Field Trip for One

Before we moved here, we started following these vloggers who were living in Chiang Rai at the time. One of their videos in particular made an impression on me, about this temple called Wat Phasorn Kaew, and I promised myself I’d find a way to visit this place. 

I finally went! Since it was such a long drive, I thought I’d fit in a visit to Sukhothai as well. Sukhothai is basically a complex of ancient temples and palaces (13th-14th centuries) that used to be the capitol of Thailand.

Sukhothai's Giant Buddha. Picture by twotravelholics.com; not my picture. I'll explain why later.

I really wanted to see these places, and the girls would have made this trip hell (a seven-hour drive to see temples? nope), and we couldn’t go without them, so I went alone. The entire trip—two days of driving, two hotels, and three days of restaurant eating-- cost about the same as a date night back home.

Below is a video of my trip. I haven’t made a video in a long time, and I’m so excited that I am finally learning how to edit my pictures so that they look a little closer to how they do in person with the vivid colors and great lighting. One of the last pictures in the video is of Sukhothai’s giant Buddha statue, one of its most famous landmarks (pictured above). I had saved it for last and was excited to see it. When I turned down the road, it was full of construction and trinket stands. Having just spent several hours on a bike with mellow Zero 7 and Alexi Murdoch on my headphones, discovering these magical ruins quietly tucked away in lush forests and fields (it’s the low season and I had the place mostly to myself), this was a buzzkill. When I found out it cost an additional $3 to enter, I said screw it. I saw it from the dusty, clanking road and snapped a picture. Good enough. At that point, there was a heat index of 99F and I was drenched with sweat anyway.

Speaking of sweat, here's our latest challenge: laundry. Our washing machine doesn't get hot water, only cold, and it doesn't have an agitator. It doesn't do a great job. I work out in 80-90 degree weather, heavy on the humidity. My shirts get completely soaked through. When I put my workout shirts through the regular wash, they come out smelling... unrecognizable. Like a chemical reaction turned the smell into something beyond human. It's shockingly bad. And it's not like we're using some mild, ineffective, environmentally friendly detergent; there are no Whole Foods products in developing countries. So I have to boil water from the electric kettle and soak my workout shirts in a bucket overnight. It's very primitive, and a complete pain. But the smell of those shirts leaves me no option. The boiling soapy soak works, but man. It's work.

We go back to school for teacher prep days next Wednesday, and our students start on the 15^th. I’ve hit the point that I’m over summer. The kids are bored and fighting. We’re all ready for some structure.

The Big Picture at One Year

Happy anniversary to us... we arrived in Chiang Rai one year ago today*. We chuckle at how bewildered we were that day, dragging ourselves from our hostel to the closest restaurant we could find before we collapsed in the heat. Then there were months of itching, sweating, nausea, and bitter struggle... We survived an intense school year and lost about $5,000, we've traveled a fair amount, made a handful of friends I hope we'll have for life, and I'm 13 pounds lighter. We have come a long way, and I am so proud.

*I actually started this entry a week ago. Now we've been here a year and a week. 

Now: facing down the descent. As Nick says, descending a peak is when most injuries occur. Considering the financial hardships we've had, I really hope the worst is behind us and the year is smooth.

We had our first official visitors last month! Nick's brother Kyle came first, and Nick played tour guide. Then my former student (and current friend) Heather came, and I took the reins. My god, we had fun. We saw Bangkok, a beach with wild monkeys, many night markets, a Muy Thai fight*, funky Chiang Mai street art, waterfalls, and temples. We played with elephants in the rain. We called a cab one time and a very sweet old man showed up in an SUV with his whole family, but hey, it was a ride to the airport and there were two empty seats. We got $10 massages in a traditional teak building while a tropical storm raged outside. We hiked at a botanical garden just a few steps from the Myanmar border. We covered just about everything. I love seeing Thailand through someone else's eyes. It amazes me every day, it's just nice to be able to show it to someone else, sort of confirming that I'm not dreaming this.

*To my local friends: If you haven't been to a Muy Thai fight, GO! We just did the one they have in the Chiang Mai night market every night. It's 400 baht (there are ticket hawkers everywhere) and it is one of the coolest things I've seen here.

Right now I'm looking at the year ahead and it's suddenly looking very short. On one hand, my feelings for Thailand have found a healthy balance and I'm looking forward to the conveniences of home (namely, a dishwasher; we're both sick of slippery dishes dropping and breaking while washing them by hand). I keep a list of things I miss, something I've covered in previous entries. The latest: I miss the library. I miss peas, GOOD peas, sweet baby peas. The only ones we get here are big, hard, and chalky no matter how long you cook them. I miss my full-sized food processor. I miss good summer tomatoes. Tropical climates will produce tomatoes year-round, but never good ones. I miss Triscuits.

