The rest of Phuket, finally

I'm very anxious to get this over with, its hanging over my head a like a very heavy thing that can cut my head off (the true idiom escapes me). I almost don't care about not having it perfectly recorded anymore, because I've left it for so long and I'm anxious to get to other things.
But we soldier on...

Monday was a day of adventuring: Ben went off with Avery (Kimmie's housemate) to rent us a motorbike for the week. I say motorbike, but it was really a scooter with a very small seat for my bum and really high foot thingies - very uncomfortable indeed. But Mr Ben is a great driver, and I am a great navigator, though we did get lost a few times before I found a great map.
Naturally just as we managed to find our way (by stopping at a Ducati dealer and asking for directions) we had a puncture, and amper amper split our heads open in the road in full traffic. Luckily it had stopped us right outside a Shell, and a nice man pumped the wheel up for us while laughing at our near-death experience in the road.

Ten whole minutes later, the tire was flat again. This time we'd pulled over right in front of a bike repair shop - I've never been so lucky in my life. They didn't speak a word of English, but one man did have a swastika tattooed on the inside of his wrist, I forget what the original symbol meant.

After what was literally 4 hours, we reached our destination of Patong Beach, the main tourist hangout in Phuket. And to be honest, it wasn't worth the trip. Patong looks like Pattaya, with lots of old fat white men looking to get off with Thai girls. The good thing about there being lots of farangs around is that it means the Thais speak better English, so its easier to make yourself understood.
But the beach is not very pretty, and we arrived too late to do anything anyway. Oh well.

Patong beach

Stolen sunset from a hotel's private beach.

 Tuesday was another fun lazy day, spent swanning around in the ocean. You have to see it to believe it. Ao Yon is a very protected bay, and there are absolutely no waves. I've never seen such flat ocean in my life. Patong had some baby waves, and I saw some really good waves on Kata Beach, both on the other side of the island.

The one constructive thing we did on Tuesday was take a drive up to Big Buddha to watch the sunset and have supper. Big Buddha is exactly that: a huge statue of Buddha built out of marble slabs. He is still being built, and tourists can donate a slab of marble with their names on it to be put on him. I did no such thing. Big Buddha is very beautiful, and 6km up a very steep mountain on a little scooter with two large bums on it. It was touch and go for a while there. He is also no good to watch the sunset from, as he is facing east, and is so big that he blocks out the sunset. So we had a look at him and moseyed back down the mountain to have some supper at a restaurant with a great view in the right direction.

A much better sunset view

 
 It was the night before Big Buddha that Ben and I decided not to go see as many islands as we could and meet up with Jay (a friend from school). Instead, due to financial constraints, we decided to cut our trip short and go home instead. A wise choice, with hindsight!

Wednesday was thus our last day, and we spent a part of it adventuring at a waterfall near Kimmie's house. We didn't go very far up, and apparently it gets much more impressive, but having mixed feelings about waterfalls as I do, I was content to just stay fairly close to the bottom.

Afterwards, we had a quick supper with Kimmie and Avery to say thanks for letting us stay, and then hopped back on the bus for a long, long trip home.

More Phuket

Today, having more time than money (more anything than money, really), I have done absolutely nothing. So I might as well finish the Phuket story, because when school starts again I don't think I'll get a chance.
So we arrived in Phuket Town itself at about 8am on Saturday morning. Coming in, it didn't look like anything I had imagined, and it didn't until I got to Kimmie's house, in a taxi that cost 400baht for a 30 minute trip. That's the second thing I noticed (after noticing that it wasn't what I had expected) - public transport in Phuket is nothing like Bangkok. None of the taxis have meters, apparently there's a taxi mafia that prevents this, and even motorbike taxis are hard to find. I hadn't realised how dependent I've become on public transport in one short month, having never used it before moving to this country. Also the taxis aren't cabs like in Bangkok, its more like a songtaew (a bakkie with benches on the back and a roof). But these are bigger, like a truck version.

Anyway, the man agreed to take us to Kimmie's house as per Nicola's instructions. Honestly, its for the greater good of mankind that that girl is learning Thai, I don't know where I would be without her. Lost in Phuket, that's where. Everything I know how to say is from her (except hong nam, that I learnt from Jay).

