Travels, Revisited

Alright, friends.

I apologize for the crazy delay in what I’ll share with you, but the month of August was possibly the craziest of my life. Between traveling, moving Annie into college, and spending time with Nana, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to update this instead of spending time with my family.

This’ll be fairly short and sweet (hopefully) — a kind of general outline of what I did, collected with memories that stood out.

So I set out on the 31st of July and I boarded the overnight train to Bangkok. I was the person unfortunate enough to get the sleeping bunk right next to the bathrooms on the train. I thought that it was going to make for a train ride from hell, but once the train started to move, the smells dissipated (for the most part), and I was left with the bros next to me who were straight outta Vang Vieng (see older post for my experience there).

Made it to Bangkok and I was there for all of about 24 hours. I hung out with an old friend, Krittika, of my roommate from my freshman year of college. I went to the snazziest food court I’ve ever seen at the Siam Paragon, zipped above the streets of Bangkok on the Skytrain (which I got fairly decent at using) and went to Chatuchack Market, the largest market in the world.

I came in at roughly 6 in the morning, and I left at about 5 in the morning to next day. I went to Hua Lampong, the train station, once again, escorted by the mother of the lady I was staying with. It was pretty cute – she kept on holding my hand when we walked down the street and she handed me a plastic bag filled with bottled water and toilet paper.

I was going to Aranyaprathet, a town in Thailand on the border of Cambodia. There, I learned to hone my travel-savviness by arguing with anyone who tried to rip me off when I was crossing the border to Cambodia. The list of people who tried to scam me included: the tuk-tuk driver who drove me from the train station to the border crossing (“What do you mean you’re charging 70 baht? I thought we agreed on 60! I’m not leaving this tuk-tuk until I pay 60 baht!” And I didn’t.); the man who tried to get me to pay money to have other people take care of my visa (“I know how to do this, and I KNOW you’re scamming me!“); and when I got a little ballsier, I even started to argue with the Cambodian officials themselves (“The sign doesn’t say anything about me having to pay 100 baht extra to process the visa! I’m not paying it! I’ll sit here and wait until I pay what I’m supposed to.“). So if anyone you know is traveling overland from Thailand to Cambodia, let them be forewarned! There are not enough expletives in the English language to describe how awful that town is.

But I made it across the border safely, despite these minor glitches, and I shared a taxi with an adorable French family and another French gentlemen to Siem Reap. I settled into the guesthouse that I had arranged for online. The whole point of my journey to Cambodia was to visit the temples at Angkor, so I thought that I’d get a head start and visit them the evening that I got into Cambodia. I hired a motorcycle driver to take me there since it’s waaay to far to walk, especially between some of the temples, and I went to visit Angkor Wat.

There are a few generalizations that I could make about the temples.

1. They are absolutely fantastic, archaeological marvels. The whole place seems really steeped in history (I was too cheap to hire a guide though, so I don’t really know the history behind them).

2. Like most things, the temples, for me, were more enjoyable in moderation. Most of the people that I talked to had kind of the same thing to say about them — After awhile, each temple becomes just that, another temple. With the heat and all of the walking that you have to do, it’s easy to get burnt out, even by the end of the morning. This is why I spent my first and third days looking though temples and my second day hiking and doing more waterfall stuff.

3. Siem Reap is kind of heartbreaking. It’s probably one of the richest towns in Thailand, but there’s a stark contrast between the poverty in Cambodia and the poverty in Thailand. At the entrance to every temple was a swarm of children that would beg you to buy their bracelets, their scarves, their books. I finally caved and bought some bracelets from a couple of girls and I told them that I didn’t have any $1 bills, so if they had change, it would be great. I pulled out a $10 bill and I saw the eyes of the girls widen and their mouths open a little. They hardly ever see that much money. (Side note – the Cambodian currency, the riel, isn’t very strong, and the American dollar is also an official currency in Thailand).

So this was kind of my first official jaunt on my own, and it’s weirdly suprising and empowering to discover what it’s like to be a solo traveler. When I stepped into the temple grounds, a guide asked me, “Lady, why do you travel alone?” A simple enough question, I guess, but it was my first time traveling alone and I hadn’t really thought about it. “Why not?” was my reply. Why not? I’m not getting any younger. Who knows when I’ll be back here. I can do things at my own pace. I can rest when I want to, eat when I want to, and spend as much time as I want to wherever I want to. I can wake up at 4 to stumble around the dark temples alone, waiting to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat (I did), and I can decide to go back to my room at 9 in the morning on that same day because I’m already tired (I did).

