bass

We moved to this quiet jungle village for the "quiet jungle" part of it, and usually that's exactly what we get. But we've got this neighbor. And he's got this sound system.

I'm not usually bothered by loud music, even when it's really, really shitty music. In Zafra, we lived right next to the plaza, where week-long festivals pumped out the same Shakira songs hundreds of time. In college, I shared a wall with a bar that regularly featured drum-heavy hipster bands. No big deal.

This is something entirely different. This is madness.

The guy has a pickup that looks like a half-finished Pimp My Ride project, and instead of putting the truck bed to any socially acceptable purpose, he's decked it out with speakers, with the volume eternally cranked up to 11. His small but diverse collection of scratched cds ranges from the Black Eyed Peas to Spanish house to sappy Thai pop ballads. When he gets going, my house shakes. The paintings on the wall rattle and the floor vibrates beneath my feet. I can't listen to my own music or watch TV. Ear plugs are futile. I once tried just putting my head under a pillow, but I could hear Fergie through the mattress.

The other neighbors, all much older than us, are even more distraught at the situation that Levi and I are. But Thais are not confrontational people. They shy away from any negative interaction, and when forced to have one, they'll smile the whole way through. Our landlords, a Thai woman and her Kiwi husband, are the only ones who have had the courage to go tell this guy to shut the hell up.

But this started four years ago, they say, and nothing will stop him.

The Kiwi has gone to the police various times. He's talked to the village leader, and to the leader of the next village over.

But apparently there's no such thing as a noise violation here, at least not outside of the city. The police can't fine him or confiscate his system or penalize him in any way.

And the village leaders are his family. Most of the village is, actually, except us and our landlords and their family, the unfortunate few who live near enough to suffer bass-induced headaches. His family won't do anything, apparently as convinced as he is of his fundamental right to deafen us all, and in fact ceased to be friendly with our landlords' family a couple years ago, when the cops were called in to give the asshole a stern (and fruitless) talking to.

Our Thai landlord, a very sweet woman, told us all this with apologies in her eyes; there's nothing to be done, she said.

So we just have to deal.

These are the moments when I find myself clashing against the culture. This would not be an issue in America. This guy would have been fined too many times for his behavior to be economically feasible. Even in Spain, the cops would have shut him down years ago. But here, the channels have been exhausted. The cops are useless, and two families couldn't talk it out, so it's over. I'll just have to spend the next seven months listening to stuttering drum machines and fantasizing about taking a baseball bat to that truck.

llegada

Culture shock is a manic sort of affliction. It brings you to the ecstatic heights of enchantment and exhilaration, only to drop you, and no more than an unkind word
or a food-order failure, to the miserable lows of anger, frustration, and irrational nostalgia for the now-mythological ease and comfort of life "in the States."

Since Thailand is my third foreign country of residence, I fancied myself, while not immune to this nasty bug, at least reasonably hardened to it. I've already lived with nightmarish tropical insects in Argentina, eaten Spain's often unappetizing food, endured ridiculous heat in both places, and learned to put up with the total loss of anonymity that comes with being an obvious outsider.

This was of course, a rather stupid line of reasoning, as Argentine culture is based on Spanish culture, which is based on Rome, on which my own culture is largely based. It's all just Western. Thailand is not.

It's been a rough landing. Our house, while totally acceptable and lent to us rent-free by our school, is a step down from our lovely Spanish flat. The food has been a puzzle, I can't effectively communicate with anyone, and Surat itself is a big, dirty, chaotic town with little of Zafra's beauty or charm.

Luckily, our little motorbike is fast, and only seventy kilometers from Surat's grey edges lies Khanom, which in the last few weeks has become a much-needed refuge of peace and beauty. It's the Thailand you've seen in tourism ads and on posters in restaurants, a curved, white beach dotted with impossibly tall palm trees, tiki bars, and hardly a soul in sight. At night, the tiny organisms that float out their lives in the surf light up in response to movement, leaving a trail of stars behind your fingers. Beers are a dollar at a reggae-themed bar on the shore where a tattooed fire dancer offers a free square of sand to pitch our tent, and a short walk up the beach there's a place that sells expensive but almost accurate American food. Just knowing Khanom is there alleviates the aggravations of Surat. When Monday comes and I'm back at work, I feel recharged and able to enjoy those hundreds of tiny faces screaming "Hello Teeeachaaa Saweee."

Levi at Ao Tong Yee--The End of the Road Beach

The aptly named "Reggae Bar."

