. Every karaoke song you can imagine we did. I even worked the bar for a bit - Sangsom and cokes are my specialty. We did S Club 7 Brits vs. Bryan Adams Canadians. I did a sweet Achy Breaky Heart rendition complete with line dancing WHILE i was singing. Don't worry there are pics. My fav. moment was when Maeve (the girl from Tdot) did some shaggy, and damn that girl has a sweet jamacian accent.

The next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed to catch our flight to Nan. Miranda and i to get to Wiang Sa, and Nick and Joss to go to Nan (about 20 minutes from our placement) the flight was incredible. tiny airplane - getting on was very......reminded me of that famous nixon pic.....did the wave to bkok.

At the airport we got picked up by a huge group of thai teachers who gave us flowers and gifts and just made a big fuss over us, we of course had no idea what was going on and no one told us anything since WE ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO SPEAK ENGLISH IN OUR TOWN. its redic. we get taken to some gov't office where we meet with tons of people and the tv cameras and newspapers are there, still no one speaking english!

then we get driven around in some teacher's car with all these other teachers and keep stopping at places but no one tells us what to do or whats going on. once they came back with these bags of the most amazing snack. Deep fried bananas. wow. new fav. food ever. anyways about 2 hours later (after visting some monks, a motocycle repair shop, tescos...) we get to the school which is so great. its pretty big. very open concrete structure with windows with those wooden shutters, no glass in this whole place. i'll send pics asap dont worry. had everyoen looking at us and waving. the kids are just about the cutest things ever. i want to pick them up and throw them!!!!!

more driving and listening to thai people speak and we get to our house wich is on this guys property. our house is in the middle of the rice patty with chickesn and roosters and pigs everywhere. lots of frogs and bugs too...... but its incredible. very big for thai standards. concrete with same open layout. tile floors with wood shutters, no glass. we have a bathroom that doubles as a shower. apparently hot water, a tv with only thai channels. its really very basic but much mroe than we could have hoped for. Our neighbors are this big family with some guy named Uncle Jai wh o comes over to fix everything and cook us dinner each night. he's great. sometimes the little baby who's two comes over and just sits looking at us. its all very very random.

some teachers came by to pick us up for dinner....someone birthday? and we got to this amazing restaurant which is like a wooden fram over a rice patty lake. sooooo thailand-in-pictures. right away they pull out the whiskey and water. ew. but we had to be polite so we had a glass.... but yuck. its funny cuz the first thing they told us in traiing was don't drink if you're a lady and esp if you're a teacher......oops.

then the food comes. thai style with alll us eating. so awkward though cuz we didn't know what's polite, for us to eat first, keep eating. leave some....ahhhh such a cringe moment. miranda and i were dead tired but the teachers were partying. and trying out their english on us...we were just not in the mood (and you guys know my not in mood mood) i felt so bad cuz obvisously it was such a status thing for themt o have us at their dinner....but it was just so wet, so many bugs, so tired, so confused, sooo.....ugh.... we just had no centre. no idea what was goign on. Anwyasy then they take us to Tescos to go shopping. so random it was like midnight and we're at tescos. bought some cofffe and stuff, and they bought us some water and whatnot. gave us our spending moeny. 500 baht a week! ballers!!!!!

then this morning we wake up and get our bikes. soooooooooooooooooo funny. we couldn't work the kick stand so ppl had to come help us. then we tried to get on them in our long ankle length skirts and ride down the road to the school. ohmygod two white gilrs riding bikes in this village must have been redic.

so we get to school and there is a huge outdoor assembly going on. everyone in lining up formation looking at us riding up on the dirt road....sooooo cringe. we are ushered to the front where we have to introduce ourselves and talk about how happy we are about thailand and sriwiang sa (the school)

Anyways we just found out that the only teacher who speaks a bit of english is in bangkok right now. so we're so lost, have no idea where/when/what we're supposed to do. I just ate some lunch which they make for us everyday..... I guess i'm going to get used to rice and cabbage soup.

everything is very messy right now - and i'm looking forward to getting a pattern, and just figuring out what the heck is going on here. also excited just to get some rest. Its all a pretty big challenge, but that's what i signed up for right?

So I don't have much more to update on. Been cooped up in the Asia hotel for 4 days doing my teaching course. Its quite funny actually, some other english teachers just come in and tell us fun games to play with the kids, and how to teach without ANY resources. Nights are spent roaming the town in a tuk-tuk looking for random places to eat. We found this one gem where its just a ton of thai people eating on the sidewalk and the waiters brign you a shabu-style pot to cook on. We didn't really get the hang of it, but ended up with soem funky green noodles and random meats that tasted pretty good. Everynight I go for an hour thai massage ($5). The best description I've heard of Thai massages are "they're just forced yoga" Basically true. these women stand on you, under you, throw you, push their elbows into crazy places, but you always walk away with a smile on your face. Its especially funny cuz they make you wear these fab pjamas that are always too short for me and too tight on my thighs, i'm pretty sure the woman are laughing AT me. Today we had a day off, but thanks to going out last night on Th Kho San, and the wonderful chiang beers I didn't make it up by 8 am to go to the Grand Temple, Wat Po and those other things. Although I did find the best hotdog vendor outside of North America.




