The LiquidLegends Lounge - Page 458

Dear victims,

I must start by apologizing for the crappiness of my previous email. It was hastily written, and also got at some points rather personal, and ended up being fairly poor reading, not that I usually write anything that I'd ever think good enough to give to the general public. But that's sort of what happens with travel emails. I write about what happens, and sometimes personal things happen so I write about them. You've been warned.

Luckily however, this email is neither as personal, nor as hastily written, so I am hoping it will be much more hilarious. Hilarious is the adjective that I try to go for when I write these things. I truly believe that if everyones day to day life could be described as hilarious, there would be no wars and little depression. I'm saving the world when I write these things you see. You see? You see.

Moving on.


Introduction (this one worth reading? Maybe?)

There is way too much to talk about, which is why I'm giving myself several weeks to write this, but I suppose I should take it one subject at a time, rather than being chronological. I'd like to start with the subject of the predicament at the house, since that will be the most similar to the candor of the previous email and will segue nicely. It's a difficult thing to describe though.

It's a nice house, which is actually not in the city of Chiang Mai at all, it's in a neighboring farming district called Doi Saket, about 20km from the city. I'll talk about Doi Saket later. The house is two stories, has three huge bedrooms upstairs with bunk beds, and two smaller bedrooms downstairs each for one person. The kitchen is incredible by Thai standards. We've got a stove, a microwave, a toaster, a washing machine (first washing machine in Asia I've EVER had), it's pretty wonderful. The internet is decently good, and when the power goes out it's usually only out for less than an hour. There's also hot water! It's a nice house.

The downstairs bedrooms are occupied by me, and the Thai attendant of the house, a boy named "Boy" who basically doesn't speak English and doesn't really interact with us, he just takes out the trash and mows the lawn and watches movies in his room. I've been told repeatedly that they want to find an English speaking replacement for him, because while he's a really really nice guy and I love him, he doesn't speak English and because of that refuses to interact with us, and when there's some problem his lack of English actually is a fairly big deal. They don't seem to actually be replacing him though, which is just fine. I like Boy, even if his language capabilities get us into trouble on occasion.

The upstairs bedrooms are occupied what has been affectionately referred to as my "harem". This is not a harem in the conventional sense, so don't think those thoughts you nasty person. This is a reference to a typical type of Japanese cartoon called a "harem anime". I'll explain. In a harem anime, a male main character is living with a large number of young, single women, who all demand his attention but either A - don't actually want a romantic involvement, or B - do but the main character is such an idiot that nothing ever happens. The most important rule of harem anime is that the main character never gets any. This is an ingenious ploy of Japanese television, because it keeps people watching the show, right?

So, as it turns out, 90% of Thai English teacher volunteers are 20 year old single college girls, usually Europeans. I've been here 3 months now and excluding me there's been 14 volunteers, of which 13 were female. And of course I'm the guy who's been here a long time, speaks English and is learning Thai, knows how the house and the town works and where the schools and the restaurants and markets are and teaches everyone everything, so I tend to get a lot of attention by the new volunteers, right. I'm always the one rescuing them from bugs in the room or walking them home from the bus late at night or teaching them how to turn on a gas stove or whatever. Basically I'm doing Boy's job. New volunteers regularly mistake me for being a staff member instead of one of the volunteers. That's okay, I enjoy it. But there's also a lot of awkward moments and a lot of hilarity, and unfortunately for me even when I get tired of living with 5 or 6 girls (It's not fun) and try to hide in my room and play video games, they tend to seek me out.

I'm going to quickly list the people who are or have been going through the house and then move on, because we talked about European girls a lot in the last email, and it's boring and I'd rather spend twenty pages talking about Thailand. Just realize that when I come home from the city at the end of the day, this is the shit I have to deal with.

At first there was a Czech girl, who was sort of a bitch and kind of rude to everyone. She left a few days after I arrived and it turned out she really hated Thailand and had left early. This is the sort of country that is nice to you if you're nice to it, but is a bitch to you if you're a bitch, so I'm not very surprised.

There was a pair of American girls who were incredibly American. They complained about the lack of an electric dryer and how the gas stove was finnicky, and how the house didn't have a bathtub, and how they sweated so much because of the heat and ended up taking 3 or 4 showers a day. They called the currency dollars and would exclaim how cheap things were literally while Thai people were ripping them off. I didn't like them much. I rarely like American tourists.

There was a hot German girl who yadda yadda we know this story it's the exact same story. What is my life. I like German girls way too much and I need to meet one I don't like to break the curse.

There was Nick, a British guy who was doing this trip at the end of a 6 month stint in India. I loved Nick, as you might imagine. He reminded me very much of a younger Ryan, always eager to explore and discuss and philosophize, and to go on long walks. I spent a lot of time with Nick and had a lot of discussions. I was sad to see him go. I hope he grows up to be just as entertainingly useless as me.

