back

After only fifteen months away, here we are again in Spain. I couldn´t be happier. Thailand was a great experience, but it certainly taught me that I would just really rather live in the developed western world. Our little flat in the center of Madrid has hot water, high-speed internet, a flush toilet located in a bathroom inside of the dwelling itself, an oven, sinks in the bathroom and kitchen, sufficient and comfortable seating...after Thailand, and especially the jungle container, it´s pure luxury. Three months in I still emerge from every hot shower amazed at how fantastic it is to have a hot shower. I´ve been cooking elaborate meals in my fully-equipped kitchen and haven´t once had to scrub mold off the walls. Life is good.

I´ve also been struck by how much easier this transition has been than any of the previous moves I´ve made. My study abroad time in Argentina was six months of culture shock; I never fully adapted because I couldn´t speak the language well and it was the first time I´d really experienced a culture other than my own. When we moved to Zafra, it took me months to being truly understanding the accent, and adjusting to small-town life was difficult and often frustrating. Living in Surat never stopped feeling insane--just when I would start to feel at home, a spider the size of my hand would scuttle across my floor, or my neighbor would proudly present me with an entire octopus and wait expectably for me to eat it, or my school would throw an enormous celebration (the motivation for which I was never once able to fully understand) in which the students would dress up in traditional Thai dance costumes and drape Buddhist scarves around a statue of the virgin Mary, or ceremonially give me a bath towel with a bow wrapped around it. There were days when it was just wholly, insurmountably foreign.

This move hasn´t been like that. I understand what people are saying. The things they do make sense to me. I can get everywhere easily, whether my bus or metro, without walking miles through unmarked village streets or risking my life on a questionable motorbike. I can buy any food I need or want. With three years under my belt, teaching is a breeze. The challenges I face every day are normal life challenges, not ´´I can´t figure out how to order food without chicken guts´´ type challenges.

Happy to be back.

leaving

I haven't written in a while because I've been a bit gloomy and didn't want to put any of that negativity in words. I've been feeling stuck--I was ready to leave Thailand a while ago but the way things worked out, we decided it was in our best interests to stay still September. So I've kind of put my head down and powered through.

But now we're two weeks from out of here, and I'm starting to reflect on my time here. It hasn't all been great. It turned out that Thailand isn't a good fit for me, or, more fairly put, that I'm not a good fit for Thailand. I didn't adapt well to the tropical heat, or to the frustration of the language barrier, and I have never come to feel at home here. But the thing is, despite the downs, I've never for a moment regretted coming. I don't wish we'd gone somewhere else instead, or that we'd stayed in Spain, or even that we'd left sooner. It's been hard, but I think if it hadn't been so hard, I wouldn't have learned as much.

Leaving always makes me look more positively on a place--In my last weeks in Zafra, the claustrophobia of small-town life stopped bothering me so much. Right before leaving Bloomington, it sorta seemed ok that hipsters and hobos regularly pissed in the alley five feet from my bedroom window. So now that we're on the verge of departure, I'm coming out of my grumpiness and starting to remember why I came here in the first place.

Thai food, while something of a minefield of weird animal parts and peppers that set your mouth on fire, is some of the best stuff I've ever had. I'm to the point where I always crave curry breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I hit this vegan place every day for tofu green curry, mixed vegetables and sauteed seitan rubbed with red curry paste. It's honestly one of the best meals I've ever had. The red curry and penang and Sweet Kitchen, a riverside restaurant that Levi and I visit two or three times a week, is extraordinary.

The jungle that surrounds our little container house really is breathtaking. I've never gotten tired of just staring into the tangles of trees, flowers, and vines. I spend Saturday and Sunday mornings laying on our bed with the container door flung open, reading a book and watching the palm trees sway in the breeze, electric blue birds and butterflies the size of my palm floating by, the occasional thunderstorm rolling in, bending the palm trunks at  incredible angles and pouring rain on the tin roof.

And the people here, both my coworkers and the locals, are fantastic. It's been pretty rare that I've encountered an unpleasant person. It's the sort of place that lends itself to a laid-back attitude, and seems to attract that sort of person. So even in my occasional irritation with Surat, I've been happy for the opportunity to get to know some really great people.

So we're off to Madrid in two weeks. We'll be there teaching for a year, and if all goes according to our current plan, Levi will continue teaching and working on his photography (which is getting more incredible all the time) while I do a year-long masters program in archaeology at a university in the city.

I'm thrilled to be going back to Spain. Oddly enough, it took a teaching job in Thailand to make me realize that what I really want to do is live in Spain and eventually quit teaching. I'm also happy to be moving to a big city--it will be fantastic to have international restaurants, import-stocked grocery stores, museums and live music at our fingertips. Madrid is well-connected by public transportation to the whole province, which has several beautiful cities and national parks to explore.

I'm ready.

en route, old friends

Katie and a coconut.

