We're Back!

Here’s a map of our trip, so you can know where exactly we were for almost a month!

India was amazing. It was overwhelming and frustrating, but also awesome in the truest sense of the word. We arrived in Delhi and were bombarded with everything: smells, requests for money and food, endless honking, cold and fog. Some highlights from Delhi include:

-Old Delhi

Jama Masjid, the largest and best-known mosque in India

-Qutb Minar

-Our first taste of delicious food to come throughout the trip
-Everywhere we went: more and more people, and honking

After a few days in Delhi we took a 7am train to Agra. Getting on the train was quite the experience. The train pulled up and there was a mad dash by hundreds of people to cram into the cars. We had to run down 7 or 8 train cars to find ours and then push our way through a crowd of people pushing in every direction just to reach our car door. Once inside the car, people had boarded from both sides without knowing where their seats are so there was a jam of people in the narrow aisle, everyone with luggage, and no one making any concessions to let people through. Anyway, we finally made it to our seats and slept and read for the 3-3.5 hour ride to Agra.

The Taj Mahal is incredible. It’s hard to put into words. Everyone has seen pictures, but standing in front of it is indescribable. It’s beautiful.

Taj Mahal:

Close up:

The following day (we were only there 1 night), we were both starting to get sick so we sat on the roof of our hotel (with a view of the Taj Mahal) and drank tea and read all day until it was time for our train that evening.

Here's a video from the roof of our hotel:


When we arrived at the station for our train to Jaipur we realized our train was 8 hours late (supposed to leave at 5:45pm but not going to arrive until almost 2am) – and we were told that it would likely be later than that. Instead of waiting for our very delayed train, we found a car and arrived at our hotel in Jaipur by 10:30pm.

Jaipur was great, but we were both sick so we took it easy. Everyone always hears and talks about the unavoidable Delhi-belly while travelling in India, but we were both fine stomach-wise the entire trip. We both caught colds somewhere along the way because it was colder than we were expecting and hadn’t brought enough warm clothing with us. We were in Jaipur for Christmas, and the big highlight was buying textiles. Jaipur is known for their textiles, and we bought some for ourselves and gifts for our families.

Showing us how the block printing is done:

A finished block printed textile:

After Jaipur, we took a train back to Delhi where we stayed for 1 day before catching a flight to Bagdogra. Bagdogra is the nearest airport (and it’s very small) to Darjeeling. From there we took a car up to Darjeeling. It was about a 3-4 hour drive up a huge mountain with great views, lots of switchbacks, and not a great road. I was expecting to get carsick, but never did! We also shared the car with a Buddhist nun from Scotland, Kay, who was preparing to do a month-long solitary meditation at a temple there. She does a lot of this kind of meditation – her longest time was 9 months without seeing or speaking to another person!

Darjeeling was beautiful, and a nice change after the hustle and bustle of the Golden Triangle (Delhi-Agra-Jaipur, called that because so many tourists visit those three – and they form a triangle on a map). It was very clear (but cold) 5 of the 6 days we were there so we had great views of Kachenjunga almost our entire trip:

In Darjeeling, we visited the Happy Valley Tea Estate, the Himalayan Zoological Park (the highest altitude zoo in the world!) and the Himalyan Mountaineering Institute. Tenzing Norgay was part of the team to first summit Mt. Everest, along with Edmund Hillary in 1953. He lived most of his life in Darjeeling, and was the first director of field training for HMI.

After a 3-4 hour car ride down the mountain on a very windy bad road, we took a 7 hour train to Guwahati in Assam where we stayed for the night before taking another 4 hour car ride to Kaziranga National Park. We arrived mid-afternoon and met Jacob’s aunt and uncle, Anya and Joe, when they arrived around 10pm that night. Kaziranga was great, we went on a couple game drives, did a lot of bird watching, went on an early morning elephant ride where we went right up to a mom rhino with her calf, and took walks in the nearby villages.

Our elephant ride:

Here's a video of the mom rhino with her calf:


Here's a video we talk on one of our walks, school was out for the day and these kids were playing in the street:


From Kaziranga we went to stay on a tea plantation in Balipara. We stayed there for the next few days and went on lots of walks, went to tea plantations, explored a local market, and went to a few different local villages for meals. Assam is a beautiful and diverse place, and it was great to meet people and learn more about the history of the area.