Then there was a British girl, who was just as pampered as the American girls but was more honest about it. She was completely clueless and needed help with everything, but admitted as much and apologized for it, and was intent on exposing herself to the world and learning a few things. She learned a few things. I liked her, and her honesty and her candor went a long way towards making up for all the help I had to constantly give her. She and Nick would bicker a lot in the way British people do, and I would just watch because it was the best entertainment one could possibly ask for. British people have a way of inventing insults out of nothing that I don't think anyone else is capable of, and it is quality entertainment. The German girl would try to butt in and stop them and I would grab her and say no no, let them argue, they are just being British and I like to watch. We all watched several movies together. The American, Slumdog Millionaire, Grave of the Fireflies. I miss our movie nights.

After that there was a Scottish girl who was super cool. She lived with her boyfriend who worked on a boat that did something with the Oil industry, so he was typically out of the house and she was alone for months at a time. She was highly sarcastic and prone to good bouts of wit, and she was very much able to take care of herself. She and I were quick friends. She and Nick were my favorites, I did a lot of day trip excursions with both of them.

Then there was another British girl, who was nothing like the other UK'ers, coming from an aristocratic upper crust sort of family. I called her Princess, which was half endearing and half mocking, and she seemed to like it. Nick hated her and would insist repeatedly that they had absolutely nothing in common, and at length talk about just exactly how he hated her whenever she wasn't in the house. Princess made a great deal about how she had been to Asia 17 times before, although these were all weekend trips with her parents, or with her school because she went to some crazy British private all girls school that, when they had a history lesson on a certain country would actually go to that country to discuss it. She would act like she was impossibly worldly and wise, and then scream and cry because she saw ants in the kitchen she'd never seen ants in the kitchen before what do we do about ants do we have to throw away the food now are they poisonous? And now the power is out, this is an outrage, Ryan you need to call the city and complain! No Princess, ants aren't poisonous, we aren't going to do anything about the power, this is Thailand. And by the way I know you just want tea and guess what, the stove still works when the power is off. Yes Princess I know you're scared of the stove I'll help you. It's going to be okay.

There was another German girl after this, who thank god broke Ryans German Girl Curse. She is still here and she's nice enough, but she is entirely unattractive and barely speaks English in the first place. Hallelujah.

Then there was a family of three Spanish girls, two daughters and a mother all together at once. They were a riot, I enjoyed them very much, not the least of which because the mother took it upon herself to cook for all of us all the time. These three were bubbly and happy and always wanted to joke and party and laugh, they really brightened up the place.

Lindsey from Bali visited for about a week with her boyfriend. We already talked about her, I greatly enjoy Lindseys company, and I want to be friends with her forever. Her boyfriend is pretty cool too, he and I got along. One of the benefits of this trip is that I now have standing invitations from Lindsey and the Spanish girls to stay in their houses in Rotterdam and Madrid should I ever make another Europe trip. I have a lot of very good friends, as it turns out. I suppose we learned this after Nicole gave me her car, didn't we. I wonder why I have so many good friends.

There's also two American girls who as I'm writing this have yet to show up before I leave for Myanmar, but we'll get to that. As I said I started writing this a couple weeks early to give myself some time.

Then there's a Thai girl who lives a couple blocks down the road and comes over regularly, often surprising me with cooked food. She once just walked into my room with a chocolate cake. I like her. I do not think there is any sort of romantic involvement though, I just want more cakes. That's really what girlfriends are for anyway right, cake priveledges? If I'm already getting cakes I don't really see any need to do anything else on the subject.

Then there's Jim, our boss, a Thai girl who lives in the city and comes over now and then to remind me that I'm not allowed to sleep with any of the other volunteers. I'm not kidding she actually does this. Her boyfriend Ben is a Welsh guy who has lived here for four years, and the two of them are very cool. Jim reminds me a lot of my friend Priyanka from India, she's from a small village and a poor family, but moved to the city and made it big for herself, and now drives a nice car and is a big strong assertive woman. Ben is kind of a goofball, but he's really sweet and nice. They have a dog that they bring over and are always a little offended that when they show up I say hi to the dog first. It's because the dog loves me, they don't love me. They only like me. I love the dog and I only like them. Of course I'm saying hi to the dog first. Priorities.

Finally there's some of Jim and Bens friends who come over now and again like Rod and Pom and blah blah blah this section of our story is getting boring. The point is it's a very busy house. We have a party every time somebody new comes, and a party every time somebody old leaves, so there's typically a party every week, and sometimes two parties in the same week. And Jim and Ben can drink holy shit can they drink, so they're usually interesting parties. I bought a deck of cards back in Oceanside for fifty cents at a garage sale, and it is being used here for entirely nefarious purposes during our parties.

I'm not going to talk on this subject any more in our story, just contextualize everything else I tell you as being time spent apart from the chaos that goes on in this house. This is where I live now. I'm basically stuck in an all girls college dormitory for 6 months.

It is horrible.


Doi Saket and Around

In contrast, Doi Saket is lovely. As I said before it's a small farming village just outside of the city. I don't know how many people live here but I'm sure it's less than a thousand. It's about the size of Graeagle, and is built in a similar way. There's one street with stores and shops, and then a few residential streets. But while Graeagle is in the middle of a forest, Doi Saket is in the middle of tons of rice fields. Gorgeous, beautiful rice fields. Something about a rice field is so pretty to me, the way the ground is terraced neatly, the individual rice plants so brilliantly green, the water glistening under them, the natural blue sky with no smog, clouds dancing around, solitary people doing farmwork, occasional water buffalo helping out, small dirt streets and here and there a tuft of trees or the big gold painted buddha of our local temple. I will never get over how beautiful rice fields are.

