Do you guys remember how I used to write travel blogs about all the places I visited? Man, those were the days, but now I’m insanely lazy. That, and frankly, detailing every instance of the trip just doesn’t seem as important as it used to. I’m not sure why. Luckily, on my last trip, I traveled with a friend, and she did all of that work for me. I’m actually pretty impressed with the writing; it’s pretty funny. I might be biased as I lived these events, but I think you’ll enjoy.
I had some visitors here last week–the first of a few this summer–which was a pretty good time. My parents, my aunt Anita, my little sister Kyla, and both my dogs (Widget & Bluto) made the drive out here. That’s no small task, either, as I believe the drive is something like 2000 miles.
Long story short, Rock Band fun was had by all. :) We also made an ill-fated attempt to go check out Mt. Rainier that basically involved us driving around staring at the clouds, haha. One thing people like to say about this area is that it rains all the time, but that’s just not true. Honestly, it really doesn’t rain that much, but it is cloudy damn near every day.
Anyway, I realized while they were here that my biggest “regret” (for lack of a better word) in living so far away from my family is missing my little sister grow up. Realistically, I can’t expect to see her more than once or twice a year, and that’s pretty disappointing considering how much she’ll likely change between visits. When I see her now, she’s always interested in what I’m doing and wanting to play games with me, but I’m sure it’s only a matter before all that starts to change.
I suppose for the time being about all I can do is try to head home for holidays and such as often as possible.
Well, I’m finally getting around to writing this post now. Sorry for the long absence. I’ve been terrible about keeping in touch the last few months. According to Juvers, it’s been two months since my last post, so I’ll start there.
The term ended at the end of February, and we’re on summer holidays now. I already miss my kids a lot, and I also miss the routine of going to my schools. Since then, I’ve been doing a wide assortment of things, including teaching holiday programs at schools, holiday club at the office, volunteer teaching, and teacher training. I suppose that’s all a bit boring though, so I’ll skip the details.
Last week was Song Kran, which is the Thai new year’s. They celebrate in a variety of ways, but the most fun is by having a nation-wide water fight. You walk down the street, and people just shoot you with water guns. I didn’t go anywhere special within Thailand for that, but I did get shot by some kids on my street. I guess you could say I enjoyed it.
I went to Malaysia and Singapore during the week I had off. During this trip, I visited Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Melaca, and Singapore. Penang is an island in the north of Malaysia. The highlight there was an Indian restaraunt which was highly authentic. KL is the capital of Malaysia, and the highlight there was the Petronas twin towers. They are featured in the movie Entrapment. Melaca was an old capital of Malaysia, and it had lots of historic stuff. Singapore was pretty cool, though it was insanely expensive. I was excited because they had Mt. Dew, and I have been craving it.
The big news, though, is that I will be starting work at GM, probably in July. I am going to be a controls integration engineer in a team working on the 6-speed transmission. Don’t ask what that means, because I don’t really know to be honest. I’m going to be in Milford, MI, which is just outside of Detroit. GM’s test facility is there. It’s called the Milford Proving Grounds.
I’m not sure when I’ll be coming home. It’s the million dollar question. I finish my contract here on May 30th, and I will leave Thailand shortly after that. I would like to go traveling for a month, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford it. I’m trying to find some work at a summer camp or something, but it doesn’t look promising.
I had a day in the office a few months back, and I was sitting around talking to my TT. This is actually the same TT as the story below. We were joking around, and she was helping me out some with my Thai. At this point, I was learning some words such as handsome, pretty, etc. We had a conversation, once again in Thai, that went something like this:
Me: I’m handsome, right?
TT: No, you’re fat.
Me: Yeah, I’m big.
It turns out, that went you say, “I’m big” in Thai, you aren’t talking about your body. There were about 4-6 Thai girls sitting in the office there when I said that. Needless to say, the word spread quickly.
Last Friday, I had to pick up my TT (Thai Teacher) on the way to the school at a bus stop. Unfortunately for me, the traffic was quite light that day, and I got there early. Her cell phone is broken right now, so I couldn’t call her for translation. It was up to me to convince this taxi driver to wait for her there. The following is an account of the conversation I had with the driver, translated to English of course.
Me: I want a woman here.
The woman is absent.
