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?

jungla

My first semester in Thailand, a brief and overwhelming maelstrom of spicy food, language barriers and runny-nosed seven-year-olds, has passed. The experienced has been mixed, the daily joy of the unsurpassed cuteness of a Thai elementary school tempered by a constant pollution cough and my inability to effectively coymmunicate or integrate, but finally, this dirty, weird little river city is growing on me.

After four months there, Levi and I opted to flee the dorm-style house our school provides. It's a fine place, newly renovated and well located, but with five new teachers moving in for the new semester, the appeal faded. So we moved to the lesser developed side of the river, a peaceful forest village called Ban Bai Mai.

The container

Our new house, recently vacated by two former teachers, is composed of two metal storage containers, each about eight by thirty feet and nine feet high. They've been welded together along their lengths, furnished with doors and windows, and wood floors, piped and wired, painted blue and stuck up on stilts over a creekb  inb a dense palm jungle. To the front we have a broad tiled porch, fruit and flowering trees bearing delicacies I've never seen and couldn't name, and our neighbors, a friendly Thai family with whom we share a gravel drive. To the back, only jungle; a thick ground cover of grass, vines, and pandan shrubs beneath banana trees with six-foot leaves and two-storey palms swaying on trunks no wider than my leg. In October the flood rains come to southern Thailand so there are fish and frogs under the house and every shade of green outside the window.

The view from our bedroom

Living room

So rather than try to wrestle pleasant travels out of so wet a season, we're spending our month of freedom in this gorgeous box. The mornings we devote to improvements, painting furniture, dusting, and scrubbing the metal walls clean of their accumulated dirt and mold, but the afternoons are luxurious stretches of movies (or in my case, admittedly terrible by nevertheless irresistible Spanish soaps), books, and watching the rain run off the banana leaves. The place is a respite from the chaos and grime of Surat, and with the addition of this much-needed hideout, I'm happy I came to Thailand.

enlaces

In lieu of an actual blog post (it's one of those days) here's some links to Levi's photos and a few articles I've written for our school's website. Enjoy.

Tai Rom Yen National Park
Chiaya
Weird Surat
Levi's Flickr Albums

rezar

Last weekend, Levi and I dropped a rather lare sum of money partying on a tourist island, so for this holiday weekend we were determined to keep it cheap. Levi took a look at a map and led the way to Chaiya, a town about an hour northwest from Surat. It's a beautiful drive on the motorbike, all palm groves and rice paddies. When we arrived, the tenth-century temple we were seeking presented itself to us with little effort on our part, along with two unexpected others.

The first was Wat Long, a largely ruined but beautifully geometrical temple across the street from a high school and pretty much in someone's front yard. Estimates place it in the ninth or tenth centuries, but it's uncertain. The second was Wat Phra Borom That Chiaya, a modern temple and monastery complex. Today is Mothers' Day in Thailand, deemed thus and particularly important because it is the queen's birthday. The place was full of families praying and laying flowers, presumably in her honer (granted, this is only an outsider's conjecture).

The third temple was the one we came seeking, tenth-century Wat Keaw, the Greet Temple. And green it is. At the threshold, the temperature plummets and the air is dense with centuries of moisture and decay. The seated Buddhas, now wanting for heads and arms, are dressed in thick layers of green moss and cobwebs. It's and eerie and beautiful place.
On my new little tablet, photo uploading to blogger is exceptionally tedious, so click the link below to check out the pics from today.

Chiaya

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.