It’s also surprisingly easy to meet other people. As a 20-year-old female traveling by myself, I wasn’t exactly the scariest looking of people to approach. This did invite some weird interactions though. There was a French guy in his mid-twenties, a tennis instructor, who invited himself to eat with me one night. We were both the only people by ourselves in the restaurant, so I thought, why not? Well it took all of about 5 minutes to decide that behind the tanned skin and greasy Euro-trash haircut, that David the Frenchman was a pretty boring guy. So much so that I declined both his invitations to go out for a drink and his suggestion that we meet up again to eat supper the next day. I should have kept a better lookout for him, because I was walking around Siem Reap the next day and out of nowhere, someone hits me on the shoulder. After quickly getting over the shock that someone would hit me, I realize who my assailant was — David, with a water-bottle in hand. He wasn’t hungry, but again, he invites himself to eat with me. So I eat and I just kind of sits there, drinking his Angkor beer and munching on beernuts. Awkwardness and boredom ensue. I’m done with my food and he declares that he’s hungry now and invites me to go with him. Luckily, I had decided to wake up at 4 the next day so I had a legitimate excuse as to why I needed to go to bed early.

I’ve discovered that I can put up with a fair amount of stuff though. On our way back from Banteay Srei, a temple about 40 km from Siem Reap, the motorcycle of my driver broke down no less than four times. One time, I sat by myself on a table under a deserted roadside stand while my driver had gone to repair his tire in the pouring rain.

Cambodia, I’ll have to say, wasn’t really that beautiful, for the most part. Most of the people that I saw were living in destitute poverty. But it was also pretty inspiring to see some of the development work that was going on in Siem Reap. I’m really hoping that I’ll go back to Cambodia someday, only not in a tourist capacity.

So this was not short and sweet. And it didn’t have pictures to break it up! And it was barely coherent! But it’s probably fitting since these are the main memories that I have of this leg of my journey. I’m hoping to put up a picture post sometime, but if you’ve got facebook, all of my pictures are up there. Plus, there are so many pictures of the temples at Angkor Wat that you can find online, so I didn’t see the need to rush and put mine up as well.

Next stop – Koh Tao & Chiang Mai

Goodbye, Nongkhai!

I’m sad to have to do this, but I feel like it’s part of an inevitable journey. Tonight, I’ll be boarding a train that will drop me off in Bangkok at about 6:30 tomorrow morning.

It’s been a fantastic summer. Sure there have been ups and downs, like any two-month period of time, but I much prefer weaving my bike between tuk-tuks and grilled banana carts, trying countless new fruits, and spending time with adorable children over faxing papers for the State of Illinois.

There’s quite a difference between Bangkok and Nongkhai, Nongkhai’s a relaxed, riverside town (explained to me as “the South” of Thailand, even though it’s in the Northeast) while Bangkok is a whole lot of hustle and bustle. But I’m up for the challenge.

Working with Isara has been great though. I’ve been able to teach English (and somewhat improve my nonexistent English-teaching skills over the course of two months), donate helmets, help bring about environmental awareness, and at least learn more about the bureaucracy that plagues developing nations (to say nothing of our own).

I’ve also tried so many new foods, become aware of a new culture so different from my own (I’m still working on my wai), and I’ve made new friends. People around town, unaffiliated with Isara even recognize me. My favorite dessert here – roti, a Carnation condensed milk-drenched version of Indian bread, has become almost a staple in my diet, and the lady who makes the roti, Mai, even knows me. We all joke that I’m in love with her because her roti is so amazing. I went last night to get my last roti, and she said that she’d make me a special something, since it was my last night here. She made me my favorite (and she knew what it was without even asking!), roti with sliced banana inside, and gave it to me for free. I got a picture with her, her husband, and her adorable, babbling 3 year-old daughter, Amina to commemorate the countless minutes I spent patiently and eagerly awaiting my hot, delicious roti at her cartside.

But I digress.

This has summer has been unlike any summer for me (although that’s something that you could have easily guessed on your own), and I’m truly thankful to Ming and Kirk at Isara for letting me help them this summer.

I’m not sure how often you’ll see updates from me for the next two weeks, but hopefully you’ll be able to see my tweets – @jordanhw.
I’ll be in Bangkok for a day before I journey to Cambodia, where I’ll spend n undecided amount of time, before returning to Bangkok on a bus, exiting that bus, and going directly to another bus, bound for Krabi, in southern Thailand. Seriously, just google Krabi.

So with that being said, sawadee kaa, Nongkhai! (“Sawadee” functions like “aloha” – meaning both “hello” and “goobye”.) You’ll always be in my hua chai and I’ll miss you!

Chirp, Chirp!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything, so here’s a little something to tide you all over until I bid Nongkhai a fond farewell (via the blog).

There’s a Sunday market here in Nongkhai that is HUGE. The whole town comes out to peruse everything from shoes to scorpions. There’s lots of interesting food to be found there.

Some favorites from the Sunday market:

-Donuts. There are some jelly-filled ones that put American ones to shame. There are also butter-filled ones that give donuts a bad name. I’ve tried both.

-Corn. This has come up as a topic of conversation many a time with friends and family back home – and yes, corn is very much a dessert food here. At the market, I tried what was basically very buttery corn in a small cup, topped with jelly (much like the jelly in aforementioned donuts). My diet isn’t really used to that much butter (anymore), but I could still manage a few bites.