Jacob, after he tried the ghost pepper:

We flew from Guwahati to Calcutta and spent the last 4 days of our trip touring the city. We were with Anya and Joe for this part of the trip as well and went to one of Joe’s talks. Anya had arranged the same tour guide she had used when she was in Calcutta in November with her parents, and he did a great job showing us around the city for 2 full days. Here are some pictures from our time exploring Calcutta:

Flower market:

A Calcutta street:


It was wonderful spending time with Anya and Joe, and it was amazing to see so many different sides of India on our trip. We drank (and came back with) lots of tea, read a lot, and came to appreciate many aspects of our lives, and the life we’ve created in Bangkok. On our flight back, we talked about what a remarkable time we had in India, but were both very much looking forward to getting back to Thailand.

After returning from India we had a couple days to rest, then Jacob’s parents, Eloise and Alan, arrived in Thailand for a weeklong vacation. We had a great time showing them around Bangkok, and it was fun being tourists in Thailand with them. The first day we went to a couple different tailors and we each placed orders for a few items. Jacob and I hadn’t done this yet, but in certain areas of downtown Bangkok there are blocks and blocks of tailor after tailor. We consulted Trip Advisor to pick the ones we used, and were very satisfied with the final products.

Jacob's fitting:

View from our hotel:

The next day we went to the Grand Palace and Wat Pho. We had a guide at the Grand Palace and it was pretty spectacular. Jacob and I had put off going because we knew we would go when Eloise and Alan were in town. Wat Pho was also amazing, it’s known for the Reclining Buddha, which is 15 m (49 feet) high and 43 m (141 feet) long. It’s also known as the home of one of the earliest Thai massage schools. Jacob and Eloise both got foot massages when we visited.

At the Grand Palace:

Wat Pho:

The next day we took a flight to Chiang Mai and spent two great days exploring the city. We went to an elephant show (the elephants played harmonicas, kicked soccer balls, and painted landscapes!) and on an elephant ride, played with tigers, visited a hilltop temple, walked around a huge night market, and bought jewelry and antiques. It was a wonderful two days with cooler weather (and it wasn’t humid either!) than we had in Bangkok, and this is when Alan started talking about retiring in Thailand! :-)

Here are some pictures from Chiang Mai:

A video of elephants playing soccer!


We returned to Bangkok for 2 more days and spent some time getting fittings for our tailored clothes, relaxing riverside at our hotel, and in a sky bar (31st floor with great views of the city!), exploring Bangkok’s Chinatown during Chinese New Year, going on a dinner cruise down the river, eating lunch at the Mandarin Oriental, and visiting the Jim Thompson House. It was great spending time with Eloise and Alan and we’re glad they had such a great time here. Watch out everyone, they might be moving here in a few years!

I haven’t sorted the hundreds of pictures from India or our Thailand travels, but will get them up eventually and send another update with info about what Jacob and I are up to now that all the excitement is over, and we’re back to regular life.

We miss everyone, let us know how you’re doing!

Off to India!

Hi everyone! It’s been awhile, but time for another update. A lot has happened since our last post.

Thanksgiving was nice, I went shopping with some of the other teachers and we all hung out after work and started cooking. We didn’t have turkey, but we had 2 rotisserie chickens as well as mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, green beans, stuffing, pumpkin and apple pie. You can see a picture here.

At the time of the last post, I think school had been cancelled for 2-3 weeks. They decided to cancel the rest of the trimester and not start up again until January 4th. I’ve still been coming in to work, but no students are around. We’ve had a couple workshops, I learned how to use Scratch and Google SketchUp, and we also had an Art Workshop. Mostly though, just a lot of sitting around not doing much.

Jacob has been consulting with Laureate and has really been enjoying the work. He’s gone down to Hua Hin (a beach town a couple hours south of Bangkok, where we went on our first weekend trip out of Bangkok) the last 3 weeks from Tuesday through Thursday so I’ve missed him in Bangkok, but he’s been having a great time meeting Laureate employees and seeing the work in action. You can see some pictures from our trip to Hua Hin here.

Laureate is an international, for-profit, higher education company. They have 60+ universities and 675,000 students in 28 countries worldwide, and Bill Clinton is an Honorary Chancellor of Laureate International Universities. Laureate has a strong presence in Latin America and Europe, but they are just getting started in Asia, so there is a lot of room for growth here. So far, he's enjoyed all of the people he's met and has enjoyed the projects that he's worked on.