 My friend Katie, the very same Katie who spent two weeks with us in Spain about a year and a half ago, just departed from her visit here in Thailand with a promise to see us again in our next destination. She's amazing. A day after her arrival, we left town to spent three days on Koh Phangan, an island off the coast of Surat province famous for its landscapes and parties. Our time on the secluded beach of Haad Yuan consisted largely of drinking beer in the sand and reading on our beachview terrace, but the journey there, in retrospect a dark foreshadowing of the rest of Katie's Thai experience, was....arduous.

The view from our bungalow. Nice place. Bad, bad bathroom.

Getting to Haad Yuan, a beautiful (albeit touristy and way too boho) beach on the west side of the island, entails the following: Drive motorbike to bus station. Park in slightly sketchy enclosed lot near bus station. Take minibus on a one-hour ride to the port. Wait at the port, normally for less than an hour, but for nearly three if they happened to have changed the departure times that day without telling anyone. Play cards and eat overpriced food to pass the time while grumbling about the Thai inability to keep to a schedule. Board the ferry and sit for 2.5 hours, during which time you will be incredibly hot and dealing with various waves of unpleasant smells. Nice views though.

Katie and I on the taxi boat. It's much nicer in the daytime.

Arrive at Koh Phangan at sunset. Pile into tuk-tuk with several European strangers and embark on thirty-minute ride of terror through the hilly, curvy terrain of the island, at the mercy of a driver who appears to have consumed a dangerous dose of amphetamines. Arrive at Haad Rin, the party beach. Walk ten minutes through the garbage of last night and the crowds of the young evening to the shore, where you will hire a taxi boat. It's a wooden longtail with a car engine strapped to the back. The driver will go at a speed you judge to be way too fast for nighttime along a rocky coast, but you've just gotta trust that he's done this a million times. Arrive at destination, find an available bungalow, sit at beach restaurant and order beers immediately.

Western luxuries in tourist paradise.

But after we had gotten through the trials, and with Katie now familiar, on her second day in Thailand, with about seven forms of Thai transportation, we enjoyed ourselves relaxing on the postcard of a beach. Levi and Katie even woke early one day and walked to the bar, where zonked-out hippies were still raving in strobe lights to nineties trance music well after dawn. Quite an experience. And our ride home was much smoother; we even had the luck of an air-conditioned ferry. We rested up in Surat for a day before embarking on our next journey: Thai New Year. More to follow soon; it deserves a focus of its own.

gang som and salt fish

Thai food is some of the best stuff in the world. Pad thai, rich coconut curries, spicy stir-fries and sweet, milky iced tea--amazing. All of those are wonderful treats, and the versions you get in Thailand are superior to the sanitized, less-flavorful versions available in the west.

But here's the thing: it's the best of Thai food, sanitized though it may be, that made it to the other hemisphere. The rest of of, quite justifiably, has no market where a European palett reigns. That coconut curry the waitress sets in front of you smells amazing, but stir it up a bit before you dive in--it's probably full of chicken feet and bits of intenstine. Anything you'd call spicy would be tasteless to a local, so the dish is so full of chilies that you've got tears streaming down your cheeks by the third bite. The shrimp in your pad thai is whole-vein, head, and all, and the chicken is full of gristle and fat. Your otherwise delicious noodle soup is full of what appears to be black tofu, but turns out to be balls of congealed pig's blood.

If you know where to look and know how to say "mild" in Thai, you can eat pretty well. Some of the best food I've ever eaten has been right here in Surat. But during the school year, while I was working at the elementary school, I would often stay and eat the free lunch that the school generously provides to the teachers. Some days, it was something simple and pleasant like fried rice or sweet curry, but every once in a while, after already committing to a plate and a drink, I'd find myself face to face with the unholy combo: gang som and salt fish.

Gang som is, from what I've gathered talking to Thai coworkers, a favorite dish of southern Thailand. It's also the most disgusting thing I've ever tasted in my life. It's a watery curry of a strange grayish yellow-green color, full of fish and bitter vegetables, with a sour/sweet/deadly spicy flavor. I can't compare it to anything because I've never tasted anything remotely like it. The cafeteria cooks generally saw fit to serve it with another Thai delicacy that turns my stomach: salt-cured fish. It's an entire fish, cold and crispy and highly salted all the way through. There's no way to really separate the meat from the bone, so you just do your best and get the occasional sliver stuck in your throat.

After being burned a few times, I had to just admit to my Thai coworkers that I hate the stuff and excuse myself whenever it was served. They laughed at me for my lack of fortitude, but even they had to concede that it isn't for everyone.

libros

I'm teaching prepositions to my second graders, making it visual by stacking kids on top of one another, balancing notebooks on their heads and having them stand on, next to, behind, in front of chairs. I make a couple kids squeeze themselves under a desk and have one hold a chair on his head. I swear this is educational.

I pull one kid's desk out of his row and into the front of the class. I tell him to stand on it. He breaks into a huge, gap-toothed grin when he realizes what I'm telling him to do, but before he jumps up on it, he presses his hands together in front of his lips and bows to the desk, the wai gesture that Thais use to show respect.

As I continue bringing up groups of kids to stand in various silly formations with each other, furniture, and their school supplies, I notice that every kid wais the desk before standing on it. I'm confused; I've only seen this gesture used to show respect to people, temples, and other things that you would naturally assume garner respect. Not pieces of furniture.