-Crickets. When there were four volunteers at Isara (myself, Dagny, and the Jens – two girls from Seattle), we all went to the Sunday market together and I told myself that I was going to eat a bug. So Ming was kind enough to find us a stand with plump and crispy crickets. We didn’t want to go for the small bugs – it was a go big or go home situation. Ming purchased about 10 baht worth of crickets and they were scooped into a plastic bag and sprayed with soy sauce for taste.

Ming, myself, Dagny, and Jen B. – before the big chowdown.
Note how perky I look!

I have never been one to school my facial expressions. My mom likes to comment that it’s one of my biggest downfalls. In the case of the cricket, I was similarly unable to conceal what I was thinking when I had a giant cricket in my mouth.

The look on my face isn’t really about the taste. It tasty mostly like crunchy soy sauce – mostly what one might expect. The look on my face is from me thinking about the fact that I actually have a bug in my mouth.

This is nothing new to Ming, and Dagny and Jen appear to be honestly mulling over the flavors tickling their taste buds.

Me, however, I’m just thinking “CRICKET. IN. MY. MOUTH. JUST. KEEP. CHEWING.”

All of that being said, I would probably eat one again. The first cricket probably needs a fair chance to redeem himself.

We took one of the leftover crickets (and there were many) back to the Isara Learning Center, where we put it on top of Kirk’s jar of peanut butter to freak him out. Our little trick worked, but then Nok, one of the college students that’s always around came up and asked if she could eat it.

And we let her.

Feeling Laos-y

I’ve been in Thailand for about 7 weeks now (and the immanence of the end of my stay is beginning to crash down upon me!), and I was itching to go out and travel for a little bit before the end of my stay in Nongkhai. Dagny and I had made plans to check out Nam Nao National Park, which is probably 4-5 away, but we eventually nixed the idea because switching public buses all the time seemed complicated and tiring. We then decided to go to Laos, which is really only a five minute tuk-tuk ride and a one hour wait in immigration away from us. Nongkhai, Thailand is home to the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge, the largest point of travel between Thailand and Laos. Vientiane, the capital of Laos, is about a 30-minute cab ride away.

So off to Laos we went, with plans to visit both Vang Vieng, a little mountain town about 4 hours away from Vientiane with outdoorsy stuff to do, and then back to Vientiane, where we would see what Laos’s finest had to offer to us.

We set off on Friday morning with the intention of catching a bus to Vang Vieng as soon as possible. We made it through immigration and received our visas for Laos. We then took a can straight to the Thai embassy (where Dagny had to do some visa stuff) and then to the bus station. The bus station doesn’t really look like the bus station of an national capital — but then again, Vientiane wouldn’t strike many people as a capital of a country (it’s population is only about 200,000). There were a few buses, and us being two of the relatively few white people around, the Lao people knew that we were bound for either Luang Prabang or Vang Vieng. We were pointed in the right direction and grabbed ourselves some sticky rice (with a little difficulty — my Thai is sufficient enough to find myself sticky rice in Nongkhai, but despite the similarities in Thai and Lao languages, I had to resort to pointing and gestures to get sticky rice in the bus station). We hadn’t exchanged any money, so this was my first experience with kip, the Lao currency. Not that I’ve had much experience with foreign currency, but kip is pretty silly. There are no coins and the smallest denomination that I saw was a 500 kip bill. Most snacky-things that you could eat would run about 10,000 kip, with the meals running about 30,000-40,000 kip. Nothing makes you feel like you’re going through your money more than spending money in denominations of tens of thousands.

The bus ride to Vang Vieng was scheduled to take 3 hours, but like many other schedules in Southeast Asia, it was more than a little off, and we got into Vang Vieng in about 4.5 hours. We dealt with leaky ceilings, coughing babies (H1N1 paranoia is high right now), constant stops of riders being dropped in their respective home villages along the way to Vang Vieng, and hairpin turns around the limestone mountains of northern Laos. Dagny and I, plus a couple of Colombians and an Australian girl (all of whom we would end up caving and tubing with later) were dropped off at the bus station outside the town. As soon as we found ourselves in Vang Vieng proper, we knew that we had made some sort of tourist’s mistake.

Now I knew that Vang Vieng was a popular spot for backpackers, but I couldn’t quite believe that I would be in a small town in a relatively small, landlocked, poverty-stricken, communist nation and find myself among hundreds of other Westerners. It felt like there were more white people than Lao people in the town. We had begun to feel a little silly about deciding to spend the weekend in a town known for its debauchery (and beautiful mountains), but felt a little better when we got a room with two beds in a guest house for about $4 a night. We went out to explore the town, and found lots of bars (many offering “happy” or “special” options for those who couldn’t already get enough of the Beer Lao that spilled out of every corner of the town), lots of restaurants offering Western food, many of which had episodes of Friends and Family Guy playing on constant repeat (which got to be pretty weird).

We found a place where could kind of sit and eat cabana-style and we got some food. We ran into the Australian girl from our bus, Annika, who I offered to come and eat with us. Annika then became our new friend. She mention that she found a tour offering caving in the morning and tubing in the afternoon. I originally kind of balked at the idea of finding a group to do stuff with, but it turned out to be a pretty good idea. We met a lot of different people.

