Going where I’ve never been

…and now that I’ve actually read my blog, I realized that I’ve included quite a few. I’ll try to rush a little less with these entries!

Today it rained and rained and rained and then rained a bit - no, a LOT - more. It’s pretty incredible, really. The most incredible thing is that 90% of the population drives scooters, and they continue to do so in torrential rain while continuing to carry entire families, ladders, umbrellas (ANYTHING) along with them. I shy away from my scooter in even a drizzle, rain can be painful when you’re moving over 20mph!

Along with the rain comes muddy, river-esque  roads, extremely lush flora, hoardes of mosquitoes and a quiet Friday night shut indoors. Being shut indoors, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are shielded from the great outdoors!

The showers in our place consist of a shower head on the wall with a small drain in the corner of the bathroom. Basically, the entire bathroom floor functions as the ‘bathtub’ and once you are done, you squeegee (?) as much water as you can down the drain. The rest of the water simply has to evaporate, which is sped up due to the windows that don’t close. Each window consists of two sheets of glass with about a four inch gap in between them. This lets in a great variety of creatures and teaches you to leave any open boxes of food IN THE FRIDGE.

Anyways, about an hour ago we discovered a black and white lizard the size of a cat sneaking it’s way in between the panels of glass, looking for refuge from the storm. My housemate Raina’s scream was enough to help him change his mind before he’d gotten too far in, and we’re hoping that it was enough to scare him off for good! With that said, there is a gecko living in my bedroom that I’m perfectly fine with, as he takes care of any mosquitoes or other insects that find their way inside.

Tomorrow’s package deal won’t happen since too many people backed out due to rain, but a few of us are going to walk down to the harbor and find someone to take us out to Ko Phi Phi for the day, bypassing all of that unnecessary buffet lunch and whatnot. It should be far less expensive and much better (in my book, at least) than being shuttled around all day. I’m not worried about the rain, we’re getting wet either way!

Hopefully I’ll have some good photos (again, weather-permitting… the camera may not come along) tomorrow, but for now I have a $3 bottle of Thai brandy to get to…

We finally got our official school/housing assignments yesterday and I am in fact in an area of Bangkok (outskirts though, luckily) and will be teaching at a vocational college (ages 18-20). That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll know english…Thai people know surprisingly few english words at all, they just make sure to have their signs and menus translated in tourist areas. There really isn’t a good grasp on our language at all here, which makes sense once you try to saw a few words in theirs!

Anyways, my housing was described as an “apartment” (we’ll see what that entails) with free internet, but no bed or hot water. Luckily the bed thing was a typo, but unfortunately the hot water thing was no! In any case, free internet will be nice, and three of my classmates will be living in the same place.

I’ve masted hello, thankyou, and sign language quite well by now, along with the art of removing your shoes before going inside a shop, the wai (bowing for greetings), the sign for “check please,” and am well aware that I should always use ‘rock paper scissors’ and not a coin toss to determine things in class (money has the king’s image on it, which is revered as the image of Jesus is…they view him as both a leader and the father of all fathers, you should never ever let a coin touch the ground!).

I’ve finally left my safe little running sidewalk and gone out exploring a bit more in the mornings, and have been well rewarded with new beaches, new food stands, more runners and a million more stray dogs.

This weekend (weather permitting…it rains every few hours) a group of us are going to head out to Phi Phi Island (where “the beach” was filmed), monkey beach (hundreds of monkeys running around) and a few other remote islands. Package tours aren’t usually my thing, but we’re getting a 12 hour day, food/drinks, several otherwise inaccessible islands and snorkeling gear for a great deal! Note to anyone who might come to Phuket for vacation…do NOT book things like this in advance or through a hotel! Go straight to the guy with the boat! This package sells online for 3500Baht ($120) and we are getting to go for 1300Baht (about $40)…it didn’t even take any bargaining!

I’ve got homework to get to, thanks to everyone for the comments!

But it’s actually a good time! We met our instructor, a Dutch guy named Kors, on Sunday night at the bar next door. After many, many beers with him, we were expecting a pretty laid back, slow-paced education. Once Monday came around we found that it’ll be quite a bit more intensive than we may have thought, but it’s extremely imformative and after only two days in class I’m feeling much more confident about getting in front of a class. He did an entire lesson in Dutch to illustrate how our Thai students will feel when we start speaking nothing but English to them, and it was quite eye-opening.

I’ve been starting my day with a run around the only sidewalk in sight, which is about a 2K loop around a lagoon. Thais are up very early, and many of them are out running at 6am. I had a cheering squad this morning (a group of young runners that I passed) and then one of them tried to race me…I left him in the dust It’s a great time of day, and I also saw my first monks this morning, walking barefoot down the road with their rice-collection bowls. It really is a whole different world, and I’m really enjoying it thus far.

We are training at a college in Phuket - every morning a song taew (a basically a noisy, smelly truck with a covered bed and two benches running down each side) comes to take us the 45 minutes to the school. On the first morning the entire Thai staff was there to take photo after photo, followed shortly by the cameras for the local TV station! We all dressed up as we were told, but luckily the rules (for training) are much more lax than that and today we were able to show up in pants and flip flops.