There's a small restaurant a short walk down the road from our house. I say restaurant but it's actually somebody elses house, and she feeds you and then charges money for it. It's probably what a restaurant was back in Sumerian times, and this tradition is still alive and well here. She speaks no English, and as I learn Thai I am gradually starting to talk to her more and more, which she seems to like. Every once in a while I meet one of the locals here, as just about everybody seems to eat at her place. Lots of Thai people don't cook for themselves, because restaurant food is often actually cheaper than making it yourself somehow. I eat curries here, and noodles, and soups, but mostly papaya salad, or som tam. Som tam is delicious, and also might be the spiciest thing I've ever eaten. It's up there. You can actually make it not spicy if you want. She doesn't.

There's also the little village temple. Thailand has a lot of temples, even though Doi Saket is very small it's got something like six. I haven't been to all of them. The main one, Wat Doi Saket, is on a hill in the middle of the village. Wat means temple, Doi means mountain, and Saket is the name of said mountain, so this is how the town gets its name. Pretty simple. But anyway, I think our local temple is the best. It's got a giant Buddha that was erected and painted while I was here, I have sat and watched it go up and now it watches over us. They also have a giant tree covered in colorful sticks of wood, which is a Lanna tradition. The Lanna people are the ethnic group from Chiang Mai, who also extend into part of Myanmar. They take big trees and prop them up with colorful sticks of wood as a symbolic means for propping up the community. I don't understand the details but it's real pretty.

I haven't done many things at this temple, although I go walking there all the time. I did go to one of the Buddhist holidays, something they affectionately call "Buddhist Lent" in July. In the morning the whole area (me included) came to the temple to give offerings of food to the monks, and then in the evening there was hours of chanting, followed by the congregation making three clockwise trips around the temple holding candles. It was interesting and fun, but uncomfortable to sit on your knees for so long. I was told after the fact that the community was really surprised that I went and took part, and that this ingratiated me quite a bit, and I could tell the difference. After that I get a lot of smiles and waves and hellos whenever I walk around. I take a lot of walks, as you might imagine. That will never change I suppose.

There are a few other nice things in the town. There's a couple good restaurants in the main street of the town, a massage studio which is incredibly cheap, you can get an hour long foot massage for about five dollars. There's a small electronics store and a supermarket, as well as a traditional market where you can buy everything you want and also many of the things you would never want. You can typically tell which is which by smell. There's a gas station, a bus stop, and so on. Wat Doi Saket is the cities one attraction, and occasionally you see a white person on the main street, but in general this is a Thai town, which is a treat since it's a half hours drive away from the most touristy part of northern Thailand.

A Songtag or bus goes between Doi Saket and Chiang Mai regularly, although I rarely take it unless I'm teaching a new volunteer how to do so. You see, one of the only difficulties of living here is that while the other volunteers teach in local elementary schools, I teach at Chiang Mai University, which is not only in the city, it's on the total opposite side of the city from Doi Saket, which makes getting there on the bus expensive and difficult. We quickly realized after I got here that it would be both cheaper and more useful for me to just buy a motorcycle and drive myself than to have to take multiple buses each way every day. So that's what we did, I bought a motorcycle.

Now, when I say motorcycle, what I mean is a Thai motorcycle, which is not like an American contraption. These are scooters. They range from about 100cc to 150cc, mine is 110 and maxes at about 65 MPH, which is more than what's needed on the highways here. It's red and made by Honda and has only almost killed me once. I love it.

In fact I really love it and I need to explain this to somebody because I don't think people understand. I hate driving cars. Everybody told me when I learned how to drive a car that everybody hates driving cars when they start driving cars because it's scary and unfamiliar, but once you get comfortable with it it becomes empowering and fun. Well I never enjoyed driving cars. Even after I got a job that required me to drive a car for about 6 hours a day, I still hated driving cars. It's uncomfortable and doesn't feel like I'm doing something adventurous or exciting, it feels like I'm sitting down. And if I'm sitting down, I'd rather be sitting down at home and playing video games. I eventually realized that I do like listening to NPR, so I retain some comfort in driving cars by listening to NPR while I do it, but I hate driving cars.

In contrast, driving the bike is an absolute joy, and I think the difference is that when I'm driving the bike I feel like I'm outside, whereas in a car I do not. It's also just much more engaging. It always feels like you're doing something. You've got to zig zag between cars, sometimes close enough that you can actually brush up against them. You've got to listen for the sounds of engines around you, you've got to play Tetris with your vehicle while it's in traffic to keep going. You've got to constantly be alert and aware and balancing and so on. It's actually like experiencing something, and it's a little bit new every time. I've been driving the exact same route between Doi Saket and Chiang Mai twice daily, every day, for three months now, and it has yet to even start to get old. I love it so much that I am going to start looking into similar products when I get home. It's like going on an adventure, whereas being in the car is like going to work, only you're already at work when you step in the car in the first place.

