Recently in Thailand

B-ball with the Locals

I have been playing basketball a few days a week with some of the local guys and some of my students since mid-November. I love playing with them. I don’t love it just because I am super tall and now know what Yao Ming must have felt like. I don’t love it just because every time someone pulls off a great shot or block or move the game stops so everyone can scream. Usually everyone yells “oh my God!” or “ooohhhhhh!” and the player yells out the name of an NBA player. “Yaooooooo!” for blocks. “Koooobbbbeeee!” for a nice jumper. “Leeee bron!” for a strong move to the basket. I got them saying “Steeeeeve Nash!” for a nice pass and “Curry!” for a splash three. They also say “made in the U.S.A.!!!!!” when I hit a three or block a shot. I love playing basketball here because I am able to relate to a group of Thai guys without really speaking. We communicate all the time, but I do not feel the language isolation that exists in other social situations. I feel like I belong to this group like I have belonged to other teams in the past. We joke, we celebrate each other’s successes and we compete.

I can tell that it is time for me to move on though. Recently the temperature has been getting extremely hot and it does not cool off in the evenings. The humidity is also increasing, which leads me to sweat a truly copious amount when I am playing basketball. I sweat through anything and everything I am wearing within the first fifteen minutes. I sweat so much that other players do not want to guard me in the post and will move out of the way to avoid body contact. And the Thais barely break a sweat! I do not understand how their bodies can deal with the heat and humidity without sweating and they do not take water breaks while I guzzle down 2 liters every time we play. It is time to move on, my body can no longer deal, but it was real.

Attack of the Jungle Dogs

Thai dogs hate tall white men on bicycles. This is a ridiculous statement, but the longer I live here the more I think it is true. There are definitely some Thai dogs that like me, but the majority of the dogs in Ngao are not fond of my presence. Every day when I walk into school there are three dogs that wait at the entrance. When they first see me they start off with small muffled barks and then start howling as I walk past them. They never bark at Caroline or anyone else. I had come to expect this and I was generally accepting that the dogs here were all bark and no bite. Then came the attack of the jungle dogs.

It was Scout Day, so naturally we didn’t have class and we were wandering around town doing random tasks with the Girl Guides (Thailand’s Girl Scouts). The final tasks were team-building activities at a farm owned by Sam, our coordinator’s husband. All-in-all it was a very fun day, up until I had to bike by myself back to our house to get Caroline. Caroline and I were spilt up taking pictures and videos for the school. Caroline went home for lunch and I left Sam’s farm to go find her and lead her through the backcountry roads to the farm.

I was casually biking along some dirt roads and took a left around a corner. In the middle of the road were two small dogs. As I pedaled towards them they just sat there, right in my way. I veered clear of them and as I passed they suddenly erupted into furious barking and began chasing me. As they started chasing me I started to see the grass and bamboo moving unnaturally. I knew something was coming, but I could not imagine that it would be 10+ huge dogs with their teeth bared, barking like savages. I felt like I was in a scene from the movie Jumangi with a bunch of terrifying jungle creatures bearing down on me! This scared the crap out of me and I began to pedal as fast as I could, but I was on an old 1 speed. They caught up and started nipping at my heels. I kicked a few and kept pedaling. Eventually they stopped chasing. I have never felt so scared in my life; with adrenaline running through me I saw Caroline and told her we had to go back to the house. I had to sit down. We called a fellow teacher to come get us to go back to the farm. When I returned I told the teachers what had happened and they laughed and laughed. They said if you stop pedaling they will stop chasing. I call bologna, these dogs wanted to taste some farang.

Karaoke Bus from Hell

Karaoke and bus sounds kinda fun at first. I love karaoke and it seems like a little bit of fun singing could help break up the monotony of a long bus ride. Adding some drinking into this mix could be even better. This long boring bus ride could be like a fun karaoke bar night. A party on wheels! This logic is wrong. So, so, so wrong. Karaoke buses are the worst. Let me tell you a story.

