A new semester, a new beginning. And NEW FRIENDS!!

(April-May 30)

In between all my adventures during the summer break, I still had plenty of time in Sawankhalok to spend time with some of my favorite people. The girls I was teaching a special class to took me to the mall in Phitsanulok one day, a two hour bus ride (which doesn’t include the time it took for our bus to break down, then waiting at the Sukhothai bus terminal for an hour waiting for a new bus to take us to PhitLok), just to take me out to a sushi lunch. Love those girls.

Also with summer means that Tara and Steven are finished teaching at Sawananan and were heading back to America. Their departure was slightly lightened by gaining a new best friend. There is a woman at the night market who sells rice porridge who I visit regularly to teach her English. My first night in Sawankhalok after both Tara and Steven left and Be was out of town, I was on my own…at first it was a relief because I felt like I hadn’t had time to myself in months. But when I went to the night market to go teach my friend English and her shop was closed, I all of a sudden felt really lonely. I grumpily walked to the end of the market and got the same meal I had the first night I was on my own in Sawankhalok six months ago from the same shop: Pork basil with a fried egg, my comfort food that will always and forever remind me of late night dinners with my dad after working at his restaurant all night. Needless to say, I was feeling a little homesick. I went to the grocery store on my way home, and I was leaving the parking lot, I heard a familiar voice calling “Koriiiin” in a terrible Thai accent. It was BaNee, the woman who sells rice porridge at the night market! I asked her why she closed her shop that day, and she told me she was taking a few days off, and invited me to come with her to a temple the next day in Phitsanulok. Desperate for an outing and a friend, I eagerly said yes and canceled my special class for the next day. She picked me up early in the morning for what I didn’t know was going to be an all day adventure. Our first stop was a temple way up in the mountains of Phitsanulok. I forgot that PhitLok bordered Laos, until BaNee’s friends that was driving us pointed to the mountains we were approaching and said that past those mountains is Laos. I had no idea! The temple was unlike any I’d ever seen. The Buddha shrine was covered in these small brightly colored stones that were carved into Buddhas. Honestly, they resembled clear plastic toys you could get in a cereal box, and just seemed kind of strange.
BaNee’s friend showed me around the temple (he goes there often) and told me the history of the temple and the colorful plastic Buddhas. I wish I could relay this information in my blog, but the whole thing was in Thai, so the little of it I understood, I can’t remember. Sorry. But he showed me this huge collection of colorful stones that were on display all over the temple. He insisted that they were from nature, which I didn’t believe for a second because of their variety in colors. Nature doesn’t make stones those colors. After lunch with the women who work at the monastery, we returned to temple. BaNee’s friend told us that if we “tambun” 500 bhat, we would receive a relic from the monk. 500 bhat is a bit steep…(about 17 dollars), but I was really happy that they took me on this trip so I figured it was a worthy donation. BaNee, her other friend P’Kwang, and myself each chipped in 500 bhat. One by one, the monk handed us each a huge ugly stone in exchange for our donation. We sat there for a minute, disappointed and confused, looking at these plain old rocks you could pick up on the side of any mountain. 500 bhat for an ugly rock?? I was glad BaNee and P’Kwang were just as confused as I was, because that meant that even though the whole thing was in Thai, I hadn’t terribly misunderstood something. Then out of nowhere, this guy that I guess works at the temple came up with hammer, and started breaking my rock!

He hammered at it until it cracked in half! He broke my 500 bhat rock! BaNee and P’Kwang and I just sat kind of helpless, waiting for it to make sense. He brushed off the debris from my broken 500 bhat rock, and showed me a crevice in the middle of the rock…under the debris in the crevice was a shiny…yellow….thing. He took the shiny yellow thing out of the rock, brushed off the rest of the dust, and plopped the perfectly round bright yellow glassy stone into my hand. Then he broke open BaNee’s 500 bhat rock to reveal a purple stone, and P’Kwangs hid a red stone. Soooo everything makes sense. All those plasticy looking Buddhas are made of these colorful stones. They are somehow magically formed inside these rocks that the temple workers pull out from the side of the mountains around this temple. Some woman who could speak decent English (where was she this whole time…?) came to tell me what a yellow stone means. Surprise, it is a very lucky color and will bring me great fortune…but I can’t imagine the other colors differ in their auspiciousness.

