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:

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. :-)

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