He also just heard back from business schools. He got waitpooled at Stanford but admitted to Emory with a full scholarship! Since he began this project with Laureate, though, he had already been strongly considering foregoing business school for now. This is a job that he would have been looking for post-business school, so if he can get it now that would be great. Anyway, many decisions to be made over the next several weeks.

In other news, we’re heading to India on Monday! We’ll be there for 26 nights and 27 days, and so far have 4 flights booked, 4 trains booked, and 8 hotels booked! We fly into Delhi, where we’re staying with my Uncle Ranjit’s cousin’s daughter. After a few days there we head to Agra (to see the Taj Mahal) and Jaipur (the largest city in Rajasthan, known as “the Pink City”). After Jaipur we’re back in Delhi for a couple days then fly to Darjeeling (a hill station in the North, and home to the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, a UNESCO World Heritage Site). We’re in Darjeeling for a little less than a week then off to Kaziranga National Park (one of the oldest National parks in India and the largest habitat for Indian single horned rhinos, also a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and a tea plantation in Assam. After that, we’ll be in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) for the last few days of the trip. The last week or so, from Kaziranga National park on, we’ll be with Jacob’s aunt and uncle, Anya and Joe. We’re very excited about the trip, and about getting to spend some time with Anya and Joe outside of the U.S.! We will be sure to take tons of pictures (as usual). We’ll be in Jaipur for Christmas and Darjeeling for New Years and hopefully will have good enough internet to Skype for the holidays.

A few days after we return from India, Eloise and Alan will be arriving in Bangkok! We’re still in the planning stages, but we will be up in Chiang Mai for a couple days, and spend the rest of the time sightseeing in Bangkok. We’re excited to see them and to show them where we’ve been living for the last 4 months! More news on that trip in the next post.

Oh, I forgot! I won’t be teaching at DSIL anymore. I’m starting a Master of Education program through the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the degree is in Educational Policy Studies with an emphasis in Global Studies in Education. The program starts the third week of January and I’m already registered for my first two courses: Education and Globalization and Human Rights and Justice in Education. The program is all online and takes 2 years to complete. I’ll finish up in December 2013, no matter where we live between now and then!

Anyway, this has gotten long. Check out my picture-a-day blog (you can also just see the photo album for the blog here if that's easier) to see what else we’ve been up to!

We miss everyone, and wish you a Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

Mid-November already, I can’t believe it!

It’s Thanksgiving next week!

Our last post was from Phuket, and a lot has happened since then. After spending 4 nights in Phuket, we took a bus headed to Takua Pa and hopped of at Nam Khem. Nam Khem is a small town that has a pier where we took a 10 minute longtail boat road to the island of Koh Kho Khao. We spent five nights on Koh Kho Khao and it was amazing. When we arrived we noticed very quickly that there weren’t many people on the island, everything was very quiet, and we didn’t have free wi-fi. We thought it would be great to be disconnected from the world on a beautiful island but that we would be ready to get back to civilization after 5 nights. We were wrong! We were not ready to leave! Now a little more about Koh Kho Khao…

To get there we took a bus from Karon Beach (where we were staying) to Phuket Town, and then a bus from there to Nam Khem (just north of Khao Lok). There was a little sign that said Koh Kho Khao with an arrow pointing left, so we started walking that way. After about .5km, a truck stopped and a man speaking no English whatsoever gestured for us to get in - which we were grateful for because we drove for at least 2km before reaching the water.

Rather than reaching a pier like we were expecting, we ended up at his house. He sat us down, gave us each a cold fresh coconut, tried again to convey his meaning to us, and then left us alone for a minute. He came back out with a phone and dialed his nephew, who spoke great English, and who explained everything to us. The pier was just next door, but the man thought we must be tired after our trip and wanted us to relax for a minute before getting on the ferry, which he would take us to when we were ready. Before we left, he showed us around his property, which was huge and beautiful and had lots of different tanks with koi in them. He had to have been a koi breeder; he had at least 20 tanks each with at least 10-12 fish in them. He also had a few big scary guard dogs that started coming at us and barking, but after a quick reprimand from him they turned and walked away slowly. After walking around his property, we ended up at end of a walk way, we were able to walk out on a little cement deck over the water. He pointed to the pier, which was probably only 30m away.