So I totally trusted the whole thing. I believed that these rocks have been formed by some mysterious natural process…I mean, it’s Thailand. Crazy things happen here. Gullable? Maybe. But tell me, how would you put a stone like that into a natural rock, that has no pre-existing fractures? It’s not like he tapped it with a hammer and it cracked open perfectly. He had to bang on that rock for a while just to chip it down to the crevice where the gem is hidden. How do you fake that? Well, I went to Chompu’s house for dinner the next night. I told Chompu and Tdi my story and my awesome yellow stone. Tdi interrupted me mid-story, and exclaimed “No Korin, No. People who make these stones are bad people. Trust me, they are bad people. I know because I use to be one of them. I used to make these stones in Uttaradit…” This was a really cute confession by Tdi because 1. He said it in English, and 2. He’s the sweetest man I know and I can’t imagine him cheating people like that. So I still haven’t decided if I believe the temple or Tdi. I still think it’s impossible to get that gem inside a natural rock. But either way, it was a donation to the temple anyway, and so it was 500 bhat well spent.

BaNee and I praying at a temple in Pitlok

Speaking of scams….part of Sawananan being the best school in the region means we are in charge of holding yearly seminars for teachers in Sukhothai. There are only 2 other schools in the province that have farang teachers, so we have become the center for foreign languages, and have to provide training for 50 English teachers from all over Sukhothai. P’Sonya kind of mentioned this to me in the beginning of the summer break, but forgot (?) to mention until a few weeks before our seminar that the training had to be done by farang teachers, AKA, me. With Tara and Steven back in the states, Be and I were put in charge of running a three day teachers seminar. Yes, Be and I with our 4 months of teaching experiences, were going to teach all the teachers in the province, who have been teaching for 20+ years, how to teach English. Legit? Not in the slightest.

The seminar actually went surprisingly well. Overbearing me, I didn’t really let Be do much. Let’s just say this is more my cup of tea than his. Though he stayed by my side throughout the planning and execution of the camp, I ended up running all 10 made-up training sessions over the three days. Oh, did I mention, the seminar had to be about the ASEAN community? Yes, not only do I have to teach how to teach English, but I have to teach about how to teach about ASEAN in English. (ASEAN is the Association of SE Asian Nations…the Asian version of the EU, to put it simply), I know a good deal about ASEAN by now, but how to teach a three day seminar about ASEAN?? Well, I started with asking the teachers, out of the ten ASEAN nations, where does Thailand rank in terms of English proficiency? Turns out, like champs, we are competing with Cambodia for last place. And from my four day experience in Cambodia, making me a relative expert, I met more English speaking Cambodians on that trip than I did 3 weeks backpacking through Thailand. Anyway, that was a good jumping off point for the seminar, to show these jaded teachers, there is a lot of work to be done if Thailand wants to be a strong ASEAN country!! How patriotic do I sound?

After two days of literally making things up as I go to entertain these teachers, I was so exhausted. Being a one-man show for 8 hours straight is not easy or fun. Especially when I have no idea what I'm talking about. But the last day made it worth it, kind of. P’Sonya wanted to have a cocktail party, to show them how “Westerners” socialize. So (my proudest moment of this seminar), I came up with the do’s and don’ts of cocktail parties. Whereas Thai parties are a constant eating extravaganza, with plenty of whisky and karaoke, I had to face an astonished crowd and tell them there is no singing or dancing at cocktail parties. Unheard of in Thailand!! So my advice included (from, you know, all my experiences at cocktail parties) 1. Don’t expect to sit down and eat, 2. Don't expect the food to be delicious, 3. Don’t expect to be full, and 4. It’s always a good idea to keep an empty plate, so when you’re stuck in a boring conversation, you can easily exit by saying “oh those dumplings were delicious, I think I’ll go get some more”. That last one was my favorite, and I really enjoyed sharing that with the Director later at the cocktail party. So in the end, I think the teachers learned something? I was surprised my randomly good stage presence, and I think I actually pulled off being a legitimate trainer, so I sure hope they did learn something from me. I am skeptical any of them will change their teaching habits, but not to worry. The Ministry of Education is forcing our school to have another teachers seminar, of course run by farang.

