Got home four days ago. I think I was walking around in a daze the
first couple days back. Everyone around me looks like me and is speaking my
native language. This is very different... I also noticed everything
seemed to get a lot bigger here. The SUV's, the people, houses, etc.
After being the only white student in a school of 3,000 Thais, why do I
feel so out of place here? It might just take a while to adjust.
What I miss most from Thailand:
- Thai cuisine. All of it. It's not the same in America.
- Somtam, Kow neeow, Nam Prick, Pad Thai, Gai Pat Met Mamooang, Kow Man Gai, Kow Pad Moo, etc.
- Outdoor noodle shops open until 4am
- Going out to eat being an everday (if not every meal) event
- The fruit smoothie stands around almost every corner
- Staying at hotels for $5/night
- Buying a whole meal for less than a dollar
- Being able to find literally anything at the night markets
- Driving my motorcycle with three friends piled on the back
- The incredibly relaxed driving rules. The maximum fine for any kind of 'driving error' (no license, helmet, or any idea how to drive) is $7.00
- The fake brandname clothing, watches, and ripoff DVD's you can find at the markets
- The friendly Thai people
- My host family and friends
- and my school
Wow, I've been really out of touch lately and I apologize for the lack of posts within the last two months. Is anyone still reading this? I'll try to do a quick recap of everything that I've been up to during my summer here in Thailand.
Since graduating from Mattiyum 6 three months ago my life suddenly got really busy. In the beginning months of this year AFS was reluctant to let us foreign students travel the country on our own without any grasp of the language or how the transportation system works. I certainly don't blame them for keeping us on a short leash then.
I had heard from past exchangers to Thailand that after you get over the hump, after those first challenging and confusing five months, things tend to get a lot easier and more fun. They certainly did. These last couple months were definitely the highlight of my life in Thailand adventure, and probably the most fun I’ve ever had. I was completely on my own. All I needed was a plan, a group of friends, my Lonely Planet Guidebook, and I was there. I had never experienced this much freedom ever before and it felt really great to be on my own.
I spent a week in the deep south in Satun Province with seven other AFS friends. Satun is right on the border of Malaysia and on the west side of the southern peninsula. It is a province of mountainous forests and more than 80 beautiful surrounding islands protected by Tarutao National Park. It took me roughly 24 hours of bus travel to get there from Nan. I almost went mad listening to the onboard Thai karaoke and watching the overdubbed foreign films for hours at a time. Why do they have to use the same voices for every single dubbed film?
After arriving in Satun I noticed two things different about the south immediately. First, the weather was much hotter here. I stepped off the air conditioned bus and the humidity hit me like a brick wall. Second, the southern dialect that the people were speaking was a lot faster than that of the central and northern dialects – from what I’ve been limited to this whole year. I had a lot of trouble understanding what they were saying and often had to ask them to “พูดชาๆ” slow down.
We stayed on the mainland for a couple days and went cave exploring, hiking, kayaking, and swimming through a river in the jungle. After that we took a two hour ferry ride to Koh Lipe, a small, fairly remote island on the Andaman (west) coast of Thailand.
Fishing boats docked at the Satun port
The island was amazing - very few farang, white sand, and quiet beaches. I actually never saw one overweight farang in a speedo, it was great! The few farangs that were there were backpacker type. A lot of them had been living on the island in bungalows for years. On the second day on Koh Lipe we all hopped in a long tail boat and went snorkeling with a guide and a couple other Thais along for the tour at about six different islands and got some real nice sunburns.
Pure paradise
A longboat on Koh Rokroy
We spent our the majority of ours days on Koh Lipe swimming, being lazy beach bums, eating delicious southern Thai food (a lot of curries), exploring the island, and meeting all of the island people. What an amazing life some of these people have! I met one Englishman who has been living in a single room hut on the island for the last 15 years. He left his family, job, and life back in England to come live on Koh Lipe for the rest of his life.
After leaving Satun I took a bus back to Bangkok and stayed with my American friend at his wealthy host family’s house for a week. His host Dad is a Thai General in the Bangkok Police force and drives a brand new BMW. What a change from Nan to see Lamborghinis and Porsches parked around the neighborhood! All I've ever see in Nan are buffaloes and mopeds and run down trucks. Ha! I was pretty envious of the big screen TV’s, the fast internet, the air-conditioning, the in house maid, etc. but I still love my small minimart house here in Nan. I wouldn’t give up my life in small town Nan for anything. A week in Bangkok is way more than enough for me. My wallet and I were both exhausted by the end of it. I couldn’t imagine living there for the year.