I couldn't resist taking some pictures on the way. The landscape is so much different to that of Bangkok, and absolutely beautiful. For once, Discovery was telling the truth :)

 Saturday night was to be the  culmination of the week's celebrations of the vegetarian festival, so there were believers lining the streets as we drove into town, all dressed in white. But more about that later.

Thais lining the street for Vegetarian Festival

 The turn-off to Kimmie's house is marked by a very cool orange giraffe, without whom we would never have found the place. Alas, Nicola's Thai does not extend to explaining giraffes, so we just went along slowly till I spotted it. You then walk down a very steep road (which the taxi man refuses to drive down) and then kind of call out until you hear familiar voices. The house itself is really cool, with all but the bedrooms and bathroom being open.

Everybody at the house had had quite a Friday night, so our early arrival wasn't quite as appreciated as it would have been later in the day.
We headed down to the beach (a mere 15 steps from the house) and lazed around for most of the morning. This was perhaps not so wise, as I was a bit red and sensitive the next day or so. The beach is so incredibly beautiful, I think if I lived here I would never go to school.

Kimmie lives in Ao Yon, or Yon Bay, which is a little secret in Phuket. Its like a little village of foreign travellers, hardly any Thai people around. The up-side of this is that you can communicate with everybody, while the down side is that you could be on an island anywhere in the world.

After roasting ourselves on the beach we had lunch at Pedro's house (a nice teacher-trainer from Ecuador). He's really well-travelled - next on his list is Nepal, and maybe at some point 'Black Africa'. I had to laugh.
He and Carlos (another very well-travelled guy, Mexican) made som tam, which is a Thai salad made with papaya and shrimp. It is very very spicy. I might even want to put another 'very' in there. But it is also lovely, and they fried some fresh fish to go with it. Yummy. I say 'shrimp' because here there is no differentiation between shrimp and prawn. I'm sometimes disappointed by my order arriving with only little babies in it, where I expected big prawns, but more often than not they're great. Prawn/shrimp/gung are very commonplace and cheap, even in Bangkok. My mama would be in her element.

We went back to the beach for a short while and had a shower before making a move towards the festival celebration in town.

Now, about this Vegetarian Festival...Do not be confused by the word 'vegetarian' into thinking, as I did, that this was a peaceful hippy gathering of people protesting for the rights of the chickens. It is in fact almost the exact opposite.
The festival is the beginning of the Taoist Lent, so really a Chinese festival. What happens is that followers of this religion abstain from meat and a host of other things for the period of lent, which is the only vegetarian thing about it. On the Friday night and earlier in the week, followers had been making themselves more inviting to be possessed by ancient spirits. Still doesn't sound too bad, right? Well, the way they do it is by ritual mortification - piercing their cheeks with sharp objects and lashing themselves, grazing the blade of an axe across their backs and so on. The reason for this is that pain purifies the soul, and enough of it induces the person into a trance state whereby they are more inviting to the spirits.

The Saturday night, as I said, was to be the culmination of all this mortification, where those who had been selected by the spirits would be possessed at the beginning of the procession, and then walk for about 4 hours blessing families and stuff. The procession is quite something, they move through the streets of Phuket and the rest of the city crowds around them, throwing fire crackers at them. You've never heard such a racket in your life. And the spirits enjoy the fire crackers, so the possessed people actually stand still and let you throw the crackers at them.

Most people were wearing masks to avoid smoke inhalation.

The lady in pink is the one posessed, the rest are there to help her and give her water and so on, they walk the whole way with her.

They don't seem to feel any pain, but I certainly did when I got caught by a stray one.
The video explains it better, but I took it sideways and now don't know how to flip it.

We returned to Kimmie's house, tired and having had enough noise, to have drinks on the beach and play the song game, although Ben and Pedro didn't sing very much. I've really missed Kimmie.

Sunday was a lovely lazy day, we had lunch at a restaurant just down the road called The Beach Bar, lay around on the beach cementing my sunburn some more and did absolutely nothing productive. Lovely. 

The path down to the beach bar.

More tomorrow.

