Trailing Off....: Retroblog: Thailand May 2006

May 15, 2006: First Week in Samui

Good morning everyone. By the time you read this my Monday will be mostly over. Ha-ha!
I apologize in advance if some of this is redundant of what I sent last week...

selfie at Chaweng Beach, Samui

I feel like I've been gone for months. It's amazing how quickly one adapts to their environment when given no choice. For example, I don't miss sweets or snacks (it's too damn hot to eat) and so I'm losing weight. Yay!! I have no problem living in a small space and being in a constant state of sweating when outdoors. I smell of sweat, everyone around me smells of sweat, and it's just the way it is.

sweaty at Ang Thong

How can I describe Samui? Well, for one it's quite touristy. I live near Central Samui resort which is the largest and schwankiest on the island. However, a few feet in every direction, you'll find the dimly lit places with non-matching table cloths, flies galore, and real Thais serving cheap food for less than a buck. There's also the people in their traveling carts, selling sticks with fried something or other, grilling hardboiled eggs (I think this is what they're doing). Then of course, there's the older men and women in their wide brim hats selling bags of cut up fruit with long toothpick things, which rivals any fruit I've had elsewhere. Eating pineapple in Thailand is orgasmic. I've even come to love papaya which I had always thought smelled and tasted of rubber bands. Apparently, I had not been eating the right kind of papaya.

ubiquitous fruit cart

I went swimming for the first time on Friday. I invented my own sort of "back blocker" but still managed to miss spots and get burned. Outside of every beach hotel/resort there are chairs available for guests. I went early enough and sweet talked the attendants into letting me use one even though I'm not a guest. The water is so clear and warm it's hard to believe it's real. You have to walk out quite a long way to be even waist deep and even when you get to neck deep water, you can see your feet. I spent a lot of time near the shore collecting all sorts of shells and trying to grab these little fishes, much to the amusement of the locals who were peddling their wares of necklaces, scarves, etc. It says in nearly every book I've read that Thais consider it rude to sunbathe in the nude. This didn't stop this older German couple, who were about as large horizontally as vertically. It's something I could have lived without seeing but like many train wrecks and natural disasters, it was hard to avert my eyes.

Chaweng Beach, Samui

Friday night I went to this resort in the jungle called, appropriately enough, The Jungle Club. It was up in the mountains and the view was breathtaking. The water is a different shade of blue when you're that far up looking down on it than when you're right in front of it. I went with Kay and some of the other teachers. These people are English and can easily drink me under the table. I can't believe how much these people can put away and still walk a straight line and not fall off of a cliff. We stayed in these very rustic, but surprisingly comfy huts and had a nice swim in an "infinity pool" the next morning. None of us felt like going to the Full Moon Party, so on Saturday night, we just hung out at the Molotov. These people are genuinely good eggs (as most teachers tend to be).

in the infinity pool

I think I've said to someone that I'm learning as much about English culture as Thai. I'm catching on to soccer (I mean, football) and am picking up these little phrases here and there. They really do speak differently than Americans, though with context clues I can usually figure out what they're talking about.

sadly, I don't remember which temple

I'm very excited for this weekend. I'm renting a jeep and possibly exploring the less touristy parts of the island with one of my classmates, Robert. He will navigate and I will drive. I've never driven on the opposite side of the road before and people here drive like nuts but he doesn't know how to drive a manual (who's ever heard of a man not being able to drive a stick shift?)

wish I could have driven a tuk-tuk just once

As for the course: So much of this stuff (grammar, phonics, etc) I've either learned in my college coursework or from teaching at Sylvan. I have to work very hard to not be a show-off. It's not that I want to be a show-off; I just want to participate, I swear! It's kind of cool to be the only chic and yet know more than the boys. Though sometimes Robert and Jared beat me to the punch!

where I studied TEFL for 6 weeks

My first lesson will be this Thursday with the staff at a coffee shop. I'm terrified and excited at the same time. In some ways, kids are easier than adults b/c they revere adults, whereas these adult students might think I'm a real dork.I keep putting off uploading my pictures b/c I don't know how, but I'll try to do it this week. Everyone keep writing, please! Even though I'm having these great adventures, one of my favorite parts of the day is seeing that I have mail in my inbox.