Everything is really, really cheap here in Thailand but you’d be surprised how fast $200 can run out from all the traveling touristy stuff I had been doing. With the last 400 Baht (around $13) I had left I hopped on a 10 hour bus back to Nan were I spent a while laying low, spending time with my family and friends and saving money.
The hot season was here now! During the day the temperature was up around 95-100 degrees (37 degrees Celsius for all you Europeans and Thais) with humidity! I spent most of my days down at Nan River swimming and jumping off bridges with friends to escape the heat. When I wasn’t doing that, I was tutoring English three hours at a time on the side to four wild kids at their house for some extra cash.
About halfway through the year my Thai Mom taught me how to drive a motorcycle and gave me one of the two at our house to use. This was great to be able to get around town and ไปเที่ยว on my own and not have to rely on my friends to pick me up all the time.
After my money and I were recharged from the two week excursion in Bangkok and the South I set off for Chiang Mai with my three friends Poté, May, and Nest. The first few nights I stayed in the cheapest/dirtiest hotel I could find – roughly $4 per night. The water reeked of iron, no A/C, cockroaches, mosquitoes, lights didn't work in bathroom, etc. Awesome! Just my kind of place. I was really keen on saving money at this point as you could probably guess. As long as there was something in the room that somewhat resembled a bed I could sleep there. I had at first planned to stay just five days but I happened to meet up with four friends from Satrisawat School who invited me to stay with them in the apartment they were renting for around $70 per month plus utilities. The room had A/C, cable TV, and hot water. How could I refuse such an offer! The short stay I had at first planned ended up turning into the better part of a month. Fuse, Jim, Dream, Drive, Poté, and I split the cost of the apartment which came out to practically nothing per person in the end.
Two to go. Not that I'm counting down the time until my departure.. but I now do know the exact date that I leave the Land of the Smiles for America - May 19th. Nearly two months have flown by since my last post. Sorry everyone! So much has happened since then, and I'm going to try to cram it all into one post. Here we go:
1. In late January we had another AFS camp, this time in Chiang Mai. All of the six Month AFS students departed to their home countries already so the camp consisted of just us year-longs, as we're the only exchangers left. There were 60 students at the camp with 9 Americans, 20 Germans, a large chunk of the group from other European countries (France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Norway, Sweden), a couple Colombians, Brazilians, and Paraguayans, and one Icelandic (Sorry if I'm forgetting you're country!). The camp was a week long and so much fun to get back together with all of my buddies. It was fascinating to see how much we've all changed since we last saw each other - around four months ago at least since our last camp in Khonkaen. Most of us can speak, read, and write Thai really well now and have all changed in many ways by adapting ourselves to the Thai culture and easy going lifestyle we're immersed in.
We stayed in a nice hotel and during the days hopped on tour buses to be shuttled around the province for planned activities. We went rafting, temple sight-seeing, went to a hotspring, visited an umbrella making factory, and watched a live elephant show where this super-human elephant played soccer (Just try to picture that) and could use a paintbrush to paint sloppy, yet astounding paintings of trees and elephants with it's trunk that were later put up for sale. I also finally got the chance to ride an elephant for about an half an hour which was really cool. Other than that, they (AFS) didn't have many activities planned so we spent a good chunk of our time just touring the city and checking out the many nightmarkets and sights Chiang Mai has to offer. It was the perfect escape for all of us - life in our hometowns can sometimes get boring and rather uneventful. And it gave kids living in the South or in Bangkok area the chance to see how different life is in Northern Thailand, try Northern Thai food, and experience the coolness of winter up here in the mountains.
2. I am now a graduate from the 12th grade or "Mattayum 6" at Satrisrinan school! That's right, school's over for me now. I did it! I completed seven months in a Thai highschool and I've got to say it was one hell of a ride.
In the beginning months I was struggling with the language and making a fool out of myself on many, many occasions through cultural differences (that comes with being an exchange student). I was learning how to fit in while still being myself and learning about Thai customs. This was the so called culture shock period for me.