So after class, I ask my Thai assistant teacher about it. She tells me it isn't about the desk, but what's inside of the desk.

Education is highly valued in Thailand. Teachers are very well respected; in Surat, if you're being treated with the rudeness usually reserved for backpackers, dropping an "I'm a teacher" in Thai will turn things around. This respect carries over to books; as the tools of education, they are treated with care and reverence.

So my students, before putting their feet (the most unholy part of the body) on the desk, were showing respect for the books.

crash

Thai driving is mad. As I've discussed before, Thai drivers, especially those on motorbikes (who seem to the the large majority) weave in and out of traffic, drive on the wrong side of the road, blow red lights, and generally behave as though there were no one else on the street. Generally, it works out. In my experience, it often seems to be a more efficient driving style. If every one of the katrillion motorbikers in Surat followed the rules of the road and behaved the way cars are expected to (stay in your lane, don't weave to the front of the line at a traffic light, don't drive on the sidewalk...) traffic would be nightmarish and no one would get anywhere. The roads just aren't big enough for it. So to some extent, I get it.

But there's no avoiding the obvious fact: motorbiking here is really dangerous. It's liberating and relaxing and fantastically fun, but it's really dangerous. You're probably going to crash at some point. You need a helmet.

But Thai people, apparently fifty-three percent of those who regularly drive motorbikes, don't wear helmets. Anecdotally, it seems to be at least that high. Considering that many people only put one on when they see a cop, or ride around with the chinstrap unbuckled (rendering the helmet entirely useless in preventing anything but a fine), the number of people who are effectively without a helmet must be much higher. This is why Thailand has the world's worst motorbike fatality rate, with eleven thousand people dying annually because they didn't want to mess up their hair (or whatever-no excuse is a good one).

The worst is the kids. Fine, you're an adult, do you thing, but your seven-year-old needs a helmet. End of story. But it's actually pretty rare to see kids wearing them. Pretty much daily, I see passengers holding entirely unprotected infants on the back of the bike, or a parent in a helmet (presumably only to avoid a ticket) ferrying two or three kids on the back without a helmet between them. It makes me shudder to think of what could happen if they hit a bump.

It's not only helmets, either. Thailand seems to have a general lack of concern for safety. You'll see ten people in the back of a speeding pickup truck, one seated on the rusted and precariously attached tailgate. Boats shuttling tourists around and between the islands will brave absurd waves, and occasionally you hear a story with a tragic, rocky ending. Children crawl around the front seat of the car or ride on the driver's lap.

People more intimately acquainted with Thai culture have told me that this cavalier attitude towards danger in rooted in some fundamental elements of the national character. Thai people are generally, about all things, very relaxed. They just don't worry about possible negative outcomes the way most Westerners do. One expat, here for a decade and married to a Thai woman, told me that they tend not to think in terms of cause and effect; if you crash your bike while not wearing a helmet and get a concussion, they will tend not to blame the concussion on the lack of a helmet. Since you couldn't have forseen the accident, they assume you couldn't have prepared for it, so there was nothing you could have done to avoid the injury. It was out of your hands.

That's another piece of the Thai psyche: superstition. You don't need a helmet, or a seatbelt, or to not get on that old wooden boat in a storm, because you won't die until it's your time to die. When it's your time, there's nothing you can do anyway, so why worry. They hop on the bike and trust the universe to do the job of a helmet. 

While I admire the Thai stress-free attitude towards life and embrace it in matters of work and play, I can't get on board with this one. Seeing my five-year-old students roll up to the school on the back of a motorbike, their tiny heads unprotected, makes it hard to smile at their parents. The universe won't help you out here. Put on a helmet.

Stats source

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.

anuban

Once a week I teach Anuban 1, which would be, in the American education system, pre-pre-kindergarten. They're three years old. But here (and in Spain, and as I understand, in much of the world) at three years old you're off to school. At Thida, they even put you in a tiny uniform. Since you can't yet handle the whole tucked-in thing, your shirt is actually attached by a series of buttons to your skirt/shorts, but apart from that and your extremely small stature, you look just like the big kids.

They're not at the point where you can do a full, 55-minute lesson, complete with bookwork and writing, so it's just a half hour of "conversation." Sarcasm quotes because, let's be honest, these little guys don't even really speak Thai yet. So on my first day with them, I wanted to keep it simple. I walk in and their teacher has them, all 45 of them, seated on the floor in neat little columns. They all scream "HELLO" and wave frantically as I walk in and take a seat on the miniature chair at the front of the room.

We practice "My name is," which they can sort of do. "My name is Teacher Savannah," I say. A couple brave ones shout "SAWANNAH," but the rest are silent, their big black eyes rolling in their heads as they take in this strange new pale addition to their surroundings. I call up the first one. She slowly stands and, prompted by her friends, timidly approaches me. They've given her the smallest possible uniform, but the short-sleeved shirt still covers her elbows and her skirt brushes her toes. She's tugged her pigtails into lopsided tangles and one of her feet is bare. "What's your name?" I ask. She's nervous, looking around at her enthralled peers for assistance. It's too much pressure to say it aloud, so she leans in and whispers, "My name is Aung-ing." I offer her a congratulatory high five, which she accepts with enthusiasm before scurrying back to her seat, where her friend returns her missing sock.

