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!
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
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!
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!
Friday, October 28, 2011
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!
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!
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
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:
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:
Thursday, September 22, 2011
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):
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):
Sunday, September 11, 2011
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:
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:
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Week 1!
Second post!
We’ve been here a little over week now, but we’re definitely starting to get settled. I went into work every day this week from 9-4 and Jacob worked from home, even though we aren’t getting internet until today (Saturday). He’s been doing what he can with no internet, then coming to campus or to a coffee shop to use wifi for a while each day.
We moved into our apartment on Tuesday, and really like it here so far. It has 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a kitchen with a small table (fits 3 chairs with one side against the wall), and a living room. We also have 2 balconies and 3 air conditioners. The kitchen consists of a sink, a microwave, and a good amount of counter and cabinet space. No oven or burners though. Apparently Thais don’t really cook much at home; it’s normal to not have an over or burners. It’s so cheap to eat out and the food is all so good. It’s cheaper to eat out for every meal then to buy supplies and cook at home. We’ll probably still end up buying an electric wok or something so we can cook sometimes and because we want to learn how to cook Thai food, and because it’s nice to not have to go out every meal. Pretty much every sidewalk is filled with food vendors selling really cheap good food. We’re going to try to eat at all of them in the neighborhood, but it will be a challenge! Besides the sidewalks, there are large outdoor markets every several blocks, and each of those has at least 20-30 food vendors. So yeah, there are easily over 100 different food vendors in the immediate several blocks nearby our apartment and my job.
We’ve eaten most meals with other people, teachers from school mostly, but have successfully gotten food on our own a few times as well. It’s a little scary at first, but we’re learning our numbers and food names, and when we don’t know what to do, we just smile and point and give them more money than we think it will be and they just give us the right change. Then say “cahp khoon kha” (that’s what I say, what females say) and Jacob says “cahp khoon khrap” for males. That means thank you. If you always start with “Saw wat dee kha” (girls) and “saw wat dee khrap” (for males) and end with cahp khoon kha, and just smile then you’re okay. Here's some basic Thai if you're curious about what this sounds like.
Four of the English teachers are recent University of North Carolina alums. There’s a UNC study abroad program at the university here, and those four teachers studied abroad here so they know a lot more Thai then we do, and know their way around. There are also 16 current UNC undergrads here studying abroad, so we’ve met about half of them as well.
My walk to work is about 20 minutes, but I walk pretty slowly because it’s so hot all the time. I just give myself extra time and walk over slowly. A lot of the other teachers live in the same apartment complex where we live (called Ban Suan Thon – Ban means house, Suan means park, and Thon is short for Thonburi, the area of Bangkok where we live), but none of them walk to work, they think it’s too hot to walk, and that I’m crazy. They all take kra-pongs, or can cars. They are these mini pick-up trucks, more like golf-cart sized pick-up trucks. They are like little buses, each has a number and a specific route. You can just wave one over pretty much wherever you are and hop on and off wherever you want. Each ride is 5 baht (30 baht is $1).
We finally made it to downtown Bangkok last night! It was our first time, and fun, but I’m glad we don’t live there. We left in taxis around 7pm and it took about an hour to get there because of traffic (the trip back at the end of the night took about 20-25 minutes). We went to dinner at this fun place that played American oldies. After that we walked over to Khaosan Road. It’s probably the most touristy place in the city. There were so many foreigners (farang is the Thai word for foreigner, we hear that a lot. Though one Thai teacher at school told me I don’t look like a farang because I’m not white) there, it was crazy! It was kind of like the Vegas strip, I don’t know how else to describe it. Lots of bars, shopping, food vendors, and Europeans. It felt really weird, I didn’t really like it. I can’t believe some tourists only go there when they stop in Bangkok. We did go to a place on Khaosan that was mostly Thais though, so that was nice. It was a huge bar that had live music, and it was packed. Of the few hundred people there, there were only like 10 farang. I’m glad we went there, and not to any of the other bars, they all seemed pretty sleazy.