This past week we went on a trip with our entire school staff. Maintenance people, administrators, teachers, everyone who works at our school were packed onto two buses for a three night, two day excursion to explore the area southwest of Bangkok. The company that produces the notebooks the students use invited us to stay at their “hotel”. The hotel turned out to be abandoned workers quarters in the company’s factory headquarters (I slept on the floor). The night we stayed there Caroline and I competed in a super embarrassing beach couple competition, ate some very questionable seafood, and drank lots of whiskey. Other than that we saw two floating markets and spent some time at the beach. But I am getting off track because this story is about the karaoke bus from hell.

We were gone from Ngao for 66 hours; 45 of those hours were spent on the bus with a 15-minute food and bathroom break every 3 hours. Those other activities were just quick stops. 45 hours on a bus does not seem that bad, but this was 45 hours on a karaoke bus blaring Thai karaoke music. When I saw blaring I mean so loud that your body shakes, it takes intense focus to even think and you feel as though someone is violating your mind. We could not even hear the few TV shows we put on our tablets with ear buds in and the volume all the way up. Thais absolutely love karaoke. They love karaoke as a whole in the way that UW students love football, an insane amount. There was always someone singing, even at 2 A.M. The volume was never turned down. Most of the singers were those drinking whiskey non-stop, but some were simply drunk on karaoke. People were up out of their seats dancing and singing along nearly the entire time. I hated it, but I was also amazed by the stamina. No one in the states can compete with this sort of undying devotion to karaoke. In addition they rotated through the same 30 songs, with 10 being repeated a particularly frequent amount. It was maddening, yet beautiful.

Caroline and I could not sleep, could barely think and were starting to go deaf. Everyone else was loving the karaoke so much that we stopped multiple times on the side of the road because the karaoke computer wasn’t working properly. We waited for over an hour and a half for another bus to come at a pit stop because the battery that runs the electronics on our bus had been drained from all the non-stop karaoke. We were only 3 hours from Ngao at that point and it was 6 AM. We did not arrive until 12:30 because we stopped to fix the karaoke machine or just stopped so we would have more time on the bus because everyone else was having so much fun. It was hell for us, the Filipino teacher and a few Thai teachers, but heaven for everyone else. I will never again ride on a karaoke bus and I will never forget those songs, permanently echoing in my skull. I will be forever in awe of the karaoke greatness of the Thais. I thought I was hardcore into karaoke, but I am simply an amateur.

Friends Around the World

The past few weeks we have had a few visitors from back home and their presence was wonderful. Caroline’s sister and brother, Meghan and Chuck visited, as well as our friends Christie and her brother Blake and TJ. I was on the same school team, the David and Julia Uihlein Charitable Foundation Team at Alexander Mitchell Integrated Schools of the Arts, with Christie at City Year in Milwaukee. Yes that is an incredibly long team name that we always had to say when introducing ourselves to those outside of City Year. Christie and her brother, Blake, are ESL teachers in Taiwan. TJ was one of my co-workers while I worked at Nature’s Classroom last year. He is doing some serious backpack traveling around southeast Asia and spent time in Vietnam and Cambodia before meeting up with us for a weekend.

We met Christie and Blake in Chiang Mai and had a great time showing them a city we have come to enjoy so much. They were visiting Thailand because they had time off from teaching in Taiwan for Chinese New Year. Caroline and I learned a lot about Taiwan from them. Their experience teaching has been very different from ours. In Taiwan, school is just a lot more serious and structured than in Thailand. We compared the cultures and the food. Christie and Blake love Thai food, so they were having a great time with us. It was so great to be able to talk to other people who understood our situation very well, but also had a very different perspective. It made me feel lucky to have the opportunity to live and teach in Thailand.

We saw TJ in a town called Phayao, about 45 minutes north of our town. Phayao is very unique because it is located on a huge marshy lake called Kwan Phayao and there is a University there. It is a really cool mix of traditional Thai culture mixed with young Thai culture with a little bit of western tourism sprinkled in. There are loads of bars and restaurants. We took off on mopeds around the lake and ate along the way. We really enjoyed talking to TJ about his travels and about our views of Thailand. We met up with a few other teacher friends at night and had a great time drinking and eating delicious Thai food. Caroline and I feel so lucky to have been able to meet up with some people from back home.

TJ!