Next up is Tang Mo, who is also in my after-school class every day and thus suffers no shyness in my presence, although she's not the reserved type anyway. Her name, directly translated, means 'watermelon.' This is a food-focused culture, and fruity names are fairly common, but sometimes a likeness can turn a cute name into adorable comedy. Tang Mo is a fat little watermelon, with round cheeks and a chubby belly and limbs of rather melon-like proportions. Before I can even get the question out, she shouts "Teechah! My ay it Tang Mo," and demands her well-earned high five. I tickle her instead, and she collapses to the floor in giggling spasms. When I stop, she's suddenly very serious, holding her hand resolutely a few inches from my face until I consent to high-five it.

I go through the entire class, one by one, coaxing their names out of them, cheating occasionally with a whispered word in Thai, hoping it will ease their nerves. One kid has his finger buried up to the knuckle in his nostril for the duration of our interation. One girl grabs my hand and examines my nail polish closely for several moments before declaring it pink. One boy bursts into tears.

Twenty-five minutes in, we stand up for a song. Thai kids are universally familiar with "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes," for some reason, so I just roll with it. But the coordination required to touch different body parts in rapid succession proves too much for most of these little ones, and a good number simply collapse in the effort. Their friends pull them to their feet, rumpling their uniforms and mussing their carefully-braided hair. One tiny one goes to touch his head and applies a bit too much force, landing on his forehead with a SMACK. It's a bloodbath. I ask them to sit down to end the carnage, but they've lost their columns and don't know where to go, so they do the next logical thing they can think: start tackling one another to the floor in extremely slow-motion wrestling matches.

Half an hour's up, sorry teacher, your problem now. I wave goodbye and go to the class next door to do it all over again.

glitter

My school, like Thailand in general, likes to party. Every couple of months (at least), classes start being sporadically cancelled, or you'll show up and only half the kids will be there, usually a mostly male half. The poor little guys will tell you that their fortunate classmates don't have to come because they're dancing.

They're preparing for a celebration of some kind. The meaning is less important than the mode, which is always the same; take lots of little girls, doll them up Toddlers in Tiaras-style, and have them do an utterly Thai dance for a small gathering of the school's nuns, teachers, and a few parents. These shows are huge; the costumes alone must cost a fortune and take hours to put together, and the kids practice the choreography for weeks. Despite the intense effort it clearly entails, they appear to do it just for the kids and the photos; there is hardly ever any audience more than twenty people.

These photos are from the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the school, but they're pretty representative of Mother's Day, Father's Day, the River Spirit holiday and others.

First and second graders perform for the nuns

Coming offstage in a blur of pink and gold and fake eyelashes.

Some of the high school girls from the other campus getting ready in the teacher's room before the show.

Big silk scarves unfolded from their skirts in the finale, which came out all blurry on my sad little camera.

Some of my kids performing the dance their class prepared.

The whole elementary school performing the final number. It was cool to see from above, but I was one of maybe three people to go upstairs to check it out.

railay

Monday was Constitution Day, so a bunch of us took the three-day weekend to go to Railay, a beautiful bay with a touristy beachfront on the western side of the peninsula. We sat on the beach, went on a snorkling trip, saw fire dancers and Thai boxing, and had a great time. Here's some pics.

Alicia on the boat to our snorkel spot. We saw a two-foot sea snake and huge schools of colorful fish.

At one of the islands our snorkel tour guide took us to. This boat, and many others like it, was fitted with a full kitchen setup and sold a pretty extensive menu, drink and appetizers as well.

Why buy torches when all these empty beer cans are just lying around? This was the method one beach bar used to light a path. There were a dozen or so. Leo is a typical Thai beer, usually one of the cheapest a shop will have. It takes something like Bud Light, only pissier.

At Railay Bay. One of the more crowded beaches I've been to here, but still no rival to the hoards of southern Spain.

Catherine on the boat to the beach. It's located on a rocky peninsula and can only be reached by boat. Like many places in Thailand, these boats are longtails, wooden canoe-liked affairs with car motors rigged onto them.

Colorful riverboats on the way out to the sea.

Levi relaxing at the restaurant in the bungalow complex we stayed in. The design is typically Thai: colorful, wooden, with a charmingly makeshift Bohemian feel. Instead of chairs, many of the tables have floor cushions.

idiomas

I've studied Spanish and Portuguese for years and am reasonably adept at languages; I'm good at mimicking sounds and tones and have a decent memory for vocab. Thai is, of course, a far more complicated animal. I've picked up a little through osmosis, but I'm ashamed to say that I haven't put that much effort into learning it. It's such a daunting task that undertaking it for the sake of a one-year stint seemed silly to me, and laziness did the rest.

But I have enough for pleasantries, at least the initial ones. I can tell the cashier I don't want a bag and that I don't have a member card, and I can give her the correct amount when she tells me the total. These feel like huge accomplishments and I'm always rather proud of myself.