Our ride to paradise

wheels

Surat Thani is a place with blistering sun and oppressive humidity, a place that makes you grateful for every breeze. The steaming bowls of spicy noodles do little to ease the burn. I find my brain and my limbs sluggish in this heat, every movement a great effort. As the sun sets and the waitress pours a beer over ice, the world clears up and my pulse quickens to normal.

Life is busier here than it is in Zafra. The streets wake up before seven every day, and rather than European microcars and pedestrians, they're crowded with motorbikes, SUVs, and smoke-belching pickup trucks. Food carts ring their bells as they pass houses and shops and cars and motorcycles blow past them. Lane markers are mere suggestions, to be taken or ignored according to the driver's whim or convenience; most choose to go where they see empty pavement, regardless of those yellow lines.

Frankly, I'm terrified of the streets, but it was too much of a hassle to be without transportation, so Levi and I bought a motorbike, a used teal Honda with some scratches and cracks, but she's got spirit. I haven't yet mastered the art of Thai driving, but I'm determined.

I'm getting the hang of my classes. Teaching little kids is like putting on a show. Since they won't learn if they're bored, the goal is to keep them laughing while tricking them into speaking English. It's not a difficult task; they're eager to please and highly excitable, and even if they don't understand a word I'm saying, they're quick to respond with cheers and grins. It's hard not to leave smiling.

whirl

It took 54 hours, a bus, three planes, and one panicked double-back to the airport to recover forgotten luggage, but we got here. Surat Thani is still a bit of a mystery to me, as we have yet to acquire a bike and it's not a walkable place with its traffic and unmarked backstreets and occasional lack of sidewalks. We've been riding around in tuk-tuks, little trucks with benches in the back who will take you anywhere for about 50 cents, but whose route and travel time are ever uncertain. So it's been a strange week, spent half in transit and half on the attempts to pull together a life--learn the job, set up the house, figure out what food to ask for and where to buy the various objects always necessary after a move. All I know for certain is that the food is delicious and everyone smiles. Once we buy a motorbike I'll figure the rest out.

In the mornings I'm at Thidamaepra School, a shiny modern ring of a building that encircles 2000 children and a handful of nuns. I teach three sections of Intensive English Program second-graders, fifty-five to a class. This week I instructed them on demonstratives and body parts while their Thai teacher menaced the troublemakers with a ruler. They give us free food at lunchtime and when we walk through the building dozens of little hands surround us for high-fives and "Hello Teacher!" comes at us from all angles.

In the afternoons I'm at Super English, the school that hired us. Here I have two classes of ten kids, aged four to six. Since I'm alone with them and they don't understand a word I'm saying, keeping the situation under control has been a bit of a challenge. But they have fat cheeks and call me 'Teacher Sawee" so it's pretty hard to get irritated. After finishing classes, it's a short walk to a one-dollar dinner of curry or noodles.

It's all still a blur of spicy food and sleepiness; I don't think it's really hit me that I'm here. This weekend we're shopping for a bike and I'm gonna get this place figured out.

PS I'll keep this blog at its current address, despite the fact that I am no longer anywhere near Europe.

f scott

'It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road. "How do you get to West Egg village?" he asked helplessly. I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.'

I've just reread The Great Gatsby for the umpteenth time, having left it alone for an unusually long spell of two years, and this quote caught my attention. I had no recollection of it, and given my almost embarrassing level of familiarity with this book, I have to assume that it had always simply seemed too inconsequential to commit to memory.

But when I encountered it the other day, it struck me that I've experienced precisely this feeling in Zafra, where lost-looking tourists occasionally wander through empty streets during siesta hours and, in either desperation or ignorance, overlook the fact that I hardly have the face of a person who might know her way around a southern Spanish village. In speaking to them, I find I recognize their accents, that in their heavy esses and lispy dees I hear Madrid and Andalusia, not the mysteriously vague 'somewhere in Spain' I heard two years ago. Moreover, I know exactly where to send them. This is no great accomplishment, considering that they always ask for the central tourist sites, which are more or less concentrated within a small circle that also encompasses my apartment, but I can't help but indulge in a moment of self-satisfaction. It pains me a bit now to leave that comforting mastery behind.

Leaving always makes me sentimental. Just yesterday I spoke with a friend from college who is packing to move away from our beautiful campus town. As my flurry of reminiscence was reaching its crescendo she reminded me, quite truthfully, that it's not the place I miss, but the time. I was tired of Bloomington's spirit, of drunk freshman and pretension, and I'm tired of Zafra's isolation and immutability. But despite the cons list, it's hard to let go of such a great time.