At a random school on our bus journey

Wat Chedi Luang with Christie

On the bus with Tanitta

Girls Guides

Girl Guides

One of the several embarassing Beach couple activities

Teaching in Thailand: A Farang’s Persepctive

Thailand has been an amazing adventure thus far. We have seen and done some amazing things. We have been filled with wonder and pushed way outside our comfort zone. During so much of our time here we are filled with that rush of excitement and curiosity that occurs from seeing and experiencing amazing, new things. However, the majority of our time is spent at school teaching, planning or talking with the other teachers. Our daily life has become a routine that does not really feel like an adventure anymore. In many ways this is exactly what we wanted to happen. We wanted to learn what it was like to live and work in Thailand and finally feel like the everyday is normal. Along with this normal-ness comes a whole new set of challenges that are deeper and more complex than those challenges that you experience upon first arriving in a new place. Many of the challenges we experience are related to school and how school functions.

One of the biggest frustrations for me has been the lack of actual class time students have. Many time students will come to school and then not come to class. Not because they are skipping, but because of some random 2 hour long ceremony or another school mandated function. In December we had 22 school days where the students came to school and only had classes on 12 of those days. The majority of my classes are Mattayom 6 students, the equivalent of seniors in high school. I was told on Monday last week that I would not be having classes that day because students would be studying for the compulsory national exam called the O-NET. After inquiring further I learned that I would not have Mattayom 6 for the next two weeks because of “test preparation”, which is one teacher with a microphone talking about the O-NET while ~200 students chat unaware in a large meeting room. Supposedly this will help the students focus on exam preparation, but they are really not focusing at all. This leaves me with 2 weeks of class before I have to give a final. Wouldn’t the students going to class be more valuable?

I have taught 6 full weeks out of a possible twelve and even when the entirety of a class is not missing, many individual students are missing for school-related functions. I know this happens in the states as well, but students here miss so much class. Caroline and I only see each group of students 2 times per week and with all this missed class time it is hard to string together successive lessons that actually help students progress with their English speaking ability. I feel like I am not making a very big impact and it is incredibly frustrating. Our experience in this regard is very similar to the experience of other foreign teachers we have met. I try not to generalize the entire Thai education system based on our experience, but when others have very similar stories it is hard to not generalize.

The laid-back attitude of many Thais and small Thai communities is prominent in school culture. Oftentimes, instead of teaching class, teachers will have students clean their classrooms or look at pictures or do some craft not related to the subject at all. When students skip class or do very poorly the Thai teachers just kind of laugh it off. The lack of seriousness in school makes it seem like there is a lack of rigor. Teachers do not seem to challenge students to have high expectations. Many classes are just a teacher droning on while the students half-pretend to listen. Students that are self-motivated or parent-motivated do well, but other students are not really challenged. When students are challenged they often shut down, especially when they are asked to produce an answer on their own or think critically. Teachers seem like they genuinely care about their students as people, but do not seem to care that much about their learning. It is important to have students that are good citizens, but it is also important to have students that are competent in basic academic areas.

About two weeks ago I was so furious about the Thai education system. I was so frustrated that students were wasting valuable school time on things outside of class. In my opinion sports and clubs are meant to be an after-school activity. I did not understand why teachers thought it was a better to cook a Thai meal, while letting their students work on homework. I was irritated every time something came up out of the blue and I was told I had no class or I needed to teach a class for another teacher that was absent. I wanted to write a post like this a month ago, but waited. I waited because I wanted to get over my sense of frustration that was so blinding at times that I did not see the good parts of Thai schools. It is also unfair for me to compare Thai education to American schools because they are different. Much of my frustration can be chalked up to cultural bias. I do not understand so much about Thailand, but that does not me that what I do not understand is wrong or less than.