The bike also just has a lot of advantages over a car that I enjoy. They're cheaper. They get better gas mileage. They do much better in traffic. They do much better with parking. They're easier on the environment, and did you know that there are manufacturers starting to make high end electric bikes now, that you can literally just take the battery out of and charge in your bedroom like you would a Google Nexus 5 2015 smartphone? I want two of the things mentioned in this paragraph. I became very consumerist hanging out with Dan.

I suppose they're more dangerous, but that seems to be worth all the advantages to me. I feel like for me it might be safer since driving the bike I'm always super focused on what I'm doing, while driving the car I'm always focusing on music or the radio. Maybe I'm reckless. I probably am, since did I mention that Thailand has the most traffic related deaths per capita of any country in the world? Well, actually Namibia does, but neither you nor I could place Namibia on a map. Thailand is number 2, with about four times as many deaths per capita as America. I have to date already seen two dead bodies on the side of the highway into the city. It's really confusing, since I always feel so safe on the road in surrounding countries, but by the statistics Thailand has more than double the accidents of any of its neighbors.

After some thought I've decided that the reason is because Thailand is the richest country in the region that isn't Singapore. While it's like the rest of Southeast Asia in that there are no rules and no driver obeys any sort of regulation, the other countries get away with it because there are not enough cars on the road to cause problems, and the cars that do exist are usually taxis with professional drivers who know what they are doing. In Thailand the people are just wealthy enough to have their own vehicles, but are driving on unregulated roads. The result is that Thai drivers are the stupidest people I have ever seen. It's not even like they cut people off and change lanes wildly to get somewhere faster or for a coherent reason, they just do it like that's somehow what you're supposed to do.0 They make left turns from right lanes and right turns from left lanes, they cut people off, they try to fit three cars in two lanes, sometimes they drive on the wrong side of the road against traffic. It is legitimately terrifying.

I've only gotten in one "accident", which was when my (used did I mention) bikes carburator decided to break on the middle of the highway, while I was making a U Turn, and I suddenly could no longer slow down or otherwise control the throttle of the bike. Rather than go into 60MPH oncoming traffic, I drove off the road and into a rice field. I crashed, got some bruises, messed up my pants, but I was able to walk away since I hit rice plants instead of a car. I took the bike to the shop, got it fixed, didn't go to work that day, and since then it's been fine. I do wear a helmet all the time, even if I'm only driving ten feet, and I bought a second helmet that I force passengers to wear, if that makes you feel any better. Actually I've had a number of Thai people on the bike and they all say I'm an exceptionally good driver and that they are very surprised at how well I've adapted to the Thai roads in such a short time. I'm rather proud of this.

It's also very fun to drive the volunteer girls around when they need to go to the train station or something, especially when they cling to me and scream or whatever it is people do when they witness Thai driving for the first time. I probably did the same thing, I'm fairly used to it now. All you have to do is expect every single car on the road (especially trucks) to be as completely moronic as possible, and you won't be surprised unless somebody is driving well. Having a cute girl cling to you from the back of a motorcycle is something every guy should experience in his life at least once, I think. For all of these reasons, I really love the bike.

The road between Chiang Mai and Doi Saket doesn't really have much to talk about if we're not talking about completely incompetent drivers, the joy of being on a bike instead of in a car, or the occasional gas station. There is Central Festival though, that is just outside the city on the same road. Central Festival is the biggest shopping mall in Thailand, and it's brand new. It's probably the biggest and fanciest shopping mall I've ever been to. It's got six floors,one is all supermarkets, one is all clothing, one is all tech stuff, etc. The final floor is an IMAX theater and for some reason about fourteen Japanese restaurants. I think if Dan ever went there he would never leave. I've been told upper class Thais really like Japanese food, apparently this is a thing. I go to Central Festival when I want to feel like I'm in the west and not in Asia, which is I think why the Thai people go there too. It was erected just a couple months before I arrived, and at first it was only Thai people there, although now it's starting to get tourists, which I hope does not dilute the experience. They also have a lot of imported food in the supermarket there, and I was at one point able to make Mexican food for the house solely from shopping there.

Anyway, that's what my area is like. After this stretch of highway I go into the city of Chiang Mai, typically to the university, which will be our next topic of discussion.


Teaching in Thailand

The easy way to explain my teaching is that I work with a professor named "teacher Tabtim", who is a well known English professor here in the city, who works for a number of different schools. I basically do everything she tells me to. But most of what she tells me to do is to work for two colleges in town, "Chiang Mai University" and "Chiang Mai Vocational College".

CMU is the big prestigious university in town. It's supposedly the second best uni in Thailand, and one of the top five unis in the Association of South East Asian Nations. It's actually really nice, it more or less meets western standards in terms of campus quality and things like that. It's expensive to go to by Thai standards, but laughably cheap by American standards, although that doesn't really tell you much since American colleges are a black hole that suck up money about as fast as they suck up your dreams. It's a good university.

There's also a lot of prestige that comes with teaching there. It's hard to explain. In Asian traditions teachers are revered. Prof. Tabtim told me once that teachers in Thailand are treated like gods. They do not say things that are wrong, and they are given an almost infinite amount of respect and leeway in matters that are even entirely unrelated to their work. And CMU is the king of educational institutions in this city. For example, I was once stopped by the police on my way to class, and while the officer was writing me a ticket for driving without a Thai license I told him that I was a teacher at CMU and I needed to get to my class. The officer immediately apologized, put his ticket book away and let me go. In this situation if he had even questioned the authenticity of my statement it would have been him being disrespectful, rather than him doing his job.