From that pier, we took a 'long-tail boat' the short ways across to our new island home. These are noisy and slow, but look pretty cool. From there, we hopped in the back of a jeep which took us to our hotel. It's listed as a four-star hotel, and it's clear why. Our room was huge, with a giant tub and rainfall shower. We had a large private balcony facing west with two hammock-chairs. While we don't have a view of the ocean, every other room-type does (and each of those is much more expensive than our room). They also have private pools, and the highest-class version is a two-story bungalow. High season hasn't started yet, which is why we basically have it to ourselves now - but I'm sure it is packed from Dec-Feb.

Our second or third morning, we rented a motorbike for the first time in order to explore the island. On the way (we were walking along the side of the road, and again didn't know exactly where we were going) to the rental place, a lady pulled over and asked us where we were going. We told her, and she said she'd give us a ride there. This wouldn't be too out of the ordinary, but she happened to be driving a blind man somewhere when she spotted us. She left him on the side of the road to drive us there (after both of them reassured us that he wouldn't mind waiting there for a minute)! It was only a short distance, but it’s a good story to illustrate how generous people were on the island and how happy they are to have us visiting. Phang Nga province, where Koh Kho Khao is located, was one of the most badly affected by the tsunami in 2004 (especially this island). While they have done an amazing job rebuilding, it’s clear that tourism hasn't fully rebounded there, and so people were always more than happy to help out where they can.

It's less than $10 a day to rent a motorbike and much easier to drive than we were expecting. We drove the 14km to the northern most tip of the island where we were greeted by a wooden sign with 'Virgin Beach' painted on it. The sign was right - absolutely nothing there except for sand and water. As we walked down to the beach, hundreds of little crabs scattered - apparently they aren't as accustomed to seeing people as elsewhere. There wasn't even another set of footprints in the sand. Our next stop was at another beach for lunch. As beautiful as the rest - you can find the pictures that we took of it online (see below!).

After lunch we went back to the pier, which is at the southernmost tip of the island and is where we rented the motorbike to fill up on gas. It was in old liquor bottles. We stocked up on snacks (since there are no stores near our hotel at all) and hurried back to the hotel, trying to beat the rain but *just* losing out to it. We spent most late afternoons on our balcony watching the rain pour down and reading our kindles.

Leaving Koh Kho Khao was hard but it was time to get back to real life. We’ve been back in Bangkok for about a week and half now. So, what else is new? My school cancelled the rest of the term. Classes had been cancelled for 3 full weeks when we received an email late one night that the rest of the term had been cancelled. We had been closed so long due to the flooding in Thailand that had finally reached Bangkok. Our school (and the neighborhood where we live) has yet to see any water, but many of our students and teachers homes and families have been greatly affected. I still come to work every day, we’re having meetings and workshops, and planning for the next term which starts January 4th.

It seems like the floods are finally subsiding, at least in some places. The prime minister said today that some parts of Bangkok could still be flooded into next year. It’s hard to find accurate news though; we’ve heard so many different sides of the story at this point. There has been lots of frustration and protests about how the situation is being handled. Angry residents have been tearing down walls of sandbags and blocking major highways. The frustration is coming from the fact that some parts of Bangkok are suffering badly while the city center has stayed dry (due to strategic floodwalls and diverting of water). Last I heard, damage is estimated at around $6 billion USD.

In other news, Jacob had his interview for Goizueta Business School at Emory at 11pm our time last night. It was funny having him shower, shave and put on a suit and tie at 10-10:30pm! It went well, and this morning he got an email inviting him to interview for Stanford. Those are the two schools he applied to first round (business school had three rounds of applications), so he’s doing well.

We’re currently figuring out visa stuff for our trip to India in January. We’re going to Assam and Kolkata with Jacob’s aunt and uncle. We need to leave Thailand a few days before Christmas because of Jacob’s tourist visa. We don’t know where we are going yet, but wherever it is we will leave from there to India in early January, and not return to Bangkok until the end of the second week of January. The third week of January Jacob’s parents are coming to Thailand and we’re currently in the process of planning that trip – probably a couple days in Bangkok followed by a few days in Chiang Mai, then a few days back in Bangkok to end the trip.

Now for some pictures! You can find them at:
Thailand Month 2!
Phuket
Koh Kho Khao

And more pictures at my picture-a-day blog too!

Thailand Floods and Kuala Lumpur

This post is coming to you from Phuket! Last weekend we were in Kuala Lumpur. It’s a tough job… but someone’s got to do it =).

