Shouzer

I got my first ever massage today after work. It was a traditional (I think) Thai massage. I think that I liked it, but I’m not entirely sure. It was really relaxing, and I felt great afterwards. However, I’m not sure why because the individual bits of it were painful at some points. Part of it was the novelty. Full body massages are something I’ve always associated with loads and loads of money, and in fact, this place was pretty swank. It cost me less than $10 for an hour though. If I was paying American price for that action, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it so much. Oh, and before anyone says anything, it wasn’t one of those kinds of massages.

There was a lot of stretching involved. She also rolled my muscles around a lot, sometimes it felt like she was trying to pull them off the bone. It was a bit strange, and that part hurt a bit. The stuff she did to my feet felt great though. If I ever go back, I might just get a foot massage.

I’m also finding out that there are some unexpected consequences to being a kindergarten teacher. One is that every time I see a kid on the street, I just want to run up and give him/her a hi-5. The other thing is that I have found myself making sound effects even when I’m not in the classroom. This can be somewhat embarrassing when dining with friends or whatever. I can just imagine myself going to a job interview and making a little “bing” sound when I produced my resume.

Since good ‘ol Albert posted some pics of his new place, I figured I should post some of mine. I can’t let some Philipino outdo me. And yes, Albert, that was racist. And yes, Albert, I misspelled Filipino on purpose.

Before we get started, I wanted to give you a disclaimer. This little mini-tour will be great–grand, even. However, it’s nothing compared to real life. That tour would be LEGEN…wait for it…and I hope you’re not lactose intolerant, because the second half of that word is DAIRY! LEGENDAY! Bee Tee Dub, if you’re not watching How I Met Your Mother yet, do it. It’s ridonk with hilarity. (No, I don’t really talk like that… How I Met Your Mother references abound).

So anyway, when you take your first step into the place, you’ll see part of my kitchen and my living room. Now, question. When is a futon mattress on the floor next to the end table with the laptop in front of the TV a good thing? Only always!

Over to the right is where I make my Macaroni And Cheese With Cut-up Hotdogs In It. It’s so good, it deserves capitals. That’s just how it rolls.

Through the door past that is bedroom number one. Since I have no furniture, it’s basically just a big floor where I throw all my clothes. Okay? Awesome.

It’s actually got two closets, which is great. The closet on the left is where I keep all my regular shirts and stuff. The closet on the right, behind the door, is where I keep all my nice clothes. Nice shirts, nice pants, awesome suit, ties, etc. All that’s important is it’s where I go when I need to suit up.

Through the door there is the master bathroom. Which, of course, implies that I have two bathrooms. Very nice.

Standing in the kitchen and facing what would left in respect to the first picture, we see a closet and a hallway. Nothing too fancy there. Just your standard closet and hallway, which is actually rather disappointing. If I’d built the place, there’d totally be trap doors or something right around this area. Totally.

Going into the hallway and turning left, we come to the other bathroom. It’ll definitely be nice having a pair of bathrooms once I actually move into the bedroom, I would think.

From that bathroom, we see the washer and dryer. They might look ordinary. And, in fact, the dryer actually is ordinary. This ordinary-ness (or even ordinarity, perhaps) is all the more upsetting when I consider the washing machine. It’s basically dead silent when it’s running. I’d never heard of such a thing, but it exists–not unlike the illustrious loch ness “creature”, Nessie. (We’re trying to get away from the term “monster”; Nessie is a gentle creature, very much unlike Sasquatch, which I think we should all be on alert for). Continuing on…

If we had turned right in the hallway, we’d be in the second bedroom. As you can see from the picture, this is going to be my office. I guess it’ll be my guest room, too. But mainly my office, hehe.

Finally, I decided to snap a closer pic of my desk. Since it’s the only real piece of furniture I have, I figured it deserved its own picture. The red computer on the left is named thewaiter, because it’s my file server. Get it? It serves up all my files. Genious? I thought so too. Kyle will know what I’m referring to, anyway. Next up, the Black Beauty in the center is jMoney. Mostly because it’s money. On the far right, we have an old HP that I bought from Kyle for $50. It’s my web server, svn server, hg server, and proxy server. Its name is WOPR… Anyone? Takers? Oh, and the bright blue router on the floor is home to jNet. It’s a badass D-Link DIR-655. That means gigabit lan and 802.11n wireless.