I am tired of the critters. We had a brief respite from the scorpions, but they've come back. Our new record was four found in one day; two of those were shaken out of my yoga mat. And one night I reached for the toilet paper and there was a thick, black, two-inch spider sitting right on it. Actually it was on the back side of it, so I had to unroll it a little before I got my surprise. Come on, man.

But on the other hand, my spidey-senses are on full alert here, in a good way. I remember on our wedding day (eleven years ago tomorrow!), I was hyper-aware of every moment, paying extra close attention to every second of the day to make sure I fully soaked it in. I'm kind of like that here. The view out of any window in our house is breathtaking every day. There are smells of wood smoke, jasmine, coffee and rain. The sound of roosters, cows, and more rain. My mind is so clear without the phone ringing. I can't believe how much my phone rang back home-- fundraising cops and firemen, mostly (give it a REST guys, damn), but the witching hour always seemed to bring major crises to my loved ones, blowing up my phone with text after text as I tried to put out my own fires. You know how you have your best thoughts, your most creative problem-solving thoughts when you're in the shower, or driving, or lying in bed or anywhere else you're not distracted by chaos? That's my life now. The daydreaming part of my brain is chugging along all the time. A lot of the time, I'm trying to think of how I can keep this peace when we move home. It will probably start with not getting a land line, and turning off my phone between 4 and 8.

We were watching something on Netflix the other day and someone said, "You're the worst." It reminded me of a fight we had with Sascha back home. There was yelling and door-slamming. And you know what? We haven't had any fights here. Not a single slammed door this entire year. Not once. Why is that?

Planning trips has become an addiction; even more so now that I know our time is limited. We spent a couple days in Chiang Mai and rolled in all tired last night, so happy to be home... and by this morning I was poking around the websites again to plan a solo trip to Sukhothai next week. I'm going to try to work my travel desires into field trips, to save time and money. I haven't approached my school about this yet, but I have found a two-week trip to Malaysia for my Environmental Science class... one week studying rainforest conservation (here), and one week working in a sea turtle hatchery at the beach (here). I KNOW. There's also an opportunity to feed the homeless of Saigon for a week with my health class. I've started the ball rolling on our Christmas trip to India by pinning down some dates with our friends. This is the Big One for me, having wanted to go to India for as long as I can remember. We are totally going to ride camels in Rajasthan. I've reserved a hotel in Siem Reap for the Angkor Wat half marathon in December (made sure it was fully refundable, heh). And last but not least, I've started poking around travel websites for Nepal. Nepal. Actually seeing the Himalayas in person. The four of us could go for a week, and airfare, hotels and guided tours would cost about $3,000. We don't exactly have that kind of money, so I'm torn. Three grand, for four people, for a week in Nepal? When will we ever get that opportunity again? It's only a four-hour flight! When I look at the big picture, is it worth racking up credit card debt? What would my 70-year-old self say? Well, I know what my gut is telling me, without an ounce of hesitation.

I think I need to see this in person.

What would you do?

Thai Time

There is this concept of Thai Time, basically meaning late. I've been taking my Thai Time updating this, and this post has to be quick because I have to get the girls in the shower.

The end of the school year was an absolute drag. In May, it started to feel like the witching hour of the school year. Everyone was tired and cranky and over it. Some kids started to act out or skip class (not common here). One staff member actually walked off the job in frustration. And just when it felt like things were coming to a head, we still had a few weeks left. The witching hour turned into the hospice. We limped our way to the end and finished the year with a whimper, barely saying goodbye.

And now... summer.

I have to keep this post to bullet points, otherwise I'd be writing for a week. I've kept random notes on my phone to bring up here at some point, so I'm just going to dump them all in no particular order. I'm going to be making some sweeping cultural generalizations, so I hope I don't sound a little Trumpy. These are all based on my observations in the past year.