Thais seem to get a lot right in school. Students are very rarely in bad moods, which is crazy because they are all teenagers. There are so many smiles flashing at me every day I cannot help but be uplifted and feel happy as well. Our school, Pracharatthammakhun, is known as “the happiness school.” Maybe it’s just something in the water, but Thailand is known as the land of smiles because there is such an importance placed on being happy and not stressing out over the little things. There is a deep sense of community at our school and a deep respect for teachers. I absolutely love teaching these students. When I actually get a chance to teach I am filled with a sense of purpose. The students laugh and are enthused very easily. I am taking each day as it comes and trying to notice the things that schools here do right. A little less stress and a little more fun might be a good thing in many American classrooms and schools. There are many great teachers here that I plan to observe more frequently to glean what I can. As a foreign teacher there is very little expected from you. Caroline and I joke that this will be the most laid back job we will ever have. I can watch birds from my classroom window in between classes. We have time to surf the Internet, work on videos and pictures. We typically only teach 4 hours out of the day and in those 4 hours I have a lot of fun. Other teachers are very kind and there is never a lack of food. We need to embrace the good and let the frustrations float away. I think we are finally beginning to understand, with 3 weeks left of teaching, that we’ll never quite grasp the complexities of a Thai education.

Christmas in Thailand

It is the future in Thailand. We are 13 hours ahead of those in the Midwest and we just finished our Christmas school day, which was a whirlwind. We had a special 45-minute assembly in the morning dedicated to Christmas. Unbeknownst to me before I began researching Thailand pre-departure, the 95% Buddhist country of Thailand loves to celebrate Christmas. It is not the intimate family Christmas that many Westerners are fortunate to celebrate, but rather a celebration of a strange and mystic tradition. Christmas staples like Santa Claus, Christmas Trees and Christmas cards are morphed into something uniquely Thai. Thais celebrate Christmas in the way many people in the states celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, except instead of green everything is red and a whole spectrum of other colors. The main point of the day is to have fun and theoretically experience some foreign culture. And on this day of foreign celebration they obviously asked the only farang in town to be Santa and Mrs. Claus.

In America the Christmas countdown seems to begin as soon as Thanksgiving is over. People decorate well in advance and advertisements are pervasive. Even though we had this big assembly the English department really began decorated on the 23^rd and 24^th. To us this did not make much sense. Why decorate only a day before Christmas? But these decorations will probably stay up for at least a month. Over those two days snowmen were made, a tree was decorated and two entire floors were covered with streamers and Christmas cards. There are many very talented students at our school. Some of these cards are just amazing, I kind of want to steal them. We were also asked on the 23^rd if we would play the roles of Santa and Mrs. Claus, aka Santee, on Christmas day. Of course we said yes and two costumes were pulled out of storage. Caroline’s outfit looked cute and was a decent fabric. The Santa Claus costume looks like someone whipped it up out of curtains and feather boas. It is definitely way too small, but I think I pulled it off in a homeless drag queen Santa sort of way. I had one major wardrobe malfunction. My beard did not fit very well and it was not very clean. The mouth hole began near my bottom lip and I thought that it covered my entire mouth. This resulted in me looking quite perturbed in most of the pictures because I was not smiling or I am making a ridiculous “ho-ho-ho” face.

During the assembly Caroline and I, along with our mini Santa and Santee were the stars of the show. I was actually thrilled to have a mini-me. They were so darn cute. We stood on stage awkwardly answering questions, standing next to speech givers and Caroline even busted out a little “Jingle Bells”. The best part of the day was when we ran out into the crowd of students and threw candy to them. I did not so much run as hobble because I tweaked my ankle playing basketball. The students and teachers thought it was hilarious to keep saying “khaaw dow Santa”, which roughly translate to “broken leg Santa”. There is just a sheer rush of joy that goes through you when you are throwing candy to adoring fans. The rest of the day we stayed dressed up and I belted out as many “Ho-ho-hos” as I could muster. We played games, watched Home Alone, ate cake and said Merry Christmas a few hundred times. I am pretty sure that Merry Christmas and Happy New Year are two of the about 50 phrases that most students know. Thai students must think that Christmas is a big candy filled party, but it is about so much more that is lost in translation.

I have really enjoyed and learned from spending Christmas in a totally new and different culture. However, the holiday season has been difficult. I have been especially grumpy because I am missing home, friends and family. We both dearly miss our own Christmas celebrations. We are not able to see family that we rarely have the opportunity to see like Caroline’s Aunt Maria and my grandparents, Aunt Winnie and Uncle Gordy. Facetime and Skype make us feel closer to home. Being able to say I love and Merry Christmas was a great gift. We both love when our families get together because they are such special moments in our lives when we are completely surrounded by the love and warmth only a family can provide. We also missed Caroline’s niece, Fiona’s 1^st birthday (even though we were there in photographic spirit).