Well, that about wraps it up. I realized after I started writing this post that I didn’t take closer picture of the living room or the balcony. Maybe I’ll do that later, but probably not. I believe that’s my laziness kicking in. Oh, how I both love and hate my laziness.

I think it’s delightfully obvious that only the Japanese could have invented this. You’d be a fool not to be impressed by stupidity of that bad boy right there. That’s about all there is to that.

It’d be a horribly bad idea in the first place, but on top of the normal level of craziness, it’s USB-powered. You really could only wear it while you’re sitting at the computer. And sure… You’ve got to look good while you’re on the computer–I’ll grant you that. (Not a problem for me. I always look good. Booyah.) But seriously, what if want to look awesome and and stay cool when you’re not sitting in front of the monitor? Well then you’re out of luck, and that’s just sad.

I officially finished my probation last week, and it’s pretty awesome to be done with it. They have a two month probation here at Fun Language to make sure you don’t suck and that you’ll actually stay. You are observed at the end of the two months and if you pass, you get a pay raise. I am now making a whopping 2000 baht more per month, which amounts to about $65. That does go pretty far here though. You could do a weekend trip to the beach for that price if you were conservative about it.

Anyway, my probation judgment was much easier than I expected it to be. One of the Thai trainers came to observe my TT a few weeks ago. The head foreign trainer was there teaching at the school that day as a substitute, and after talking with the Thai trainer who had just seen me and my TTs (I happened to work with all 3 that were at the school that day), she decided that she would just pass me. They were already overdue on judging me, and they are extremely busy right now. Normally, one of the two top trainers comes out to watch you for a day, and you get this major formal feedback. It sounded quite nerve-racking to me, and I’m glad I don’t have to go through it. Plus, I didn’t really know I was being judged at the time, although it still made me nervous for her to be there. I actually assumed the Thai trainer was there to observe me because my TT is really experienced, and I saw her filling out an observation form. It scared me a bit; I won’t lie.

I got the first fruits of my probation pass today though. I was reimbursed 2000 baht for my travel expenses to Cambodia. So, to recap, I got a day off and a 2000 baht bonus to take a vacation. Nice. Hopefully I can pull off something similar next time around. My visa runs up in October, and I want to go to Vietnam. I’ll be getting reimbursed for my initial hotel stay next week as well. It’s always nice to get paid a little more money.

I’d just been doing my thing for the last few weeks. You know, work, sleep, work, sleep, etc. But then all of a sudden, BAM! Megan, Corinne, and Jordy were all out here too. Sure, Jordy had been here all summer for an internship with Amazon, but ignore that fact. Facts are the devil’s favorite tools. “Who needs them?”, that’s what George Bush says.

Anyway, Megan came out here to visit, and Corinne had just finished her internship and was out to visit Jordy. Good times were sure to follow, and follow they did. We didn’t do anything particularly noteworthy, but it was still a blast. We saw Bourne and The Simpsons (both of which I really enjoyed), we ate out at a few nice places, we got drunk (read: I got drunk) and played some guitar hero one night. We generally just hung out. Oh, and Megan got her cook on. I hadn’t eaten a real meal in like 3 weeks, so I was all about that.

What’s funny about it, though, is that I’m not doing anything very different than I did all last week. Oh, I haven’t gone to any movies or eat out. I’ve just been sitting around watching tv (and three movies today, haha), but it’s more or less the same type of stuff. Regardless, it certainly is not the same. I imagine this could be considered pretty obvious, but I guess the point is that it’s nice having company, even if you’re all just sitting around together.

I’ve been in my permanent place for about a month now, and I still don’t really have any furniture. You walk in, and basically what you see is a TV, a mattress on the floor in front of the TV, a chair, and my laptop in front of the chair. That’s about all there to it. It makes for a pretty short tour.

