Songkran Pt 3: Beautiful Thailand

Days 3 and 4 of the Songkran trip were all about aesthetics and Thai history. However, I was remiss in my last blog to mention a beautiful Thai temple we visited on the morning of Day 2.  

This was in the town of Tatako.  The temple was on a hill.  While the others in the group took the truck, Amanda and I opted to hike up the rocky steps.  Suffice it to say, we were completely drenched in our own sweat.  The sun was out and boy was it humid.  Some nice solid exercise, for sure.

The temple was so gorgeous.

Okay, now back to Day 3.

It was up at 6am again, then off to Sukhothai.  Sukhothai literally means "Dawn of Happiness."  It's just over 420 kilometers north of Bangkok and was founded in 1238.  This city was the capital of the Thai Empire for approximately 140 years.  Today there are nearly 200 thousand-year-old temples scattered throughout the area.

BUT, before I get to pictures, there is something to be said for the drive leading up to the park where many of these temples sit.  Let's just say our selected route was wanting.

This shot is from our car.  We spent 2 1/2 hours in the car to only drive 10 kilometers.  These are Thai people packing the street on Day 3 of Songkran -- Day 3!  This had already been going on for TWO WHOLE DAYS!  Traffic was completely bumper to bumper.  2 1/2 hours to go 10 kilometers!  

Kayne was driving.  You can really sense the inner frustration.  The party outside kept us entertained.  

Apparently, Thailand has its highest incidence of pink eye the week following Songkran: so many people getting shot in the eye with water from who knows where!

We finally arrived.  It was worth the wait.  

This picture was not taken off-kilter.  That tower in the middle is leaning to the left.  I call it the Leaning Tower of Thailand. 

We spent much of Day 4 venturing back home.  We made a stop through a Mediterranean shopping center and an action sports park.  Both were fun. 

This is me with Kunta (May's father), Tyler Capp and Amanda, two other teachers.  "Kunta" means grandpa in Thai. 

However, the highlight of the day was visiting a very old temple in a city called Pitsanulok.  The Buddha statue in this temple is very special.  It is made of solid gold.  The whole temple was truly breathtaking. 

And that was pretty much the day and the completion of the 4-day trip.  And what a trip it was!

Plenty more has happened over the last few weeks since Songkran.  So many more posts to come!  

Meanwhile, I want to share a bit of trivia I found most fascinating.  Did you know that Bangkok is the longest city name in the entire world.  Bangkok is just the shortened form.  The full name is: 

Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit

And here is Pum, one of our Thai teachers, saying it.  It's quite impressive. 

Stay tuned!

Songkran Pt 2: Completely Soaked!

Day Two of Songkran was probably my favorite.  And probably the most exhausting.  Up nice and early again, we headed to May's cousin's farm.  Just after breakfast, I got the chance to drive the tractor.

That's May's cousin Wit helping me.

Then I got to drive the sugarcane tractor.  This bad boy picks up sugarcane and loads it onto the trucks you constantly see driving around the area.  These trucks are piled like 10 meters high with freshly cut sugarcane.  Mm mmm, sounds tasty right about now.

What's cool about this guy is that he's only operated by pedals.  There's no steering wheel or anything.  Levers are used for the crane but all the driving is just two pedals.  Pretty wild.  The thing can do some killer 360-degree turns.

And that was only before 11am!  Just the tip of the iceberg.  The shell of the nut.  The peel of the banana, baby!

Next we headed to a temple where the major Songkran festivities were happening in the area.  First up: water fight.  And it was WAR!  The pictures don't even tell the half of it. 

These kids may look young and cute, but looks can be deceiving.  Full force guerrilla warfare tactics from these youngsters -- no holds bar.  And they have a particular penchant for the eyes.  Everywhere I turned these guys were shootin' me in the eyes.  

But then "Da Crew" banded together...

...and gave 'em hell!

You see that guy in the bottom left-hand corner of the picture?  What's the white stuff on his face, you ask.  That's talcum powder mixed with water.  Part of the tradition is putting it on your face and everyone else's.  Kids run around slapping this stuff all over you.  It's really cute. 

Needless to say, everyone was completely soaked from head to toe.  This went on for 2 hours, non-stop.  I thought my eyes would pop -- or I'd at least lose a contact. 

We made our way back to the motel to shower up and try to get a little nap.  I of course was just getting warmed up so couldn't sleep, especially in the middle of the afternoon.  

We drove back to the same area that night for a nice outside dinner and concert.  The atmosphere was spectacular.  Countless tables filled the parking lot and an entire stage had been constructed -- all in a few short hours.  Thai people work fast!