After the first three months I had a good grasp of the language, had a great group of friends that I hung out with regularly, and was learning all the slang and goofy and quirks they use. In school I was studying Thai speaking, Thai reading and writing, Thai art, and... volleyball. Yup, that was my schedule in school. Most of the time when I didn't have any classes (which was quite often) I would join friends in their Cooking, Physics, Math, Chemistry, and English classes, or just sit outside with friends and play Thai games - it varied day to day. When joining an English class I would often end up teaching the class myself while the Thai "english" teacher looked on. They left everything up to me for the lesson of the day. And with no prior planning I usually resorted to teaching the students slang conversation to keep them entertained. Hearing classes of 50 Thai kids repeat "What's up?", "How ya doin' man?", or "See ya dude" in their accents is fantastic.
After six months I stopped taking Thai speaking and my schedule was even more flexible than before. The only scheduled class I was taking was Thai reading and writing which was one on one with a teacher. I can now read Thai but still struggle with the writing. In the Thai alphabet there are 44 consonants and 32 vowels. ยากมากๆ!!
School was always a blast. It's impossible to put the general feeling I got from all the students into words without sounding too cocky. Forgive me if I do.. I think my ego's swelled enormously since living here. haha. They all loved me. Lee, the only white student in a school of 3,000. I was a celebrity. I even signed autographs on a couple occasions. I was getting my picture taken and being watched constantly and had to make sure I was always looking good in my uniform and smiling - it's a Thai thing, if you're not smiling they'll think something's up and ask you about it. Outside of the classroom I could barely walk ten feet without someone scream my name 'Leeeeeeee!! Where you go?!'. I've never had so much attention in my life! It was great! But definately tiring at times. Some days I would come home from school absolutely exhausted just from smiling and waving at kids as well as chatting with friends. I really enjoyed school, but there's definately a weight off my shoulders now that it's over. I feel I can finally loosen my collar a bit now that I'm out, as should every graduate, but for me in a different way. I can finally relax knowing that not everyone is watching me every minute of the day and it feels pretty good.
3. The actual graduation ceremony was rather unofficial but a ton of fun. In short, all of the students bought candy and other gifts and ran around pinning them on eachother's uniforms. After that little celebration, the graduating class all gathered in the volleyball gym where we listened to speeches by a number of teachers, got a buddhist blessing and goodluck strings tied around our wrists, then all danced to Thai Karaoke perfomed by a couple of the students.
Last friday was "Wan Dek" or Children's Day in Thailand. So my Mom, my Mom's sister, and my grandfather decided to drive to a small primary school high in the mountains of Nan to meet the kids and hand out icecream to them to make them feel good on their day. Up here, the people live in small wooden huts and are really far from just about everything. The children are really lucky to be able to study in a school like this. There were about 60 young kids in this school, all of which had never seen a "farang" - me, a foreigner with white skin and were really shy when I tried to talk with them. However, after I gave them all a bunch of icecream they warmed up a bit :D
Here they are eating lunch
Icecream! The kids are thinking "Hey, this new white guy isn't so bad!"
Yum! - first time eating icecream.
My Mom and Grandfather
More icecream please.
Me with my Mom and her sister, an engrish teacher at the school
A hill girl with her baby
One of these things is not like the other..
I needed a break from life in small town Nan.. So for New Years I took a five hour bus to Chiang Mai and stayed for a week spending time with some of my Thai, American and Aussie friends. There I ate plenty of good food, watched movies, visted some temples, celebrated New Years, went to the Zoo, and checked out many of Chiang Mais night markets.
I'm going to keep this write up short because, well, I really don't know what to write about! Nothing bizarre or unusual happened, and I've already described the city in a previous post a couple months ago.
Instead, here are some pictures:
This older woman and child dressed in tradition hill tribe clothes pose outside of the popular tourist attraction, Wat (temple) Doi Suthep all day and wait to get their picture taken by foreigners. After I approached them and took their picture they said "Photo give money!!". That's probably the only english they know - but all they really need to know!
Traditional music at Wat Doi Suthep
An Emu at the Chiang Mai Zoo
Nam Tok
Me inside of a temple
Gai Pat Met Matmooung. So, so good.
A monk
Relaxing in the park
Music at the night market
New Years Celebration!
Overall, the trip was a ton of fun and a great New Years excursion to the big city. Now I'm back home and out of school until the 14th.. and after that I only have about four weeks of classes left until school gets out towards the end of February.