We walked around for the rest of the afternoon and happened upon a temple where there was a group of kids, all practicing praying. It was really cute, and one of the few redeeming qualities of Vang Vieng (outside of the scenery).

Bright and early Saturday morning, we were picked up from our guest house and we set out for caving in the morning. To make a long story short, we walked maybe a kilometer or so out to the cave, which turned out to be simply a little opening on a mountainside, covered partly by the river:

Here’s a little taste of the view from the walk to the cave:

And right outside the cave, these little boys were swimming and jumping into the water:

In this cave, we swam through water so deep we couldn’t touch the bottom with our toes, crawled through mud six inches deep, walked across gravel with our bare feet, bumped our heads, scraped our knees and had, all in all, a pretty amazing time.

Our knees, after crawling around in the cave all morning:

Meanwhile, my Chaco tan lines are worsening:

We then went tubing in the afternoon, which was more or less all-out bacchanalia. Not really my cup of tea, but it was fun for the afternoon. We basically had to tube from bar to bar down the river, where people could order anything from Beer Lao to giant Mekong Buckets of cocktails, to “happy” pizza and “special” tea. There were also swings, all about two stories (or more?) high that you could jump off of and land in the river, where someone would throw you an inner tube and pull you to the side. This, I did twice, and it was pretty fun. Here’s one of me at the very middle of my swing ride. Don’t worry — I didn’t let go until it swung up to the top again, at its highest point.

I was pretty tired after being outside, on the move, all day, but Dagny and I had made plans to grab some supper with our new friends, Annika, from Australia and Katrina, from Scotland (who I don’t have a picture of). We ate at the same restaurant that we went to the night before and had some wonderful barbecued vegetables. (Side note: Thai food is wonderful, but there’s not really a lot of vegetables, so these vegetable skewers really hit the spot). They wanted to go to one of the island bars, and we didn’t have much else to do, so we went along.

At the bar, I spent most of the time with Annika, talking to an extremely inebriated and high Northern Irish guy named Ollie (and a second year law student, no less), who made it a point to repeatedly say “Tomorrow is the biggest march of our lives!”. He kept on calling me a Canadian, despite the fact that every time that he asked me where I was from, I told him Illinois. The multiple bars along the river, he informed me, weren’t enough for his Irish tastes. Dagny, meanwhile, was stuck listening to some first-year med student (also Irish) who said something a little like this:

Irish Guy: “Life just goes so fast, you know? How old are you?”

Dagny: “I’m 26.”

IG: “So you know what I mean. Life just goes so fast! I mean, I’m 20, but I feel like it wasn’t that long ago when I was 16!”

D: “Yep.”

IG: “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get all deep on you.”

So with that, we decided that there were only so many deep conversations we could have and only so many times that I could inform people that I was, in fact, an Illinoisan, not a Canadian. We left and tried to get sleep for our kayaking trip back to Vientiane the next day.

Kayaking was probably my favorite part of the entire trip. We went down the Mae Nam Lik, and everyone involved got pretty sunburned. I went with a guide, which came in handy when we went through rapids, but my guide was in the habit of splashing people kayaking by us and splashing me. At least he kept me on my toes.

We stopped and were able to eat lunch on a bunch of rocks on the riverbed, which was really nice. After kayaking, they dropped us off at a place where we could shower off, change clothes, and make ourselves more presentable for our arrival in Vientiane.

After squeezing one too many people in our minivan back to Vientiane, we made it back to the tourist center of the town, which happens to be a rather unimpressive fountain. We found a guesthouse that was almost all of the way full, but we booked the last two beds available in a dormitory room.

I ended up sleeping between a dour Canadian man with the bushiest beard and no mustache who refused to return to Ottowa because “It’s too cold there” and an elf-like Israeli dude from Haifa who kept on making me pretend to dunk a basketball (for fairly obvious reasons, I guess) and kept on snorting like Steve Urkel (because I told him I was from Illinois, then I had to explain that Chicago was in Illinois too. He turned out to be a pretty big fan of Family Matters, though neither of us could remember the theme song.)

Long story short – you are sure to meet some characters while traveling.

So Vientiane was nice, but we were pretty tired from adventuring/traveling that we weren’t able to do a whole lot in Vientiane. It was a nice little city, as far as third-world Communist country capitals go.

We wandered around long enough to see Patouxay, a giant arch mirrored after the Arc de Triomphe, but never finished. A description on the arch described it as a “giant concrete monster.” It wasn’t bad at all though. It had a pretty ceiling, ice cream, and a puppy inside, which is all a place needs for me to like it.

View opposite Patouxay:

We also found the Golden Stupa, the national symbol of Laos:

And with that, we left Laos (after a quick stop at the Thai embassy).

From this trip, I have learned that:
- Tuk-tuk drivers will always try to rip you off. You just have to act like you done something a million times and act offended at the prices that they offer.
- The people that you meet while traveling can be amusing. There’s lots to learn about other places, based on where other people have traveled.
- Sometimes scenery can be enough to sustain an otherwise ridiculous and random party-hole in Communist Laos.