We’re looking forward to exploring more of Bangkok on the other side of the river, there are so many temples, markets, parks and other things to see and do. Unfortunately I just got a text (a lot of communication here is via text not actual phone calls) saying internet is being installed tomorrow afternoon. We’ve stayed home all morning waiting for them to come today when we could have been exploring, and now it looks like we’ll have to do the same tomorrow. It’ll be nice to have internet, but it’s a little annoying that we’ve spent our first full non-jet lagged weekend sitting around the apartment instead of exploring the city. Oh well – we have another year of weekends to explore I guess!
And now some more pictures:
This is right in front of the apartments where we live. See that 7-11? Turn right there, and that's our apartment complex! It's pretty big, there are twelve streets and we live on the twelfth, so we're far back from the main street. Also, there are 7-11's every here, and we call it "the seven."
When you turn right at "the seven" from the picture above, this is what you see, and we live way at the end on the right.
This is the road that I walk to and from work on, it's relatively quiet as far as streets around here are concerned.
That's all for now, don't forget to check my picture-a-day blog for more! We'll try to update here about once a week. If you don't want to forget to check it, you can subscribe by email at the top right of this page, and it will email you whenever we update. :-)
We miss everyone, send us updates!
We’ve been here a little over week now, but we’re definitely starting to get settled. I went into work every day this week from 9-4 and Jacob worked from home, even though we aren’t getting internet until today (Saturday). He’s been doing what he can with no internet, then coming to campus or to a coffee shop to use wifi for a while each day.
We moved into our apartment on Tuesday, and really like it here so far. It has 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a kitchen with a small table (fits 3 chairs with one side against the wall), and a living room. We also have 2 balconies and 3 air conditioners. The kitchen consists of a sink, a microwave, and a good amount of counter and cabinet space. No oven or burners though. Apparently Thais don’t really cook much at home; it’s normal to not have an over or burners. It’s so cheap to eat out and the food is all so good. It’s cheaper to eat out for every meal then to buy supplies and cook at home. We’ll probably still end up buying an electric wok or something so we can cook sometimes and because we want to learn how to cook Thai food, and because it’s nice to not have to go out every meal. Pretty much every sidewalk is filled with food vendors selling really cheap good food. We’re going to try to eat at all of them in the neighborhood, but it will be a challenge! Besides the sidewalks, there are large outdoor markets every several blocks, and each of those has at least 20-30 food vendors. So yeah, there are easily over 100 different food vendors in the immediate several blocks nearby our apartment and my job.
We’ve eaten most meals with other people, teachers from school mostly, but have successfully gotten food on our own a few times as well. It’s a little scary at first, but we’re learning our numbers and food names, and when we don’t know what to do, we just smile and point and give them more money than we think it will be and they just give us the right change. Then say “cahp khoon kha” (that’s what I say, what females say) and Jacob says “cahp khoon khrap” for males. That means thank you. If you always start with “Saw wat dee kha” (girls) and “saw wat dee khrap” (for males) and end with cahp khoon kha, and just smile then you’re okay. Here's some basic Thai if you're curious about what this sounds like.
Four of the English teachers are recent University of North Carolina alums. There’s a UNC study abroad program at the university here, and those four teachers studied abroad here so they know a lot more Thai then we do, and know their way around. There are also 16 current UNC undergrads here studying abroad, so we’ve met about half of them as well.
My walk to work is about 20 minutes, but I walk pretty slowly because it’s so hot all the time. I just give myself extra time and walk over slowly. A lot of the other teachers live in the same apartment complex where we live (called Ban Suan Thon – Ban means house, Suan means park, and Thon is short for Thonburi, the area of Bangkok where we live), but none of them walk to work, they think it’s too hot to walk, and that I’m crazy. They all take kra-pongs, or can cars. They are these mini pick-up trucks, more like golf-cart sized pick-up trucks. They are like little buses, each has a number and a specific route. You can just wave one over pretty much wherever you are and hop on and off wherever you want. Each ride is 5 baht (30 baht is $1).