Yesterday I celebrated my first Christmas in a foreign country. Christians are close to nonexistent here - 94.6% of the Thai population are Buddhist, 4.6% Muslim, and only 0.7% are Christian. I was away from my family, snow, Christmas trees, and a whole bunch of other things. However, one of my good Thai friends from school, who comes from a Christian family, invited me to go to Church with him and his family on Christmas Eve which was great fun. I'm not a frequent Church goer in America but I found that Church in Thailand was somewhat similar in a couple aspects yet very different in others.. Inside there was a big plastic Christmas tree along with other tacky Christmas decorations you might find at Wal-Mart. As the ceremony started, Thai children dressed in Santa outfits with big smiles on their faces came out dancing around playing their violins horribly out of tune. I really regret not bringing my camera now! After the kids serenaded us with their Christmas melodies the priest told a long story about Jesus of which I unfortunately only understood bits of. The rest of the ceremony was awesome. We all sang Christmas carols together and I was the only one singing Jingle Bells, Frosty the Snowman, etc in English it was fantastic! It was pretty funny to hear those songs being sung in Thai. To finish the ceremony, some Thai kids acted out a brief skit about Christmas where King Herod became King Carrot and the Jesus baby ended up being a stuffed Tigger doll (from Winnie the Pooh) which was wrapped in a green blanket.
A Thai Santa
Christmas day was fairly uneventful, however. I chose not to go to school and spent most of the day sleeping trying to shake a cold I had caught and woke up around 4 pm to find that Santa hadn't left any presents overnight... oh well. Later, my Mom and brother took me out to dinner to my favorite restaurant that serves good Western food and I stuffed myself with mashed potatoes, veggies, a steak, a whole pizza, and a salad. It felt good to eat Western food once again - I think I haven't had that kind of food in over a month or two. After that we went home and opened some presents my family in America had sent us and then climbed into bed with a full stomach.
Apart from not having any snow or many of the other things I associate Christmas with, Christmas wasn't so bad after all. I enjoyed seeing what the Christian Thais do to celebrate and teaching my Buddhist family about how we celebrate the holiday back in America. It doesn't matter that 95% of the population is Buddhist, Thai people just like having fun and are open and friendly to other religions. I even went to a Christmas party after Church with a handful of Buddhist Thais which was awesome. Give them a good excuse to have fun and they will celebrate just about anything! This year it was very, very different but certainly a Christmas to remember.
Time flies when you set into an easy rythm. Day in and day out, week in and week out, it's all been blended together into one big wild Thailand adventure. I'm coming up on the halfway point of my stay here. It's been almost five months since I took off from the American soil with my fellow exchange students - all just as nervous as the guy strapped in next to them. As we watched the coast of California disappear from the 747, we had no idea what we were getting into. As for me, I've gotten myself into a wonderful cultural experience. Living amongst Thai people, I've noticed myself changing for the better. I'm becoming more patient and open minded about everything. I've learned to "ja yen yen", which means to just take it easy and stop stressing over the little things. And I've learned a lot of truth in the Buddhist teachings that "everything is in a state of motion, and something you can count on and depend on one day can be gone and lost the next" (teacher). I guess having a dramatic change in lifestyle has dramatically altered my perceptions of the world. So now my views have been changed to trying to get the most out of the present. After all, nothing on this Earth is permanent.
You don't know what tomorrow will bring, so why try planning for it? Enjoy today and let tomorrow come.
Some of my other exchange student friends aren't so lucky, however.. A couple of them could not adjust to Thai culture and their new lifestyle and unfortunately chose to go home already. I like it here, a lot, but every so often I do get sudden cravings for an American pizza or a big hamburger, or a Hollywood film with lots of action and stuff exploding! I'm not about to turn 100% Asian.. I miss my friends and family, but I know that life back in Rockport, Maine, USA, is probably not nearly as cool as what I've gotten myself into here!
Okay, okay, enough of the sappy I love Thailand stuff blah blah blah. It's been a while since I last updated this. I've been really busy over the past couple weeks so I'm going to try to sum it up as best as possible.
I started taking free Muay Thai Boxing classes after school at 5pm. I've been going three to four days a week with some other American girls in town. Muay Thai Boxing is a lot different than some of the Asian Martial Arts movies I've seen where they have the apprentice doing pointless tasks for months. On my first day there the Muay Thai master guy tossed me some gloves and told me to punch him in the face. And on my third day he told me to get in the arena (with some protection) and fight one of his other students! There's no messing around with this sport. After only a couple days my shins were all bruised up and my knuckles were bleeding, but it's good fun.
