I always enjoy the market. Sunday morning has the biggest market in the village. It has rained a lot the last couple of days so the market was a mud pit. There was a whole section I just looked at and decided I couldn’t go in. I didn’t think I could make it out without casualties. Whatever was in there, I just didn’t need. I did get a Hello Kitty pancake which made me very happy – the little things….. I swept the house, defrosted the refrigerator (unplug it and open the door until all the ice melts), read a chapter and did some blogging. It almost feels like a normal day, the kind of weekend I envisioned I would be having here, not the constant lesson planning I’ve been having.
In the afternoon, Tip picked me up for a Sam Ngao road trip. She wanted to go to the Sam Ngao temple to drop off a donation for the monks. I had never been to this temple, but had driven past it quite a few times when someone took me to Ban Tak or Tak. It’s also the temple that comes up when you google Sam Ngao. After that we went to another temple. This one was on the Ping River and was in the jungle. You had to drive through farms on a dirt road for quite a while to get there. The buildings were much more simple without all the gaudy glittery colored ornament. I thought it was very beautiful. Lining the river was a long line of large Buddha statues. Tip said there were over 100 of them. I counted over 50 as we walked along, but they kept going off into the distance. Tip explained that there were jungle temples and city temples. The jungle temples were simpler with less buildings. I think I like the jungle temples better.
Oh, and there were buffalo walking down the street. This is far better than cows walking down the street. Just so you know.
As we were driving out we passed Chatchai, which I had passed many times before and always wondered what it was. It has a lot of signs and a big entrance with sheep statues. Tip said it was a resort. On the way back we drove through. It’s a huge, quite, almost deserted resort with a sheep farm in the middle. I wonder how this stays in business in a very rural village in the middle of nowhere. It was very beautiful. If you are looking for a very nice and quiet place to get away, this is the place.
Now I’m at home avoiding doing research on what is next to do. Where am I going to go in October? What am I going to do after that? It’s a giant world out there and figuring this out seems like a daunting task.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
This one has some extra bling
Traditional Style Thai HouseTraditional Style Thai House
It was kind of a normal week except I was done with lesson planning on Saturday instead of Sunday! Whoa!
One of my M6 classes (12 grade) always wants me to sing or dance. They love music. So I brought in music related to the doctor since my lesson was on health. They went nuts and got up and started dancing. Then after the first song they wanted to play Doraemon songs. I knew Doraemon was a cartoon, but had no idea Doraemon also had electronic dance music too. Huh….Who knew? The other M6 class was a bit different. They sat on the edge of their seats watching the video that went with the song and had little interest in dancing. The first class was oblivious there was a video. So far most, if not all Thai music I have heard is horrible. It’s like bad walmart sappy love song lounge music. Doraemon throwing down the beats was a welcome change. When I told Noi about the M6 class loving to dance she said that was because that class had a lot of boy girls in it. I assumed this was like a very effeminate boy. It does seem that is true.
I’m still amazed by the restaurants here. It’s a wonder I’ve only gotten sick twice. Not one place I have eaten in since I got to Thailand would pass a health department inspection in the US. Yet, it all seems to be just fine. All of them in my area are outdoor kitchens. The number of chickens I saw running around kitchens this week alone was mind boggling. We went back to one of the places I wrote about before where there were so many chickens and flies. I’m now naming this food shop, House of Chicken. No food shops appear to have names and if they did, I couldn’t read the sign anyway, so House of Chicken it is. They were everywhere, pecking at a bag of food, playing in the sink of dirty dishes, pecking at the frying pan, running in the street. The kitchens are like camping kitchens. I feel like I’m just camping 24/7, but with a lot more chickens. Yet, no one seems to get sick, including myself so maybe we are just over paranoid in the US?