She is absent.
Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go.
(Points at the clock) Ten, ten.
Do you understand?Driver: A little (plus some other words I didn’t know.)
My TT arrived a few minutes later, and she and the taxi driver started laughing while discussing this conversation. It turns out, the sentence I had used “I want a woman here” has the connotation of “I want a hooker here.” Woops.
This is my second major slip up in Thai. I think I told the story before of how I announced that I had a big penis to several of my female colleagues. If not, I can share it later.
Also on Friday, I had a preschool kid (not in my class) throw-up in my shoes. It was glorious. She had incredible aim. She nailed them both, and managed to keep the floor pretty clean. I was thrilled to say the least.
I finally got the pictures my friend took on our trip to Vietnam. I found myself exhausted with the idea of traveling after this trip. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was the people there that really tired me so much. They were quite rude to me on several occasions, but then, to be fair, they have a good reason for disliking Americans. I did some traveling in Thailand over my Christmas break, and it was much more relaxing. More on that to come in the next few days. I only feel like writing one post today, especially since I’m now using internet cafes. My laptop perished earlier this week. I’m looking for creative ways to destroy it if anyone has any suggestions.
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| Vietnam |
The roads are horrible here right now. Not because they’re icy or anything like that–no, it doesn’t get that cold here. :) Actually, it’s because there’s just too many damn cars out there. It usually takes me about 5 minutes to get home from work, which I personally really like. Yesterday it took me 20. Now, granted, that’s not actually that long. On the other hand, it is 4x longer than usual.
Anyway, I’m getting ready to leave for a couple weeks. It’s cool that I haven’t been working at MS for even six months yet, and I can already take a couple weeks off. That’s how we roll, I suppose. I think next year, though, I’ll have to stick around. My building was dead quiet the last few days, and it’s probably the best time of the year to get some serious work done if you want to.
There was a holiday in Thailand last weekend called Loy Krathong. Here’s a link to a Wikipedia article about it. I’m not going to offer an explanation about it because mine will only be inferior. Don’t worry, that one is really short.
My Loy Krathong celebration started last Friday. My regular school had a hand, foot, and mouth epidemic so they canceled. I begged my way into an outing to another school where they were celebrating the holiday. They had games, a traditional song and dance, this hot air balloon/kite, and of course, they floated Krathongs onto the swimming pool.
On Saturday, I went with a bunch of foreign teachers and one Thai to the main festival in Bangkok. We started out at a temple which is close to the canals and fairly close to the main river. I’m really not sure why we were there, but there were tons of people in the area. It had a carnival type feel to it. There were stalls all over the place selling everything imaginable as well as a few carnival rides and games. The more notable things were a freak show, a show where monkeys were all dressed up, and 2 dunking booths with “beautiful” girls ready to get all wet. Most of them didn’t look that happy to be there, incidentally.
After the carnival/temple, we headed down to the main river. There, people were floating their Krathongs. There was also a parade of much larger boats and some fireworks. It was incredibly packed here as well. Most of the action seemed to be on the other side of the river, but the bridge crossing was jammed with people so we just stayed on our side. Afterwards, most of us were pretty tired, so we headed back to our area for some dinner and chilling out. I floated my Krathong on a canal near the beer garden where we were. My candle went out pretty quickly. I think that means I’m destined for a short life. Then again, I’m also destined to meet a beautiful woman because I’ve taken the last piece of food from a dish at a community meal. So I guess I’ll have a short, but happy life.
That’s right, I’ve got more pictures for you. The first set is an update of my ever-expanding Bangkok folder. Enjoy:
Bangkok
I think the new ones are towards the end, but not quite the very last ones. The last pictures in that folder came off a different camera, and the pictures are sorted by name. I’ve tried to change it, but I’ve never been successful. Basically, I just don’t care enough to do anything about it.
I recently made all of my travel pictures public here. However, I took some shots of my kids today that won’t show up there. It seems somewhat wrong to put those on the internet for all to see, like an invasion of privacy or something. Anyway, if anyone wants to see them, I will email you the link to the private album, assuming you aren’t a known child pornographer or something, then you can’t have them.
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.
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| Sukhothai |
I’m feeling too lazy to write anything informative or entertaining about the trip. Maybe I’ll get motivated some time later.