my "guide" at the waterfall

May 20, 2006: It’s All About Spontaneity

Hi All,

It's about 8:30 pm on a Saturday night here on Samui.
I had my first TP (teaching practice) on Thursday and it went fairly well. I had 2 students, whereas everyone else had 8. There are pros and cons to this. The two girls I taught are waitresses at a cafe/pizza place called Sundays. My lesson was about greetings and pizza toppings. The typical lesson plan needs to have these elements: an introduction of myself, a warm-up activity, a teaching of vocabulary and structures (e.g., plurals, verb tenses, etc), a 6 line dialog, a "communicative activity", and a game (called a "cooler"). My lesson was fine but a bit more boring than the others. I need to figure out more creative activities. Next week I'll be teaching 12 year olds at a government school. Everyone else is daunted by this but I think I'd prefer this setting to adults but we'll see.....

class at a government school

Yesterday (Friday) I woke up a little worse for the weather after a nigh of partying but I was still determined to stick with my original plan of renting a jeep and exploring the island. I arranged for a jeep and the cutest red jeep pulled up ready for me to drive it. I got in (on the opposite side of what I was used to) and saw this giant stick to my left and three pedals. I tried my damndest to figure out how to drive this stick shift with everything on the opposite side, to no avail. I'm used to stick shifts that tell you on the stick what gear you're in (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, reverse). This had none. To make a long story short, I tried to teach myself, about ran over a dog and figured I'd save a few lives by not taking this rental. I was very distraught by this failure and decided to call one of my best friends and vent.

I needed a break from this?

Fast forward to Saturday. I rented a nice Suziki automatic Jeep (and turqoise, my favorite color!) and decided to explore the island. I found it quite difficult to concentrate on the crazy driving and a map at the same time so figured that as long as the ocean was to my left, I couldn't get too lost. However, I grossly overestimated the size of the island. Let me back up. You know how in "The States" you see a sign every few feet? Not so much here. So I stopped at a restaurant on the beach, completely unaware of where I was but thinking I was still on the East side of the island. I asked the waitress to show me on the map where I was and low and behold I was on the other side of the island. To put it in perspective, I think you could drive around the island in an hour and I thought it would take several hours. Not to mention everything is in kilometers. I wouldn't know the length of a kilometer if it bit me in the ass.

Three things I don't do anymore

So I remembered my days of traveling in Iowa on country roads and the spontaneity of stopping at things that seemed interesting, weird, etc. On a side note: On one of these roadside stops where I bought a green Fanta (gross! It tasted like those candy necklaces!) I left my camera. I drove back to the other side of the island to retrieve it. The owners were so nice and let me take their picture.

The southern part of the island is much more rural, which is more my style. I stopped at a random place because I saw a sign that said, "Food and Boat Ride". I got a coffee and asked if I could take a boat ride. Oh, did I mention that it was rainy and windy as hell? The owner laughed uproariously and said, "No, it's too windy" I pantomimed that I didn't care one wit and 10 minutes later I'm a boat to a remote island. The waves are huge and I had to come up with a plan of what I would save if we capsized. At one point, one of the two young male drivers told me to sit in the middle of the boat. Apparently my lardass was making the boat lean too far to one side. The ride was so awesome. Once the guys realized that I actually enjoyed the huge waves and getting wet, they went faster.

I remember these guys overcharged me, but I didn't care

All around were what looked to be deserted, uncharted islands. If I closed my eyes and ignored the hideously bright turquoise and orange paint of the boat, i could almost imagine what it must have been like to be an explorer and find these lands.

selfie on some island

On Koh Tan, I walked along the beach. I had an eerie thought that I could easily be murdered and no one would know that I had been there. But then I found a restaurant (the only one as far as I could tell) and enjoyed a beer and some friendly BS with the owners.

map and rental

On my drive back to Chaweng, I stopped at a market. So many food stalls selling the most interesting things! At one place there was a giant bowl of hundreds of raw frogs and next to it a giant bowl of raw chicken feet. Vegetables, flowers, curried food galore. I bought a skewered stick of pork and some underwear (not at the same stall).

I never tired of these markets

So, I enjoyed driving. I mastered passing slow trucks and people on motorcylces without having a head-on colision. I stopped at some very remote beaches. However, I drove around the damn island twice and still couldn't find "Big Buddha" which is like THE tourist attraction. At one point I saw a sign that said "Big Buddha 24 km; Chaweng 27km" But never another sign and I just ended up back in Chaweng. So, I think I might spend the same amount of money I spent today and take a "guided tour". I don't care if this makes me a schmuck, but there's a lot to see that I didn't.