At this point, said cashier is super excited because it's rare that she meets a foreigner who speaks Thai. She compliments me on my skills (I know that one) then proceeds to say...some other stuff. She seems to be asking a question now...oh god, smile and nod...nope, appears not to have been a yes/no question...search purse for exact change...not what she wanted...abandon ship!

"I dont understand," I say, a phrase I learned within a day of arrival. I'm defeated. She's laughing hysterically. She says nevermind, tells me I have pretty hair, and gives me my change.

I scurry.

the job

I work at a gigantic elementary school. On most days I teach three classes, each with over fifty second-graders. I see these same kids for an hour every day, so I've gotten to know them pretty well. They are amazing.

 I walk into the classroom and one designated kid, usually of the suck-up variety, shouts "Stand up, please!" They all rise, their hands clasped in the prayer-like gesture (call a wai) used to show respect. "Good morning, teachah," they chant, their Thai tongues unable to handle that final 'R'. I say good morning and ask them to sit down, to which they respond, "Thank you, teachah." The second they're seated, the politeness drains out of them and they return to their noisy, misbehaved ways.

 Months ago, I divided each class into teams. These teams earn points by being reasonably good, and the reward for a certain number of points is a homework-free day. They like the incentive, but mostly they just want to honor of bestowing a name on their team for the day. They wrestle each other's arms down and squeal "teeeeaachaaahh,"  hoping to catch my attention. The kids I call on proudly shout "Team Angry Birds," "Team Amazing Spiderman," or, in the last few weeks, "Team Gangnam Style." One tech-savvy class once gave me "Team iPad," "Team iPod," and "Team iPhone." My kiss-ass class comes up with things like "Team Teacher Savi is Beautiful" and "Team America is Great." They know how to get extra points out of me. The same class once realized that I'd give out points for candy (I have limited integrity when it comes to points) and I spent two glorious weeks being showered in sweets and, once, an entire cake.
 

Maintaining peace in the face of violence

I start class with a game that gets them moving around, usually something that has them racing to the board to write vocab words. It's amazing how intensely interested they suddenly are when I throw in competition. Some kids get positively spastic. When we study animals, I have a few class clowns come up and act like gorillas or dinosaurs (T-rex arms are a personal favorite of mine). When we're doing adjectives, they come up and puff out their tummies for "fat" or have jumping contests for "tall." One very entertaining week on professions, I had the rowdiest boys posed as ballerinas and the daintiest girls aiming fingerguns as cops. At the end of class, I assign them homework and listen to their argument against homework. Alright, it's less an argument and more "teaaccchhahh noooo homework!" In the end they laugh and do it anyway.

When I see them around the school, they run up for high-fives and hugs. I'll occasionally see one at a store or restaurant and they freak out, waving and shouting "HELLOO TEACHAH!" until their parents hiss at them to show proper respect with a wai. They're still so small that seeing a teacher outside school is exciting enough to make them forget their manners.

Somedays they give me headaches, aggravate me with their inability to conjugate a verb properly despite weeks of practice, and I swear if I hear one more of them singing "Gangnam Style" I might lose it, but they are just awesome. I mean, look.

Pictured: pure evil

bad

I teach for two hours a day at Super English, an after-school academy. My students are three to six years old, but many of them have a higher level of English than the second-graders I teach in the morning. In my first class, I have the smartest of all of my students, a tiny five-year-old girl named Gun who is every bit as girly and headstrong as I was when I was a kid. She loves showing off her absurdly floofy dresses and raises her hand to answer every question. She's fantastic.

That class is now all girls, but I used to have a few boys, the most memorable of whom is Bamboo, a chubby five-year-old who is good at English but terrible at behaving himself. He's a fat little cannonball, just runs through life destroying everything in his path. Gun has no tolerance for his nonsense; she's always rolling her eyes at him, or shaking her head at me and saying, "Teacher, Bamboo is bad."

There's one central rule in my class: no speaking Thai. If they're not speaking Thai, they're not distracted, and generally listen and behave better. I'm strict on this rule.

So one day the kids are doing a worksheet. I turn my back for a moment and hear a smack. I spin around and Bamboo is hovered over Gun's desk, her Cinderella pencil case is in his porky fist, and her arm is raised. She quickly returns it to her lap and looks guiltily at me.

Bamboo launches into a wailing narrative in Thai, acting out what happened, clearly trying to tell me that Gun retaliated physically against his theivery.

Gun looks at him, looks at me, and waits. When Bamboo stops, waiting for me to punish his assailant, Gun purses her lips and looks me directly in the eye and says, "Teacher, Bamboo is speaking Thai."

No punishments were dealt that day.

blanca

In the west, we value a good tan. As a redheaded decendent of the pigment-challenged Irish, I am acutely aware of this fact. In our highly industrialized society, there's a belief that the working class labors indoors under flourescent lighting while the rich have the leisure time and money to lie on a beach. So a tan implies wealth, health and status.