I went to Tak with Noi one day after school. I went to the bank to find out why I can’t transfer money on line. The lady helped me register for on-line banking, but I don’t know she understood my concern and I don’t think it changed anything. I also went to the store to buy cheese and cereal – both things I can’t get in my village and can’t live without. I ran into the western teacher I had met in Chiang Rai. That was kind of funny. We stopped at a teacher’s credit union / co-op type thing after the store. There was a younger kid in there. I assumed his mom was one of the ladies working there. All the ladies encouraged him and cheered him on as he tried to speak English with me. He asked my name and where I was from, my favorite food, and a few other questions. Very cute.
Of course there were no classes Friday afternoon because it was National Thai Language Day so there were speeches, dances and other performances all afternoon. No one told me until about lunch time. Oh well, that’s just one less lesson plan I have to do for next week. There was a going away party for one of the teachers after school. I was told about this in the afternoon. I felt funny going since I didn’t even know who was leaving until she got up after dinner for all the speeches and photos. But, I didn’t want to offend anyone by not going and I was curious what a going away party would be like. It had lots of Thai music, spicy food, rice, sugary sweet sodas, whiskey, speeches, giving of gifts, lots of photos, lots of selfies, and karaoke. I managed to find some food that I could eat. I probably should have tried the whiskey, but I don’t really like whiskey. I tried the atomic fallout green soda. It was quite delicious. They love to take photos of gifting. So there is a overly posed photo of every gift she received being handed over by the giver. Still, as I sat there and looked around, I felt very strongly like I was a guest at someone’s family dinner. This is a family and they truly care about each other. I did get a not so good video of my next door neighbor, Q, singing karaoke. A lot of people asked if I did karaoke, but I don’t know any of the songs and I can’t read the words on the screen.
I left my motorbike at school because it was raining so hard when I left. So, I walked up to get it Saturday morning. The janitor, Q, and some of the other male teachers were sitting in front of the school office around the drink cooler obviously working on the left over whiskey. They wanted to know where I was going. “Teacher Rraine, where you go?” They also wanted to know where I was going in October. Then the janitor proceeded to say he loved me about 7 or 8 times. “Teacher Rraine, I love you.” I’m going to guess he thinks that means he likes me or he will miss seeing me when I leave, not that he actually loves me, but who knows. He barely speaks English so I’ll chalk it up to that, that and whiskey.
The coffee shop was closed so I texted the lady that makes salads and burgers to see if she was open because I know she has coffee and wifi. She was open so I spent most of the day there. The tables and chairs were very uncomfortable, but there’s more than sugar on the menu so I got an egg ham and cheese sandwich was was delicious. A lot of students came in while I was there. It was a nice change of pace. I did massage yesterday too. It was one of the most painful yet. When he worked on my shoulders I cried. I was glad this was near the end of the massage because it felt like there was so much crying and screaming wailing wanting to come up. I just don’t feel safe letting that volume of emotion out in that atmosphere. After he gave me his phone number. I think he was trying to tell me he would work on me at my home or his or come get me if it was raining. He was either trying to give me a safe place to work next time or he was hitting on me. I really have no idea. I went home after and tried to release some of emotions I’m holding in my shoulders, but nothing came up. How can that be? I know it’s there. Even as I write this, I can feel so much crying stuck in there, but I can’t reach it. Maybe tomorrow….
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
The best crispy pork is made hereThe Ping River from Crispy Pork RestaurantHouse of Chicken RestaurantHouse of Chicken RestaurantShe is cooking my lunch right now at House of ChickenChickenWhat? There’s a chicken behind me?This is a restaurant
There aren’t very many colorful cars in Thailand unless you count the taxis in Bangkok, the tuk tuks or the songtheaus. Most personal cars are white or some other neutral color. I wondered why for awhile now. I now have the answer. There is a god, the one with four heads, yea, that one. He is the god of creating and destroying. People pray to this god to be purified. White is the color of purification so people like the color white. So actually having a white car is in fashion. I have this on very good authority.
I got ice cream on the way back from Chiang Mai. It was made from coconut milk instead of cow milk. This makes it extra delicious, but not as creamy. It’s kinda grainy. That would have been good enough, but there’s stuff on top of it, stuff that doesn’t need to be there. I picked the bright colored pink and green one thinking it was mochi or jelly. Nope, it was grainy tasteless chewy and extremely less exciting than it’s color led you to believe it would be.
