Road-trip to Loei Province

There was another three-day weekend last weekend because of a Buddhist holiday on Friday. On Monday, I the school director asked if I wanted to go with a bunch of the Thai teachers on their trip to Loei Province. I figured it would be a great chance to get to know some of the other teachers (there are about a hundred at my school), so I said yes.

Loei Province is in northeast Thailand, bordering Laos, and it's a popular spot to go and watch the sunrise over the Thai/Lao border. We left at six on Friday morning, dark and early, in a procession of vans with ten teachers each, plus a driver. The teachers in my van made a great effort to practice speaking English with me. Occasionally this led to some hilarious misunderstandings--when a teacher named Jung offered me something that sounded like "egg-hair" I found out he really meant "eclair." I also had to laugh at a conversation I heard between some of the teachers on the first morning of the trip, in which they were discussing my name. R and L are pretty much interchangeable in the Thai language, which means that my full name, Kimberly, is sometimes difficult to pronounce. I've noticed in a few of the student books I sign at the end of each class that my name is sometimes spelled "Kimberry" (which I suppose in some ways is at least better than Kimbelly). As evidenced by the conversation I heard on the first morning of the road-trip (which I only caught the gist of, since some of it was in Thai) this seems to have given rise to the belief that there's some kind of fruit called a kimberry. One of the other teachers knew my name was spelled with an L, so I didn't have to jump in and correct anybody, but I did get asked if they were pronouncing raspberry correctly.

Highlights of the trip included: stopping for fresh tamarinds, pineapple, and other fruit sold by the side of the road, a stop at a sort of international garden with lots of roses and other plants, a truly awful attempt at karaoke on my part (the other teacher did fine--I just happened to have the misfortune to pick a song where the music was faster than the words scrolling across the screen), watching the sun rise over the Lao border and a very foggy valley in Phu Ruea, walking through the street market at Chiang Khan, and visiting two really beautiful temples. Seeing the sunrise was a little funny, because all the other teachers, except one who's from China, thought it was freezing. True, it was cold enough for long sleeves--especially after experiencing three months of tropical heat. But it was only 16 degrees Celsius--something like 60 degrees Fahrenheit, a nice spring day in Seattle. Perhaps the funniest moment of the whole trip was on the last afternoon, when I was a little sleep deprived. We were walking through a market next to one of the temples--a temple the other teachers told me was built to symbolize peace and friendship between Thailand and Laos. I wasn't paying very much attention to where I was walking, just following the others and looking at the different stalls in the market. I walked straight into a metal pole, one of the supports for the overhead sunshades. The teacher in front of me had just walked under it without having to duck, but it hit the side of my head, and I had a very strange realization: as far as Thailand is concerned, I'm tall. At 5'4", who'd have thunk?

 Sunrise at Phu Ruea

 View from a street market near Phu Ruea

 The Walking Street at Chiang Khan

Duang, me, and Pheung at what is reportedly one of the most beautiful temples in northeastern Thailand.

The Butterfly that Came to Class

On Thursday, I was teaching my third-year students about the environment. I used a lesson I vaguely remember learning in fifth grade, in which we went through different types of environments (rainforest, ocean, tundra, swamp, etc). What I remember from the lesson I had when I was ten was that we were divided into groups and assigned one of the environments, which we wrote a paper about and painted on a mural. I couldn't exactly have my students painting murals, but I did have them write a paragraph for the environment, come up with a food chain that existed in the environment, and draw it all on a piece of paper. There was one funny moment where I had to correct a group who were drawing different desserts (I'd assigned them the desert environment).

About halfway through introducing the names of different environments, a butterfly flew through the window into the classroom. I've had pigeons and dogs before, but this was the first time I've taught a class with a butterfly. Strangely enough, while the pigeon proved to be a fairly short distraction and the students didn't even blink at the wandering dog, the butterfly was a complete distraction, although I did try to incorporate it into one of the environments I was talking about. While they worked on their group projects, it fluttered around the room landing on various students. I don't think it found the window again before the end of class.

I still find it amazing that there are butterflies everywhere in January. I also find it hilarious that the only environment the students described as hot was the desert . . . apparently the jungle isn't.