I've taught a few different classes at the university, they're usually remedial or extra credit classes for people who need additional English instruction. One class I taught to the staff of the Fine Arts department, another to the university library staff, and a third to students in the Graphic Design department. I like all of these classes. Teaching faculty is fun because they're older and more relaxed and I can make dirty jokes and goof off with them in ways I can't do with 18 year old students. But the Graphic Design class is fun too because they're all nerds who are into Anime and Kpop and League of Legends, so I can relate to them a lot. Did you know Thailands LoL team won the International Wildcard Qualifier tournament and are going to the World Championships this year for the first time? It's a pretty big deal.

Chiang Mai Vocational College is a little lower key, I'm teaching younger students (15-16 year olds) who are learning how to become chefs in tourist hotels. What's nice about it though is it's one class, twice a week, and the schedule is always the same. Since the CMU classes are extra classes or faculty classes which one I'm doing and the schedule changes a lot, whereas here it's always the same, so I'm slowly getting to know everybody. The vocational college is also in the middle of the city which is a bit easier of a drive, where the university is way at the opposite end from where I live.

I'm also teaching in the evenings two nights a week at a temple for a group of monks here in Doi Saket, and apparently somebody wants me for private tutoring of their daughter as well, so I'm fairly busy when it comes to the teaching. And unlike in Bali, here in Thailand I'm making my own lesson plans, my own worksheets, I'm assigning homework, and so on. It's conversational English, so it's mostly getting them comfortable actually speaking the language with a native speaker, which means there's not a lot of technical stuff to do, a lot of the time I just chat with the students like we're friends and goof off. Occasionally we do something specific or have a field trip or something. It's really fun.

I rather like it, and in fact I like it so much that we're looking into me taking a TEFL course while I'm here, since it would be much cheaper to do it in Thailand than in USA, and there's a few good accredited options here in the city. It's a one month course, and I feel like it would give me a lot of job security to go get paid to do something like this if I can't work out getting a career back in America. If I could stay here long term and get paid to do what I'm doing now, I think I'd be very happy. To be fair though, I don't think it takes very much to make me happy in life. Pretty much just youtube videos, I had to stop to watch this four times while writing this paragraph.

I'm also taking a few classes while I'm here. I'm supposed to be taking Thai classes, they were supposed to enroll me in free Thai classes at the university, but it has never happened. Thai people probably procrastinate more than any other sort of people I have ever met. Students are regularly 30-45 minutes late for class, things happen weeks after they're arranged, schedules are always in total flux. It takes a bit of getting used to but it's just the way it is here. I think the only other country I've ever been to that maybe comes close is Greece, and the thing these two countries have in common is a heavy reliance on tourism, so maybe that's a part of it. I have learned a little Thai though, but I'll talk about that in a different part of this narrative, because it will be funnier over there.

I'm taking some disorganized Thai cooking classes, by which I mean I'm getting local girls to teach me to cook things, because that's never not fun. So far I'm only confident in my papaya salad, but if we are prioritizing things by how spicy they are as we should, this is the most important one anyway. Who am I kidding curry is the most important. I'll get there. I intend on having five or six dishes comfortably under my belt by the time I come home.

I'm also taking a self defense class. This one maybe requires some explanation. You see, I've been wanting to take a self defense class for a long time. Not like a martial arts class or something like that, like a class that is just all about what you do if you get mugged. I've wanted this ever since I got attacked by a dog travelling, which just happened to be the last time I was in Thailand. When I lived in Oceanside I tried to find a course that would be what I wanted, but they just had a lot of martial arts studios who would tell me they teach people how to fight as a sport and do not in any way teach self defense in practical situations. I figured Thailand would be a good place to find one since Muay Thai is such a big deal here and everything is so cheap.

And found one I did. I'm getting one on one, private lessons from a retired man who used to be a close quarters combat instructor for the Thai military police, and now occasionally freelances as a bodyguard for VIPs. He once had to cancel one of our sessions because he was playing bodyguard for the prime minister of Laos on an unscheduled visit, so his credentials are pretty top notch. I did a lot of research work with Bretton to verify if this was a quality course, and it not only appears to be, but it appears that while I am paying a lot for the course by Thai standards (about 30$ an hour), I'd have to pay maybe 400$ an hour for a similar course in America.

I really like the class because it's very practical. It's not teaching you how to beat people up and it's not working out and bodybuilding. It's specifically tailored to the person that I am and what I can do with my body type, and teaching me what situations I can get out of safely and what situations I cannot. It's much more focused on getting out of and away from a dangerous situation than actually winning a fistfight with somebody, although we are doing a little bit of kickboxing. And he'll use multiple instructors with different body types so I can feel what it's like to be grabbed by a big guy as opposed to a small guy and so on. We tend to have to take medical breaks during the classes because people end up with minor cuts and bruises from practicing things. I don't know if this class is actually going to save me in the event that some horrible thing happens to me when I travel, but it's probably going to help. I'll at least be better prepared than the other skinny white nerds walking around, which is what I'm hoping to get out of it.