Volunteering Gets Heated

Through an interesting turn of events, I appear to have been kind of fired from my volunteer teaching job. I can’t say that I was entirely shocked, but I can definitely say that the “cancellation” of my volunteering was in no way justified.

I went in yesterday with Dagny to teach just one class. I was hoping for a better experience than Dagny and I had had the last time that we had gone to her class, when she left us alone with her kids for roughly two hours. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find that she only threw the third grade book at me, expecting me to teach a lesson on “How many?” while she sat in the back of the class and translated what I asked her to translate. So I wasn’t exactly just assisting her, like I was originally supposed to do, but she was still in the room with me. I felt like we had struck a mutually satisfactory compromise. I taught my little heart out and walked away feeling pretty satisfied about how the day went and hopeful for the next day.

But larger forces were at hand. Namely, politics. Kirk had gone in earlier that day to talk to the teacher. He asked her to please not leave the classroom, to ask her to help me help her by being there, to ask her to utilize my offering to help her as a volunteer by not disrespecting me and her students by leaving me alone with them. And it sounded like the talk went pretty well, but she revealed a piece of information to Kirk that helps put my frustrations with he into context. This teacher is retiring in two months. So it didn’t really matter who talked to her, she just wasn’t going to care.

While the talk with Kirk earlier that morning might have been helpful for me later that day when I was teaching, it certainly wasn’t appreciated by the teacher. She had to actually do things in class, instead of watching t.v. and answering her cell phone. So things boiled down to her early retirement and her wanting an easy two months of teaching, instead of doing a lot of work in the classroom while I was volunteering. Because she wanted things to be easy for herself, she didn’t want me around anymore. So as quickly as my teaching at Tesebahn 2 started, it ended, with the teacher “cancelling” our arrangements for me to help her.

The volunteering there was certainly frustrating, so I can’t say I’m entirely sad that I’m not welcome back there again. But I’ll miss the little bits or fun that we had in the classroom, when the teacher would actually help me with translating and I could joke around with the kids, the free lunches (more noodles than I could imagine!), and mostly, I’ll miss the time that I got to spend with the kids. They were really sweet and I wish that I could’ve at least been given the chance to invite them to Isara to study English after school. Then I could have seen them again.

But at least I’ve learned that I can get pseudo-fired for other people’s unwillingness to assume responsibility in their jobs. I’ll hopefully use the extra time now to check out other schools in the area, from the local college to possibly rural schools, to more English camps. I’m helping out at an English camp on Friday. Dagny and I just randomly met an English teacher at a hotel (at this thinly-veiled ploy to sell English-teaching software disguised as an English camp) and she asked us to help out at her school’s English camp and we were happy to help.

So I’ll be doing that soon, plus Dagny and I plan to venture out into Thailand, about 4-5 hours away to Nam Nao National Park, where we’ll be hiking, exploring more waterfalls and caves, camping, and possibly more! I’ll keep you guys updated.

Daytrippin’ and Water-fallin’

Updates first: Dagny is here, and she’s great! Only a few hours after her overnight train came in from Bangkok, she came along with me to the my afternoon classes at the government school. The teacher saw that there were now two, not one, volunteers, so she seized the opportunity to take advantage of us as quickly as possible. She told us that she had to go the bank. It was imperative, apparently, because she was going to Bangkok this week and she had to get money now, never mind the fact that she had just had a two hour lunch break, the banks were open long after school ended and the banks are open on the weekend too.

So we managed the classes all afternoon, just the two of us, but it was definitely challenging. The class has this sound lab that they can’t use, but they don’t even have a clock! I tried to draw a picture of a cell phone to ask the kids to show us what time it was, but that attempt to find the time only ended in the kids copying my drawing in their notebooks. They will copy anything.

I’ve about had it with the teacher at the government school, so lucky for me, the school was on a holiday all this week to celebrate Buddhist Lent (which was Tuesday).

To take advantage of my day of freedom from the government school, I went with a group of Isara regulars and Ming and Dagny to the far reaches of Nong Khai province, about 200+ kilometers away from the city of Nongkhai. We planned to hike up this mountain, Phu Tok (pronounced “poo talk”) to see a temple carved into the rock high in the mountain. We also wanted to go to a nearby nature reserve, to play in the waterfalls there.

Dagny and I rode most of the way to Phu Tok in the back of a pickup truck, along with a few of the other people going with us. It was fun for awhile, but riding in a pickup truck can quickly become less fun when it begins to rain. And it rained a large part of the way there. But we would not let that ruin our day of adventuring.

Fortunately and unfortunately and unbeknownst to us, a larger force was intent on ruining our day. We got to Phu Tok, and had to park farther away from the mountain because the PRINCESS OF THAILAND had come to visit for the day. This means that everywhere the princess wants to go, no one can go at that time. So we stand around and wait in the nurses tent (about 15 nurses were brought in, should anything happen to the princess) while the princess takes her own sweet time getting to Phu Tok. I was pretty excited, because I had never seen royalty before, but this princess was pretty underwhelming. She was wearing a pink polo shirt, and pink baseball cap, and jeans. So she may be fairly down-to-earth, but she still got the entire mountain to herself. We waited for her to simply walk by, because we were locked inside the premises, but we couldn’t climb the mountain either.