Sukhothai

Last weekend was a three-day weekend, so I decided to take the opportunity to head to Sukhothai, the city that was the capital of Thailand before Ayutthaya. Finding out exactly how to get there made for an interesting time--there's no bus from Doembang to that part of Thailand, and not even a bus from Suphanburi to Sukhothai. The closest thing to a straight line, as far as I could work out, would be to head south for an hour on a bus to Suphanburi, then east on a bus to Ayutthaya, and then get a bus going north to Sukhothai. Altogether, it would have been about a ten hour journey, not counting waiting for different buses. So I decided to take my normal bus from Doembang to Bangkok, and get a bus from Bangkok to Sukhothai. It was still a nine-and-a-half hour trip, and I felt a little silly going south just to go farther north, but at least the waiting at Mo Chit station in Bangkok was minimal. But, on the downside, the trip pretty much took up my entire Friday.

This is where I stayed in Sukhothai:

The owners and staff were incredibly friendly and helpful. Plus, it was a really good price--only 300 baht per night. The only down-side was the shared bathroom, but even that wasn't too bad. 

The actual tourist attraction, the Old City, is about a fifteen minute songtaew-ride away from where everyone in Sukhothai lives and shops, in the New City. I slept in a bit on Saturday, had breakfast just before nine at the restaurant in the guest house (which served pancakes!) and headed off to the Old City in company with a nice couple from Germany. 

Bike shops were right by the park entrance, with bikes priced at 30 baht for the entire day. Since the park is absolutely HUGE, it was definitely worth renting a bike. I spent most of the rest of the day biking around the ruins and the fields in between them, taking loads of pictures, and wandering around the festival that was going on in the central portion of the park. (I had pad thai served in a dish made out of a stapled banana leaf.) The park was beautiful and hot and divided into five portions, which each cost a hundred baht to enter. I spent hours just cycling around, not in any hurry, and I only went through the central and northern sections, which should give you an idea of how spread out all the ruins were. The amount of pictures I took is a little ridiculous, so I'll just share my favorites here, to give you an idea of the highlights. 

So . . . yeah. I could easily have spent even longer on Saturday wandering around and taking pictures. On Sunday, I got up early and repeated the nine-and-a-half hour trip to get home. But Saturday made both trips totally worth it! 

Tamarinds, Aquariums, and Crocodiles

I've been a horrible blogger this past week. My only excuse is that I've experienced a greater than usual amount of productivity in my writing elsewhere, and I went where the winds of productivity took me.

As to the happenings of last week . . .

Tamarinds are in season. I'd never seen a tamarind before now, although I've come across plenty of Thai recipes that call for the sauce. This is what a tamarind looks like when part of its shell has been removed and you stick it (for no apparent reason) on a plate of sticky rice:

I had to consciously remind myself not to think of centipedes or worms. However, aside from their positively alien appearance, tamarinds are quite tasty. You know how the edible part of a fruit is sometimes called the "meat"? Like the meat of a coconut? The phrase actually makes sense with a tamarind, because its texture is somewhere between actual meat and dried cranberries (the taste is in the dried cranberry vicinity, too). Watch out for the seeds, though--I'd swear those things can break teeth.

The tamarind here was part of a fabulous meal/party with a bunch of the other teachers, right after a trip to the local aquarium. As it was a weekday afternoon, the aquarium was nearly empty. It felt a bit like being given a private tour. A little surreal, but it was nice not to have to deal with crowds.

This is the shark tunnel that the aquarium is famous for:

A separate building holds all the fresh-water fish, and a fenced-off area between them has crocodiles. Walking through the aquarium was a lot like walking through an aquarium at home--minus the crowds--but the crocodiles were something else. It was a bit creepy, seeing that many all in one place, and so many of them lying unmoving like so many statues. Walking on the path over the enclosure, I kept thinking about a line from the film Jumanji contrasting alligators with crocodiles. Also, fun fact for the day, crocodiles don't have tongues . . . which explains why the crocodile in Peter Pan might swallow a clock--no tongue means no gag reflex.

Also, apparently the Thai traditional wai of respect extends even to crocodiles, particularly when they're wishing visitors to the aquarium a happy New Year.

Sunburn at Cha-am

I realize I've formed a bad habit of talking about things in a nonlinear way (time-wise, at least). And I've resolved to stop doing that. But New Years seemed more important for the last post. Now, let's rewind a little bit . . .

