Greetings from Thailand!
The weather is absolutely amazing here, that is if you like sweating and heat so thick you can drink it like a fruit smoothie. A nice change though from the Baltic weather we've been surrounded by most of our trip. We arrived after a rather peculiar if not precarious start which included Bangkok being on International news with their riots over former PM Thakskin. According to the media, Bangkok was under siege, as was their airport, and we stood in Munich with our heads tilted up towards the big screen as we and forty others that realized that CNN was replaying a story filled with guns and mayhem in our destination city. Of course the Germans seemed unfazed, and to be honest after a big pint of beer things seemed less worrisome than earlier. We contemplated not getting on the plane, and were convinced we may have to teach in Vietnam instead, and then we arrived in tropical Bangkok with Buddha statues and open arms. Everything was fine, and my already wavering faith in the media has been dropped to an even more skeptical status.
Of course, we also landed during the Thai New Year which turned out to be an interesting if not moist event. We were soaked with buckets of water during this holiday which celebrates and remembers the dead. The Thai people go to these tall, pointed statues where they put the ashes of the dead and all around them build many identical sand castles. It is also a time where monks pray intensely to Buddha, and local people pour water over him (as they do to the people too). So, after two days of acclimating to the heat and time change in our "hot box" room (which was three feet by seven and had NO windows) Christine and I packed our bags and headed south to Suratthani for a job interview. While we awaited an answer from an employer we went to the island Koh Samui. What an adventure! The beaches were white and endless and the sky melted into the ocean in a nearly redundant view of perfection. The best part was that we had ocean side bungalows where, when the rain raged down on us like BB guns, we sat on our thatched porch and just listened. Never have I heard thunder make such a cacophony of noise in my life. It was like an orchestra above us somewhere in the pink and purple lightning, making even the waves seem silenced. The rain was more like a mist of needles than anything I had seen, and on multiple occasions I was the last person standing on the beach, letting myself be covered completely with warm rain.
Of course, there are always good stories about the beach, and our favorites are the bed bugs that ate us the first night, and the GIANT three inch long cockroach that took over our room the third. Though, I must say the most shocking surprise of all were the white men on the back of motorcycles with Thai women clinging behind. I must say, I was warned of this, but to SEE it over and over again caused me to, more than once, give some dirty stares to equally dirty male individuals.
In Suratthani Christine and I lived for the vibrant night market. At seven, as the sun went down, the many eclectic vendors popped up selling everything from mint milk to Dior eyeliner. We ate Pad Thai every night that was made by the most wonderful older Thai woman. She had such an effect on us! She mixed the noodles, sauce, and peanuts on a large wok about two feet in diameter and the heat evaporating from it was a wonderful scent of grease and sweet chilies. She grew to know us, and greeted us with a hearty smile that we eagerly returned one hundred fold as only Americans apparently know how. After turning down the job through the Suratthani office, we decided to take a leap of faith and head back to Bangkok to sign with the company called AYC Thailand who would place us in public schools in Chumphon (still in the south but three hours north of Suratthani).
The train ride was something I won't soon forget. We bought tickets three minutes beforehand and noticed a plethora of foreigners unusual for that part of Thailand. We bought the third class tickets which were about seven dollars, and watched as everyone else (the white others I mean) got onto the first and second cars. We were on the 16th. I still think we are perhaps the first white people EVER to have done this, and never have we been more stared at in our lives. Open mouths, large, deep brown eyes pierced us as we waddled down the rows covered in our two cumbersome packs. The blondie and red head then sat down and OH the faces of the Thai couple who had to be next to us! Clearly they feared being ostracized by being in our vicinity. But, we won them over in the end and they were truly the most beautiful young pregnant couple ever. They touched our lives with their sweetness and clear love for one another, and being on that train for twelve hours, 9pm to 9am, was something I would never trade. Half the people laid on the ground on newspapers, barely fitting under the metal seats, and yet it was like a community. Everyone was eventually sprawled, touching a stranger, and as the night air blew in they dropped into an easy sleep as Christine and I fidgeted with our long legs and pale skin. Finally, we decided to lie on the ground with nothing, and the couple next to us, after we dozed for about thirty minutes, ended up throwing a jacket over us (like we could ever be cold in Thailand) to comfort us. Bless them! I am continually fascinated with language, or the absence there of, and how I can speak not a word of Thai, and the couple not one word of English, and yet we truly became friends after that journey. I think they need to to see white people in the third class as much as we needed to see what the third class entailed and how Thai people travel their country. So, we learned from each other, through tilted smiles and many hand gestures, and somehow I could start to hear the rhythm of their young love, as they could sense the joy for life that lay within us. Somehow not using words made it so much better, and as we hopped of the train in Bangkok to a gloomy, humid day, they leaned out the window and gave us a hearty wave. I guess it may not seem like one of those things that should really impact someone, in fact it was uncomfortable, smelly, boring and strange, and yet these things are all what make the trip worth taking; THESE things are why we are where we are and are loving it! It is not always easy, but damn it, it makes one hell of a story. And of course, I do enjoy sharing a good story :-)
So, we are sitting in Bangkok, eating more iced coffees than is wise, and just recently signed our lives away to teach until the end of September. Our guesthouse has enough fans to make the air reminiscent of cool, and the colors, as usual, are poignant and uplifting, similar to the food!
That is all for now (my fingers are cramping and you MUST bee tired of my rambling.....)
Sawasdeeka!!!