Since our last post, flooding in Thailand has gotten worse and worse. The country is experiencing its worst flooding in 50 years. According to the most recent article I read, 62 of Thailand’s 77 provinces have been inundated and 3.5 million acres and as much as seven million tons of crops have been destroyed. From what I hear from people in the U.S., this hasn’t received much news coverage there. If you’re interested, google “Thailand flood” and articles will come up. Here is one of the most recent. This website shows a map of the flooding, it’s in Thai but all the blue parts are the flooded areas.

Water has been slowly approaching Bangkok for a couple weeks now, and we keep hearing different news every day. So far, 9 days of school have been cancelled. At the beginning of this week, a 5 day holiday was declared for people to evacuate. The Chao Praya river runs through Bangkok and a combination of monsoon rains and high tides have combined recently to overpower some of the key barriers blocking water from entering the city. Over the past few weeks, water has been diverted into nearby areas that were already flooded to keep Bangkok safe, but not much can be done at this point. Now the water just has to drain to the ocean, directly through Bangkok.

We were told by the school to stay in our apartments or try to leave Bangkok, so last night we purchased tickets to Phuket, an island in the South of the country, and will be staying here through Monday night (at least). School is supposed to open again next Tuesday, but everyone has been saying not to be surprised if it’s still closed longer. Accurate news is hard to come by concerning whether or not our neighborhood will be affected, and we’ve been hearing for a couple weeks now to be prepared for 60-80 centimeters any day now but nothing much has happened. One Saturday night there was about ankle-deep flooding, but it was gone by Sunday morning.

The airport was packed this morning, and flights were delayed because everyone was trying to leave town. If we hear school is closed longer we’ll probably try to stay down here longer. There is so much to see down here, and it’s all beautiful. Now for more on our trip to Kuala Lumpur!

We had a scheduled 3 day weekend from school (separate from the flood stuff), which coincided with the weekend Jacob needed to leave the country because he’s on a tourist visa which needs to be renewed by leaving and coming back to the country every 60 days. I took the Friday off (school ended up being canceled that day because of flood stuff anyway) and we went to Kuala Lumpur for a four day weekend.

Kuala Lumpur is a very interesting city and we had a great trip there. The city feels completely different than Bangkok, or anywhere else either of us has been to in the region (or world for that matter). Primarily, these differences lie within the people and the city itself. The people are quite diverse, and the ads around the city reflect this by ensuring that there are always at least four people who look completely different in each of their ads (chinese, malay, indian, a combo of those, and lighter and darker skin for all of those). Most people there are Muslim, and there is also a full range of Islamic clothing styles. Interestingly, skin color and clothing weren’t necessarily correlated (women who looked chinese wearing headscarves and fully covered, and middle eastern looking women wearing very western style clothing). There was also a great deal of interaction between groups – you would see a group of young adults hanging out at the mall together, and half the women would be wearing head scarves and the other half typical (American) mall clothes.

The city itself was also unique. Kuala Lumpur boasted, at one point (although no longer), the tallest skyscraper in the world as well as the highest tower (think Space Needle in Seattle). While Petronas is no longer the tallest skyscraper, it still is the tallest twin tower building. There are many tall, beautifully built buildings in the downtown area, but after being there for a little while, we realized that there is only a downtown area. It’s full of corporate offices and hotels, but void of condos and apartments. It wasn’t until Monday that we fully realized this, as suddenly, everything was crowded and busy on streets that were relatively quiet over the weekend. Without any knowledge of Kuala Lumpur’s history, it seems that the city was built next to a large residential area, rather than gradually developing within one.

Some of the other highlights included the food, a language using letters that we could read, widely spoken English, and lots of green throughout the city. We visited Batu Caves – a large limestone formation with beautiful caves close enough to the city for it to be a train stop – where monkeys tried to steal our water bottles. We walked through several crowded markets and, as usual, didn’t buy anything. We went to the top of the tower to get an amazing view of the city, and saw a two headed turtle at their animal park at the bottom. And, we watched New Zealand beat France to win the Rugby World Cup at a bar right next to a TGI Fridays (which we had regretfully accepted was the only place to watch it in the city and were about to go into before seeing the game on in the window of this place). It’s a small city, so we did lots of walking around, trying our best to cross off everything on the guidebook to do list and find some things of our own as well.

We brought laptops and picked a guesthouse with free wifi but the internet isn’t fast enough to do much. I had planned to upload a couple hundred photos from the last month and our past couple trips but the internet’s not letting me (it doesn’t even let me upload one photo to keep my picture-a-day blog updated). Those will go up when we get back to Bangkok next week (assuming that happens) – so expect a new batch of pictures sometime soon.