I go Phuket

I'm going to have to write this one in instalments, because otherwise it will be ridiculously long, and take days both to read an write.
So I'll start with last Friday, the last day of term, when we left for Phuket. 'We' is me and Ben, a teacher-friend from school. We were on our way to stay with Kimmie, who I hadn't seen in three whole years, which neither of us had realised. It was maybe not the best time for a holiday, with me still not having received a full month's salary yet, and having to budget intensely for the trip, but I was determined, so we set off. The first leg of the trip was on the Wednesday to the terminal to get the tickets. Being the organised and paranoid person that I am, there was no way I was going to show up at the terminal on Friday with only a hope of getting a ticket. Alas, this trip didn't go so well - the taxi driver swindled us by driving us practically all the way round Bangkok, a distance of 50km, and charging 350baht. Not cool. Especially when we then managed to get a bus home for a mere 18baht, a 20-minute journey. Pig.

Anyway, so we had the tickets and set off on Friday after school, meeting up at Victory Monument (which I still need to take pictures of to show you my morning route). Our next unwise decision was to take the 515 bus to the terminal, the same one that got us home on Wednesday. A wise choice in that it was only 18baht, unwise in that this was at about 17:30, and rush hour. It took us an absolute age to get there, and the people on the bus were laughing at us for getting antsy. Ben then wanted to get out and walk the last 2km, in the pouring rain. He did not at that stage know how heavy my bag was, luckily I talked him out of it.

The slowest bus driver in the world.

Made it to the terminal at about 7pm, for a bus that was leaving at 7-30. But wise Mr Ben also pointed out that this is Thailand, nothing happens on time. And he makes a very good point; African time has got nothing on Asian time, its truly a whole new perception of time and punctuality.

The next difficult part was making sense of the bus station. All the signs saying 'platform' pointed to floors above us, and we reached the fourth or so floor, before wise Mr Ben again came forth and suggested that the bus could hardly take off mid-air, so we ignored all signs and headed back downstairs. We got some food and libations for the 12-hour journey; what had at first appeared to be a chicken burger later revealed itself to be a shrimp burger. It was proclaimed 'well-nice' though.
All this food and libation buying and getting lost and finding the toilet, took ages, with the result that we only happened upon our platform (and quite by accident too) at 7-27, three minutes before scheduled departure. And then we were even some of the first people on the bus! The bus duly left at 8pm, which was quite annoying after all that running with the heaviest bag in the world. Just like the Translux then.

It is a very long and very boring trip to Phuket. The bus stops once or twice in the 12 to 13 hours, the reasoning being that the bus is equipped with a hong nam (toilet) and so there's no need to stop. However, there has never been a more smelly hong nam since my life, and we could smell it from our seats the whole way. Ugh.

May told me before I left that I should wear closed shoes on the plane, in case my feet swell. I wore closed shoes on the bus too, because Thai people like having the aircon at subzero temperatures, and while my tootsies did remain toasty warm, they also swelled to elaphantine proportions, and so I had fat ankles for a full day in Phuket. Not my sexiest day.

More to follow soon :)

New week, new space :)

I didn't realise how much this weekend tired me out. I still thought I was going to Chaduchak Market again with Ben to look for a backpack. But we had lunch and then faded.

Then I found out that my room was available for me to move into, I couldn't wait! Lugged all my stuff up 8 floors in the creakiest lift in the world, and it only took three trips. And for the first time since I arrived here, I really unpacked, and got all the way to the bottom of my suitcase and got everything out. I found out that I actually did bring long pants, and more shoes than I thought (although my mother already knew this about me).

I also found out that the people at OR Tambo who cut the lock off my suitcase not only took the pretty key-ring that Lara bought me with my initials on it, but also my black dress with the orange straps and stuff. This makes me sad.

But unpacking is incredibly liberating. I feel like I'm not in transit anymore, and I can be just as morsig as I like. Although, because the space is so newly mine and I'm still baar, you must know that I made up that bed at 5:30am when I woke up!

I also have my own bathroom for the first time in my life, and I really like the feeling. I've never lived absolutely alone before, and I suppose I'm still not really alone, but it feels like it, and its a good feeling.

I do like to be beside the seaside!

When I started this blog last Thursday, I was feeling terribly homesick, what with it being my mother's birthday, Charlene getting her results and PMS all kicking in at the same time. I didn't have much hope of having a good weekend at all, but am pleasantly surprised by how well it turned out.

On Friday night, Nicola and I went out with Ben, his Thai friend Paula and some Americans from school. Little did we know that we were going to one of Bangkok's swankier joints, and thus did not arrive financially prepared. A little awkward, to say the least. Didn't hang around long after supper, Nics and I went on a bit of a roundabout ride that ended with me at home and her heading out to party with her Mexican friend. I didn't mind, as I still didn't feel up to shenanigans and fun, so sleep was good.