So, I've got a lot of stuff going on here. It's quite fun. Between teaching, learning other things, and the unmentionable chaos of home life (and video games!), there's a lot to do, which has unfortunately ended up with me being unable to work on my growing number of pictures, I think we might be up to 8,000 now. Which is a pity because I've also done quite a lot of sightseeing that has been wonderful. Let me tell you about it.


Chiang Mai and Around

Sightseeing in Chiang Mai has been an interesting thing, since it's the first time I've really gone sightseeing overseas in a city that I've been to before. And it hasn't really changed. In fact some things literally did not change at all in three years. When I went to Chiang Mai in 2012, the second floor of their national history museum was closed for renovations, and tickets were free to make up for this. Well, it's still closed, and tickets are still free to make up for this. The only change is that in 2012 they said the second floor would be opening soon, but now they say they don't know when it's opening. This is Thailand.

There's lots of neat things to see though, and I have found some that I didn't see when I was here three years ago. Chiang Mai is mostly its old city to a tourist, which is a central area surrounded by a big brick wall, with a number of gates going into the city. There's a lot of walking streets and markets, and a huge number of temples. I feel like I've heard that Chiang Mai has the most temples of any city in Thailand, but I can't confirm the authenticity of this statement. There are a lot though. Lots of monks, lots of Buddhas, it's not quite the serene, enlightening wonder that Luang Prabang is, but not much comes close to that. There's also lots of tourist trap restaurants and markets and things, it feels like there's more than there used to be. There's a lot of tourists, but they neatly confine themselves to certain portions of the city, allowing you to interact with them when you want to, and also to ignore them when you want to. It's really a lovely setup.

The road I take into the city goes through Wararot Market, which is the Chinese district of the city. It's actually quite old as far as Chinese districts go, I've heard parts of it are as much as 900 years old. Chiang Mai is an old city. It used to be the capital of an independent Lanna kingdom, which was conquered by the Burmese, and later rebelled with the help of the kingdom of Siam in the south. Siam and the Chiang Mai kingdoms together make modern day Thailand. There's more than that but that's basically the cliffnotes version of northern Thai history. The rebellion against Burma was only about 300 years ago, but there doesn't seem to be any animosity. There are also Lanna peoples on Burmas side of the border, maybe I'll meet them sometimes. Older Chiang Mai residents will proudly tell you about Lanna food and Lanna culture as if it's different from other things in Thailand. The food definitely is, Lanna food is delicious.

Anyway, the Chinese district has a traditional Chinese market, which goes all the way to the old city that then has a traditional Thai market. There are many markets. Day markets and night markets and tourist markets and food markets and tech markets and so on. No bird markets that I've seen, those are all in Indonesia I guess.

Some other things that I've seen. There's a "3D Art Museum" which is entirely big wall paintings that are supposed to look three dimensional when you take pictures of them. It's hit or miss but some of the displays are very good, and it's a popular date night attraction with the locals. There's also a Lanna cultural museum and a city museum in the old town, which are interesting if you like history and culture and all that sort of thing like I do. There's a zoo that I actually went to today, it wasn't the San Diego zoo but it was fun for an afternoon, they had a rhinocerous and some bears.

I've found a few good ethnic restaurants. There's a Burmese restaurant that I like, a Mexican restaurant that isn't great but is acceptable, which is high praise for a Mexican restaurant in Asia. No carne asada fries though. I found a steakhouse called "Santa Fe" that is also acceptable, an acceptable pizza place, basically if I need western food I'm more or less covered, although I'm not sure why I would do anything but eat Thai food for the rest of my life. I've also found a couple pretty good Indian restaurants, which I suppose isn't too much of a surprise, India is actually not all that far away from here, as the crow flies. There's also tons of excellent Japanese restaurants, which is weird but I explained that earlier.

One restaurant I've found that is in particular excellent, that I am treasuring with the eagerness of a famished dog, is actually an Iraqi restaurant. I'd never had Iraqi food before, and it seems to be a blend between Persian food and things which I'd consider more traditional "Middle Eastern", which I suppose is not surprising. But it's amazing. A good Persian restaurant in ones city is a jewel that must be protected and savored forever. Their Fessenjoon was honestly a little bit disappointing, I suppose I'd recommend it to somebody who'd never had the stuff before, but since I have had real fessenjoon I was not very impressed. But their kebabs and yoghurt and hummus and so on are all to die for. It's basically where I go when I don't want Thai food. But I never don't want Thai food, so I don't go there all that often.

There's also an "ancient city" just to the southeast of Chiang Mai, which is an old archaeological find that's more or less where the city center was hundreds of years ago. The river moved, as rivers do over time, and as such the city center moved, and the old temples and things were buried by time. I went there with the Scottish girl and we made a day of it hiking around temples and through jungle bits. It was quite entertaining. It's just outside the city, but when you go there you really feel like you're in an rural forest environment, just like how at the house it really feels like I'm in a rural farmland environment.