The fact of the matter is that I haven’t been able to afford furniture yet. Rent, food, cable, internet, phone, gas, etc. It’s all just too expensive. I did manage to get a desk for my “office room” last week, but it’ll probably be a while before I get anything else. That’s in large part due to the fact that I plan on getting a nice TV at some point, but hey… You’ve gotta have your priorities straight. Who needs a bed frame when you’ve got a mattress and a 50″ TV? That’s the question I want an answer to.

Sukhothai

I’m feeling too lazy to write anything informative or entertaining about the trip. Maybe I’ll get motivated some time later.

Yeah, I would consider paying for this if I was at home:

Link

I probably wouldn’t, but I would consider it. I would love to see Pacman Jones in a wrestling match. Something about that just seems very funny to me.

I’ve been trying to stay abreast of the news at home, although I admittedly don’t do a very good job of it. Of course, I didn’t do a great job of it when I was still there, but that’s beside the point. I’ve read some about the tussle between Barack and Hilary over national security, and I don’t particularly like what I see. I read this article today, and it really scares me that these are our two mostly likely candidates for president.

According to the article, Barack wants to withdraw from Iraq, send more troops to Afghanistan and invade Pakistan. Maybe invade isn’t the right word there. It isn’t clear what level of troop commitment he is looking to make there. Still though, do we really need to attack another country? I just don’t see the point of this. Why can’t we have a leader that realizes you can’t fight a war of ideals with bullets and bombs?

Barack also stated that he would never use a nuclear weapon against terrorists in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and Hilary pounced on it say, “‘I don’t believe any president should make blanket statements with the regard to use or nonuse’ of nukes”. Well I don’t see why they shouldn’t make a blanket statement about the use of nukes. What possible scenario can she envision in which it would be a good idea to drop a nuclear weapon on terrorists in either of those countries?

Politics depress me.

I got paid this week, and I decided to go purchase a new toy. As I was really struggling with the lack of variety in my diet, I decided to buy an electric griddle. Basically, I ended up with this thing that is about a 20 inch circle that gets hot. You can cook food directly on it or put a pot in the middle for boiling things. The box says you can bake things with it as well, but I don’t see how that is possible. I’m not bothered by that though because I rarely feel the need to bake anything. It would be nice to be able to cook a pizza, but I wouldn’t be able to find the ingredients anyway.

I christened it this morning by cooking a lovely breakfast of eggs, hash browns, and sausages. The circle in the middle that holds the pot is also perfect for cooking eggs in. I’ve never had a fried egg come out in such an exact shape. I can’t explain how good it was to be able to cook again. Cooking is not only my hobby, but it sustains my need for food. I can order 4 things from the Thai street vendors, and it nice to be able to create some variety again. Plus, now I can cook western food whenever I want. This week, pasta and tacos, not on the same night obviously.

When I moved to Thailand, I knew I would have to adopt some of their customs, but I never really expected their culture to ever rub me the wrong way. Unfortunately, sometimes it does. There is just a different perspective on what is rude and what is not here. For example, titles are quite important here. Older people should have the title “P” in front of their name (I’m not sure how it’s spelled), and those in power get the name “Khun”. They are pretty lax about this with me though. I am one of the youngest teachers, but I use the “P” prefix with very few people. Most of the foreigners don’t bother with it unless the age gap is quite big. I’ve mentioned before the necessity of “Wai”ing all the time, which can get to be a pain when I’ve got stuff in my hands. I usually don’t do it in that case. Still, I bust one or two off every time I enter and leave a school and then multiple times throughout the day when I see teachers or admin in the halls.

What strikes me as odd though are the things they find perfectly acceptable that I would normally consider very rude. For example, no one seems to mind interrupting other people. The number of times a taxi driver has interrupted me when I was having a conversation with a TT is unbelievable. I’ll be in the middle of talking, and the taxi driver will just butt in and start a 5 minute conversation. They also have no qualms about speaking in Thai in the presence of a foreigner. By this, I mean if I am sitting at lunch with 3 Thais, they will speak in Thai the whole time while I sit in silence. I never really saw this as much of a problem until I was in Cambodia with 2 Germans. They practically refused to speak in German when we (myself and an English girl) were around. There were times that the conversation had nothing to do with us, and they were having problems communicating. We had to practically coerce them to speak German to each other. It was nice to have someone be so concerned about my presence. On the other hand, the Thais sometimes talk about me in Thai. I called some girls out on that a few days ago because it honestly does bother me. They tell me its never anything bad, but I still don’t like it.