Saturday morning is where it got fun. I woke up at 6-30 (which was not the fun part) and went to Victory Monument to meet Ben and more Americans for a trip to the beach. I have not been to the beach since before I left home, I cannot describe how friggin excited I was, even though the one we went to is apparently not very good. Our plan to meet up and leave at 7-30 fell through, as such plans always do. And my anal punctuality means that I, of course, had to wait for everybody else for ages. But once we got on the way, it was worth the wait.
We headed for Pattaya, which is a coastal town an hour and a half out of Bangkok. The three best things about Pattaya, in order of bestness:
3) Its smaller than Bangkok, so you don't always feel like a little guppie about to get swallowed whole by a whale.
2) You can breather through your nose there cos it doesn't have that characteristic Bangkok smell that sometimes makes you gag.
And the absolute gem of the lot (drumroll please)
1) Its by the sea!!!!!

The distance to the beach from where we stayed.



There are umbrellas and chairs all
 along the beach, Thai people hate the sun.












I didn't know I missed the ocean that much until I got closer to it and could smell it again. I will not pass judgement yet on whether Bangkok is or is not the city for me, but there are things counting against it. Like the fact that I don't consider myself a city girl, even though this is the first really large city I've lived in. Also the smell. And the guppie thing. It does have great things going for it too, I admit I love the skytrain and the fact that there are so many other guppies around me and so on. But I digress...

We arrived in Pattaya quite early, at about 10:30 and booked into a guest house on Jom Tien Road. There was a little too much discussion about rooms and who would sleep where and who'd have to share and so on, but I tried hard not to pay any attention, what with the sea waiting for me.
Straight to the beach (Jom Tien Beach) from there on, which is literally across the road from the guesthouse. The sea is quite different, as expected. There's not much in terms of waves, more swells, really. Although they do jump up and smack you in the face just as you start thinking the water's tame. The beach is quite steep too, so the water gets deep quickly. And there's these little things on the sand that I've never seen before but the Americans knew all about - sand dollars. They look like sea urchins but they're flat and not prickly. Interesting zoological discoveries. Also on that front, there are jellyfish in the water that one must watch out for. I thought it was a lie, being a generally disbelieving person, until I saw one washed up on the beach. So we waited to see if the next person that came out of the sea was scratching themselves. It happened to be an old man in a Speedo (sies man) and while he was continually adjusting himself, there were no red marks so we figured the water was safe.

Lovely times in the water, which is like a tepid bath, really. But lovely nonetheless. I tried to dry off in the sun, but its a different story over here. I was dry in approximately 10 minutes of lying out, and then started burning. Not so nice, but now I know for next time.
Then Jay (one of the American guys, lovely) wanted to start missioning and we went to the Hard Rock Hotel, one of three in Thailand. They have an amazing pool there and we wanted to swim, but the lady wouldn't let us, so we left and went to Pattaya Beach to see the sights. The first sight I saw was a fish foot spa. I'd seen them in Bangkok and had wanted to try, but this was just opening so they had special promotion prices (lol cheapo and the dweebs to the end). What happens is you put your feet into this fish tank, and the fish all swim up and nibble the dead skin off your feet. It feels so bizarre, very ticklish, but I liked it. I might even do it again!

Fishy toes

We walked along Pattaya Beach, and saw things I've never seen before. Everywhere you look you see two things: Firstly, middle-aged to old, mostly balding, mostly fat and gone to seed, white men looking like fat kids in an all-you-can-eat restaurant, and secondly, young pretty Thai girls in groups, waiting to be approached. These men have come to this country looking for a easy and cheap sex, and it definitely is easy and cheap to get. Gross.

We left the meat market and went back to Jom Tien, and stayed out on the beach till about 5, when we went off on our next mission - looking for a Thai barbecue. This is quite different to any kind of braai in that its not at all private. Its like a restaurant, where you dish up all your food, get some meat and seafood and cook it on a coal stove-thing at your table. Its all-you-can-eat for 129baht, and I tell you, we ate loads! There's all kinds of really good food, and you can prepare it the way you want it. It's generally in a parking lot, with lots of tables set out, and the food in the middle.

Thai barbecue!