We finally made it to downtown Bangkok last night! It was our first time, and fun, but I’m glad we don’t live there. We left in taxis around 7pm and it took about an hour to get there because of traffic (the trip back at the end of the night took about 20-25 minutes). We went to dinner at this fun place that played American oldies. After that we walked over to Khaosan Road. It’s probably the most touristy place in the city. There were so many foreigners (farang is the Thai word for foreigner, we hear that a lot. Though one Thai teacher at school told me I don’t look like a farang because I’m not white) there, it was crazy! It was kind of like the Vegas strip, I don’t know how else to describe it. Lots of bars, shopping, food vendors, and Europeans. It felt really weird, I didn’t really like it. I can’t believe some tourists only go there when they stop in Bangkok. We did go to a place on Khaosan that was mostly Thais though, so that was nice. It was a huge bar that had live music, and it was packed. Of the few hundred people there, there were only like 10 farang. I’m glad we went there, and not to any of the other bars, they all seemed pretty sleazy.
We’re looking forward to exploring more of Bangkok on the other side of the river, there are so many temples, markets, parks and other things to see and do. Unfortunately I just got a text (a lot of communication here is via text not actual phone calls) saying internet is being installed tomorrow afternoon. We’ve stayed home all morning waiting for them to come today when we could have been exploring, and now it looks like we’ll have to do the same tomorrow. It’ll be nice to have internet, but it’s a little annoying that we’ve spent our first full non-jet lagged weekend sitting around the apartment instead of exploring the city. Oh well – we have another year of weekends to explore I guess!
And now some more pictures:
This is right in front of the apartments where we live. See that 7-11? Turn right there, and that's our apartment complex! It's pretty big, there are twelve streets and we live on the twelfth, so we're far back from the main street. Also, there are 7-11's every here, and we call it "the seven."
When you turn right at "the seven" from the picture above, this is what you see, and we live way at the end on the right.
This is the road that I walk to and from work on, it's relatively quiet as far as streets around here are concerned.
That's all for now, don't forget to check my picture-a-day blog for more! We'll try to update here about once a week. If you don't want to forget to check it, you can subscribe by email at the top right of this page, and it will email you whenever we update. :-)
We miss everyone, send us updates!
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Our first blog post from Thailand!
Hi everyone!
It’s the early morning of our second full day in Bangkok! Our first full day was full of delicious food. We were both thinking we’d lose a little weight here just because that’s what generally happens when people travel, but now we’re not so sure about that. The food is so cheap, and so so so good!
We both took short naps yesterday; we’re still adjusting to the time change. We also walked around the campus and neighborhood a little bit. There’s definitely a lot of hustle and bustle, and motorbikes are pretty loud, but there aren’t really people asking for money, or trying to get you to buy things all the time, which is very nice. I think on the other side of the river, and for sure in the more touristy areas, that will happen more.
This is where we are in Bangkok. On the east side of the river is the downtown area, and all the touristy stuff. We are in more of an actual Thai Bangkok neighborhood, which means we don’t see many tourists or white (or anything else besides Thai) people much. On the other side of the river I hear it’s pretty easy to get by with just English, because so many people there speak it, but not so much here. We’re working on learning Thai. So far we know numbers 1-10, hello, how are you, and thank you.
I think we met someone yesterday though who can help us out with that. Jack (his Thai name is Thanyawich) is the IT Director at the school and he picked us up from the airport. Our guess is he’s in his early thirties and he’s been at the school for 11 years. He’s finishing up his PhD this year. He has a strong accent but his English is pretty good. He took us to buy cell phones yesterday then we had dinner with him and our potential future Thai tutor. She goes by the English name “Apple” and she’s one of the Thai Language teachers at DSIL (the school where I’m working). She has a masters degree in Psychology and is currently working on a masters in teaching English as a foreign language. She’s a little shy and not very confident about her English, but it’s pretty good. She wants to work on her English, and we want to learn Thai so hopefully we can set up regular times each week to meet with her and work on that.