• Thai people smell good. Let's just say that you could think of some cultures that, by and large, do not smell good. I don't think I've run across a single stinky person here, no matter their socioeconomic status. Well, not a stinky Thai person... There are plenty of American trustafarian tourists here to funk up the place. Thanks a lot, Chad.
• There is this music here that's like bossa nova covers of popular songs, and it is everywhere. Everywhere. It's nice, but man. I've never heard anything so ubiquitous. 
• We've had random infestations of things all at once. For a couple of weeks, it was scorpions. They were all tiny, no bigger than two inches, but still scorpions. I found one in the laundry when I was loading it into the washer. I found one in the dark with my foot when I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. We turned on the light and found not one, but two of the bastards hanging out on the floor. It stung me on the side of the ball of my foot. It burned, and tingled weirdly like that part of my foot was asleep. The pain was no worse than a bee sting, but the difference was that it lasted a very long time. It was a good 12 hours before I could walk on it. I had to call in sick and elevate my foot with ice on it all day. Anyway, the next thing we had were these comically fat little beetles. I saw them everywhere, but only for 2-3 days. And lately there's been a riot of butterflies all over. You drive down the road and it almost looks like snow, there are so many of them. Those can stay!
• People cut in line here more than I've seen in any other place I've been. It seems to be worse with older people. They just walk up to the line and get directly in front of you. I'm still a guest here, so I keep my mouth shut and take the abuse. 
• A saleswoman at a mall in Bangkok started speaking Thai to me. I told her I didn't speak much Thai. She said that she thought I was Thai, and it must be my eyes. I've always had these top-heavy eyes I inherited from my Russian father, and in spite of the fact that I love them on him because they look wise and kind, I haven't liked my own (they don't translate well to a woman's face; I just look bloated and tired). But now that I think of them as Thai-ish? I love them! That was a huge compliment. Of course, they're also blue, so maybe the woman just had terrible eyesight.
• Women here do not wash their hands after using the bathroom. Yes, broad generalization, because some do (usually without soap), but the vast majority don't. For as often as I've used public bathrooms in the past year, and in as many towns in Thailand, this is a fair assessment. It's gross. Makes me scrub my own twice as hard. I bet my local friends will look for this now, if they haven't noticed it already.
• On that note, food allergies here aren't a fraction of what they are in the US. Hmm. 
• Thai Time makes me MENTAL. Remember that I feel most at home in Germany. We'll plan to have dinner at a restaurant, drive out there, and it will be randomly closed for the night with no explanation. We just went to the beach with Nick's brother a few days ago, and most of the transportation there is a labyrinth of waiting. Nobody is keen to get anywhere. I don't consider myself a Type A person (my inner C student can usually handle it, although I am a hyper-punctual C student), but if I was, it would make me come unglued. It just makes me miss Germany even harder. 
• We are removed from all popular TV, commercials, and most music, unless we seek it out. I like it, because less general noise = less stress for me. I was reminded of another reason I'm glad we're here just last week. I did not have to explain Orlando, or any other shooting, to my kids. It's not in the news. There's no news on TV, because we don't have cable! And few people talk about it. Here, we have natural dangers to worry about, like snakes and scorpions, or genuine accidents, like cars, although most of the streets we travel are low-speed areas. No twitchy, angry, random beta males trying to send a message of desperation or revenge or any other thing that a child shouldn't have to comprehend. It is such a relief. Poor girls are in for a mighty shock when we go back, between school cliques and violence in the news and the general top-volume BLAH BLAH BLAH of life in the US. I'm nervous. We've already decided we won't get cable when we go back. It's a small step.
• A few more things I miss: Trader Joe's hand cream, the thick stuff. Anyone who's been to my (US) house knows I had a bottle in almost every room, and one in my classroom. I also miss grapefruit, peaches, and berries. We have a pomelo tree on our property. We picked a huge one and cut off the 2" thick rind. It's not a grapefruit. It sucks. But we have a big bunch of bananas that's almost ready, and the mangoes will be right behind them. There must be a thousand mangoes on the trees out there. We're certainly not hurting for fruit. But some fresh blueberries would be nice. 

That's about it, I need to wrap this up. Not the most exciting post, but it's something! I will have more time to write this summer.

On Bali and Rising from the Ashes

I haven’t written about Bali yet, not because it was an uneventful trip, but because we had a series of misfortunes right around that trip that overshadowed it a little. More about those later. 

I had read all over the Internet that Bali was THE place to go in Indonesia; I’d also read everywhere that it has been ruined by tourists. I’m so glad we went and found out for ourselves. There are some places I’ve traveled to that I’m happy to never go back (I’m looking at you Hawaii, as hostile as you are beautiful), but I’d make the effort to go to Bali again. Well, part of it. 

OMIGAWD SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE! JAVA TRENCH! LIFELONG MAP NERD FLAILING!

We spent the first two nights inland in a town called Ubud, famous for being artsy and starring in the “Love” segment of “Eat, Pray, Love.” We rented a tiny villa with our own private pool for like $60 a night. 

I expected Bali to look like Thailand. The climate was the same, but the trash that permeates all of Thailand’s nooks and crannies is nowhere to be found, at least in Ubud. Ubud is gorgeous. 

 

Everything is so lush and close. There is beautiful carved wood and stone everywhere. It is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, up there with the Alps and the central coast of California. The pictures do it so little justice. I took this video just for myself to remember the narrow road from town up to the villa, with all its tiny storefronts and stone-carved temples. Don't feel like you have to watch the whole thing.