The weather is absolutely amazing here, that is if you like sweating and heat so thick you can drink it like a fruit smoothie. A nice change though from the Baltic weather we've been surrounded by most of our trip. We arrived after a rather peculiar if not precarious start which included Bangkok being on International news with their riots over former PM Thakskin. According to the media, Bangkok was under siege, as was their airport, and we stood in Munich with our heads tilted up towards the big screen as we and forty others that realized that CNN was replaying a story filled with guns and mayhem in our destination city. Of course the Germans seemed unfazed, and to be honest after a big pint of beer things seemed less worrisome than earlier. We contemplated not getting on the plane, and were convinced we may have to teach in Vietnam instead, and then we arrived in tropical Bangkok with Buddha statues and open arms. Everything was fine, and my already wavering faith in the media has been dropped to an even more skeptical status.
Of course, we also landed during the Thai New Year which turned out to be an interesting if not moist event. We were soaked with buckets of water during this holiday which celebrates and remembers the dead. The Thai people go to these tall, pointed statues where they put the ashes of the dead and all around them build many identical sand castles. It is also a time where monks pray intensely to Buddha, and local people pour water over him (as they do to the people too). So, after two days of acclimating to the heat and time change in our "hot box" room (which was three feet by seven and had NO windows) Christine and I packed our bags and headed south to Suratthani for a job interview. While we awaited an answer from an employer we went to the island Koh Samui. What an adventure! The beaches were white and endless and the sky melted into the ocean in a nearly redundant view of perfection. The best part was that we had ocean side bungalows where, when the rain raged down on us like BB guns, we sat on our thatched porch and just listened. Never have I heard thunder make such a cacophony of noise in my life. It was like an orchestra above us somewhere in the pink and purple lightning, making even the waves seem silenced. The rain was more like a mist of needles than anything I had seen, and on multiple occasions I was the last person standing on the beach, letting myself be covered completely with warm rain.
Of course, there are always good stories about the beach, and our favorites are the bed bugs that ate us the first night, and the GIANT three inch long cockroach that took over our room the third. Though, I must say the most shocking surprise of all were the white men on the back of motorcycles with Thai women clinging behind. I must say, I was warned of this, but to SEE it over and over again caused me to, more than once, give some dirty stares to equally dirty male individuals.
In Suratthani Christine and I lived for the vibrant night market. At seven, as the sun went down, the many eclectic vendors popped up selling everything from mint milk to Dior eyeliner. We ate Pad Thai every night that was made by the most wonderful older Thai woman. She had such an effect on us! She mixed the noodles, sauce, and peanuts on a large wok about two feet in diameter and the heat evaporating from it was a wonderful scent of grease and sweet chilies. She grew to know us, and greeted us with a hearty smile that we eagerly returned one hundred fold as only Americans apparently know how. After turning down the job through the Suratthani office, we decided to take a leap of faith and head back to Bangkok to sign with the company called AYC Thailand who would place us in public schools in Chumphon (still in the south but three hours north of Suratthani).
The train ride was something I won't soon forget. We bought tickets three minutes beforehand and noticed a plethora of foreigners unusual for that part of Thailand. We bought the third class tickets which were about seven dollars, and watched as everyone else (the white others I mean) got onto the first and second cars. We were on the 16th. I still think we are perhaps the first white people EVER to have done this, and never have we been more stared at in our lives. Open mouths, large, deep brown eyes pierced us as we waddled down the rows covered in our two cumbersome packs. The blondie and red head then sat down and OH the faces of the Thai couple who had to be next to us! Clearly they feared being ostracized by being in our vicinity. But, we won them over in the end and they were truly the most beautiful young pregnant couple ever. They touched our lives with their sweetness and clear love for one another, and being on that train for twelve hours, 9pm to 9am, was something I would never trade. Half the people laid on the ground on newspapers, barely fitting under the metal seats, and yet it was like a community. Everyone was eventually sprawled, touching a stranger, and as the night air blew in they dropped into an easy sleep as Christine and I fidgeted with our long legs and pale skin. Finally, we decided to lie on the ground with nothing, and the couple next to us, after we dozed for about thirty minutes, ended up throwing a jacket over us (like we could ever be cold in Thailand) to comfort us. Bless them! I am continually fascinated with language, or the absence there of, and how I can speak not a word of Thai, and the couple not one word of English, and yet we truly became friends after that journey. I think they need to to see white people in the third class as much as we needed to see what the third class entailed and how Thai people travel their country. So, we learned from each other, through tilted smiles and many hand gestures, and somehow I could start to hear the rhythm of their young love, as they could sense the joy for life that lay within us. Somehow not using words made it so much better, and as we hopped of the train in Bangkok to a gloomy, humid day, they leaned out the window and gave us a hearty wave. I guess it may not seem like one of those things that should really impact someone, in fact it was uncomfortable, smelly, boring and strange, and yet these things are all what make the trip worth taking; THESE things are why we are where we are and are loving it! It is not always easy, but damn it, it makes one hell of a story. And of course, I do enjoy sharing a good story :-)
So, we are sitting in Bangkok, eating more iced coffees than is wise, and just recently signed our lives away to teach until the end of September. Our guesthouse has enough fans to make the air reminiscent of cool, and the colors, as usual, are poignant and uplifting, similar to the food!
That is all for now (my fingers are cramping and you MUST bee tired of my rambling.....)
Sawasdeeka!!!
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