At least for the next seminar, I will have new helpers. We now have two new farang teachers: Bryan and Kirk! Bryan is from the Philippines, and Kirk from America. Just starting the first week of school, and I love them already. Almost instantly, the four farang bonded together to form "The F Team". We’re still working on our individual super powers, but as a whole, we’re a pretty rad team. It’s nice to have such a tight knit group so early in the semester, and I can see already that this semester is going to be awesome.

Rugby in Hong Kong

(May 11- May 15)

 Just before the semester started (literally days before…), I had the opportunity to go with my rugby team from Bangkok to play in a tournament in Hong Kong. Even though I’ve been spending a lot of money on travel, and should be focusing on the new term, I couldn’t say no to playing rugby in Hong Kong. So the weekend before classes started, I hopped on a flight to Hong Kong. I’ve never had much of an attraction to Hong Kong, and I can kind of see why now. It is so expensive! Before I left, I set aside how much I wanted to spend while there, and changed it into Hong Kong dollars. From arriving at the airport, taking a train and taxi to the hotel and paying for the room plus a deposit, I had already gone through all the money I wanted to spend! And I had only been in HK for an hour. Great. Luckily we were spending the whole next day on the field. We got to the drizzly field on the top of a steep hill at around 9 AM. Going into this whole ordeal, I figured the teams would be similar to our team: older ex-pats living in foreign countries that play touch rugby for fun. Turns out touch rugby is a big sport in Hong Kong and Singapore, so 9 out of the ten teams came from Hong Kong or Singapore, and were young, fit, serious rugby players. The 10th team was from Bangkok, and were about twice the age as most the other players, and nothing near as fit. Yup, that’s my team. As luck would have it, I got really sick the morning of the tournament. Of course, the team’s youngest, fastest player had a fever, headache, chills, the works. I think it was the sickest I have felt since I’ve been traveling. I played through the first game (we lost), and sucked it up for the second game (where I was really close to scoring a try! Inches away from the line.) I had to take some mystery medicine someone brought from Thailand to get through the rest of them, but whatever it was worked because I felt close to fine for the last three games, and played much better! I didn’t score any tries, but I sure did defend a ton of them! I’m still working on my technique when it comes to touch rugby, so I am still a lousy offensive player, but I can defend against any team. The whole day was so fun, but incredibly tiring. We lost all our games in the round robin, so our last game was against the losers from the other bracket. We were competing for the prize of all prizes, the golden bowl! We played a fantastic game against the other losers, and victoriously took the golden bowl, placing 9th out of 10 for the mixed gender teams. Like true rugby players, we noticed that between the golden cup, plate and bowl, our glorious bowl is the most conducive for drinking beer out of, and we assured ourselves it had taken some clever calculations to know how many games we had to lose to win that bowl. And like any good rugby tournament, the day was followed with an outing at a bar downtown, with free food, drinks and a lot of dancing. Day One, and no money spent. Off to a good start.

The next morning, most of the team had a late morning. I suppose ending at a bar called “From Dusk to Dawn”, that is to be expected. I met up with some of the other rugby folks for some very necessary Dim Sum. I must have been spoiled in Chinatown in Philly... despite being in Hong Kong, the Dim Sum in Philly is better, but maybe that was because the food comes out in carts. That seems to make all the difference. Shu mai, Chinese broccoli, spare ribs, and sesame dessert balls later, I was ready to explore Hong Kong. So we started with the most touristy thing (but also the thing I probably most highly recommend doing) in Hong Kong.