Obviously, it is my place to conform to their culture. I am living and working in their country. This is just not an area I really expected to have any trouble with. It is tiring to have to constantly adjust myself to fit into a new culture, but I love it as I like challenges in my life.

So, I realized I haven’t posted on here in ages, and as such I felt it was time for an update. Don’t worry Hark, no ER stories anymore as I no longer work in an ER (at least for the time being). Like Al I’ve moved to Chicago (thanks for the apartment listings, btw) and am slowly settling into life here and in my new apartment. I also found out while walking to Starbucks this morning that I live just 1/2 block north and 1 block west from Al.

Scott and I are now living together–and settling in quite nicely, I might add. After having a long-distance relationship for the past two years, it’s weird to think that I’ll be seeing him everyday from now on. Guess I haven’t gotten used to the fact that short visits are no longer what’s in store for us.

The city is wonderful, and the neighborhood our apartment’s located in is great. It’s close to Rush, which is where I will be starting grad school in September. It is close to the expressways and the CTA, and to some really great restaurants and bars…all within walking distance. I definitely didn’t have it this good in St. Louis.

Now to just finish all this unpacking….

Cambodia

Like all of my trips, this one started early on a Saturday morning. We took a bus to the border town of Poi Pet. The ride was uneventful and completely not worth talking about. Poi Pet, though, was an experience. First of all, it was the first time in my life that I have ever walked across a border. How crazy is that? They drove us to customs, we got out, walked through, and then got on another bus. Poi Pet was a dirty town. I was appalled at the conditions when I first saw it as I have never seen poverty like that. It didn’t seem quite as bad on the way back.

I made my second mistake of the trip in Poi Pet. I exchanged money there. I had read on the internet that it is difficult to exchange money in the interior of the country, and the guy who was guiding us recommended it. Can’t imagine why he would do that. I was far too trusting as a result of my last package trip. It was absolutely flawless, and the people along the way bent over backward to make sure I had a good time. I should have realized that a guy who ferries tourists across a border for a living wouldn’t care too much about the quality of my experience. I didn’t exchange much though, so it wasn’t a big deal.

We go incredibly lucky in Poi Pet on the other hand though. They gave us a car and driver to take us to our final destination, Siem Reap. The road to Siem Reap was dirt, and when I say road, I mean path. I’ve driven across smoother fields. There were pot holes in this thing that could easily eat a car. Along the way, I kept seeing kids selling a brownish liquid in old coke and pepsi bottles. I had no idea what it was, but someone informed me that it was gas. It was something I had never seen before.

Before we left Poi Pet, the driver stopped at a shop to get his car repaired. I have no idea why he didn’t do this before we got in the car, but we weren’t there for long. There was a fairly small crack in his windshield, and he wanted to get it repaired. A guy comes out of the shop, and traces the crack on another piece of glass with a marker. He goes away for a while, and then he comes back with a crudely cut piece of glass. He attached it over the crack with an epoxy and some tape. It wasn’t exactly the type of fix you would see at home.

We got to Siem Reap at night after a bouncy ride in the car. Our hotel was pretty nice, but there was a problem. They had little idea what was included in our package. We bought this package from a travel agent in Bangkok, and this guy had sent the hotel the shortest email in history to inform them of our arrival. They had no idea what was covered, and we really didn’t either. It was a bad idea to book a package, but I had no idea what kind of infrastructure to expect in Cambodia. It’s not like I was traveling to Western Europe or something. The hotel was quite modern though, and they had loads of tours you could take. It would have been much easier and somewhat cheaper to have booked the tours there. We pretty much had to haggle with the hotel for everything, and I felt bad doing it because they will probably have to pay for some of it out of pocket. I have come to the conclusion that package deals from Bangkok are only useful if the destination is both popular and near the city. The Kanchanaburi trip was amazing, but the destination was extremely popular as well. The guides knew exactly where we were going and when, and they went out of their way to make us comfortable because they wanted us to recommend business to them. Plus, we saw a load of stuff on the way there. It would have been impossible to have taken a bus to Kanchanaburi and booked the tours there. Half of the trip was over before we got there.