The other food delight of the weekend was lasagna flavored chips. I have no idea why you would want lasagna flavored chips, but curiosity won. I assumed it would not taste like lasagna since I don’t think most Thais know what lasagna actually tastes like. They kind of tasted like lasagna if you made lasagna with taco sauce and chili peppers. Why does chili have to be in everything? It doesn’t belong in lasagna.
Oh, well I don’t need to eat either one ever again.
And yea, that thing that resembles a waffle is what I call Death By Waffle – It’s a waffle rubbed in nutella with coffee ice cream, whipped cream and chocolate filled marshmallows. And, yes, I ate the whole thing.
I came back from Chiang Mai with Noi and Chelon. We stopped in Lampang and I got to see some of Noi’s home there. After I got home, the rest of the day was laundry and cleaning. It was nice to have a short week – 2 days.
Somehow, Pat realized that I wasn’t the right person to be creating the curriculum for the Mini English Program and she assigned different parts to all the other English teachers. I will proof read what she writes though.
My MEP students did horrible on their tests. I didn’t think the test were that hard. Pat suggested I re-test them. In America, they would fail and if they failed enough, they would be held back a year. But, here, they help them by re-testing or giving them other ways to make better marks. I think I will re-test them, but then average the scores of the two tests.
I got home Friday and just decided to go to bed early. I slept 12 hours. I needed that. I know a huge part of why I don’t like teaching is that being in a school setting is reminding me how much I hated my childhood. It’s exhausting, but it’s also good to be facing it head on. I know that much of what I feel isn’t real. There is absolutely no reason to feel negatively about any of this – it’s old stories. I’ve known this for a long time, but it feels like I’m looking at it from a different angle as if I’m not actually feeling this childhood stuff, but watching myself feeling it. It is very detailed as if I am looking at it under a microscope. This is what most, if not all, humans do to themselves. We spend so much time feeling things that aren’t even real. They may not have even been real in the past the first time we felt them. But we keep pushing play over and over and over on an old recording of a bad feeling.
I notice that music helps break the cycle of old feelings. So, I’ve been playing music more often when at home.
Here’s some pictures and video of the students cheering and some pictures of Jetson, the village next to mine. Even though it seems run down, there’s so much beauty in this area.
What do Thai people do on holiday? I had seen pictures of the floating house boat type things and was hoping to get to do one. This wasn’t quite that in that the house boats didn’t go anywhere, but still, it was enough for me to feel like I could check it off my list. Noi picked me up in the morning at the hotel. I got to meet her sister, daughter, son, some brothers and some neices and nephews.
We went to a temple first. It was one of the most beautiful temples I’ve ever seen. It was a compound of temples. They were all wood with beautiful blue roofs. The dragon statues in front of the temples were the most ornate and fantasy like of any I have seen. It was such a big and beautiful place to be in the middle of nowhere. It was at least an hour or more outside of Chiang Mai.
Then we went to the lake. After we parked, a songtheaw picked us up and drove us to the top of the dam. There we loaded into two longtail boats. The boats took us about a minute upstream to a floatilla of floating houses. There were a bunch of tables, one of which was ours. We had lunch and then the kids had swim time. The kids and Rraine. I was the only adult interested in swimming. There was a floating trampoline. We didn’t spend the whole day here like I thought we would. That was good as I was over it after about an hour. Then Noi said there was a change of plan and we were going to go to another temple and get coffee because the adults didn’t swim and they were bored.
The first temple we went to had a ceremony going on so we got back in the cars and went to another temple. At the next temple, we all met in a room with the monk. They had brought offerings of florescent light bulbs, food and toiletries for the monks. There was some chanting and bowing and a lot of laughing.
Then off for coffee. The first place we went was in the middle of a farm and was closed. The second place we went was near a farm (or maybe there’s nothing but farms up here). The whole family got coffee, sat around for a little bit and then took off. Noi took me back to my hotel and said she’d pick me up in the morning.
