Tuks-Tuks and Tigers and Temples, OH MY!

And just like that, another month is gone.

Since I last wrote, I have:
had a Thai man of the large, jolly variety stick his finger up my nose; thrown up in front of a boat-full of people (my finest proverbial hour); been given the most wonderful, hour-long full body Thai massage for about $5 American; seen more of the underbelly of Bangkok than I maybe cared to see (look up “ping-pong show” if you’re really curious—be warned, however, there’s a reason I’m not including a description in this PG-content post); overcome my fear of fish (somewhat) by snorkelling in some of the bluest waters on Earth; lounged on the same beach where Leonardo DiCaprio filmed “The Beach” (a big deal for a recovering Titanic/Leo-aholic); been ushered unwittingly into what can’t really be described as anything but a hooker-bar; and put my life in danger by playing with some really big tigers.

My ten days in Thailand were crazy, wonderful, and successfully increased the size of my travel bug and decreased the size of my wallet—the signs of a good trip.


We got to Bangkok at 3:00 am on Christmas day without a hotel booked in advance. In retrospect, I realize that was a really stupid idea and could have made for a lot of headaches, but it worked out surprisingly well. After a short sleep at a cheap hotel outside the city, we woke up to the warmest Christmas day by at least 40 C I’ve ever experienced. Amanda Suppes (friend from back home) has been to Bangkok before, and she suggested a hotel called the D&D on Khaosan Road. Even though I’d tried to book rooms there in advance and it was completely filled up, we thought we’d take a chance and head there anyway to see if there were any cancelations. Luckily, there were, and the D&D ended up being the perfect hotel in the perfect location. Even though the beds literally had the softness of plywood and we shared our room with a couple little gecko friends (eeks!), it was definitely in our price range and had an awesome roof-top pool and bar...and lots of other young backpackers staying there. Top-notch Pina Coladas too. Thanks, Amanda!


Bangkok is a sensory overload. It’s impossible to take it all in. So much of what you see you can’t believe you’re actually seeing. It is an awesome mix of people—including tourists from all over the world and from every walk of life. Hot pink taxis, monks and scantily-clad girls walking the same streets, tuk-tuks (golf-cart-like taxis), Buddha statues, temples, huge pictures of the King everywhere, wild dogs, mopeds, knockoffs, and street food. That’s what I’ll remember about Bangkok. And if you can believe it, one of the girls I was with actually shelled out over $450 for an Armani suit without the label. Apparently this is a great deal...?? I learned, on our little trip to the silk shop, that Armani suits say “Made in Italy” on their tags, but the silk comes from Thailand, and the suits are completely sewn together in Thailand as well. The Armani label is added in Italy, and that’s about it. Hmmm.


After two nights in Bangkok, we flew down to Phuket, took a three-hour-long taxi ride to Ao Nang, and finally caught a long-tail boat to Railay beach where we had a room at a resort booked for five nights. Again, didn’t really think things through too well; arriving on an island at night meant having to drag roller-suitcases aimlessly through mounds of sand in the dark. Tired, cranky, and exhausted, we eventually found our resort, only to have to conjure up some more mental energy to figure out how to trick the hotel staff into believing there were only two of us staying in the room and not four. Don’t ask.

Railay was breathtaking. I can’t really describe it, so I’m not going to try—just check out the pictures. It actually isn’t an island; it’s a skinny peninsula that feels like an island because it’s only accessible by boat. Rocky cliffs cut it off from the mainland. The excitement and craziness of Bangkok was awesome, but it was nice to just veg, soak up the sun, and enjoy the beauty and laidback life of Railay. I spent almost the entire six days swimming in the crystal waters, drinking Pina Coladas, buying delicious, cheap Thai food sold out of long-tail boats, and lying on the beach...that is, until I got sick, and then it was more lying in bed enjoying the view of the bottom of the trash can and toilet bowl. And this is where the Thai man’s finger up my nose comes into play...


On our second to last day on Railay, Liz and I decided to take a daytrip to the Ko Phi Phi islands by speed boat. The Phi Phi islands are where the Tsunami hit the hardest, but you’d never know it now. All the resorts are completely rebuilt and operating at full strength. These islands have also been the setting of a bunch of famous movies....and for good reason. They’re stunning. I was kind of feeling off when I woke up that morning, but I figured it was because I was sunburned almost beyond recognition after kayaking the day before for hours with no sunscreen on (nope, I didn’t learn my lesson from my lifeguarding days). Swam and snorkelled all morning, but by lunch, I was turning down piles of fresh fruit and spring rolls—very unlike me.

I got back on the speed boat after lunch and almost immediately needed a bag. Luckily, we had the world’s sweetest Thai man for a tour guide, and he was nice enough to hold my hair back for me (ish!), rub my back, and basically let me pass out on him for the rest of the boat ride, which is all a blur. He also had some suspicious supposed nausea-remedying nasal vapour stuff that he put under my nose—and UP my nose—with his big, lovable, chubby finger. Even after seeing me in this oh-so-attractive, semi-comatose state, he still asked my roommate as she was all but carrying me off the boat if he could take me home with him and take care of me. Thais really are about 110% friendlier, funnier, and more laidback than Koreans. He handed Liz the bottle of medicine and told me to think about him whenever I use it. And I do! There were times during our stay on Railay that we wished we had rented a cheap, rugged Bungalow and roughed it a little more rather than doing the resort thing. But as I lay either in bed incapacitated or over the toilet for two days, all I could think of was how glad I was to be in a clean, comfy hotel room and not sitting on boards in a bungalow warding off monkeys trying to steal my things (true story—the monkeys love to take over bungalows on Railay). I still don’t know if it was the food, the water, or too much sun. I suppose the silver lining was that I didn’t have to get on a boat, train, or plane again until I was feeling better.