Anyway, Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples were just stunning. My favorite places were the spots where giant trees had grown up over the walls of the temple. It looked amazing to see this roots jutting down the sides of 800 year old ruins. I think the pictures speak for these scenes better than I can.

One other cool spot was a room where you could stand against a wall, hit your chest, and hear it echo through the room. It was supposed to be good luck to do so. It reminded me of those whispering chambers where you can whisper across a big room due to the acoustics.

All of the temples were originally Hindu, but were then converted to Buddhism later. Therefore, they had signs of both religions. It was cool to see the ancient carvings and symbols.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was the freedom we enjoyed. They let the tourists explore these old temple ruins with little to no guidance. It was so amazing to crawl over these piles of rubble in a secluded temple in the jungle. It felt as though we were the first people to be there in hundreds of years. It was so nice not to have people worrying over my safety all the time as well. If I wanted to scale the steep steps up the side of a temple, I could. Most of them didn’t even have hand rails, but no one cared. I loved that.

Sunrise at Angkor Wat was also a pretty amazing experience. The sun peaked over this stunning temple, bathing it with gorgeous light. It was definitely worth getting out of bed early for.

For the first day, we had a tour guide showing us around Angkor Wat and some of the surrounding temples. This was actually the most frustrating part of the package deal. We were assured we would have a tour guide, but we had to pay extra. However, the guide was well worth the money. He was extremely friendly and knowledgeable. This guy had fled Cambodia in 1979 because of the communist Khmer Rouge regime. He grew up in a refuge camp in Thailand, and he could speak fluent English, Khmer, and Thai. The man was simply a joy to be around for the day. We became quite friendly with him, and by the end of the day, it was though he was just one of the group. Of course, I had known him for nearly as long as some of my other traveling companions so that’s not entirely surprising.

Due to the poverty of Cambodia, the tour guide was fairly cheap, $25/day. Between the four of us, we had 2 tuk-tuk drivers as well, meaning we had three people working for us for a day. All of this cost a total of $50. It is really nice to get the kind of service for that kind of cost, but I felt somewhat guilty about it. I really felt as though I should be paying those guys more, and we did tip them. On the other hand, providing them jobs and contributing their economy will help drive their salaries up. The more demand, the higher the price.

All around the temples, there were children peddling souvenirs, food, and drinks. These kids were extremely persistent. They would swarm you and try to get you to buy their stuff. Everything was a dollar. “Mister, mister, you buy big water. Only a dollar.” That sort of thing. They were very good salesmen as well. They would ask you where you were from, and then spout off random facts about the country. “Oh, you from America. Capital is Washington DC. Population is 300 million. President is George Bush. What state are you from?” They didn’t know the capital of Illinois, but they all asked me. I mostly just ignored these children, and some had funny responses to that. “Can’t you hear me? Oh, you must be very drunk. It is very early in the morning to be so drunk!” It was fairly common for them to compliment you as well. “Oh, you are very handsome. Would you like to buy a T-shirt?” The kids were all much older than they looked, at least, if you assume they were accurate when they gave their age. Perhaps they were malnourished and not growing quickly enough.

The food in Cambodia was amazing. They had good, French bread everywhere. I miss good bread a lot in Thailand, and it was nice to have some again. I assume that they had such good bread because of the French colonization. Some Cambodian dishes I tried were Amoc fish, which was similar to a curry, Loklak, which was stir fried beef in a gravy with a fried egg, and Marango Chicken, which was chicken in a brown gravy. All were very good.

The trip back to Bangkok was difficult. We took a bus back to Poi Pet this time, so it was a much more difficult ride. I was in Poi Pet for 2.5 hours because we had to wait for a coach bus to fill up. That was frustrating because we got there just when the previous bus filled. Budget traveling is filled with these moments.

All in all, I had a great time. I know it doesn’t sound like it from these comments, but it was simply amazing. Angkor was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, and it is always nice to experience another country.