Next we went adventuring to Walking Street. This is the red-light section of Pattaya, and there are many, many red lights, and people in the street advertising shows of things involving ping pong balls, candles, umbrellas and the like, that I didn't know were physically possible. We even went into a couple of places, just to see what it was like. The ladies were a lot more excited to see the boys than us girls though, not surprisingly. Poor Ben got his bum pinched at every place, though I doubt he saw it as a drawback.

Muay Thai on Walking Street, but I think they were faking it.

Having had enough of salacious entertainment, we went to a karaoke bar closer to Jom Tien and had a fantastic time with Taylor the creep, Du Hast by Rammstein and Carole King's Natural Woman.
What a great night.

I didn't last much longer after we left the karaoke bar, and we left to come back at about 10am this morning.
A good idea, even though I wanted more beach time, since I still need to move into my new room. I also now have to do more washing - I walked into my room to find that the landlord's kittens had found their way and it looks like they spent the weekend in here, nestled in my suitcase on top of my clean clothes. I am allergic to cats as well as fleas, but I suppose I had to come back down from my weekend high somehow.

Starting out

So I got this idea from my friend Jennie. It makes sense to keep track of what's happening for my own records, as well as to save having to repeat stuff and getting it wrong. So friends and family will be able to see on this here blog what I've been up to and I won't forget how awesome it was.
Its a bit late to start, I suppose, this being my third week in Bangkok. Wow, I didn't even realise it had been that long until this afternoon. So to catch up on all that has happened, this first post will be rather longer than the rest.

I left home (East London) on Friday 17 September, having waited an entire month for the Korea people to tell me they were ready for me. In the end, I was going somewhere, and as Ty said, it turns out that Bangkok was the place all along.
Landed here the evening of Sunday 19 September, convinced it'd be a while before I got on another plane. Its just such an artificial situation, cramped in a space of maybe 1square metre, with hundreds of strangers, thousands of kilometres up in the sky. And they try to make it as normal as possible for you, which just points out the abnormality even more starkly.

Nicola came to fetch my from Suvarnabhumi Airport, and we caught a cab back to her flat. Walking out of the airport was like being slapped in the face, the heat was intense. And it does not abate, not even late at night. So another thing I've gotten very used to is perspiring constantly. Not very attractive, I know, but as Nics says, horses sweat, men perspire, and women glow. I quite like that image.

My first few days were just getting the hang of things, learning a few basic Thai phrases and finding my way around the area we lived. I managed to get a job sorted very quickly, and went for an interview on the Wednesday of my first week.
I started at my school (which I won't mention, lest I become a bit critical later on) the following Monday, and was surprised to find that not only do I now teach matric physics, 11 chemistry and 10 Biology (none of which I've taught before), but I am also the ONLY person doing so, and thus have to plan out the curriculum as well. The school runs according to the curriculum of the Californian schools for reasons only they will ever know, which means it was fairly easy to find a content list on the internet. And you mock me for my constant Googling!
Luckily, I've done this planning business before, and on a considerably larger scale, so I'm not too unhappy.
What I am marginally unhappy about is the fact that the school's director is a bit of a dork, but then so is Ben, and he's alright. 

Ben and Jennie


I've met some nice people, other teachers from school, and we spend a fair bit of time together outside of school hours, which is nice. Now that I've moved out of Nicola's, I don't see her that much, but its also good to be challenged by having to figure things out on my own. I have mastered the BTS Skytrain (like an underground, but over-), motorbike taxi's (I can even sit side-saddle, its inappropriate for ladies to sit wydsbeen), cabs, buses and almost mini-vans. I say almost with the mini-vans because they always have their destinations printed in Thai script, which I can honestly say I will never be able to read.

The place I live now is in Sukhumvit, which is a really nice area. At present I'm shacked up with my landlord and his son in their flat until my room becomes available towards the end of the week. I can't wait!
The commute in the morning is much better than from Nicola's, but only marginally so.


The view out of Nicola's window at sunset.




And that's all I can remember about what's happened so far! I haven't seen much that hasn't been obviously apparent, but I plan to change all that as soon as my October salary becomes more obviously apparent :)
I've seen Chaduchak Market (insane and huge!), Khao San Rd (full of farangs/tourists) and the inside of a  club called Hollywood with underwear-clad singers on stage. Good times!

What a monsoon season looks like

All I can really say is that I'm keeping my head up so far.