DSIL is on a university campus, and we ate breakfast and lunch at the cafeteria of one of the women’s dorms. Luckily one of the women serving the food spoke English otherwise we would have just pointed at things and probably ended up with something way too spicy for us. For breakfast, each plate starts with rice, then you can add as many sides as you want. The sides included chicken dishes, tofu dishes, vegetable dishes, and eggs a couple different ways. I asked for not spicy and ended up with one of the tofu sides and one of the vegetable sides. Jacob said a little spicy was okay (for those who don’t know, Thai food is known to be very very spicy), he likes spicy food but was being cautious with American-spicy versus Thai-spicy. He got a chicken side, a vegetable side, and an egg side. Adding a bottle of water and a coffee, our total came to the equivalent of a little over $2 USD. Lunch was similarly priced, we spent less than $5 USD for both breakfast and lunch (and drinks) for the 2 of us.
It’s the rainy season here and I was kind of expecting rain all day for the first two months. Turns out it’s more like, very intense rain, thunder and lightning for about an hour per day. Yesterday it happened during lunch. We had just started eating and it started pouring. We ended up hanging out there for a while since we didn’t have umbrellas or any rain gear. After a little bit, it changed to drizzle and we walked home, and shortly after that it was done. We’ll see how today goes!
We have phones now! Our phone numbers are 08-7595-1750 and 08-7595-1820 but we haven’t figured out how texting and calls work with the U.S. Since Jacob and I are on the same plan, it’s less than 1 baht for texts and calls between us (30 baht = $1 USD). As soon as we figure that out, I’ll let you all know. The outdoor market where we got the cellphones was very cool too; it had a ton of food stalls, fruit and vegetable stalls, then everything else you can think of – clothes, electronics, jewelry, etc. We got some grilled chicken skewers and sticky rice there, but brought them with us to dinner at a small outdoor restaurant/street food vendor right down the street from the school. At dinner we had a shrimp/mushroom/coconut milk soup (so good! my favorite at dinner), mango salad, papaya salad (spicy!), a ground pork dish, and sticky rice. It was all great. At the market, we also tried 2 new fruits at the market; we’ve never seen them or tried them before. One was a small light brown/olive green kind of hard shell circle but once you open it, it’s like a clear grape inside. The other was a spiky dark red/brown oval shaped thing. The inside was like a loquat. They’re both good and we brought a few home with us. There were a lot of other fruits and vegetables we had never seen or tried before so more updates on those later. And we’ll try to find the names of them too. There was also durian – we’ll see if we get brave enough to buy one of those someday!
Jack is supposed to take us apartment hunting today and we’d like to find a place ASAP so we can move in and get settled. We’ll let you know how that goes!
Below are some of the pictures that we took which should illustrate some of our adventures throughout the day. Since Cristal’s photo-blog is limited to one picture a day, and since we are new here and want to share a million (maybe more like 10-20) pictures a day with you, we’ll include the extra ones here. Cristal is going to keep doing her one pic-a-day blog though, too, so don’t forget to keep checking that out.
Our first meal in Bangkok:
Jacob walking near campus:
The school:
Pouring rain at lunch:
Our two new fruits from the outdoor market:
It’s the early morning of our second full day in Bangkok! Our first full day was full of delicious food. We were both thinking we’d lose a little weight here just because that’s what generally happens when people travel, but now we’re not so sure about that. The food is so cheap, and so so so good!
We both took short naps yesterday; we’re still adjusting to the time change. We also walked around the campus and neighborhood a little bit. There’s definitely a lot of hustle and bustle, and motorbikes are pretty loud, but there aren’t really people asking for money, or trying to get you to buy things all the time, which is very nice. I think on the other side of the river, and for sure in the more touristy areas, that will happen more.
This is where we are in Bangkok. On the east side of the river is the downtown area, and all the touristy stuff. We are in more of an actual Thai Bangkok neighborhood, which means we don’t see many tourists or white (or anything else besides Thai) people much. On the other side of the river I hear it’s pretty easy to get by with just English, because so many people there speak it, but not so much here. We’re working on learning Thai. So far we know numbers 1-10, hello, how are you, and thank you.