It was so wonderful to get to meet her family and it was so nice of them to let me tag along on their holiday family outting. But for the most part, it was me just sitting around akwardly not understanding most of what was going on. As much fun as it was, that is exhausting so I was happy to have the evening to myself. I went to my favorite pizza place for dinner, read a little and now I’m done for the day! Who knows what time she’s picking me up tomorrow.
The night we got into Chiang Mai the Sunday night market was going on. It was so close to our hotel that the taxi couldn’t take us to our hotel. It just dropped us off at the market and we had to walk the rest of the way. However, after we checked into the hotel, this made it easy to run back out and wander the market. I saw a fortune teller and remembering previous conversations with Noi about fortune tellers, I decided to have her read my cards for fun. Something about headaches, lots of work, lots of money, making jewelry, true love (but not until next year). As with most fortune tellers there was a lot of vague things that seem to be unique to me. We’ll see what happens…..
We had a day in Chiang Mai before Andy headed back to Singapore. I looked up museums in Chiang Mai and we found the Insect museum. We decided that sounded unique. It was. We got up to a house and there was a sign on the gate that said to ring the doorbell. A lady came and opened the museum for us, charged us the fee, and gave us some water. The museum was full of fossils, bugs, rocks, elephant statues and all sorts of other interesting things. The insect collection was incredible. Incredible and creepy all at the same time. There were also many many many signs about love, life and loving the world around us. The couple that started the collection were both malaria and mosquito researchers and this collection is part of their life long passion for their work. The woman who let us in, was in fact, Dr. Rampa Rattanarithikul herself. The highlight of the museum was getting to read all about her and her husband and then meeting her.
After the museum we took a taxi to a nearby waterfall. It was rather underwhelming. After the waterfall, we found a man selling bugs and Andy decided it was a good plan to buy and eat some bugs while I videoed it. I don’t know how he did it. It grossed me out just videoing it. He said they were horrible. We walked through the arboretum and then found some lunch. I’m not sure if I am ill or what, but I’ve been feeling tired and dizzy a lot lately. This hit around lunch too. The heat probably added to it too. So after lunch, it was nap time.
In our search for things to do we saw an advertisement for a cabaret show. That sounded fun so we went to the night market, found the show and bought tickets after dinner. The theatre/stage looked like we were going to see a cabaret in someone’s backyard/garage. The show was very armature, but it was also fun and cheap. So, overall, I’d say we got a good value for our money.
Tomorrow Andy is heading back home to Singapore. After he was so nice and introduced me to his friends and showed me around Singapore, it was nice to be able to show him around Thailand a little. Andy, Ivan and Judy should be back in Thailand in October. I am hoping I can meet up with them then.
Our hotel has this very annoying wakeup call system. They put the dining room on top of some of the hotel rooms including ours. So around 7:00am you are awake, ready or not, because all the early birds are scraping their heavy wooden chairs across the floor above you. There seems to be nothing except cheap plastic furniture in Thailand except in our hotel where the dining room chairs are made of such heavy wood, you couldn’t pick them up if you wanted to.
The tour we booked for yesterday went to a lot of places. The tour started off with going to an overlook off the side of the highway. It was overcast so the pictures aren’t the greatest, but the view was wonderful. It was 23 year olds tour day for sure. Our van seemed to be on the same circuit of tourist sites as a 5-10 others as everyone we saw at the overlook we also saw at every other stop for the day.
The next stop was Lod Cave where we were supposed to do bamboo rafting also. I think they invented a new sport. I’d call it speed caving. They put me and Andy with two girls that could barely walk. They were so out of breath they couldn’t keep up with the guide who had the only light. So, then going through the cave became even more difficult for them since they kept falling behind. Speed caving was not the sport for them. It was basically a long line of tourists and guides winding it’s way through a very impressively sized cave. We had to move so fast and keep in the line that there was no time to really enjoy looking at the cave. A river runs through the cave and they put us on rafts and we went about 2 minutes to another part of the cave. We did some more speed caving, came back to the rafts and then back out the way we came in. Overall, this could have been the highlight of the tour, but it turned out to be my least favorite part of the tour.