We sat around and ate for an hour or so.  I'm not even going to try to describe the food.  I even had some Thai whiskey mixed with Pepsi, which was actually quite good. 

The music was amazing.  This was the first time I'd really heard Thai music.  I couldn't help but dance.  I found myself practically hypnotized by the rhythm.  The lights, the singers, the dancers -- I couldn't resist! 

And that was about it.  My group was leaving and I had to be pulled away.  Just when I was getting my groove on too -- DANG!

Here are some more pictures from the trip:

A cute little dog I saw at the 100 year old market.  I had to take a photo :)

An interesting statue I encountered. 

The t-shirt says it all. 

That's all for now.  My next post will be about Day 3.  Until then, go eat some Thai food and shoot your friends in the eyes with water guns!

Songkran Pt 1: Happy Thai New Year!

Happy Thai New Year!  You've just got to love Thailand.  They celebrate the International New Year (2010, 2011, etc), the Chinese New Year (in Jan) and their own Thai New Year.  The celebration starts on the 13th of April and usually goes 3 days (not including the weekend).  It is now the year 2054 in Thailand.  I will try to do my best to describe this very special holiday, but I advise making it to Thailand one year to get the true flavor.

The month of April is considered one of the hottest of the year.  The most obvious celebration of this 3-day+ festival is the throwing of water.  People line the streets in every major and minor city and town in all of Thailand and spend hours endlessly dousing each other with water.  It seems as though the whole country shuts down and takes to the streets.  Any means possible is used: water guns, buckets, fire hoses, pumping water from lakes and rivers -- whatever it takes to get everyone and everything wet!

On a more religious level, Thais celebrate Songkran by paying visit to a wat (Buddhist monastery) to pray, donate, give food to monks and cleanse Buddha statues by pouring water over them.  It is believed that by doing this, it will bring good luck and prosperity for the New Year.

Here's Kayne and me.

Now, let's get down to the activities over the last 4 days.  Because we did so much, I think I'm going to have to break my posts down into days to really give enough depth and dimension to it all.

Wednesday, Day 1

This started with a nice early rise at 3:30am.  I was with a group of 10 others.  The idea with getting up so early was to avoid the inevitable hoards of people leaving Thailand to Chiang Mai and the countryside.  This was the first day of Songkran and many Thai families leave to tour and to visit family and friends.

The drive was a little over 3 hours.  We first visited a 100 year old market in Supan Buri.  It was a huge place where you could get anything from shirts, to water guns, to food and statues.  There were all forms of exotic foods I'd never seen or even heard.

This is sala (background) and rambutan (foreground).

We arrived in Supan Buri where we visited Baan Kwai, which means "House of Buffalo" in Thai.  The main attraction was of course the buffalo but there were other things like traditionally built Thai houses that provided a little historical background of the country.  Here are some shots of the houses and their landscape:

And obviously they had buffalo.  You could pet them, feed them and even ride them, which I took the opportunity to do.  Then they had a buffalo show where they would do tricks like lift a leg, kneel and even smile.  One even had a fifth leg coming out of his neck.

Here are some we saw.

Me with my buddy "Buffy" the buffalo.

Here are some other pictures of the buffalo show and within Baan Kwai. 

(Yes, that's a midget not a really big buffalo.)

After that we made our way to the motel in Nakorn Sawan. 

The view from around the motel. 

We got settled in, took our naps and made our way to the closest massage parlor.  Deeelightful.  A nice Thai foot massage was certainly in order and boy did it hit the spot. 

Finally, we had a dinner engagement with May's relatives at an outside restaurant. The atmosphere was great and the food was amazing.  May's cousin owns a sugarcane farm in the country, which we visited the next day.  More on that later. 

The whole gang with May's relatives.

During dinner I had the opportunity to practice and show off my Thai a little bit.  I'm actually getting quite good.  I'm hoping to be conversationally fluent in 6 months.

All in all, the first day was exhausting but one I will not forget. 

Stay tuned.  I'll be posting Day 2 tomorrow or the next day.  Until then, if you have any Thai friends or acquaintances, wish them a very Happy Thai New Year!!

To Know the Wai of Thailand

Well, I'm coming up on the two-week mark here in Thailand.  Boy, has it been great.  I thought I'd include a few details on cultural dimensions of an expatriate in the Land of Smiles.

The Wai:
Pronounced "why", the wai is the form of greeting in Thailand.  It looks like this:

Whenever greeting a Thai person, you would say "Sa-waa-dee-krap" (if you're male) and "Sa-waa-dee-kaa" if you're female.  When saying this, you wai them.  The more important people are or if they are an elder, the higher you go with your hands.  If you are a teacher or an elder and a child wais you, you could wai back or just nod your head and say sa-waa-dee-krap. 