Thailand, and apparently much of Asia, are different. The poor laborers here spend their time in fields, on the water, and on construction sites, where it's impossible to avoid a deep tan. The rich work in offices (speaking very generally). So here, a tan is a marker of poverty and low-class status. Much like being pale in the west, this is considered unattractive. Of course, this falls mostly on women and girls; perception of female beauty is largely dependent on skin shade. And as with our slew of bronzing, self-tanning, sun-attracting products back home, this insistence on an arbitrary feminine ideal gives rise to a really, really stupid industry.

I ran out of deodorant last week. I'd brought a few months' worth from Spain because I'm picky (that gooey roll-on stuff grosses me out and is ubiquitous everywhere I've travelled) but I finally exhausted my supply and went to the store. What I encountered was at least ten different brands of deodorant, each that messy goop, and each containing skin-whitening components. For my armpits. And to think, I had no idea! All those years of off-white armpits, all those sundresses and tank tops in which I flaunted them to my oblivious humiliation!

And it's not just deodorant. While your sunscreen prevents that disgusting tan, it's making your base-level white a shade lighter. Your dead-white liquid foundation will bleach your face for you. Moisterizer, lotion, shaving cream, cleansers, body wash, masks, powder--every skin product imaginable. For some of these products, like deodorant, it's challenging or impossible to find something that doesn't offer to make some part of your body porcelain white. Your face, your hands, your legs, your freaking armpits. This horrifying article discusses vaginal whitening wash. (After several attempts at a snarky remark on this subject, I've decided that it lampoons itself just fine without my help.)

Given no other options, I purchased the one with the least offensive packaging. It smells like bug spray and gets all over my clothes. But I'm sure no one will be able to resist me and my glaring white underarms.

sidestreet

There's a place on a dark sidestreet downtown with an English sign and a beautiful outdoor seating area. It's got a trendy hideout vibe to it and some European beer signs and it's close to work, so Levi and I decided to check it out. We got there before their dinner rush and enjoyed an empty beer garden. Literal garden: it was decorated in the jungle style common to Thai restaurants, with enormous banana trees, flowering bushes, hanging moss and vines. Lovely. We asked our exceptionally pretty waitress for two cocktails from the rather large cocktail menu, and were informed that they had only beer, and no imports. Alright, disappointing, but Thai beer it is. We ordered some food as well, to the apparent confusion of the waitress, who called over another gorgeous girl to confirm that this was ok.

They decided we could eat, and the two of them scurried off to the kitchen. As they left, we noticed they each had a ring of little bells tied around their ankles that jingled pleasantly as they moved. We also noticed the dangerously high slits in their matching form-fitting, strapless dresses.

The food turned out to be pretty good, and we were rather enjoying ourselves when the place started picking up. More of these beautiful, similarly-dressed women appeared to wait on the additional tables, which we came to notice were comprised almost exclusively of men, either on their own or in groups of two or three. Once these customers had arrived, we found it highly difficult to get the attention of a waitress; they all seemed exceptionally absorbed in conversation with the gentlemen at their respective tables.

When the waitress finally brought the check, I left the standard tip, which generally gets a grateful response from servers. She looked at it, looked at me, scoffed, and turned back to the solo diner at the next table, who said something that prompted her to show him her tummy.

We left hastily.

sangre

American expats don't tend to be the most nationalistic Americans you'll meet, but our distance from home leads us all to strange bouts of patriotic fervor on two occasions: Independence Day and Thanksgiving. I imagine we get all watery-eyed about these, rather than Christmas or Easter, because even our non-American expat friends can't relate. So we do silly things like launch fireworks until the neighbors fire off warning shots and call the cops (happened), and throw Thanksgiving barbeques where we improvise with local ingredients and drink too much beer.

Anyway, the latter happened the other night, at least for most of my friends. On the way to the party, a coworker crashed her motorcycle and woke up in the hospital in need of a friend. So Levi and I ditched the dinner and drove out to lend some moral support.

I'd only ever been to the private hospital in Surat. By western standards, it's extraordinarily cheap so there was never any reason to go to the public center. But for the typical Thai person, the modern, clean, centrally-located hospital is prohibitively expensive. Our routine visa health checks there cost 500 baht, which is only $15 for us, but for the average working person here living on 10,000 baht a month (a little over a third of what we foreign teachers make), that 500 baht is a healthy chunk of cash. With that money you can fill up your motorbike tank 4 times, or buy 15 meals, or take over 30 rides in a tuk-tuk to anywhere in town.

So when you get hurt and aren't awake to tell the medics where you want to go, they'll take you to Surat Thani Hospital, the publically-funded medical center. It's cheap, I'll give it that.

We arrived at the Motorcycle Accident/ER (yes, it's called that). A waiting room full of cracked plastic chairs was full of typically calm Thai people, sitting around patiently under the flickering florescent lights, watching infomercials and staring at the broken clock on the wall. Through this room a slow but steady stream of motorcycle patients was being wheeled in on rusty stretchers. Many of them were carrying their own IV bags. They were, on average, bloody messes, and they would stay that way for a while in the crowded, understaffed ward.