Here there's no cheese or good bread, or strawberries, pizza, hamburgers, sandwiches, salad dressing, bagels, pasta, peanut butter... ahhh the list goes on. Even so, I find that I have a never ending appetite, and often I am eating when I'm not even hungry. My Mom cooks the most amazing Thai food and asks me what I would like to eat everyday. I'm getting ridiculously spoiled here. I have no homework, I don't get graded in school, I have no chores because we have a maid, and my Mom basically hands me a dinner menu every night. The other day my she told me she considers me, not just an American student living with her, but truly one of her own kids. It's amazing how that works. We look nothing alike, yet I am part of their family. I'm thankful that they've adopted me as a brother, and a son.
Speaking of being thankful, I had my first Thanksgiving in a foreign country. And it was very different and somewhat depressing to be away from my American family for the first time. I met seven other American friends of mine at Nan river for a Thai-Thanksgiving dinner. They are all English teachers at the locals schools here in Nan. We decided there's no way we were going to be eating Pad Thai for Thanksgiving so we organized a little Team America potluck by the riverside at night. We each brought a dish of whatever we could scrounge up that was somewhat similiar to American food and it turned out to be an okay Thanksgiving dinner (minus the turkey) with chicken! We had the idea to dress up as Indians and Pilgrams to fully embrace our American-ness and really confuse the Thai people (who don't know about our holiday) but we weren't able to get the costumes..
The weather has started to get chilly at night as we move into the Winter season. It's usually 80-85 degrees during the day but drops to around 60 at night. I've begun to sleep with four blankets at night because its cold and there are no heaters here. This morning I could actually see my breath in my room. Ahh I wish I brought more warm clothes from America. I thought this was a year round tropical country!
I can speak Thai now. I chat in Thai with my Thai friends and family everyday, so when I get together with the Americans I find speaking English to be weird for me and I sometimes mess up. Maybe I should enroll in some english classes for foreign people when I get back to America.. In Thai there is no grammar, and future or past participles. Because of this I find the language to be fairly easy to learn, and I enjoy strictly using Thai with everyone I meet. I've actually started using my name in the first person. To declare you are hungry in Thai is translated to "I hungry", or "Lee hungry!". You can say it either way, but I prefer to use my name - "Lee very tired", or "Lee going to school now, bye bye!" because it's fun and I can't get away with that in America.
Well that took a while to write. Especially that first paragraph and all that stuff about Buddhism and my new crazy ideas. School's over now so I'm gonna head to the gym. I'll catch you all later
And she was a slightly overweight, middle-aged Thai woman to top it all. After she kneed me repeatedly in the back, jabbed my kidney's with her thumbs and almost ripped my hair out she demanded money from me.
And I obliged gratefully. I'll have to go back there in a week or two. Best massage ever :)
Every year my town, Nan, has a big Boat Racing Festival in Nan River. People come from all over to see this and Nan has been packed with traffic for a week or two. Many extra outdoor markets were set up as well, selling the oddest things such as little pet Rabbits smaller than my palm that don't grow, or crickets to munch on when you're watching the races. The teams have been training hard for the past couple months for the event and we could hear them shouting as they practice from my school, as it's not far from the river. I went and watched it with my friends from France and Sweden and had a ton of fun. It was quite the scene! There were 131 teams from all over Thailand with about 50 rowers in each long boat (reua yao) all working together in perfect sync. Thousands of people showed up and it was tough to find a seat. They even had a couple TV crews here broadcasting the event.
You'll notice that there's not a single person in the stands is not protected by an umbrella. Thai people are smart and try to stay out of the sun as much as possible. They think that "dark skin is not beautiful". Here you can buy cream to make your skin whiter that it actually is. Completely the opposite of many Westerner's ideals.
Just got back from a two day excursion to Nanoi with six other six-month AFS Community Service people, a couple teachers from my school, and P Orm from the AFS office in Bangkok. We stayed at a cabin high in the mountains of the amazing Nan National Park at close to 3,000 feet. Getting there was the hardest part. We all packed in a bus and drove on winding roads that dropped off hundreds of feet. Luckily we had a driver that skillfully manuevered the deadly roads at high speeds. The next morning we got up at 5 AM and witnessed an amazing sight. Overnight, the Nan River Valley had filled with a sea of fog and the temperature had dropped significantly. That morning I felt my first chilly weather of Winter in Thailand.