I think we met someone yesterday though who can help us out with that. Jack (his Thai name is Thanyawich) is the IT Director at the school and he picked us up from the airport. Our guess is he’s in his early thirties and he’s been at the school for 11 years. He’s finishing up his PhD this year. He has a strong accent but his English is pretty good. He took us to buy cell phones yesterday then we had dinner with him and our potential future Thai tutor. She goes by the English name “Apple” and she’s one of the Thai Language teachers at DSIL (the school where I’m working). She has a masters degree in Psychology and is currently working on a masters in teaching English as a foreign language. She’s a little shy and not very confident about her English, but it’s pretty good. She wants to work on her English, and we want to learn Thai so hopefully we can set up regular times each week to meet with her and work on that.
DSIL is on a university campus, and we ate breakfast and lunch at the cafeteria of one of the women’s dorms. Luckily one of the women serving the food spoke English otherwise we would have just pointed at things and probably ended up with something way too spicy for us. For breakfast, each plate starts with rice, then you can add as many sides as you want. The sides included chicken dishes, tofu dishes, vegetable dishes, and eggs a couple different ways. I asked for not spicy and ended up with one of the tofu sides and one of the vegetable sides. Jacob said a little spicy was okay (for those who don’t know, Thai food is known to be very very spicy), he likes spicy food but was being cautious with American-spicy versus Thai-spicy. He got a chicken side, a vegetable side, and an egg side. Adding a bottle of water and a coffee, our total came to the equivalent of a little over $2 USD. Lunch was similarly priced, we spent less than $5 USD for both breakfast and lunch (and drinks) for the 2 of us.
It’s the rainy season here and I was kind of expecting rain all day for the first two months. Turns out it’s more like, very intense rain, thunder and lightning for about an hour per day. Yesterday it happened during lunch. We had just started eating and it started pouring. We ended up hanging out there for a while since we didn’t have umbrellas or any rain gear. After a little bit, it changed to drizzle and we walked home, and shortly after that it was done. We’ll see how today goes!
We have phones now! Our phone numbers are 08-7595-1750 and 08-7595-1820 but we haven’t figured out how texting and calls work with the U.S. Since Jacob and I are on the same plan, it’s less than 1 baht for texts and calls between us (30 baht = $1 USD). As soon as we figure that out, I’ll let you all know. The outdoor market where we got the cellphones was very cool too; it had a ton of food stalls, fruit and vegetable stalls, then everything else you can think of – clothes, electronics, jewelry, etc. We got some grilled chicken skewers and sticky rice there, but brought them with us to dinner at a small outdoor restaurant/street food vendor right down the street from the school. At dinner we had a shrimp/mushroom/coconut milk soup (so good! my favorite at dinner), mango salad, papaya salad (spicy!), a ground pork dish, and sticky rice. It was all great. At the market, we also tried 2 new fruits at the market; we’ve never seen them or tried them before. One was a small light brown/olive green kind of hard shell circle but once you open it, it’s like a clear grape inside. The other was a spiky dark red/brown oval shaped thing. The inside was like a loquat. They’re both good and we brought a few home with us. There were a lot of other fruits and vegetables we had never seen or tried before so more updates on those later. And we’ll try to find the names of them too. There was also durian – we’ll see if we get brave enough to buy one of those someday!
Jack is supposed to take us apartment hunting today and we’d like to find a place ASAP so we can move in and get settled. We’ll let you know how that goes!
Below are some of the pictures that we took which should illustrate some of our adventures throughout the day. Since Cristal’s photo-blog is limited to one picture a day, and since we are new here and want to share a million (maybe more like 10-20) pictures a day with you, we’ll include the extra ones here. Cristal is going to keep doing her one pic-a-day blog though, too, so don’t forget to keep checking that out.
Our first meal in Bangkok:
Jacob walking near campus:
The school:
Pouring rain at lunch:
Our two new fruits from the outdoor market:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)