Photography of the princess wasn’t allowed, but they had hung pictures of her all over the area for the occasion of her visit, so I snapped a picture of one to remember my encounter with royalty.

The princess walked by, and then we were allowed to leave. We wanted to get some lunch while the princess was up on the mountain. But these bees had been hovering around me and I tried to swat one away from me, only to end up smacking the stinger right into my pinky finger. It was a good thing that we were hanging up in the nurses tent, because I got some pseudo-medical attention quickly. They didn’t have any tweezers (or Band-aids, for that matter) but they gave me some cotton balls soaked in alcohol and some antibiotics, should I have an allergic reaction to the bee sting.

We went and dined on som tam (with the less-spicy Thai-style for the white girls), sticky rice, chicken, fried noodles, baby bamboo soup and probably some things that I don’t remember. Here’s one of the unexpected dinner guests that joined us. My leg is to the left.

Here’s our entire group, before we started climbing. There’s me, Dagny, Ming, Party, Pop (Party’s sister), Nok (in the sunglasses), Fern, and the two boys in the back are Sam (Nok’s boyfriend) and Bell (our driver for the day and Party’s boyfriend).

With the princess gone, we were finally allowed to climb the series of stairs, planks, and stones that comprised Phu Tok.

The buildings built on the side are temples or monks’ living quarters.
The views from the mountain were incredible! I know people say this stuff all of the time, but the pictures really don’t do it justice.

Here’s a little sample of what we climbed to go up the mountain:

(Highly) unflattering picture of myself, Ming, and Dagny, mid-mountain, where Dagny and I were obviously feeling the heat and Ming looks as perky as ever.

On the “fifth floor” we came to the temple carved into the rock, which was amazing. It was also featured prominently in the latest edition of the Lonely Planet Thailand guide. Hah.

We keep climbing, climbing, climbing, and finally we get as far as we can without climbing through actual jungle, with real snakes!

Here’s my sorry, exhausted, and very content face at the top:

A few more pictures of the views from and of Phu Tok:

I managed to make my way down all of these rickety flights of stairs, and by the end of it, my legs would shake if I held them straight, but it was amazing! If you ever happen to be in northeastern Thailand, definitely give Phu Tok a visit.

So next on our itinerary were the waterfalls at a nearby nature reserve. I was pretty excited, especially after getting pretty sweaty at Phu Tok, and I was looking forward to playing in the water.

But the Princess struck again! She had been to the waterfalls after Phu Tok, and we had to wait outside at this convenience store on the side of the road for at least an hour for the princess to leave the waterfalls so we could go in. By the end of the day, I was pretty sick of the princess.

The waterfalls were absolutely amazing though! There were a series of three that you could travel to, so we walked the the trail to the last and most beautiful fall. (I think that there were more that were inaccessible).

Here’s a shot of the area right above the first fall.

Second fall, maybe?

Here’s the final waterfall:

Our group (minus Ming) at the final waterfall:

And they don’t call them waterfalls for nothing. Here is a shot of my backside after my first fall, when I lost my footing on the slippery rock and ended up in the water:

I might’ve fallen again here:

Here’s a picture, where I have fallen again. I managed to find the only shoulder-deep crack in the water and slip right into it.

With a day so full of slipping and sliding, my hip was really hurting by the time we had to hike back up to the truck! It’s still a bit sore today, but give it another day and it’ll be fine.

The ride back home was a bit less than fun, since Ming, Dagny, and I were all still wet and riding in the back of the truck. It started raining again, but we took everything in stride and every started to giggle like schoolgirls, making fun of our “first class sleeper” in the back of the truck (by that time, we were all laying down sharing a blanket), and thanking the princess for screwing our day up. But all in all, I had an absolutely wonderful day away from the city of Nongkhai!

The ILC – A Picture Post

Just some pictures so everyone can see where I’ve been staying and teaching.

Here’s the area in front of the house

The actual ILC itself

Here’s the first room you walk into

Here’s the original, little classroom, off to the right

Kitchen area, plus the stairs

New classroom

Pier plus the swamp

my room

Friend on the balcony upstairs

fun light

The New Farang!

One of the first Thai words that you’ll learn as a Westerner here is farang. It basically means “white person” and I’m usually able to tell when strangers are talking about me, because I can pick it out of conversations.

So being the new farang in a town where most farang are creepy, fat, old men who have come to Nongkhai to take advantage of some Thai women’s desire to improve their own socioeconomic status through marriage has been an interesting experience. The ratio of male to female farang here is pretty lopsided — maybe 5 to 10 men farang for every female. But I’ve been received with lots of respect and enthusiasm.

People want to get pictures with me (kids and administrators alike), and I was approached by a gaggle of 11-year-old girls wanting my autograph after class in the government school today! At first I thought that they wanted me to write my name in their notebooks, so I started print it carefully in each one, only to be met with shouts of “Big!” while they pantomimed the scribble of an autograph. I obviously felt pretty silly doing this for the ten or fifteen girls, but they seemed to enjoy it. When I finished giving my “autographs”, they all lined up to shake my hand. I guess they had to get the full experience. But after all of the hand-shaking, they then wanted to take pictures of me! Being a celebrity volunteer English-teacher is hard work.