A receptionist pointed us in the direction of our friend, the only foreigner there. She was banged up and had fractured her collarbone and bumped her head pretty good, but was thankfully alright, awake and not in too much pain. As we waited for the results of her x-rays and then the sling they decided to give her, we watched the arrivals come in, more and more frequently as the night wore on. A doctor came over at one point to grab the oxygen tank stashed under my friend's stretcher; as he carried it off I noticed it was entirely engulfed in rust.

I was struck by the relaxed demeanor of everyone there, doctors, patients, and family. As another friend put it after his own serious motorcycle accident, Thai people have an incredibly casual attitude towards terrible injury. I seemed to be the only person flinching at all the blood and gore around me.

When we finally left, the bill was a little $30, x-rays, sling, and meds included.

rey

The Thais are a patriotic bunch. The king, the longest-ruling monarch on the planet, inspires more adoration and awe than any celebrity or leader I've ever seen. On Mondays, the weekday of his birth, a striking proportion of the population wears a polo with his crest, in yellow, his personal favorite color. His birthday is the biggest holiday of the year. His face graces (by law, I've heard) every business, every public building, and most houses in the whole of Thailand. There's a law in place that makes it illegal to do anything to an image of him that could be considered "defamation." People have been arrested for drunkenly painting on posters of him, placing pictures of other people above a picture of him on websites, and sending unfortunately intercepted text messages expressing distaste for him. I can't figure out if it's actually illegal, but the Buddhist taboo about feet, combined with the image of the king's face on the currency, means that it is completely unacceptable to step on a coin to keep it from rolling away from you. You may think this wouldn't be that big of a deal, but I'd bet you do it way more than you realize, and it's a tough habit to break. It also tends to happen when you're fumbling for change in crowded places with lots of witnesses. Awkward moments had by all.

Probably the most obvious manifestation of this legally-enforced lovefest is the national anthem. It's not actually called that, but referred to as "the King's song." It plays at eight am and six pm in every public place, every TV and radio station--everywhere. And it stops everything. Everyone drops what they're doing, however important, to stand at attention. No one walks or moves. Cars driving by the schools in the morning, upon hearing it on the loudspeaker, hit the brakes. A friend once joked, probably inappropriately, that if you ever want to wreak some unopposed havoc in Thailand, do it at eight or six.

Our neighbors have two little white puffball dogs, poodle mutts or something. They're generally pretty quiet and relaxed (very Thai), only getting yappy when we drive our motorbikes too close to their house or when a cat goes by. But through some weird training regimen that I can't fathom, their masters have gotten them into a habit of howling like maniacs ("singing," they insist) when the King's Song plays. They start when the music starts, and stop immediately after the last note. I thought at first that it must be a fluke, that they just barked when music played on the TV, but that TV runs all days, and those dogs are quiet as can be, except for 8 and 6. Like clockwork.

When I was reading about the king for this post, I found out that people have actually been arrested for remaining seated while the song is played before a movie at the theater. They don't bother with this for us foreigners at the English-language movies, but at Thai movies, they run it before every film, regardless of the time. My boss told me that he recently went to a movie with his Thai wife where they played not only the song, but a long and highly emotional slideshow of photos of the king, from his birth, to his coronation, to his present advanced age. My boss watched, bemused, as his wife and everyone else in the theater broke down in tears.

But my favorite King's Song anecdote came from a fellow teacher at Thida, the Catholic elementary school where I spend my mornings. The building is a gorgeous modern construction, a giant, domed circle lined with four floors of classrooms overlooking a tiled central courtyard. Every morning, the children line up in front of their classrooms, facing the center, to say morning prayers, do some calisthenics, and sing the song.

Like many Thai buildings, Thida has a wide open entryway to encourage much-needed airflow. This allows stray dogs to occasionally wander in, and since strays here are treated well and are therefore generally docile, no one bothers to shoo them. So one morning, while the children were lined up, two dogs entered the building and made their way to the center of the courtyard. After hanging about unmolested for a few minutes, they decided to make some puppies. Normally, someone would break this up quickly to avoid the awkward questions of the over 2,000 watching three-to-eight-year-olds. Unfortunately, this went down at 8:00 on the nose. No one could move. No one could do anything. The dozens of nuns, teachers, parents, janitors, administrators and lunch ladies were all frozen in place by a lifetime of twice-daily renditions. So for the sixty-second duration of the song, 2,000 pairs of little eyes watched as two muddy street dogs banged in the middle of their school, during the King's Song, right in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary.

My friend could barely tell me this story with a straight face. Thai teachers--less amused.

dishwashing

We don't have sink at our house. This generally proves to be less of a hassle than you might think. I brush my teeth in the shower or, on those days when the tank dries up, with a water bottle over the drain. We have a spigot in the bathroom for handwashing, and the trusty hose next to the toilet serves well for cleaning.

The only time this omission becomes particularly glaring is when it's time to do the dishes. We eat out most dinners and nearly all lunches, but breakfasts and the occasional carry-out meal usually create a pile of dishes at the end of the week. These dirties are stored outside, on a rotting wooden table furnished with two big plastic buckets, a drying rack, and a hose. The setup is covered in termites, ants, and the mosquitoes that breed in the water under the house. We do our best to rinse all the food out of the dishes and keep the table free of standing water, but the rain thwarts our efforts, and washing dishes is such an ordeal that there's no way we could do it daily. So the sticky stuff stays sticky, and the bugs go mad.