We left beautiful Railay and its families, honeymooners, and rock climbers (it was the running joke our whole time there that everyone on the beach fell into one of those three categories) on New Year’s Eve and rang in the new year on Patong Beach in Phuket. Patong had all the craziness of Bangkok x20. I’ve never been to Time Square on New Year’s Eve or to Mardi Gras, but it felt like what I imagine an amalgamation of the two would be. I’m serious when I say I’m glad we made it off the beach alive. Anything seemed to be legal, and there were no authorities in sight to keep order, manage the massive crowds, or to control where all the intoxicated people lit off fireworks...really, really big fireworks I might add, readily available from Thai men selling them to any average Joe right on the beach without safety instructions of any kind, pretty much making the entire beach one big landmine. If not authorities, it would have been a good idea to at least have some paramedics or firefighters on hand. The fireworks were a little terrifying, but the Thais also have a New Year’s Eve tradition of lighting big paper lanterns and letting them float up into the sky in the hours leading up to midnight. They’re supposed to give you good luck in the New Year. THIS was cool. And so beautiful! The sky was filled with hundreds of lanterns at any one time and people just kept lighting them and lighting them. I bought one but ended up needing help from a Thai woman to get it off the ground, so maybe I’ll only have good luck for half the year.


On New Year’s Day, we flew back to Bangkok for two days before heading home. We did a day trip to a floating market outside the city (aka chaos on water) and to Tiger Temple. The floating market basically consisted of Thai people selling fresh fruits, traditional foods and souvenirs out of little wooden boats lining a canal. We paid to be chauffeured down the canal in a long-tail boat, and when we saw something we wanted to buy, we just had to ask our driver to pull up next to the little boat-shop. It was cool in theory, but felt way too touristy and artificial. Also, there were so many boats on the canal at one time with no traffic control system that there were a few times we were locked in a boat jam for 10 minutes, no boats willing to budge or back down. Where was that Korean efficiency when we needed it?? Tiger Temple is an animal sanctuary where Buddhist monks have taken in orphaned tigers. The monks live with and take of the tigers right there at their temple. It’s open to the public in the afternoons, at which point tourists can visit the tigers, pet them, and take pictures with them. The precautionary warning they give you about not wearing any warm colors like red or yellow so as not to excite the tigers is a little scary and reminds you that they are actually very dangerous animals , but they were so docile and relaxed that it didn’t really feel dangerous at all.


Just when I was starting to get completely enchanted with Thailand and ready to say forget Korea, I had a rat sighting. A ginormous rat scurrying around the garbage bags on the street outside our hotel on our last night in Bangkok was enough to make me ok with leaving.

Everything about the trip went so smoothly. The only hard part was having to constantly convert money in our heads...not just from Thai Baht to American Dollars, but from Baht to Dollars to Korean Won, and we all know how math is my forte. And if I really wanted to be a complainer, I’d say that I didn’t enjoy the humidity. But I’m not, so I won’t ;). My hair did just keep growing (in volume, not length) as the trip went on though. I actually felt like Monica in that episode of Friends where the group goes to Barbados for Ross’s convention and Monica’s hair just keeps getting bigger and scarier until she looks like Brambles, and she keeps screaming, “It’s the humidity!” You KNOW what I’m talking about, family....Brambles. Not pretty.

Since I got back from Thailand, things have been busy but great. The situation at my school has gotten much better; the principal, who everyone had a major problem with (example: she told our new American teacher who is Black, “I was a little worried about hiring you because you’re my first brown-skin...but it’s ok because you look like Obama!”), was fired two weeks ago. Her replacement seems like an organized, reasonable man, and we’ve all already noticed a big difference in moral at the school. Maybe better than getting the news that my boss had been fired was getting the news that my big bro and sister are coming to visit me for a week at the end of March. I know Korea isn’t exactly at the top of most people’s must-travel-to lists—I know for SURE it wasn’t at the top of Gina’s—so thanks for being good siblings and making the trek over here to see me, guys! I promise the kimchi won’t disappoint :).

I am still in love with my kindergarten kids and am so sad about having to say goodbye to them at the end of this month when they graduate. As frustrated as I have been with the administration at my school, I still love going to work in the morning because these kids are so awesome. I found out on Friday that the new class I will get in March (the start of the new school year here) is going to be first-year kindergarten. Yikes. I’m used to my seven-year-olds who are almost fluent in English and who I never need to dumb-down my language for. These kids I’ll be getting are four- and five-year-olds who won’t know a word of English on day one. Apparently they typically cry all day, every day for a solid three weeks. Say a little prayer for me.

Everything outside of school has been great lately too; love the people I work with and have met some cool non-colleague friends also. The expat community in Seoul really is small—you start to run into the same people when you’re out after a while. I’ve been here almost half a year now and can’t believe I’ll be home in just three more months; I get into Winnipeg on April 30th. Time is flying. As great as it will be to get home and see everybody—especially my little nephew who thinks his aunt is a computer robot of some kind—I’m already sad about leaving. I’m having a blast! And it was over 50 degrees here today...Feb. 1. I went out for brunch with Eva and we actually sat on the patio. Can’t really complain about that either.

With only three months left, I need to step-up my efforts to learn some Korean. Tom Cruise was in Seoul promoting his movie Valkyrie last weekend and I didn’t even know it. I really do need to learn the language so I can get this kind of vital information from the media here...you know, so I can keep up my creepy star-stalking habits and such. Side note: Valkyrie was awful. Did anyone else see it and wonder why all the Nazi soldiers had British accents and think that Tom Cruise was so not believable as a German?