We miss everyone, leave comments or send us email updates to say hello!

Tourists

Another 2 weeks have gone by! We've done some more touristy stuff...

This past weekend we went to Ko Samet, and island nearby. We took a bus about 3 hours from Bangkok then a 40 minute ferry to the island. It was beautiful and relaxing. We were on the west side of the island which is the quiet side away from town. The east side of the island is much busier (though it’s still a tiny island so not really that busy… just comparatively) and we hung out there a bit Saturday night. For the most part we just hung out at the beach and ate good food. I’ll put some pictures down below.

In other news… since the last post below I put up our first month’s pictures in a Picasa album, you can find them here. The weekend before Ko Samet we did some touristy stuff in Bangkok. We went to Wat Arun, one of the better known wats (wat means temple) in Bangkok, and one of the better known landmarks in Thailand. It’s named after Aruna, the Indian God of Dawn. It’s supposed to be most beautiful at dawn (and at dusk), but we haven’t seen it at those times. It was pretty cool during the day.

Last week, we also met a friend of a friend at a sky bar on the 25th floor of a building downtown. I think people here just refer to open air bars that are downtown on higher floors of buildings as sky bars. Maybe that happens other places too and I just don’t know about it. There was a great view, see below. This was only the 25th floor, one of the most popular ones in Bangkok, is on the 63rd floor of a building (and actually called Sky Bar) – scary! Also, the guy we met (Jacob’s Aunt’s former student’s wife’s friend from college!) grew up in Redwood City, what a small world!

Works going well, I’m adjusting and not overworking as much as I was the first couple weeks. Jacob’s making progress with his project and is really enjoying his work as well. We also just bought tickets last night to go to Kuala Lumpur. Kuala Lumpur is the capital and second largest (by population) city in Malaysia. The weekend Jacob needs to leave the country (because he’s on a tourist visa) coincided with a long holiday weekend I have for school so it worked out perfectly and we can leave the country together. We’ve just started looking into things to do while we’re there (a Friday through Monday), and it’s looking like it will be a great trip.



Wat Arun:

The sky bar:

Ko Samet:

One Month Thai-aversary!

I can’t believe it’s only been a month. I feel pretty settled by now. I’m almost done with my second full week of teaching, and Jacob seems to have a good work at home schedule as well. He went to rugby practice downtown for the first time last night, but is planning to make that a regular weekly thing.

Teaching is going well, I feel like I’m supposed to be preparing ALL the time though. When I’m not planning, I feel like that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. I underestimated the difficulty that the language barrier would bring to my project class (chemistry) and definitely overestimated the English abilities of my English class. I’m readjusting though, and things are going well.

In other news, we’ve also had our first weekend trip outside of Bangkok! Last weekend we went to Hua Hin. It was great, it’s a small beach town and it took us about 2 hours to get there by van. You can get there by train, bus, or van for different costs and travel time. While in Hua Hin we ate some great seafood – biggest prawns we have ever seen! – with a friend of Jacob’s from rugby and his Thai wife, we relaxed on the beach, and we walked a lot. The King of Thailand has a palace there where he spends most of his time when not in Bangkok. There are two royal palaces in Hua Hin, we got to visit the one where he doesn’t live regularly because he is currently at the other. It’s called Maruekatayawan Palace. It was used mostly in the 1920s as a relaxing beachside getaway, then again the 1940s for parties. It’s now restored and open to visitors.

Hua Hin isn’t the closest beach town to Bangkok, and it’s definitely not the biggest or the most touristy. Pattaya is a little closer, and known to be a huge party beach (though they’re trying to make it more family friendly). Hua Hin had a good amount of expats, and mainly older couples on vacation from Europe.

Oh! Guess what I found out today! The King has a dog named Copper! Or had… I’m not sure, I think she’s still alive. I was in the school library this morning and found a book called “The Story of Thong Daeng.” It was written by the King himself, and when published in 2002 it became a bestseller and a very popular gift to give. It’s the biography of his dog Thong Daeng (which means “Copper”), but also is “a parable on many social topics,” says Wikipedia. I agree, I read it this morning. Lots of discussion about why she’s such a great dog, she’s so loyal and humble, she knows protocol, she always sits lower than the King, etc.