Ubud was full of Trustafarians, and countless western women doing the Eat Pray Love thing. Here is why I pass that judgment: As I was out running one morning, I grinned my big stupid Labrador grin at everyone I passed, like “Wheee! Can you believe we’re here?” 90% of the white women I passed gave me a slightly offended look, which I sensed to mean, “Uhh, excuse me, but **I** AM HAVING A MOMENT HERE, and your big American teeth and purple Asics are knocking my chakras out of balance. This is MY expensive soul-searching quest; please move along.” Even the locals gave me an “I’m tolerating you” look. It reminded me that Thailand is the Land of Smiles… Indonesia is not. But snotty artsy rich women couldn’t touch my good mood. Not while running in that scenery.

My favorite moments from this segment of the trip: We rented motorbikes because cabs are impractical for those tiny streets. The first night we got in late enough that we just ordered pizza and hung out by the pool, but the next day we ventured into town for lunch. On our way home, we got caught in a heavy tropical downpour. We just had to get wet. And laugh. 

While running, I passed by four roosters in cages (these can be seen in the video-- four bell-shaped wicker cages on the left side of the road). As I ran past, a big dog lumbered over to them, lifted a leg, and lazily peed on the roosters. They squawked something fierce, and I laughed hard enough that I had to stop and walk. Out loud, alone, with my big American teeth.

That looks exactly like my handwriting on the blue... What a coincidence...

The second night we went out to this beautiful restaurant. The food was wonderful, delicious and well-priced. But the best thing about it was how accommodating they were to kids. It was a full-fledged Fancy Restaurant, with no crayons or dancing animal costumes or anything, but they had a respectable kids’ menu and they were really nice to the girls. I’ve never seen anything like it; they were treated like adults. After we got home, Sophie and I celebrated the best (only?) way one can if you have a private pool all to yourself: with a moonlit skinny-dip!

After Ubud, we went to Kuta, which is a touristy beach town (even though the beach was brownish and dotted with plastic). 

 

To be fair, 99% of the flotsam in this picture is coral, not trash.

I still had to get in. I had to be in the Indian Ocean.

Kuta has all the charm and beauty of Tijuana, although I remember Tijuana having far more redeeming qualities. Kuta is awful. People hawking stuff everywhere. I passed a guy on the street there who embodied the whole place for me: young white guy, tribal tattoos on his sunburned shoulders, walking down the street with an open beer at 10 am yelling “wooooooo!” Shudder. 

Also, sweet Jesus was it ever hot there.

We went there for our hotel, which had outstanding kid activities, and we rarely left the grounds. 

Nick and I snuck out for a nice lunch date one day while the kids were in a craft class. We went to the fancy hotel next door. At the table next to us, all in bathing suits, was a long lithe woman and three beefy guys with tattoos of guns on their arms. All spoke Russian. Yiiiiikes. 

Most of the other hotel guests were Australian. This is probably an unfair blanket statement to make, but it was something that Nick and I noticed right away about the vast majority of them, and there were several hundred in this hotel: Australians are large people. Not just overweight, but TALL! And BIG! That is some hearty stock there!

YES that is what you think it is.

One last thing I want to remember about Kuta: there were tiny frogs everywhere. We had to be careful not to step on them. I forgot to get pictures, so I borrowed someone else’s from the web. They were the cutest wee things. 

Now, the dark clouds: we were (and are) still dealing with this horrible landlord situation, which is currently at a standstill. We would wake up every morning in Bali and start talking about it, all the possible awful scenarios and what our options are. It gave a small undercurrent of distracted stress to the trip. 

We came back to a drought, a heat wave (it reached 108F) and horrible smoke. I got some kind of 24-hour stomach bug that had me so violently ill that my core muscles (and all the muscles behind those) were sore for days. When we returned to work, the bank called our school to let us know that someone had tried to use our ATM card in another country. We said yeah, yeah, that was us, but they wanted us to come in anyway to clear it up. When we did, we found out that someone in lovely Kuta had indeed emptied our account two days after we left. The bank is still “investigating.” I will be surprised if we get our money back. 

These things have been bad enough to give us pause about staying here another year. Without getting into too much detail, we’ve had some long, tense, come-to-Jesus conversations about how many beatings we are willing to take. Now that a little time has passed, we’ve had some rain, and the air is clearing and cooling off slightly, I think things are looking up. (We’ve gone 15 whole days without getting robbed! And I cringe writing that because I don’t want to tempt fate.) 

My girl riding Bangkok public transit like a boss.

I rode my bike around town for a few hours yesterday, for the first time in months. I went for a massage, and was greeted by my usual lady with several bear hugs and a reminder that she hadn’t seen me since Christmas. I went to the Saturday night market with a visiting friend, another thing I haven’t done in months, and remembered that this is a pretty cool town. Over the last two months, we have spent so much energy stressing out over the landlord that we have completely forgotten to enjoy… well, anything. I'm reacquainting myself with Thailand, and I want to think we’re crawling out of the hole. Certainly we can’t just cower in there waiting for the next screw. At least now the end of the school year is in sight.