When Kirk and I went to a nearby school to donate helmets, we came in the middle of some sort of song/dance spectacular, complete with royalty, a giant bug (I think?), and mermaids! The mermaids wanted to have their picture taken with me, but little did they know that I wanted to be photographed with them as well! So here’s a picture of me with the mermaids (and a king and queen).

Here’s another picture from the same day. It’s me with most of the college (which is analogous to high school in the US). Do I look awkward in all of these pictures? You bet I do.

But enough of my new found fame, I’m guessing it’s time for a life update, no?
So in non-Thailand, but travel-related news, I’ve been accepted to the study abroad program, International Honors Program, that I applied to! I originally applied for a program that studies global and community health in Switzerland, India, China, and South Africa, all in one semester, but that program was full. I’ve been offered a spot on a similar community-health focused program that goes to Washington, DC, Vietnam, South Africa and Mozambique, and Brazil. I’m really excited about Brazil — I’ll get to form an opinion on it that isn’t solely based upon City of God and Death Without Weeping! Now some of my free time here has been spent trying to work out the logistics getting the necessary forms for the program from here in Thailand, to home in Illinois, to Providence, to Boston. But it’ll all work out.

In other completely unrelated news — Happy Birthday on July 1 to Annie, my lovely and ridiculous sister, who’s turning 18! Thank goodness for skype — I’ve been able to talk to my fam at home and friends in Providence so far!

There’ll also be a new volunteer coming to Isara on Thursday, so I’ll have to share my room! Her name is Dagny and I’m sure she’ll be a great addition to my experience here this summer.

Down to business though — teaching! To fill up my spare time, Kirk and Ming mentioned that I could help out at Tesabon 2, a government elementary that’s a super-short bike ride away from the ILC. So after a short meeting, I’m helping there three days a week, for an hour on Monday mornings and then all day (4 classes each day) on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’m in a classroom with the English teacher, a serious lady with seriously gelled hair in her early 50s. I couldn’t remember her name, so I asked her, and she told me her full name and nickname (both of which I still can’t remember), and then said, “But you can just call me Mother.” So now I just avoid addressing her directly.

Side note about the teachers — They used to have a ladyboy teacher that Ming told me about. She said that s/he was a good, strict teacher, so I thought, “Great! Good teacher, strict, ladyboy, cute children in uniforms, I love all of these things! I should help out.” Well the school started laying off teachers because the attendance was down, so the ladyboy moved back to Pattaya (which could diplomatically be called the hedonistic capital of Thailand), where s/he was living previously. I was a little bummed about the ladyboy leaving, but that’s alright.

This teacher is pretty different from the teachers that I’m used to though. She talks on her cell phone in class, lets the cell phone rings all of the time, watches TV in class, and worst of all, tells me that she “has to go to the toilet” and then leaves me alone with the students for sometimes 15 minutes, sometimes the entire class period of an hour. Which quickly becomes frustrating, especially when I don’t know enough Thai to functionally run and control a classroom, and their English isn’t good enough to understand most of what I say.

So Ming came with me this afternoon to “take pictures for Isara’s website” and talk with the teacher about leaving me all of the time. She explained that I was here primarily to help the teacher, not run the classroom, and that she shouldn’t take advantage of me. I’m sure that this teacher said something like “Sure, of course!” but that didn’t stop her from leaving the entire next class period. Luckily that class was only girls (the ones I mentioned earlier who wanted my autograph) because the boys were practicing some boy scout thing that included drums(It’s mandatory for all students to be a girl/boy scout). They were easy to teach, but it becomes more difficult when I’m left with younger kids who don’t know as much English.

Here’s the classroom that I teach in. The school obtained 200,000 baht to build a sound lab for the English room, spent about 100,000 on the lab, and someone probably pocketed the rest of the money. So these kids are left with a sound lab that isn’t set up and that they aren’t allowed to use, and I have to try to look at all of their faces behind these silly plexiglass walls! It’s a difficult environment to teach in, and I can’t imagine that it would really facilitate learning.

On the bright side, the students really are sweet. They know me now when I ride my bike through the gate of the school and they smile and yell “HELLO” as I climb the stairs (all four flights) to the classroom. They’ll stay after class to try to get me to sing Kelly Clarkson songs and they’ll pop their heads of whatever class they’re in to say “Good Aftanoon, TEE-CHA!” One little first grader even gave me a hug after class today! My frustrations with the school and education system in Thailand don’t seem to matter as much when the students are so friendly.

Luckily, going to the school on my first day was made a bit easier because I knew some of the students from the ILC English classes that we hold after school. All of the Isara kids probably felt pretty special, already knowing the new English teacher! One of the students, Miew, likes to come up and tap me and giggle from time to time, probably just to keep me in check. So now I look forward to taps at school and at Isara.