For the three days I had off before New Years, Rachael and I decided to head to the beach. I'm a little shocked it took me two months to get there, but that's part of living a minimum of four hours from any beach. Our indecisiveness made for last minute planning and much changing of said plans. Originally, we were going to go to Krabi. Then we looked at travel time compared to how much time we'd actually spend there, and changed our plans to Koh Chang . . . which changed to Koh Larn, which changed to Bang Saphan, then to Hua Hin. We can blame it on the hotels that we ended up in Cha-am (just north of Hua Hin and about 2 1/2 hours southwest of Bangkok), because by this time it was hard to find anywhere that wasn't completely booked.

So, after a two and a half van ride from Victory Monument in Bangkok, we were let off at Cha-am and got to the hotel by motorcycle taxi. Here's a view of the hotel from the fourteenth floor, where our room was:

Yes, I got a jolt of vertigo every time I looked down. Although, technically we were on the thirteenth floor. It was one of those hotels where they like to pretend for their more superstitious clientele that the number 13 doesn't exist. And this is the view from the tiny balcony in our room:

The beach was beautiful. Maybe not the celebrated white sands kind, but coming from Seattle where the water will turn your toes into ice cubes during the warmest months and the sand is more accurately described as pebbles, this was good. Yellow sand littered with seashells and water the perfect temperature. What surprised me most was how shallow the beach was--from the road, there was a line of trees, a line of umbrellas, a line of sand, and then water. You were never more than about thirty steps from the water. This is the widest stretch of beach I found:

The first day, the beach looked almost deserted--especially compared with what I was expecting. When the weekend truly hit there were more people to be found, both Thai and tourist. The tourists came mostly from places like Norway--and judging by how many Norwegian restaurants we found on the road along the beach, this was a pretty normal thing. At one point Rachael commented on how strange it was that nationalities seem to flock together even when they're on holiday--the whole idea reminded me a little of some of the commentary in E.M. Forster's "Room with a View."

The moon rising over the water that first night was one of those things that my art professors used to tell us never to try to paint or even photograph--it just wouldn't translate.

The next two days were busier, but not so busy that the beach was as crowded as, say, a beach in Florida. The water proved to be perfect swimming temperature, waves were practically nonexistent, beach chairs could be rented for about a dollar . . . and I let myself spend most of my time either reading, swimming, or walking along the beach listening to music. Some things I did not do, even though they were available: buy food or souvenirs from the vendors who wandered from umbrella to umbrella, ride a banana boat (pulled at crazy speeds by Thais on jet skis), or horseback riding--offered by barefooted Thai "cowboys" (meaning they wore jeans, flannel shirts, and cowboy hats) who rode the tamest horses I've ever seen up and down the beach. It was all very relaxing, except for the sunburn. Despite being careful about reapplying sunscreen, I wound up with lobster-red shoulders that are still peeling almost two weeks later--although it's turning my arms a darker tan than I ever thought I could achieve.

This is the sunrise I saw walking down the beach on Sunday morning (Sunday a week and a half ago, not two-days-ago Sunday):

And wouldn't you know it, those art professors were right--the picture doesn't come close to the real thing. 

Happy New Year!

I don't think I've ever had a New Years quite like this one. Normally, I spend New Year's Eve at home with family, playing games, watching movies, and generally just hanging out. At midnight we usually clink glasses filled with something fizzy and talk about what we hope will happen this year.

When 2013 hit:

I was in a boat on Bangkok River watching some truly amazing fireworks.

The boat thing wasn't supposed to happen. We were actually supposed to be at a place called Asiatique, which is on Bangkok River. Timing just happened to work out. We were hanging out playing games, but around 10 pm exhaustion and apathy hit, and we couldn't decide whether or not to go or just have a quiet New Years at Rachael's apartment. We headed out for some food, and the som tam and sticky rice was enough to refuel our energy. By this time, however, it was past 11, and given that we were depending on public transportation, we had some realistic expectations of ringing in the new year on Bangkok's sky train. But the taxi we took to the first sky train stop made good time, and we made both trains (we had to change lines) just on time. Then, going down to the dock from the sky train, we made it there just a few minutes before the boat was due to leave, too. The countdown happened just as we were pulling up to the dock at Asiatique, and we stayed on the boat for the fireworks.

Then we got off and wandered around for a while, figuring there was no point in trying to get back home so soon when so many people were going to be doing the same thing. There was a concert going on, so I got my ears blasted a bit by Thai music. Quite the experience when you're short on sleep. We headed home at about 1:30, but didn't make it until almost 3. I doubt I'll ever have another New Years quite like this one.

It was strange to think of the new year arriving 15 hours before it would hit at home. But I'm excited for this year. It's going to be a good one. Happy 2013, everybody!