Its so true that here in Thailand you're most likely to get scammed by someone being friendly to you rather than someone attacking you. If i go to one more silk suit shop in a tuk tuk when I clearly stated "100 BAHT NO STOPS!" at the begining I might just steal the tuk tuk for myself. Even random old ladies seem so nice and tell you about their favourite places to eat or shop, and its all just for them to get commission of us bloody farangs. Its all a part of the fun I guess. But argh. We found a way to avoid the tuk-tuk scams, and discovered the canals of Bangkok. Apparently it was supposed to turn into the venice of asia...but a few still remain, and for 20 cents you can go on these rusted boats anywhere you want, as long as you can correctly guess when to jump the 2ft. gap between the boat and the dock. The driver actually yells something in Thai that means 'have a calm heart!' Speaking of Thai my language learning is going great. I can count to ten, say hello, goodbye and thankyou. Not to mention the key terms of TOO MUCH! YOU'RE CRAZY! I PROMISE I WILL WALK AWAY!




I fly out to Nan on Tuesday, and before that I have to go back to the fab MBK mall and buy some more stunning short sleved blouses. I keep going there to get them, but spend my money on the abercrombie/hollister/LV/billabong/polo/Lacoste clothes they have for sooo cheap. I also accidently bought a bunch of $0.25 DVD's....to use as teaching resources of course ;)




I'm getting along SO well with all the other gapper teachers. They are tons of different ages and backgrounds. Paradie is sitting beside me and says hi to everyone that we both know. Oh! I added a few pics up top. My favourite ATM in Bangkok so far was at the elephant zoo. Some pics of Th Kho San. THE GLORIOUS MALL! Our teaching classroom. The beautiful view of B'kok from our hotelroom. And some action shots of tuk-tuk-ing

This post is dedicated to the wonderful feasts and sketchy transportation of Bangkok.

So now that i've shed the hot, sweaty, farangs of Th Kho San road, I find myself in the sweetest airconditioned, five star hotel with a shower bigger than my whole room at the Siam guest house. I hang out with diplomats and expats at the bars at night, and during the day cruise the airconditioned malls for the best knock-off goods. It's a tough life this teaching business.

Anyways food. It is incredible here. Not only are the orange fanta and banan' pancakes still plentiful, but with my newly found confidence thanks to the 5-star, aircon hotel I have ventured out to try the delic street vendors. WOW! They are incredible. The curried pork on a stick along with some fresh fried noodles is a classic for only 20c. Also this morning i got up extra early since i was so excited to try out the free breakfast buffet. WOW! over 100 dishes of everything you could ever want to eat, wantign to get my deals worth i ate a little too much, but it was so worth it. Not to mention the excitement of gettign to have a bowl of PRO-STARS cereal for the first time in over 15 years. I love Thailand.

I've met up with the 10 other volunteers (britsh and canadian) and we all went out for dinner last night at the NOOD-BAR. the english translation leaves something to the imagination, but it was still great. it was one of those point-and-pray ordering methods, but i ended up with some amazing singapore-style noodles with prawns and pork.

The brilliance of Thai cooking is balanced by their inability to conceptualize proper driving techniques. Apparently Thai's regard any sort of official driving rules as anthethetical to good sense and well...anything goes. The tuk-tuks are my new favourite transportation option as you get the rush of being at exhaust level of the big trucks/busses but the (somewhat false) sense of security of a few metal rails around you. Although trying not to get scammed is the bigest obstacle to overcome. I've masterd the vocabulary of "no stops, no gas, no shops, 40 bhat" that usually lets you get your way, but even yesterday we got scammed and tuk-tuked aroudn the city to different suit shops and government offices. Even with the scams the barely legal aspect of tuk tuks is still worth 40 bhat just to weave in and out of the "recommened" three lanes of traffic that usually end up to be about 8-9.

Anyways this side of Bangkok is amazing. I just got back from visiting the Canadian embassy and the consul-general met with us and told us where he vacations in the south if we ever want to drop by, oh and how HIS 20 year old son is also teaching here....hmmmmmm ;)

I promise i'll get pictures up asap. This city is just screaming to be photographed and I can't wait to get out there.

So after a whole day here in Bangkok i'm sorta getting used to the heat, but its still like a wet-soggy-wool blanket on your whole body while you're wearing wet socks. Just smothering. Although I did sleep for 12 hours last night when i repositioned my bed under the fan so i got a little bit of wind througout the night.

Bangkok is a really weird city. First of all there are billions of Farangs (white tourists) and everyone loves them. The taxis have "I LOVE FARANGS, LETS SPEAK ENGLISH TOGETHER" stickers on them, and every thai person i've met speaks some sort of english. There is every kind of traveller here too. My favorite thing is to sit on the balcony of my guest house's restaurant and just watch the people walk by. I saw two Paris Hilton 17 year old ameican girls walk by wearing their nude money belts on the outside of their frilly white skirts, then you see 3 hard core russian guys who have just been trekking in Bhutan going into the same guesthouse. Its just weird. Bangkok is also a city where its hard to meet other travelers, everyone is pretty paired off or in their groups. Like I said, weird. But I of course with my magnetic personality and stunning features have met some nice British folk and today will be goig to the Bangkok city zoo with them. crazy times.

I haven't braved the tuk-tuks yet since i'm not up to being ripped off quite yet. And the busses (ANTM style) are just too expensive. So im walking around town getting caught in the HUGE rainstorms. All of the sudden you hear a crack of thunder (which i may or maynot have thought was gunshots) then all the thai people run for cover. I decide to keep walking and get soaked. then 1 hour later after continuous torrential downpour it stops and gets sunny and wet-socks hot again. Yeah for rainy season.

I would post some pics, but i haven't taken many, and i left my camera in my room which is on the 5th floor of this guesthouse. I know i have to work off the banana pancakes which i eat about twice a day, but those stairs are redic!

That's about all for now. I miss you all as much as I miss the cool waters of lacarno beach.

I've done/seen some really cool things during my 7 hour layover here in Taipei, but all the stories boil down to two major themes:

1) I'm tall
&
2) I'm white

This is going to be a fun year.