More on the King: I don’t think I’ve mentioned him before, but he’s everywhere. Literally. His face is on all the denominations of bills and coins for Thai currency, and there are pictures of him all over the place. I must see his face at least 50 times a day. The royal family here is a really big deal, and no one can ever say anything negative about it. The pictures are mostly of just the King, but sometimes the Queen as well. And, along similar lines, the national anthem is played every day at 8am and 6pm. I’m not sure if it’s a Bangkok thing or the whole country, but pretty much wherever you are at those times, you’ll hear it. All the radio stations play it, any parks, malls, etc. Here’s a picture of the King and here’s the Thai National Anthem.

Some other pictures from the last couple weeks:

Seafood in Hua Hin!

Teacher Nuch (all teachers are called "Teacher [name]" -- I'm Teacher Cristal), one of my Thai co-teachers, being silly with Rew and Pop:

My two favorite students in project class (shhh!), Rew and Palm, playing with non-Newtonian fluid:

Pop looks frustrated:

Hua Hin from our guest house balcony (I'll put more pictures up of Hua Hin in a Picasa album soon):

It’s been 2 weeks!

Another week has gone by, with some more adventures. School starts tomorrow, so next week’s post will have more info about what’s going on with me day-to-day at work. Until now I’ve just been doing lesson planning. I do know that I’ll have an English class with seven boys, ages 10-12 for 3 hours a week, and an Intro to Chemistry class with 3 boys and 3 girls, ages 10-12 for about 12 hours a week. I do need to be at work from 8-5 so when I’m not in class I’ll have free time for lesson planning, and to participate in sports and club activities.

Jacob found a rugby club in Bangkok and emailed them about playing, he’ll probably be starting soon! The rugby world cup kicked off on Friday and Jacob went out to downtown Bangkok on his own by bus and train to meet some of the guys from the club, and to watch the first game. He’s so brave! All on his own, navigating the city, and going to meet up with strangers and make friends! I couldn't do that. It all turned out well and he made lots of friends like he always does, except at the end of the night one of the guys took Jacob’s backpack thinking it was his own. That was bad because Jacob’s kindle, umbrella, raincoat, map, etc. were all in there.

It all turned out okay because Saturday, we went back together to watch the Argentina vs. England game at the same place and a bunch of the same guys were there, the one who had mistakenly taken Jacob’s backpack brought it back and everything was still there. That was a relief! They’re all nice guys, mostly European, and very friendly. The sports bar (who is owned by one of the funders for the rugby club) also has lots of non-Thai food so I had a pretty tasty club sandwich with fries, which was a nice break from Thai food. Even though all the Thai food is great, it was nice to have a sandwich for a change and being around lots of people speaking a language I could understand was nice too.

After the game we went to the downtown Central Plaza which is a huge 7 story shopping mall, to look for cleats in Jacob’s size. Central Plaza is a big mall brand (what’s a better word for that?) around here, like Westfield Shopping Centers are all over California. The downtown Central Plaza is in a shopping corridor, so apart from being massive on its own, it’s right next to 4 other huge shopping centers. If we need anything, I’m sure we can find it here. We found some cleats that are about a half size too small, and they cost $100 USD. He might get those, but we might just look online, and he’ll go to a few practices without cleats to make sure he wants to play.

What else? Hmmm… we’ve been seeing people eating this grilled whole fish everywhere and Jacob’s been wanting to try one, and we finally did! It was very good. I’ll put a picture below. I don’t think I’ve mentioned these before, but some of the weirder food we’ve tried includes chicken joints, pig neck, pig udder, intestine soup (probably pig, they eat a lot of pork here), we tried getting duck beak but they were out… they’ve all been okay, but not really favorites for me. We also picked up a dragon fruit to try last night (picture below). I think it mostly just looks cool, but doesn’t taste like much. Jacob liked it.

Jacob got a massage today! It was 140 baht for an hour! He said that he barely fit onto the massage table and they were teasing him about being so tall and hairy. Thai massages are known for being really painful (but make you feel really good afterwards), so I need to learn some new words (like soft and stop) before I give it a try. There was a lady on the table next to Jacob who kept yelling out in pain the whole time, but he said that it wasn’t really that bad.


Whole fish before:

Whole fish after:

Example of "to-go" soup in Bangkok, they wrap up the food in butcher paper and put a rubber band around it, and then the broth comes in a plastic bag:

Downtown Bangkok, this is near Central Plaza and the huge shopping area:

Dragon fruit: