Thailand 3- Ko Pha Ngan

The trip to Ko Pha Ngan was long. It was Christmas day, we had just been dropped off at the ferry after a 3 hour car ride, only to find the next boat wasn't for 3 more hours because of rain delay. So we sat, while the worse possible Christmas music blared in the intercom. When we finally caught the ferry it was a 3 hour ride and the taxi companies were trying to scam us to get us to our desired beach. After a long day of travel we decided to call it a night and camp out and move on in the morning.

This is K and I at our Christmas dinner. Even though we hadn't made it to our final destination, we couldn't have asked for a better Christmas dinner.


The Sanctuary- K wanted to go to another beach to stay at a resort that was vegetarian and offered yoga throughout the day. The place turned out to be pretty cool. Even though it rained one day it was fun to hang out at the common area to eat and read. I tried some yoga too, it was difficult but fun.
On sunny days the beach was beautiful.

Thailand 2- Koh Sak

Koh Sak was a nice getaway from the chaos of Bangkok. The taxi ride was 3 hours from the airport. It is so amazing that someone would actually be willing to drive us for $30USD.

Our jungle house was a straight up hut. The walls were weaved like a heavy duty basket. Inside we had a mosquito net, thankfully and an outdoor shower and toilet. One night we left the soap outside and a little animal came and ate it and the wrapper. Oops, I didn't see any dead animals outside though, so it must have survived. The next day we signed up for a one day tour that included a cave, and a jungle trek.

This is a picture of the area. It use to be hills but Thailand decided to make it a man made dam instead. The landscape was beautiful. Yes, I was the only person on the boat wearing a life jacket. Doy (the tour guide) gave it to us for a reason...

Our first stop was animal watching. We took a longtail boat around with our tour guide and he took us to a secret location to see animals. If you look closely, that blob is a monkey. We were lucky and saw a whole family swinging from the trees.Next was the cave. I was petrified at the prospect of meeting a snake in the cave. I had secretly been mentally preparing in case I saw one, luckily we only saw huge spiders and bats. It was pitch black in the cave and only had 3 flashlights for 5 people. Most pictures had to be guess-timated.

This one is a shell but I saw others this size too.For lunch Doy knew of this brand new floating restaurant and wanted to take us to help bring it good luck. It was owned by one of his friends so all of his friends were there. It was cool to see natives in their actual native area. Actually this is their "new" homeland. They were recently given back the land that was taken from them decades ago. Instead of living in the hills they are now a river village. Two Aussies who were part of our tour group. They were cool guys.

After the jungle trek we took a dip in the water. It was a refreshing change. When I was jumping off the boat onto the raft I jumped right on top of the patched part on the raft. The workmanship of the patch was high quality, so instead of falling straight into the water I just made the dent deeper. So dumb on my part. Doy- the REAL jungle man. He was a character. When we were hiking in the jungle he carried a huge machete. I asked him if he had to use it on any animals, he danced around the question and answered he needed it for bushwhacking. He only pulled it out once, it was a bit scary to be the one following him. You never knew when he would whip it out. On our ride home he ran into his house and grabbed this pic to show us, he was very proud. He said he takes his gun on longer trips to scare the animals. We also switched from his nice truck to his Jeep so that we could go off roading for our 7 minute trip back to our hotel. That 7 minutes was crazy. I felt like we were on a hardcore jungle safari in the pursuit of lions or something.

Thailand 1- Bangkok

Thailand was amazing!

1. Bangkok
Not my most favorite place. We arrived at night after a long delayed flight and found ourselves in tourist central.



The next morning we shopped our brains out at the weekend market. Haggling was not our strong point. After spending a while at one stall we would decide to move on without buying. Needless to say, the sales people were not happy with us.
After a long nap, we treated ourselves to Condoms and Cabbages. The proceeds from the restaurant went to help educate the public about safe sex. The tree behind us was decorated with condoms. As was this super-hero of a man. They were pretty cool, but they were a bit smelly.
The next day was the Grand Palace and other famous sites. The palace was one of the most ornate sites I have ever seen. Everything was gilded in gold and covered in jewels. The walk and sites in itself were visually exhausting to look at. So K and I breezed through the rest and treated ourselves to a tuk tuk ride. For dinner we ate at an all vegetarian restaurant. The owner was so cute. She put on a performance for no one in particular and explained her cooking process.

Eye Exercises

My students do these exercises 2 times a day, and they seem to hate it. The first day of class I had no idea what they were and my class said they weren't important so I continued to yell over the loud speaker for 10 mins! The girl walking around is the class monitor, if you don't do the exercises she scolds you until you do them.

Quanzhou

Kristen is here! I am SO happy. We went to Quanzhou, about an 1.5 hour bus ride away. According to the tour book it is heavily influenced by the Muslim population. Somehow I interpreted this as vibrant painted doors with ornate decorations (I'm not sure how my imagination ran so wild) but instead got a smaller more chaotic Xiamen, except Xiamen is cooler.

Significant differences:
1. Cars are more than happy to honk their horns at just about anything, in Xiamen you could be fined.
2. Motor taxis are everywhere and even if you are 2 feet from them will lay on the horn. Motor taxis are not allowed to be in the area I live.
3. Shopping is not outrageously expensive.
4. Kids were smashed into tiny back carts of bikes, it reminded me of how I would think illegal immigrants get past the Mexican border.
5. The increased amount of homeless people.

Now a shortened version of the sites we saw throughout the day, with an added (but FREE) commentary.

1. The mosque reminded me of Roman ruins. It had a massive pillar and an area with smaller less impressive columns.
2. The temple. This place was huge and relatively uncrowded compared to the temple in Xiamen. I was partially disgusted by the extra flair that was added to the temple.
This included:
-the added flood lights to make the temple picture perfect for night.
-the hippie trippy looking buddah placard that had buddah on it and neon lights swirling behind
him.
- the fact that the chanting was mic-ed so that the entire temple could hear it.
- it cost 10 kuai to get in.

Besides that I rather liked the town, even though I wasn't so hot on it initially. Even the bus ride was an adventure. Especially since I couldn't remember how to get home exactly...

Weekend so far

On Friday I went to a classical music concert. It was surprising how many instruments I could identify in each piece, it really brings me back to Mr. Cerri (I think only 1 person would understand this reference). The conductor was going crazy, he was power tripping because he kept entering and exiting the stage, I think just to earn more applause. I don't really see the big deal in a coductor, I mean I NEVER looked at the conductor. Well maybe every so often, just so he could signal me when I was supposed to play. But besides that, NEVER.

Anyhow, the venue was tiny, I didn't even know it was an entrance. The room was packed with white lawn chairs, upholstered theater type seats, and those chairs pre-schoolers sit in. I thought they were for the little kids, but they were indeed for adults. Luckily, we had the upholstered seats. During the performance the kids would play with their toy dinosaurs on the floor, or somehow wedge themselves between people for a better view. AND people, don't dress up or turn off their cell phone ringer, even worse is they ANSWERED the phone!

Today I had conversation partner. I decided to invite her to my house this week because her house is so dark I can barely see anything. Once she got here she kept commenting how comfortably I lived, I was kinda embarrassed. It's like I'm this punk kid who doesn't really do much of anything but teach, yet I have an apartment 4 times the size of hers. I kinda regretted inviting her over. Plus she got off at the wrong bus stop so I had to search for her for an hour.

And I went to the fabric market. The fabric market is basically a Jo-Anns worse nightmare. It is a whole building of fabrics, and tailors. You can bring a picture or draw a picture of something and someone will make it. Quality not gauranteed, but still, it's pretty cool.

Then I went to a friends house to watch Music and Lyrics and she made BBQ chicken pizza! I haven't had cheese in a loooong time. It was delicious.

Celebrity

Today in class I asked all the kids if they could meet a famous person who would they meet. Then I put them into groups and made each group write down each group members pick for a famous person. I then told them all of the celebrities are in a hot air balloon, but it only has enough power to hold 3 people, so they must throw one person off (weight doesn't matter) to save the rest of the celebrities. Here are some answers I got.

The list:
Tom Cruise
Bill Gates
Tracy McGrady
Mickey Mouse
We would throw off Tom Cruise because he is a bad father to his children.

I can't remember the rest of the lists but here are the answers.

Bruce Lee because he knows kung fu and he won't be hurt.

Yao Ming because he is ugly and heavy.

Some young diver, because he is not old and not as famous as the rest of the people in the balloon.

So I know this game doesn't seem like it has to do with anything. But this weeks unit in the book was to talk about celebrities. This forced the kids to talk about who is famous, and what they are famous for (supposedly, haha). Last week was how to make a milkshake (and we did! but they weren't too tasty), makes me really wonder about these textbooks...