Next was lunch. It was ok. After lunch was a hot springs. It was a luke warm river. It was very beautiful and I got in for a minute or two, but then it was jam packed with 25 year olds and became way less relaxing for me. After that was a waterfall. It was the kind where it’s a series of smaller falls. You can climb the rocks and wander from pool to pool. It was very beautiful. The same vans of people were there too. The final stop was Pai Canyon. It looked so big in the pictures, but was less so in person. Still, it was my favorite part of the tour. It was a series of rock fins in the middle of the Pai canyon. You could see all the way around, the canyon floor stretching out in all directions to then be met by large mountains all around. It reminded me so much of Colorado. It was very beautiful.
After we got dropped off in town we went to the cake place. They had at least 20 different types of cake, a coffee shop and PIE! So, my mission of taking a picture of pie in Pai was complete. We also added the symbol pi just to round out the mission. This made me very satisfied. And the pie was delicious too. Dinner, wandering around the walking street, and an unimpressive foot massage finished out the evening.
Today we got a taxi driver to take us to an elephant camp and a waterfall. It cost as much as the tour we did yesterday. But, it was nice to go at our own speed and not have the crowds of people. After lunch we got on van and came back to Chiang Mai.
I got to the bus station in Chiang Mai and had a little trouble finding Andy. He said he was at the ticket desk for the van company. I couldn’t find the ticket desk. He said it was in the parking lot across from platform 12 so I went to platform 12 and looked across the parking lot. There was no van company, but I did see another bus station. Huh. Two bus stations next to each other. I’ve been there several times and never noticed there were two bus stations. We managed to exchange our tickets for an earlier van ride, grabbed lunch.
A few hours later we are in Pai. It’s up in the mountains and so beautiful. It reminds me of Colorado, not up close, but as you look off into the distance it looks similar. Makes me homesick. It’s a bit cooler too, not cool, but cooler, which is a nice relief. Our hotel was beautiful with farm land and mountain views in the back. We asked about tours and they told us to go into town. One of the reasons I booked at that hotel was because they had a tour desk. They also gave us a much smaller room than I paid for. But when I asked about that, they just said “sorry, all rooms full”. Then when I asked about a refund, of course, her English couldn’t handle that. We gave up and went into town and were able to book a tour of the area for the next day. We wandered around the walking street and a few other streets checking out street sales, had some dinner, and had a drink. We went in search of pie because I wanted a picture of having pie in Pai. No luck on the pie mission. But we did find a closed cake shop so the mission will continue tomorrow. I’d heard that Pai is popular with Thais because of a movie. I had heard the rest of the tourists are backpackers. From our short survey of the area I’m pretty sure that all the tourists except us are backpackers in their 20’s. And it appears there are more tourists than locals.
This week has just been frustrating. I’m very annoyed about the whole thing where I was told I needed to go to Mae Sot on a weekend and then I find out I could have gone last week. I’m not sure why I can’t let it go. Then Wednesday this week, Pat asks if I want to go to Mae Sot with her, Robin and the Director. They have to go to renew his visa. I asked why I had to go last weekend if I could have gone this week. I got the whole story again about how Robin’s visa is different and the Director has to be there in person to sign paperwork. That didn’t answer my question and now I’m more annoyed than before. I really wanted to go because they were going to turn it into an entire day of sight seeing, but I have way too much work to do and don’t see how I can get it done if I go. So, I stayed and worked all day Thursday. I’m all caught up on lesson plans except one so that is good.
But I still have to do a curriculum and syllabus. On Monday I was told that the curriculum I did was the country standard and couldn’t be changed. Well, then why did you tell me to change it? Then I have to do another curriculum. And Pat will ask the lady for the correct other curriculum which is the one I can’t change anyway. I asked for an example and she just told me to pick a few things from the country standard and then put in my curriculum. You might as well have said “lakjoiy lslieyhh” as that would have made just as much sense. Later in the week Pat sent me an example, but I’m avoiding opening the email as I’m just not ready to deal with it yet.