I am also hitting the culture shock part of the acculturation process. Culture shock can happen after being a part of another culture for a while. What is happening to me is that many of my experiences tend to have a negative vibe. Things that I once found charming, I have been finding annoying. The laid back attitude is seeming more like sloth, the kindness that is shown seems hollow and the inability to communicate is no longer challenging, but isolating. And the 35 degree temperature swings in the 5 hour school day are just uncomfortable. I am still happy to be above freezing all day. Luckily I have a PIC (partner in crime) who has already been through this culture shock. Caroline assures me that things will get better. I am so glad to be here with her. I really admire people who are on their own in an adventure like ours because I would be pretty depressed during Christmas if I were here by myself.

There are many reasons to be happy this Christmas. We could not have done this without our supportive families and friends. We are going to Southern Thailand to lay on white sand beaches, swim in clear blue water and visit tropical islands. As I think about back home, I am sad, but I am also filled with a gratitude I have never felt before. I am so grateful for the families and friends that Caroline and I have. I am grateful to be in Thailand and have this life perspective shaping experience while we are young. Thanks to all of you for being a part of our lives and being there even though you are ~ 8,300 miles away. We love you so much and have a very Merry Christmas.

My students with a scary santa

Unknown teacher posing for a photo-op

Stylin’

Christmas ceremony interview

Just one more picture

Ho’ Ho Ho kids

Mrs. Clause

A Wonderful Day in Thailand

Caroline and I have had many wonderful days in Thailand. Each day there is a new challenge and something wonderful. This past week has been filled with challenges at school and social events at night. Yesterday, our Saturday was a particularly good day and it speaks so much about the experience we are having here.

Yesterday we were supposed to go to Lampang City in the morning for some shopping and then to a local national park to check out some natural wonders. The morning started off as planned. We left with our coordinator, Tanitta, her husband, Sam, and one of the student teachers, Little, at 7:45 AM. They were going to Little’s University, Lampang University, to have a meeting with one of Little’s professors about her progress (she is an awesome teacher so I am sure the meeting was good). Caroline and I went to Macro Market and Big C, which are Thai versions of Sam’s Club and Walmart. There was something surprisingly homey and comforting about shopping in those stores. We were able to find some things that we could not find in Ngao and we also found a few creature comforts, including red wine! I find it weird to find consumerism so comforting, but other than a few strange dried fish products it felt like home. There was even a movie theater that was playing the new Hunger Games movie!

After our morning shopping we had two lunches. One at a pizza restaurant with some amazing cheesy garlic bread and another at a restaurant called MK. MK is a chain restaurant in Thailand where you can create your own Pho (soup) and cook all the ingredients right on the table in a pot of boiling water. It was amazing! Our always-generous Thai parents, Tanitta and Sam, picked up the tab. After that we did not have time to go to the national park before it closed so we proceeded with plan B.

Plan B’s are very typical in Thailand and if you do not adapt to going with the flow you will have a very hard time fitting in and being happy in Thailand. I think that we are really starting to adopt the “mai pen rai” attitude. If someone calls and asks us to come over or go somewhere we say yes. If unexpected situations arise, we smile and make the best of them. This was very hard to do when we first arrived and it was exhausting. As we are beginning to acclimate, it is becoming easier and we are enjoying our experiences even more.

Our Plan B began with a stop at an amazing Burmese-style temple in Lampang. I will let the pictures speak for themselves regarding the beauty of the temple. Many Burmese immigrant workers used to work in the area in the lumber industry and the temple was built by one of the lumber Barons known as “Big Boss”. Behind the temple was a shallow pond with some of the biggest catfish I have ever seen! We fed them and some pigeons. Next up we went to a ceramics factory, which I initially was skeptical about. This factory was awesome. The company called Irada was one of a few ceramics factories in Lampang that produces high quality hand painted mugs, plates, and a variety of other items at extremely reasonable prices. I have never been so excited about ceramics in my life.