We took a cute little tram thing to Victoria’s Peak, Hong Kong island’s highest point. The patio at the top that you have to pay for is a bit over rated and expensive, but from the top you can go on an hour long nature walk for free that circumvents the peak. It was approaching sunset as we started on this path, so we got the coolest views of all of Hong Kong in the best lighting.

 Not only is Hong Kong a beautiful city to see from the peak, but it also has the COOLEST BUGS ever!! A lot of people come to Hong Kong to shop. I would totally come here just to check out the bugs.
 Exhausted of beautiful views of Hong Kong, I parted ways with the rugby folks and headed to Kowloon for the night, where I would meet Dave. Dave and I were dating when I first came to Thailand, but after months of not seeing each other, we have decided to go our different ways. But we’re still on awesome terms, awesome enough to meet up in Hong Kong. It actually sounds quite romantic, doesn't it? Rendezvous in Hong Kong? It indeed was a very cool meeting. I met him at the ferry from mainland China, and we caught up over a few beers and a soccer game in a Western bar. I forgot how much I missed interactions like that- first to drink beer instead of whiskey is weird, and to be at a bar with a television? It felt like we were back in Philly for a few hours. Until we left the bar and headed to our crappy little hostel on the 13th floor of a huge hostel/shopping complex in Kowloon. It's a weird little sketchy place, where all the hostels are run by African immigrants for some reason? But it is right in the middle of Hong Kong’s night life and is super cheap. Dave and I had one full day together before I had to go back to Thailand, so I planned a very full itinerary. Like I said before, a lot of people like to go to Hong Kong to shop. What a lot of people don’t go there to do is hike, and I have no idea why. Hong Kong has endless hiking trails all over all the islands, and they all boast stunning views. So while shopping at Channel and Gucci were certainly on my to-do list (juuust kidding), I opted for a hike instead. We took the subway to Lantau island where we took a cable car to the top-ish of the highest mountain on the island. Towards the top is (not the world’s largest seated Buddha, or the world’s largest bronze Buddha, but) the world’s largest seated bronze Buddha (even Hong Kong has to have some sort of superlative, otherwise who would want to go see a giant Buddha on top of a mountain besides me?)

 And I swear I can’t go anywhere without finding some massive Buddha to take pictures of, so this portion of the itinerary was very necessary.
After my Buddha fill was complete, we started our hike. I pointed to the highest peak and told Dave we were climbing it. He just kind of laughed, and said yeah right. There is no way we can climb that and get back before dark. But when you basically climb vertically for an hour straight…you can get to the top of any peak. I actually didn’t think it would only take us an hour, but we were above the mist on Lantau’s highest peak before we knew it, and saw a bunch of cool bugs on the way!
The rest of my day-long agenda fell through at that point, because that hike took a lot more out of us than I expected (what a romantic I am, right? I get one day to see my ex, and I decide hiking a mountain would be the best use of time. But it was kind of one of the coolest hikes
I’ve ever done).

We took the ferry back to Hong Kong island then headed back to Kowloon to get ready for dinner. We walked inland (away from the awesome waterfront that BBC rated as one of the top five free attractions in the world, Tsim Sha Tsui pier…we stayed less a block away from the pier and I never got to see it. Figures) to where the best cheap food is. Definitely essential for us, Hong Kong is freakin expensive. After checking out a strip of restaurants with signs written all in Chinese and no English menus, we picked a spot with a promising crowd and delicious looking whole duck hanging in the window. We didn’t have duck, but Dave got to show off his Chinese skills and ordered us a feast with chow fun, Chinese greens and squid something. I still like Thai food better, but I totally wouldn’t mind eating Chinese every day either. After stuffing ourselves way too full, we walked it off for hours while browsing though the street stalls. We took an incredibly long walk back to the hostel, through a different side of the Kowloon night life. There were still neon lights everywhere, but under them, outdoor restaurants piled high with dishes covered in fish bones, shells and other food remnants, with a bunch of men sitting around the table with their shirts off, stroking their full bellies and spitting in the street. Dave says that’s what its like everywhere in China. Yeah, Hong Kong is cool and all, but I was happy to head back to Thailand.