At one point I took a day trip with the same Scottish girl to a place called the Elephant Nature Park, which is a wildlife sanctuary for elephants, sort of an expensive place for tourists really. It's not the sort of place I'd go on my own, but many of the volunteers went there and loved it, and several of them I personally drove to the pick up location in the city, so after hearing about it so many times I had to do it myself. The basic gist of the place is that Asian Elephants are dying out in Thailand. Although there aren't small enough numbers yet for them to qualify as endangered, there's almost no wild ones left and there are thousands of domesticated ones that do not have jobs. You see, the main use for elephants in recent memory was for logging, which was outlawed something like twenty years ago, leaving thousands of working elephants with no jobs. This is a rather serious thing because it's difficult for these elephants to get new jobs, and while they don't have jobs they're not really being fed or anything. Many of these elephants are also disabled, because logging is dangerous work. So this elephant sanctuary takes in old jobless elephants and takes care of them, and pays for it by letting silly tourists go feed and hug the guys. So, as a silly tourist, I paid to go feed the elephants, hug the elephants, pet the elephants, and most of all take pictures of the elephants. It was a good day, there's a couple pictures of me and said elephants on facebook. I'm glad I went, although it was expensive and I will not be going a second time.

The final big site to see in Chiang Mai is called Wat Pra That Doi Suthep, which as you know from our Thai lesson previous in the story is a mountain called Suthep with a temple on it. Wat means temple and Wat Pra That means a temple that holds an icon of the Buddha. It's on the far side of Chiang Mai next to the university and the zoo, about an hours drive by motorbike. The temple is quite lovely. It's the largest and most prestigious temple in northern Thailand, and lots of pilgrims go to it. From the top of the mountain you can see the entire city. I have actually not been there yet since I arrived three months ago, although I did go in 2012. It's the next thing on my list of attractions to see. I've been trying to spread out the sightseeing since I am here for so long, I only let myself see one new thing per weekend.

Jim and Ben have also taken me out for some nightlife experiences. We've gone to a few bars, and to one local Thai club, which was quite interesting. Thai peoples idea of a club is very different from a western club, there's no dance floor and basically no dancing. Everybody sits at tables, drinks, and watches performers on a stage, and there are no end to the performances. There seems to be a new singer for every song, with thirty or fourty singers in a single night, and every Thai person knows every word to every song and you sing along to everything. It's like live action karaoke. It's great fun, although not really a place to find a date. Jim has this habit of only taking me places that the University students go anyway, and I'm not allowed to date students at the University where I work obviously, which just adds to the hilarity of my current dating situation. I guarantee you I could write a script about my actual social life and sell it to Japan to be made into a cartoon.

I'm not sure how much more there is to tell about Chiang Mai really. There are a few other trips outside the city I want to do during my time here. Pai and Chiang Rai are two touristy areas I haven't been to that demand weekend trips, although I haven't been to either one yet. There's also Doi Inthanon, which is the tallest mountain in Thailand, although not quite that big only about 2000 meters. I went there with a couple of the British volunteers at one point. There were some scenic vistas and the King and Queen stupas, and a nice botanical garden. We also took a several hour nature trek while we were there, it was fun. Nothing too spectacular, but definitely worth a day trip.

The last thing that I've seen so far that I'd like to discuss is the Hill Tribes south of Doi Inthanon. For one week I went and taught in a rural village of the Karen people, a small ethnic group that's been marginalized in Burma and largely forced to flee to Thailand. They live up on top of one of the mountains south of Doi Inthanon, and they are quite interesting. It's possibly the most rural place I've ever been in my life. There's no hot water, no shower and no real toilet, you poop in a hole in the ground and wash yourself with a bucket of cold rain water. There's no wifi. The bed I was in was horrible and I actually had to use my mosquito net. The town is probably only 2 or 300 people, and there's cows and pigs and chickens and children just sort of wandering around all the time. There's actually a few of these villages, one each on top of one of the mountains in the area, although there's only one school, that covers grades K through 10. The kids walk from their village to the school and back every day, some having 7km walks each way across mountains and through jungle to get there. The people are very simple but very tough. I'm told Chiang Mai province has an inter regional sports league amongst the schools, where they all play soccer against each other, and the hill tribes kids destroy everybody else every single time. They're tough kids.

Teaching there was difficult because the kids English was by and large terrible, and many of the teachers didn't speak any English as well. However, it's here that I think I've learned most of my Thai. There's not much to do here, but two things that they have in abundance are food and alcohol. There's an extreme excess of food to the point where an egg omelette will contain 7 or 8 eggs, and when they offer you a banana they'll give you 10 or 15 of them. Evan would love it here actually, he could eat and drink and play soccer all day. And they love to drink. So all the teachers get together every night, and we'd eat outrageous amounts of food and drink outrageous amounts of beer, and chat. And our conversations were mostly either me teaching them English, or them teaching me Thai. It's here that I learned the differences between the Thai tones, although I'm embarassingly bad at them, as well as a lot of my vocabulary. Thai is an extremely difficult language to learn, it's like Chinese where the words are all small and there's very subtle tonal differences between them that makes them so hard to learn and to reproduce in your own mouth. But I've gotten a few things down.