Our next stop was a town next to the Lignite Coal Mine. Once again, I was extremely skeptical about visiting a coal mine, but as the car drove higher and higher into the mountains I began to see why there were so many families around this mine. It was beautiful with mountains in the background and an exceptionally manicured public park and golf course. We even went grass sledding, which was super sanuk (fun). Who knew you could sled without snow? Then we went to a sunflower garden overlooking the mine and the surrounding mountains. Even a gigantic coal mine looks beautiful with mountains and sunflowers in the same view at sunset.

The journey home ended with dinner at Tanitta and Sam’s house with fellow teachers and one of Tanitta’s two sons, Ham. Our dinner was the same pho style dish we had for lunch, except with at Tanitta and Sam’s house we brought super hot coals inside the house in ceramic containers. We then grilled meats and vegetables over the coals; inside self-grilling. It was awesome and delicious. At the end of the meal I felt like Caroline would have to roll me home. We both had a great night’s sleep after such a long and enjoyable day. I feel so lucky to have such warm and welcome friends in Thailand already because on this day we did things that are not in any guidebooks. We were living like local Thais live. The entire day I felt genuinely grateful and happy. I think that is why the Thai people are almost always smiling, they are grateful for what they have and they are able to see the good rather than the bad. We could have been pissed off or upset that we were not able to go to the national park like we had planned, but we definitely saw all of the good during our wonderful day in Thailand.

Loy Krathong

So it has already been a week since the beautiful spectacle that was Loy Krathong, celebrated on the first full moon of November. Loy Krathong is a Thai holiday that has elements of different cultures and religions that results in a wonderful blend of traditions and beliefs. At its core, Loy Krathong is a festival where people pay their respects to the Goddess of the Water. People show thanks for all of the water they use and to ask for forgiveness for their sins and the sins of loved ones. Loy in Thai means to float and Krathong is the name given to the circular floating bouquet that people decorate magnificently and float into the river to as a form of thanks. We were able to float our Krathongs together. It is said that those in love should float their Krathongs side by side and make wishes about their love.

Loy Krathong in Ngao is something that will be hard to explain. Ngao is a small town with many smaller villages and with farming families that live outside town. Everyone shows up to take part in the Loy Krathong festivities. I mean everyone. Usually, the side streets have a constant, steady flow of traffic. On Loy Krathong there were thousands of people lined up and down the streets of the parade route and even more people down by the river. There were lanterns everywhere and all of these amazing parade floats that were made entirely or mostly out of natural plant materials. They were truly magnificent. Every group had a huge set of speakers blasting the Loy Krathong song or some upbeat Thai songs. Some groups had their own musicians rocking out.

Oh yeah, our school was definitely a part of the ceremonies and we were front and center for a lot of it! It felt a bit like a carnival and we were the strange new attractions to come in and steal the show. That is a bit dramatic, but we did take a ton of pictures. Everyone was so friendly and excited that we are now a part of their community. We were getting pulled here and hurried there and everyone said we looked like royalty (even though we were dripping with sweat, me much more than Caroline) in our traditional, local Thai dress. Caroline did look like a Farang-Thai princess and everyone kept saying “suaay, suaay!”, which is the Thai word for beautiful. It was an amazing evening that we capped off with street beers and food in front of a Thai soft rock band. They really did sell beer and whiskey right in the middle of the street and people took it upon themselves to make sure the Loy Krathong party was alive and well. As we left to walk home we encountered a music stage where a little younger crowd was gathered and a more upbeat Thai rock band was playing. People were gettin’ it! Thais really know how to party, but we had to go home because the next day we were gonna do it all again!

The next day we had school, which was sparsely attended by students. This sparse attendance was not a bad way to end the week after the night we had. As soon as school ended we caught a van to Lampang and then on to the city of Chiang Mai via bus. As soon as we arrived at the bus station we tried to arrange transport and no one would take us. The taxis and tuk-tuks said there was too much traffic because in Chiang Mai, Friday night is the Loy Krathong Parade. We finally found one brave tuk-tuk driver that would take us. Our first tuk-tuk ride in Thailand was quite the experience. There are truly no rules of the road other than do not get hit!

We got as close to the parade as we could without getting swallowed up by the people and we dove in to the swirling massof people from all over the world. Everyone was there to celebrate Loy Krathong. As we crossed a bridge we looked out to see the water full of little lights, which were the Krathongs floating down the river. Then we would look up to the sky and see thousands of Lanterns dancing in the night sky.