This took some getting used to.  And am I finding more and more rules to this.  For example, the feet are considered the most unholy part of the body, while the head is considered the holiest.  To point your feet at someone, pet a dog with your feet or even use your feet to move a chair is considered rude.  This extends to the shoes as well.  So when I wai'd my Thai teammates on the soccer field last week with my cleats in hand, it didn't go over so well.  A resounding "ooooaahh" clearly indicated I'd done something wrong.  I felt like a dork, but that's all part of the fun in being in a completely new culture :)  Oh, and it didn't help when I did it again when leaving -- OOPS!

Even the dogs wai!!!

This is Ang Pow, one of Kayne and May's three dogs.  She is some kind of terrier mix I think.  And would you believe she's 15 years old!!!!!

Trash cans:

A decent trash can is hard to come by in Thailand.  They are truly few and far between.  And the funny thing is they use plastic bags for EVERYTHING.  They put their sauces in plastic bags, their slurpees in plastic bags.  You get bananas at the market, they give it to you in a plastic bag.  But where do you put all these damn plastic bags when you're done?!

Female cleaners in the men's bathroom:

Just thought this was kind of funny.  You'll be taking a leak in the bathroom at a mall and all of sudden an old Thai woman will come in with a mop and start cleaning.  I kind of flinched when I first saw it, double-taking a little.  But when I noticed the Thai men going about their business I figured it was normal.  And it is.

Protein and fiber:

Both very much lacking in the Thai diet.  And in much of the Asian diets for that matter.  Every dish will have some form of meat, whether beef, pork (lots of pork here), chicken or duck.  And with this meat will be -- at least to me -- a disproportionate amount of white rice or noodles.  There will usually be a small side of vegetables.  

When you go to a 7-11, any other convenience store or even a grocery store they have ZERO protein bars.  Everything is practically based around the unholy white carbohydrate.  Lots of sweets, chips, fried snacks, etc.  I'm figuring out a few tricks to work around this. 

And protein powder -- yikes!  I went to a GNC last week.  It was 3,600 Baht for a container of protein powder!  That computes to over $110 USD.  The same thing in The States would be $25.  

The food is unique and good, but man, I just wish they'd put a little more emphasis on fiber and protein.  They are two things I just gotta have. 

Parking at the mall:

Parking at malls is very unique.  All cars park backwards into their spot (which makes sense) but then other cars will park perpendicular to those cars -- parking right in front of them.  Looks like this: 

The perpendicular cars don't put their parking brake on and keep their transmissions in neutral.  Then, if your car is blocked, you just push the cars out of the way and drive out.  It's kind of fun when you think about it. 

I have many more details on cultural dimensions.  I don't want to keep these posts too long so I'll let you go for now.  Definitely more in the coming weeks.  In the meantime, here are some more videos and pictures I think you'll enjoy. 

Sumo and Ang Pow:

This is Amanda, a foreign teacher from Sweden teaching at the Learning Home: 

Zoro, a foreign teacher's pet flying squirrel: 

A cute video of me and one of my Thai students after class: 

Tyler the Teacher

"Teacher Tyler, Teacher Tyler!" the Thai kids say as they insist on either being thrown in the air or given a high five.  I started working at the school within just 3 days of my arrival in Thailand -- something I was not quite expecting, though it's worked out quite well.

The school is called the Learning Space.  It is one of a few programs under the name ASAP: Applied Scholastics Asia Pacific.  There is also a kindergarten program closer to downtown Bangkok called the Learning Home, which teaches English, Math, Geography and much more.

The Learning Space operates on evenings and weekends, though recently they had morning and afternoon classes for summer school, which takes place here in March and April.  The other program ASAP is doing is bringing their English curriculum into Thai schools.  I am set to start this at a school called Sam Chi in a city just outside of Bangkok called Samut Sakhon.  I was originally supposed to replace the foreign teacher there (also named Tyler) but now they want us both.  While this will potentially make for some confusion, what with two Tylers and all, it is a fantastic indicator that the school loves the program.  This will bring great word of mouth to other schools and our program will expand.

Meanwhile, I've been at the Learning Space.  I have two class periods on the weekdays and 3 on Saturdays.  My class has 2-3 Thai teachers that work directly with the kids.  I oversee the class and check the kids' work (spelling, pronunciation, etc) at various steps of their schooling.  It's a very smooth system and the kids really enjoy it.