My Thai ability is all very basic and practical. I can communicate bodily needs like saying I'm hungry or thirsty or hot or cold or sick or need a bathroom, and I can count, and I can order food in a restaurant and explain whether or not I want it spicy, and I can do some basic politenesses, some pleases and thank yous and hellos and how are yous etcetera. But that's really it. It's a little pathetic for three months of study, especially since I think I learned half of it inside of a week. But when you've got five people huddled around a fire in the cold, barbequeing somebodies pet pig, all drunk and trying to explain the differences between "Ma" "Ma" "Ma" "Ma" and "Ma" to a westerner, well that's a true friendship experience right there. I'm not sure I could handle being up there long term just due to the extreme lack of basic amenities, but for a short term visit it was quite endearing and lovely. And the sunsets were spectacular. They also are the ones who taught me how to make Papaya Salad. They want me to come back before I go home to California, and have said they'll house me free of charge if I stay for a week or two at the end of my volunteering. I'll likely go again at the end of my trip, it'll be a good way to say goodbye to the country.

For a final story about the Hill Tribes, there was a national holiday while I was there, the Queens birthday. Did I talk about the Thai monarchy? If you want to talk about Thai politics you really need to understand the monarchy. The king of Thailand is the longest reigning monarch in the world, and has been ruling the country since before World War 2. He is widely regarded to be an excellent, benevolent, wise and wonderful ruler, and although I don't know how true all that is since I'm hazy on the details, what is true is that the Thai people love him. His picture is everywhere, and badmouthing him is illegal but that's fine because I'd be shocked to see a Thai person do it anyway. They all love the guy.

Now, the King does have absolute power in the government, but this particular Kings particular way of governing is he lets his elected and less-than-elected officials do everything for him, and he just steps in if there's some extreme emergency. The last time he actually made a political statement was about five years ago, when two rival political factions were at each others neck during one of Thailands many political coups. Things were getting particularly violent, and all the King did was invite the leader of each group to an audience with him, and televised it. All they did was talk about the weather and other pointless things, but because of Thai custom the two leaders of these parties that were killing each other in the streets had to, on national telivision, sit next to each other, prostrate themselves and bow before the King. That was literally all it took to defuse the entire situation and all the violence stopped. The Thai people love their King.

Now the King is getting old, and there's a lot of worry amongst the people that things will get violent and ugly when the King finally dies. He's in the hospital a lot now and doesn't really make public appearances other than twice a year or so to just pop his head out and say "I'm still alive". There are some very real terrorist groups that are milling about under the surface of Thailand, but they wouldn't dare do anything while the King is still alive. The King has a son, but as I understand it he's not all that great and the people don't want him to be leading the country. That's what I've heard from the Thai people at least, I don't really know the details. Maybe he's a good guy after all? I'd hope so. There was a lot of worry for a couple days after this bomb hit Bangkok that it was the beginning of some serious political unrest, but now the authorities are pretty sure it was a Turkish terrorist group, which honestly is a bit of a relief for everyone. Nobody really wants the current situation to change.

Anyway it was the Queens birthday and I was up in the mountains. I had decided I wanted to go on a trek through the jungle, so I asked the director to get me a guide. He got me a ten year old. Said ten year old met me for the trek armed with a machete, a slingshot, a water bottle and a Thai English dictionary, and we went off into the jungle. It was about 5 hours of hiking, 3 hours up the mountain and then 2 hours back down. We set off over one mountain and to the next village, and were then picked up by one of the teachers in his truck. There were giant centipedes and mushrooms and cliff faces that were climbed both up and down, and an incredible view of forests and mountains and little villages on the tops of them. At the next village there was a botanical garden dedicated to the Queen, which was fitting given her birthday and all. They had a big picture of her like they always do, and I gave it some of my lunch, which made my guide laugh. He approved.

It was a good hike, not too difficult but not too easy, although my ten year old was a much better hiker than I was. We did however have a bit of a problem at one point. My guide, while going downhill and hacking through brush with the machete, managed to trip, fall and tumble a ways, ending up with the machete lodged into his foot. I was pretty happy to have taken that first aid certification course, not because bandaging a cut foot is a difficult thing but because it was a really huge cut, and because I took the course I had brought some basic first aid tools that allowed me to bandage said cut. If I hadn't had my first aid stuff with me there was a very real possibility that this kid would have lost his foot. But I was able to clean it up and bandage him up. And what was amazing about it is this kid was completely unphased. He didn't say it hurt or complain or cry or anything, he just walked the rest of the way down the mountain with me like a champ. These are tough people.

So, that's really what I've been up to. I've got another two and a half weeks here before the university goes on vacation for a little over a month, at which point I'll be taking another backpacking trip. I'm going to spend four weeks in Myanmar/Burma, then about three days in Singapore, a week in Malaysia, and a week in southern Thailand before making my way back up to Chiang Mai. For the latter part of the trip my mother will hopefully be joining me, she's waiting on a doctor to tell her if her knee is up for the trip. I've gotten all the relevant visas and the necessary plane tickets are all purchased (Air Asia is wonderful). I am excited. Burma is going to be easily the most like a real adventure of any trip I've ever taken I think. It is not entirely civilized, I hear.

After I come back I've got two more months of teaching at the University, and then likely a month of a TEFL course, which would have me going home some time in February. All in all I'm still not quite halfway done with this Asia trip, but I feel very settled and like I could stay here for much longer if I was able to. It feels like home.

I like it here.