The night that ensued was equal parts wonderment, confusion, fun, and exhaustion. We met up with some friends from our Teach in Thailand orientation after a fair bit of searching. Mike and Kristen, who are teaching east of Lampang, and Dan and Izzie who are directly North of us in Phayao. We had a great time reminiscing about our very first week teaching, so many hilarious stories, miscues and miscommunications. We managed to walk to our hostel after meeting some other teachers at a place called THC Rooftop Bar (no THC consumed). Our hostel was situated on a tiny little Soi inside the Old City of Chiang Mai. It was a great location close to many charming restaurants and shops. That night Caroline decided wisely to hit the hay a little early, but I decided to go out with the rest of the folks to check out a local bar. We did not expect to find the EDM dance party sprawling out between bars and restaurants. Young tourists had taken over the cluster of bars and restaurants, with plenty of dancing Thais interspersed as well. Naturally we danced until around 2:30 AM and walked back to our hostel after some delicious street tacos. Asia has the best late night street food (I am daydreaming about those tacos).

The next day we hit up the old city of Chiang Mai. Sweet little boutiques and tasty food were the themes of the day. It was a gorgeous Saturday to hang out in Chiang Mai with the temperature hovering in the high 80s. Frequent snack stops were one great way to beat the heat. That night we visited the famous Saturday night walking street on Wal Lai (pronounced like the fish Walleye) road and an expansive food market. They say that eating and shopping are Thais favorite hobbies and they are also quickly becoming ours. Unfortunately I did not feel very well, but Caroline was in heaven at the market. I wish I had the affinity for shopping that she does cause she found some great stuff! Not a lot of clothes for 6’5” guys around the market…

We had a great weekend in Chiang Mai and a great week surrounding Loy Krathong. We will definitely be visiting the city again when there are not the huge swarms of tourists. It was an experience we are very glad to have had, but it was a truly exhausting week. This weekend we are looking forward to staying local and casually exploring. We are going to visit the closest big city, Lampang, for a little shopping and sightseeing. A quite, relaxing weekend sounds absolutely perfect and luckily Thailand is the perfect place for those.

 

Hello from Bangkok!

Hello Friends and Family,

It’s LJ reporting from the busy, culinary, farang friendly, and lovely city of Bangkok. First I should explain the word “farang”. A farang is a Caucasian foreigner in Thailand and there are currently a lot of us running around this little section of Bangkok called the Lak Si disrict. All of the locals are living up to the Thai reputation of being very tolerant, patient and friendly. And many of them already speak a little bit of English, so combined with our miniscule amount of Thai, things have been going very well! It has only been a few days, but I already feel comfortable here.

We first arrived at our hotel at 11:30 PM Thai time after 28 hours of travel, during which time neither of us slept for more than 4 hours. So you can imagine we were feeling pretty tired. Our excitement of being in a new country was overwhelming and we ventured out in the soi (side street) by our hotel and found a little pad thai street vendor. The cook had his daughter at work with him, since the kids are out of school on holiday. He had her serve us and when I asked how much, she practiced her English with us and proudly told us 40 baht. She was so cute! And her and her father were so genuinely happy.

Orientation has been filled with socializing, learning Thai and most importantly, learning how to teach English to students who may not know much English at all. Caroline and I have met some really amazing people from all walks of life and all areas of the US and Canada. Everyone has a different story to tell and everyone is buzzing with excitement about what awaits them. There is just so much to learn and so much to see.

Here are a few bits of Thai unofficial philosophy that will hopefully put the feeling that you get when you come here in perspective. The first words that you need to know when in Thailand are “mai bin rai”, which can be spelt in many different ways and has a few different meanings. At its core “mai bin rai” means “no worries, “chill out”, “hakuna matada” (for the lion king fans). We were told that in order to be successful and happy in Thailand, you will need to adopt this philosophy and just calm down. The only one who is going to put huge expectation on yourself is you. “Jai dee” means being kind to others. There are so many stories that past participants have about acts of incredible kindness and generosity of people they have met and complete strangers. Hearing these stories makes us feel so at ease here in Thailand and makes us so excited for what lie ahead.