Learning English is a real ruin or problem for adults and kids alike in this country.  And its understandable.  They are dissimilar in every way imaginable; from the inflections, to the alphabet, to the grammar and spelling.  And don't even get me started with the Vs, the Ls and the Rs.

I know for me it's been challenging to learn the Thai language.  My strategy is two fold.  1) Associate dialogue with anything from the English language, despite how goofy it is.  Example: "mai ko jai" means "I don't understand" in Thai.  Well, "mai ko jai" kind of sounds like saying "Michael Jackson" so if I think of that I will figure out "mai ko jai" and say it when I should.  It's very silly but it's a good crutch until the words and phrases become second nature.

Number two (2), learn at lease one major conversational word or phrase every day and say it repeatedly.  Say it to yourself, say it to other Thai people -- and don't be surprised when you get lots of smiles, giggles and corrections.  Sometimes I'll just say something randomly with other Thais around, completely out of context, just to see what their reaction is.  If I got it right, they'll say something to show it.  If I'm wrong, they'll laugh and drill me on how to say it correctly.  And they totally love it.

Here are some pictures of the Learning Space.  They recently moved into a brand new 14 classroom facility, where they're also teaching art, music, singing and drama.

The hallway.

One of the classrooms.

Reception.

Here are some of my summer students who graduated just a few days ago.  That's Kei (which means chicken in Thai) on the left, Kun Ta (which means grandpa) in the middle, me and then Byfern and Pum on the right, two other Thai teachers. 

That's all for now folks!  I'll catch you back here in a day or so with some more exciting news!

A Stranger in a Strange Land

Falang!  Falang!  A word that has both good and bad connotations in the Thai language.  It all has to do with the context and how it's being said.  Falang is their way of saying foreigner.  And typically this means a white foreigner -- a Westerner.  Here is a great example:

I have been in Thailand now for just over 5 days.  And boy has it been an experience.  For those that have not visited or have very little familiarization, the only thing I can say is that it is quite different from American culture.  And there are many examples.

Language.  This is obvious, however, it has deeper layers.  Thai comes from Sanskrit via Cambodian.  A major distinction I find with Thai is how many different meanings one basic word can have.  It has to do with inflections, which makes for a tricky if sensitive learning curve.  Words can be said up to 5 different ways.  Case in point: take the word "maa". This can mean both "horse" and "dog"; it has to do with how you say it.

The humor in this is obvious, especially in the case of a newly-arrived Falang.  I was at the mall with Kayne and May (husband and wife -- owners of the school) getting new cell phone service.  I was curious how "excuse me" was said in Thai so I asked.  May told me it is "kaa tot".  I began drilling it while walking around the mall.  When in the cell phone store, I said out loud "ka toot", which in Thai means "I want some ass".  May busted up laughing and I of course followed.  I'm sure glad she told me.  The last thing I'd want is to be bumping into Thai people and saying "I want some ass".

Traffic.  They drive on the left side of the street in Thailand.  All cars have their steering wheels on the right.  This definitely takes some getting use to.  But that's not all.  Driving in Thailand is a bit of an "every man for himself" proposition.  Half the people drive scooters, which are constantly weaving in and out of cars.  One intersection on the outskirts has no traffic lights whatsoever -- and it's actually a heavily-trafficked area! People kind of figure out who's going and a procession in one direction starts.

Food.  Well, most everyone is familiar with Thai food.  But here, it's just food; what I eat every day.  Unlike Thai restaurants in America, it's Thai culture to have the spoon as the primary eating utensil.  Everything evolves around the spoon.  Everything contributes to what the spoon must do.  If the fork or knife (rarely used) were the bees to the honeycomb -- the food -- the spoon would be the queen bee.  

Dogs.  The Thais love their dogs, but in a different kind of way than Americans or many other cultures for that matter.  Dogs are an "open" part of the Thai community.  By that I mean there are so many dogs around that are not owned in the usual sense of the word.  Rarely do you see a dog with a collar.  Dogs wander the streets, have certain hang-out spots, stay in populated areas, etc.  In fact, when you take the road to Kayne and May's house you'll find 3 to 4 dogs at any given time sleeping in the middle of the road.  I am not joking here.  These dogs will curl up and SLEEP in the middle of the road.  Beyond this, it is hard to explain.  I am a dog lover and to see so many wild, free dogs around is kind of cool.  Just don't go kissing them.

I'm going to leave it at that for now.  I have so much more to write about but very little time.  I think I am now over the jet lag/lack of sleep phenomena.

More on Thai culture and cultural differences to come.  Meanwhile, here are some more pictures from what I've been seeing in day-to-day life.