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.
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| 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.
We have Monday July 30 off from work because of a national holiday (Buddhist Lent Day), and, as you would expect, I’m taking the opportunity to travel. I’ll be heading off to magnificent Cambodia to see the world renowned Angkor Wat and hopefully a few other things which I’m not sure about yet. I’m going to book the trip tomorrow so I’ll find out then.
I was supposed to work on Tuesday, although all of the area schools are closed. For some reason the administration wants us to come into the office. I’m not sure what everyone will be doing. I, however, will still be in Cambodia doing a “visa run.” Our visas must be renewed every three months which means you must exit and reenter the country. The office pays for the trip out of country and gives you a day off to do it. I pushed my run up a few weeks early so that I can have this 4 day weekend. They are even going to pay for part of my trip since they pay for people to do their visa runs. I’m pretty excited.
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| Nakhon Pathom |
The plan for today was to head out to Nakhon Pathom to see the world’s tallest Buddhist monument and also a 40m tall standing Buddha in a park there. I was pretty excited because my friend and his wife were going to come along, and his wife is Thai. Since I didn’t even know how to get to the bus station, I figured this would be a huge help. At 7 this morning, I got a call informing me that they would be skipping the trip because she was sick. No worries though, I still had one travel buddy and my usual thirst for adventure. How hard could it be, right?
Well, getting to the bus station proved to be fairly easy. It was on the far end of town, so I took a canal boat as far as possible, and then picked up a taxi for the remainder of the trip. I had to use the phrase book, but even the taxi ride went off fairly smoothly. Then, there was a lady waiting for us at the bus station who literally opened the door of our taxi and asked us where we wanted to go. She directed us to the right bus, and we were on our way. The bus dropped us off right in the middle of town and the enormous chedi that we had come to see was right there in front of us. Things were going well.
Unfortunately, that’s where it all went wrong. I wanted to go check out this park that was in the guide book that had a 40m tall standing Buddha, but it didn’t really clue us in on how to get there. I was under the impression that this thing was on the corner of town, and the town wasn’t that big so we inquired with a tuk-tuk driver. He wanted 1300 baht for the journey, which is enough for an all expenses paid weekend on a tropical island. That wasn’t happening. Next, we asked a motorcycle taxi, and he directed us to a bus which was shocking to me. Turns out though, we were on the bus for an hour before we were told to get off. Not exactly on the edge of town, and not exactly the right place either.
I called my friend with the Thai wife, and she explained that Nakhon Pathom was the province and the town we were first in. The town we were in now was also in that province, and that the Buddha image we sought was probably there. We were both about to give up for the day before I made this call, but we decided to have a quick look around for the town’s temple where the Buddha was sure to be. Just as we were about to give up, I saw the roof of a temple at a distance. It looked as though it was a long way away, but we started towards it anyway.
I can’t really accurately describe this walk. Let’s just say it was not short though, and it was not in a straight line. We took many a wrong turn, but we pressed on. I felt a bit like Captain Ahab hunting Moby Dick. I could see this temple, but the roads to get there were hardly logically placed. At one point, we dead-ended in a school. Once we finally got to this temple, it was closed up and practically abandoned. I felt like $1,000,000. I felt pretty bad dragging my friend along on that trek as well. I’m a bit obsessive compulsive when it comes to tourism.
We were looking for a place called Phra Phuttamon. I assumed that when people kept responding to the world Phuttamon, they were recognizing the name of the park. Turns out, it was a city. Phra is the word for Buddha image, which I didn’t know when I was trying to get there, so it makes sense that Phra Phuttamon would be in a temple in Phuttamon. The guide book told us to take the bus towards Phuttamon, but I think now that we were supposed to get off sometime earlier than we did. It says, “All Bangkok-Nakhon Pathom buses pass the access road to the park; from there you can walk, hitch or flag a sawngthaew (I have no idea what this is) into the park itself. From Nakhon Pathom you can also take a white-and-purple Salaya bus; the stop is one Th Tesa across from the post office.” We interpreted that to mean that the stop to get the bus in Nakhon Pathom was across from the post office. I’m thinking now that we were supposed to get off at a stop across from a post office. Either way, I’ve passed by the access road to this park four times now, and I have no idea where it is.
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