On Saturday mornings, I tackle this chore. The first step is to empty the buckets, with are undoubtedly full of rainwater and the resulting mosquito larvae. Lifting up the buckets usually reveals a termite smorgasbord; apparently weary of a wood-based diet, they've started working on the tough plastic, to an impressive degree of success. I rinse the little bastards away and get started on the ants, who, their feast on the crumbs under the table rudely interrupted by my assault with the hose, are now climbing angrily up my legs. I wash them off, often with some high-pitched squeals of which I'm not proud, and clean out the buckets. Both get filled with water, and to one I add soap. As I scrub and rinse, I'm doing battle with the swarms of mosquitoes; this "sink" is unfortunately located at the edge of the water, and they can't resist this rare bag of warm blood that has wandered into their realm. They're the bad ones, too, the nasty ones who fear no bug spray, so big you can clearly see the stripes on their backs and their horrifying needle-noses.

By the time I've gotten through the pile, I'm soaking wet, sweating, and covered in mosquito welts. A shower is in order. Sadly, the dishwashing process uses so much water that the tank is unlikely to contain any more, and I am often forced to sit in the house in filth until it is refilled by our landlord, the incoming tide, or the water fairy (it's unclear how the Thai water supply actually works). Thank god (vodka fairy?) for screwdrivers.

gac

Levi sipping a coconut on the porch

The landlords of our little jungle box are our neighbors, a family who live in two houses on our lane. The elderly patriarch of the family, a giggly, toothless, sun-weathered fellow, spends much of his time in galoshes and a straw hat, splashing around in the swamp and tending to his various crops of fruit, flowers, and the carcinegenic nut he chews as a stimulant. The result is the verdant setting of our weird, wonderful house, as well as a few treats.


Yesterday a member of the family dropped by with two coconuts. He hacked off the tops with a machete and instructed us to stick a straw in it. Yum.
 

Unripe gacfruit in our "yard"

A little while later, his sister sold us, for about 75 cents each, two bottles of the juice she and her husband have been squeezing from gac fruit, an orangey-red spikey thing that grows outside our living room window.The juice is a vivid red and tastes sweet and mild and fantastic. I threw some vodka and soda into it and enjoyed an immensely relaxing Sunday afternoon.

wc

Travel books will tell you all about the food, culture, and language of Thailand, but the nitty-gritty of daily life doesn't tend to reveal itself in these descriptions. For instance, nobody talks about bathrooms. This may seem like a weird blog topic, but the Thai bathroom experience is (to Westerners) bizarre enough to merit a walkthrough.

A typical Thai bathroom, whether in an average working-class home or business, is to Western eyes a truly horrible affair. First of all, there's often no toilet, or at least none that fits the American definition of that word. Instead, there's a porcelain bowl on the floor, elevated only a few inches. If you happen to be a man with only a brief bathroom necessity, the initial step poses few obstacles. However, for women and for men in need of a sit-down, this is a bit of a process. You have to straddle this bowl and, for lack of a less hideous word, squat. Not such an issue with skirts, but if you've got pants on you have the additional challenge of pulling them far down enough to be in the clear, but not so far as to interfere with the squatting action or to be on the (inevitably filthy) floor. The real difficulty here is getting through this without urinating on your own shoes or clothing.

Now that you've finished, you need to move on to cleanup. Thing is, the Thai sewer system is not nearly so advanced as to allow for the flushing of things like toilet paper. If you try, the results will be disastrous. You will therefore encounter one of two situations. You may be expected to use the provided toilet paper and deposit it into a wastebasket. This wastebasket will be full of the used toilet paper of previous visitors, and the room will smell accordingly. The more likely circumstance is the absence of toilet paper. In this case, it's bum gun time.

The bum gun, a space-saving cousin of the European bidet, is a three-foot hose with a head like those dishwashing nozzles you'll sometimes see on a kitchen sink. It's generally installed right next to the toilet (or squatty bowl thing, as the case may be). This is your TP substitute. If the water has run out, as Thai water supply is wont to do, you're simply out of luck. Should have checked that before you got started.

If you're lucky enough to have had water at a decent pressure, you're on to the flush. (No, you don't get to dry off. This is Thailand. You were already drenched in sweat and monsoon rain anyway.) Now, the mini-potty doesn't have a tank. It's nothing but a bowl set on top of a pipe in the ground. This means no handly flush button. Next to the bum gun there will be be a bucket full of water with a tupperware bowl floating on top. You scoop up the water with the bowl and pour it into the "toilet," effectively flushing it. Were you wondering why the floor is completely soaked? Were you concerned that it was urine that was soaking into your shoes and the ends of your jeans? Partially, yeah, it probably was. But it was also the spilled water that results when people get this step wrong. Because it will splash. On the floor, and on you.

You're done. Get out. No, you're not washing your hands, where do you think you are?