The day before exams, Pat asked me to change the cover sheet of my exam because it had the wrong information on it. I looked at it. It was the right grade, but not the cover sheet I created and had someone else’s signature on it. Then I looked inside and it wasn’t the test I created. I told Pat it wasn’t my test and she and I just looked at each other blankly. I was told the correct test showed up later. I assume I have to grade exams too, but no one gave me the finished exams so I don’t know how or when that will happen. I probably should have asked about them, but if I got some cryptic answer that had nothing useful in it, I just might break my contract and never come back from the upcoming long weekend.
On Sunday Noi had told me that on Tuesday afternoon we would go to local temples to give the big candles to the monks. I had no idea what that meant. Pat failed to tell me about this until an hour before. I chose to go with Noi’s group. It was 6 teachers and about 8 students in our group. We went to two temples. The students had bought giant yellow candles, put them in pails and decorated the pails. They also had money donations in an envelope.
At the first temple we had to wait because the monk was bathing. I found that odd, but ok. A temple cat came up and decided to lay next to me and then scratch Noi. So, that was my entertainment as we waited. Finally when he came out they presented the candle, there was a lot of chanting and bowing and conversations I didn’t understand. Then he asked who owned the pink motorbike and one of the students said he did. The monk directed him to wash it and himself in holy water. I gathered all this by what happened not that I could understand what they were saying. He took a cup of water from a big wooden cask and splashed it all over his motorbike and then himself. Then later Noi filled me in that the monk had seen a bad spirit standing behind the bike while they were chanting. The spirit was gone, but the bike and it’s driver needed to be cleaned with holy water to keep it from coming back. Fascinating. When you sit in a temple you have to have your feet pointing away from the Buddha and monk so you either sit on your knees or you sit on one side with your legs folded under you and feet pointing behind you. Usually on a marble floor. Well, we had been there so long, I could barely stand when it was time to leave. My legs had cramped up completely. This being devout is hard work. The second temple was just as interesting. It was in a very poor part of town. Seeing all the farmer’s houses makes mine look like luxury. The temple was ornate and pretty, but another building (ordination hall?) next to it looked run down and in bad need of a new paint job and a weed whacker. Noi kept asking me “Isn’t this temple just beautiful”? This was similar to the other temple in that we waited awhile for the monk then there was chanting and bowing and talking. This one there were two opalescent vessels with water that two of the teachers poured into matching bowls while all the students and teachers touched each other’s shoulders or arms to form a chain from one vessel to the other. More chanting and bowing. More cramped legs. Even though I don’t understand and probably wouldn’t believe if I did understand, I love this part of living in Thailand. I love seeing how others live and worship.
After the temples, we took one of the students home and then went to the house of a lady Noi knew. The lady had such a kind energy to her. We picked longan from her longan farm. Oh, and there were cows on the road – once again proving my theory that it makes you happy to see cows walking along the road.
Thursday night I went to get a pedicure. I went back to the only lady in Thailand that didn’t try to take my toenails off completely. While I waited her young son (4 years old?) tried to have a conversation with me. It was cute even though I told him I didn’t speak Thai, he kept trying. Then when I sat in the chair he pulled up the stool, sat down and pulled the cart up with all the pedicure tools and polish in it as if he was going to do my pedicure. One of the cutest things I’ve ever seen.
I got to have dinner with Tip. Reading lessons for her daughter turned into pouting and then when Ging and her daughter came over all was lost. I ended up teaching English to Tip and Ging again. It was nice to get to spend some time with them.
This weekend is a 5 day weekend. My friend Andy is visiting from Singapore so I’m going to meet him in Chiang Mai and we are going to Pai. Noi asked me to go spend 2 days with her family doing fun water things up at another dam. It turns out that’s the day Andy leaves so I’m out the money for a hotel room for one night, but it sounds fun and I’m excited to meet her family. She will pick me up in Chaing Mai and take me to the dam and then bring me home after.
Rraine Drops 