Here’s a few pictures I took of the first grade class today, while we were waiting for the teacher to show up:

And here’s a few of them, with the school’s other building in the background. All of the hallways and stairs are outside, kind of motel-style.

Here’s a few pictures of other things.

Things like a view of Prajak Road, one of the three main roads in Nongkhai and only one over from Mee Chai, the road I’m staying on.

Things like this birthday present that Kirk received last week from one of the students, Jeab (who I teach at both the ILC and Tesabon 2). Check out the beautiful, artistic rendering of a peacock from a Heineken car. That is talent if I ever saw it.

Things like the cutest motorcycle helmet I have ever seen, complete with wiggly antennae and googly eyes! I want one.

Coming up in Nongkhai — the arrival of Dagny, a soccer/football game on the fourth of July (sadly unrelated events), another, hopefully longer, visit to the Sarnelli House (the home for children with HIV/AIDS), and maybe some more exploring around the province.

Pom Ruk Koon Means “I Love You”

Everywhere I go, I attract unwanted attention.
Just because I’m white.
And for reference, “suay” means “beautiful.”

It might be cute the first few times when people look at me and say “suay,” but when random strangers start rubbing my skin and saying this and when Thai teachers will look at me and then ask their students “Suay, mai?” then it becomes awkward.

On bike rides down the Mekong riverside, strangers I pass will shout at me “Hello! I love you!” I either keep my head down or smile and pretend like I had not idea what they said.

And when driving past a hoard (100? 200?) of hiking boy scouts, all ripe and festering in their puberty, who hoot, holler and catcall me while I ride past them on a motorcycle, head lowered so as not to draw extra attention, it becomes embarrassing.

And while riding in a van to a local school, a cameraman doing an interview with Isara for the news in Bangkok asks me if he can teach me some Thai, I can already tell where the conversation will end up.

“Pom ruk koon” he says.

Ming told me that it meant “I love you.” This specific phrase is limited to man saying this to women, so it’s not like it would have made sense for me to say it regardless. So I try my best to give a polite, but nervous chuckle and I continue looking out the window.

A few minutes later, Ming tells me that he wants to teach me another phrase.

I count find a way to translate this within 5 seconds on Google, but he said “Let’s be together.”

I didn’t know how to say that guys in metal band t-shirts, unruly goatees, and pointy ear piercings weren’t exactly my type in Thai, so I just chuckled as solemnly as possible and kept on looking out the window.

A bit of background information: Today Kirk, Ming and I went to a local college to donate some motorcycle helmets. I didn’t do much besides stand and smile, but there were peals of laughter when male administrators of the school came up to me while the entire school was seated in front of us, just to get a picture of us together. The pictures would have to turn out kind of comically because of the height difference. At 5′8″, I’m not really tall back in the U.S. (and I even have the misfortune of being the shortest person in my family), but here in Thailand, I usually have a good 3 inches or so over a lot of the guys.

But why do they love me so much? I chalk it up to the fact that I’m (very) different to some Thai people. And because three weeks in Thailand hasn’t done as much damage to my skin as it does to other people’s. Being a traditional burn, burn, burn then tan (ever so slightly), it would take a lot for me to become noticeably tanner.

But as much as I’d love a little color, the Thai people loooove the pale skin. This is demonstrated by:
1. The countless whitening creams that are sold at drugstores that promise porcelain complexions.
2. Advertisements of featuring random women and photos of Thai celebrities, who, in comparison with Nicole Kidman, would make Nicole Kidman look like Donatella Versace.
3. Women and men alike using umbrellas to shade them from the sun.
4. People wearing sweatshirts on days when I am about to overheat while wearing a tank top and shorts. The sweatshirts apparently serve a dual purpose — their skin isn’t exposed to the sun, so they won’t tan, but they also won’t feel the heat of the sun. I’m not sure how much I would agree with the latter part.
5. Face powder that men and women use to make themselves look paler, while really only making themselves look a bit ashy.

I try to tell people that for the most part, people in America like to be tan. They think that’s crazy. But I still can’t helping feeling a bit awkward, being noticed and commented on wherever I go, only because I’m a pale white girl.

Because using the whiteness of my skin as a measure of beauty only detracts from their own beauty, their own ethnicity. I silly to think that I could be tan, because I spend most of the year in New England. Likewise, it’s probably unrealistic to be very pale in Thailand, where the sun seems to go when it’s not in Rhode Island (read: Thailand is sunny, RI is not). Aside from the generalizations that pale people have office jobs and tan people do harder labor and spend more time outside, why not just celebrate the way that your skin reacts to your natural environment, rather than thinking that the grass is always greener on the other side?

One Week In Pictures

Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge

Giant Bamboo

Some sort of bean popsicle/ice cream bar. Pretty tasty!

New friends of the ILC. They remind me of home.

I FOUND MOTHRA.

Food at the riverside. Fried rice, seafood salad, tom yam, and some sort of slushie.

Gel snacks that Thai people seem to enjoy a lot, set against the backdrop of our new pier and our old swamp.

And to leave you with, I found this shoe brand in the mall.