Yesterday they took us to a Tesco for lunch (a huge supermarket chain almost everywhere but the USA - it has everything from groceries to clothing to a mall to a food court…walmart-ish), which was good because I was able to find a pair of flipflops (men’s size LARGE), bad because the food choices were things like KFC, McDonalds, etc etc. We all decided against that and were able to find food near the school. None of these places have roman letters, much less english, so ordering was quite an ordeal. Using a phrasebook we thought that we ordered a few different dishes, but the woman cooking apparently took the safe route and served us all the same dish, fried rice with chicken and chilies. It was very tasty and cost less than a dollar, so no complaints from us! I think next time I’ll use the point-and-pray method…

I just got in from a post-school swim in the ocean with a few friends and am now about to head down the road in search of more cheap, delicious Thai food (surprisingly hard to find around here, as it’s a tourist area and there are many italian, mexican, french, etc places). There will be more photos soon…

So I’m here in Phuket and things are pretty much wonderful! I landed yesterday around noon, my bag made it with me, and I was promptly picked up, along with a fellow trainee, by a guy named Neil. He drove us the hour or so to our accommodations, which actually surpassed the photographs! We have little beach “villas,” 3 or 4 in each one, with our own bedrooms upstairs and a common living room/kitchen/patio downstairs. There is a beautiful pool on site and we are less than a five minute walk from one of the 12 beaches on the island.

This is definitely a tourist area, but it’s a good, easy introduction to Thailand and the food is still quite cheap, the roads are still chaotic, the people are amazingly friendly and it is HOT. It feels like Florida in the dead of summer, complete with afternoon thunderstorms and palm trees doubled over in the wind. It’s wonderful!

There are 15 of us in the group and everyone has hit it off extremely well. It’s a good mix of girls and guys, americans, canadians and brits. We’re all expecting our “training” to be pretty lax and are looking forward to what will more or less be a month of vacation at a beach resort.

No matter how cheap things are, however (beer excluded - one beer costs as much as a meal), it is EASY to spend far too much. There is too much to do, too much to eat, too much to drink and too many neat things to buy. I should be fine as I’m pretty good at moderation, but I will certainly be spending more than expected here. There are several of us that want to get our diving certification done, so we’re going to try to pull it off while we’re here - hopefully during the week between this course and when we start to teach, as it is a four day ordeal.

I’m still weighing the pros and cons of renting a scooter - it’s cheap (the girl next door got one for three weeks and paid less than $100) and I would love to be able to get around the island, actually see it while I’m here without having to hire transport (there are more varieties than you can possible imagine!), but I am slightly concerned about making through the month without an accident! It’s actually not that busy on the island and no one drives fast, but they do drive on the left (sometimes), lanes are merely suggestions, and the signs (whatever the say) might as well not be there. Needless to say, they haven’t really discovered sidewalks and walking isn’t always the smartest option! So we’ll see.

Anyways, things are great so far and I think that I’m in love with the place. We lucked out and the ethernet connection in our villa (which is supposed to cost 1000Baht/month) is working and we are enjoying free internet. My only regret is in not bringing more clothing…you are literally soaked the second that you walk outside. Luckily clothes are cheap and plentiful here…I just may have to lose a few pounds first!

Strangely enough, China seems to be the only place along my journey to offer free wifi in the airport! The bulk of my flight(s) is done, I’m here in Hong Kong waiting for the final 3 hour leg to Phuket.

I boarded the plane in San Francisco at 1:30am on Friday and landed 14 hours later at 6am on Saturday - I’m still trying to wrap my head around that, but the flight overall wasn’t bad. It was a huge, comfortable double-decker plane - they served us dinner, I promptly went to sleep and that’s really all that I did until breakfast time. The jetlag shouldn’t be bad at all…

It’s really foggy and drizzly out, but I was able to catch a small glimpse of fishing boats and mountains as we flew in earlier - it appears to be a beautiful place.

I’m already starting to get used to being the only blonde for miles around and hearing more or less no english. Of course, this being an airport, everything is subtitled and I really don’t feel too out-of-my-element yet. I’m sure it’ll hit, and soon…

But this is where I will be spending the month of May (rent free, mind you)…

http://www.naiharnvilla.com/

…and that makes the nervousness turn into excitement! 2 hours til I head out, it’ll probably be a few days before I get back on here!

It’s my last night in the states and I finally started to seriously pack…I thought it would be a breeze, but my light packing isn’t quite light enough! Or maybe my small backpack is just too small? Half of what I’m taking will get discarded once I’m done teaching, but it’s got to make it over there with me.

In any case, I’ll make it work as I absolutely refuse to commit the sin of bringing another bag! All of these minor “loose ends” are turning out to be pretty big projects and it’s going to be a loooonnnngggg night…

I’m here at my parents’ house in Denton, trying to figure out exactly what is coming with me in that very-small backpack that’s sitting in the corner. I had a wonderful last few days in Austin (hence the reason that this blog did not get put together), followed by a classic Macsas bbq here in Denton, complete with tons of family and friends - I’ve got some great people in my life.

Gabe left early this morning, heading back to work in Austin - it was a tough goodbye, but luckily time will fly and soon we’ll be together in Thailand having the time of our lives! For now it’s just me and my sister’s dog Bunnycorn (yes, really) hanging out at the house, wondering where to start with this packing thing…