stephs travels: February 2010

Ive been in Thailand for a whole month, can you believe it? Im still loving it so much, I think I might actually be annoying everyone with the amount of times I say that I love Thailand. There are so many reasons to love it and I must say im experiencing most of them.

The people of Thailand are the greatest. They are warm and hospitable; they always want to make sure that you’re comfortable and happy, if you’ve eaten yet. They are happy go lucky people, always joking and laughing. They want you to be a part of their life, if even for a moment. Even the farang that teach at our school and other schools in town are wonderful. The thai culture is so infectious you cant help but reciprocate the smiles and warm personalities.

Last week I got a little sick with the flu. I laid on the couch all day and was not a happy camper, but I have great co-workers who covered my classes and made sure I was ok throughout the day. They made an appointment with the doctor and took me to see him. For those who don’t know, the doctor is the man who owns the school I teach for. His wife runs mostly everything at the school and they are like our parents in Thailand. So they were pretty busy at the doctors office but the women at the desk were cheerful, I wrote my name on a piece of paper and sat down expecting to wait for quite awhile. My roommates waited with me for the 5 minutes before they called my name and I got to go in before everyone else (which I felt horrible about). The doctor is the sweetest man, he asks me some questions and tells me that he’ll give some pills to help with the neausea and an antibiotic. He also told me that I should drink coke if I like it, but that I should open the can and wait for a little bit,then pour some salt in and drink up. While he was telling me this I was thinking ok cool whatever, but then I had a flash go through my head. Wait, What? Ok if I was in the states, this would not be the advice coming from the doctor, but the fact that I didn’t question it must mean that im assimilating to thai culture right? Anywho, I feel very at home here and have to keep telling myself that ive only been here for a month (esp. when I think omg, how am I ever going to leave this place?)

So this week of work was so-so, pretty busy, had some good classes and some not so good classes. I got a new class this week, theyre “the sharks” and they are the cutest. They range from 4-7 for most part but then I have a couple older ones thrown in there as well. They don’t know much English but I enjoy them because they find the littlest things enjoyable. For a rewards system they each colored their own shark and at the end of the day if they are good throughout class they can put a sticker on their shark. Well they loved that idea but the best part is this story: one of the little girls who hangs out in the office and therefore picks up on a lot of the teachers vocabulary looks at my shark (of course I colored one too) points and says “ oh my god, Stephanie, beautiful!” I almost died. The kids are hilarious.

Every other Thursday there is what is called quiz night at a bar the farang frequent called bigs. People take turns making up the quiz and you put in 50 baht to play on a team of four or so and the winning team gets the money. This week I was nominated to do the quiz. I was a little intimidated by this since I had only been to one other quiz before but my roommate nicki saved the day and helped me make it. We made it all about random facts from a book that she found at mathus, I think most people enjoyed it. Now I have all of this random knowledge in my head, totally useful…

We went to Khanom this weekend, which is the beach that is the closest to my house. Its about an hour away and completely beautiful. You can take a van/bus there and then they drop you off in the city where you can either get a motorcy taxi to the resort or the resort people will pick you up. When we got to town, the people from the resort picked us up right away in the pickup and we rode in the back, down country roads with cows and dogs running about. I immediately felt relaxed and at peace, thinking again how much I love Thailand. We got to the resort and hung out by the beach. There was a party down the way for valentines day/ Chinese new years at a bar called CiCi’s, so we walked down the beach to the party. A lot of the other teachers who work in Surat were there as well and it was so fun. We danced and had a great time. There were a couple of little kids there too and so of course I danced with them more than I danced with people my own age, they were adorable. The kids were about 3 or 4 years old and would mimic everything you did, so I would put my hands up and then they would, I would twirl around and then they twirled. So adorable. We went swimming in the ocean on the way back to our room. The water was so refreshing and the stars were out. It was like a fairy tale and to make it even better you could see the phosphorescents in the water. Im not completely sure what they are but someone described them to me a little plankton particles. So you go out into the ocean and when you move your hands around underwater they swirl around and glow. At first I thought I was just imagining the glowing, like when you stand up to fast and your head spins a little, like that. It was beautiful, it looked like little Christmas lights underwater, kind of bluish white. Unbelievable.

I woke up the next morning pretty early before anyone else and had breakfast, lying on a chase lounge underneath a palm tree looking out at the crystal blue water all the while thinking -how could this be my life?- I had eggs, toast and coffee and enjoyed my book. I went swimming and laid on the beach all day just relaxing. I keep reminding myself that no matter how busy my weeks get, I have this on the weekends. Just beautiful.

So thats what I did this past weekend but the weekend before we went to the rainforest and hiked. That was just as wonderful. We saw wild monkeys, swam in the river, saw spiders as big as my face (with blue legs and a black body with a red stripe on its back), and crazy trees and lizards. We hiked for 4 hours or so, all in flip flops! It made me really want to hike the Appalachian trail (probably not in flip flops tho), so matt get ready!

Ive also been trying new things since Ive been to Thailand. This might not seem like anything outrageous to some but guess what? I like bananas in Thailand! Ive eaten them on four different occasions and actually enjoyed it. Friend Bananas with ice cream (I don’t know if this really counts but im counting it), bananas with this sweet magenta pink syrup, bananas with plain white rice, and chocolate chip banana muffins. Wow im really trying new things, huh?! Ha!

All in All I love Thailand! Here are some pictures from the last two weeks…