Phuket

I arrived in Phuket 14 hours later and surprisingly not too tired. I catch a cab to the suburbs where Barry and Suzi live, my day was full steam ahead after that. Suzi and Barry's home is incredible it is like being in a museum. The whole house is full of beautiful Asian pieces.
All the doors in the house are solid carved wood of mostly flowers. There are Buddha statues throughout the home, stone work that is stunning, gorgeous rugs spread throughout the house, and furniture that you couldn't get in the states unless you paid an arm and a leg for it. The best part of the house by far is the garden. It is so lush it is like being in a hidden oasis. Sitting out on the porch is amazing I spent so much of my free time out there reading and sleeping.

The garden was also full of my favorite flowers, orchids. My first morning there Suzi was having a breakfast party with some friends so I helped her set up and get ready for the party. I meet two of Suzi's friends Bob and Christine who I would see a lot of the coming week. It was nice to have a home cooked meal and to just relax for the morning. After breakfast we ran errands before coming home to get ready to go out with more of Suzi's friends. That night we went to Bob and Christine's house for drinks and to meet some other people, Kirsten and Torbin. After introductions were made we ventured to Friendship Beach to have drinks on the beach. It was a nice place but the tide was very low and boats were just sitting in the sand/mud. We finished up there and went to a local restaurant which was a nice way to end my first day in Phuket. The week in Phuket was filled with morning walks with Suzi to the pier and while we walked we would feed the stray dogs. Even though I had to get up super early it was nice to get out and walk. Our days were filled with errands: either trips to the nurseries, grocery store, laundry place, or vet. Nights were filled with going out to dinner or little events with Suzi's group of friends. Even though they were older they were really nice and had a lot of great advice. They also have traveled all over Southeast Asia so I would pick their brains for places to go. While I was there Suzi and I did make to the beach. It was this great little hidden beach with not a lot of people. You had to travel up and down a couple of mountains but it was so worth it and the water was heavenly.

Even though we didn't go to the beach all that often we did spend plenty of times in the pool in the backyard which was just as nice. It was surprisingly deeper than I thought it was, I would swim laps once a day and then read my book the rest of the time while I sun tanned. Thursday was a great day in the morning we went to a local park to have a group walk and then went to this wonderful Roti place in Phuket town. It is run by these Arab women that have used the same recipe for 3 generations. Roti is this thin dough that is layered into a flaky bread that is eaten with a curry or made into a dessert. We had both Rotis which were amazing. The chicken curry with the Roti was amazing and the Banana Roti was deadly. It was a wonderful lunch and it cost us a whopping $3. After Roti we went to the outskirts of town to visit a friend, Wendy, who volunteered teaching Burmese children English. The school is run by this wonderful nun who accepts all Burmese refugee children. She is amazing she  runs the school off of donations and the teachers are all volunteers. The school is in an area of shacks where these Burmese people dry fish for eating.

What is horrible is the Burmese people are charged rent for these horrible one room huts with no electricity or plumbing. There are about 70 children of all age groups that study in this long outdoor room. The children were all so happy and well behaved. Surprisingly they were all very clean. All looked like they had showered and brushed their teeth regularly. We handed out sweets during their meal and unlike American children they waited until they finished their meal to eat the treat or they saved the treat to take home. They also didn't complain that they didn't like the flavor they were given or did we have something else because they don't like that treat. They were all incredibly respectful and had no problem doing what they were told. Seeing the children so happy and obviously learning something makes your heart swell. I am not sure that I could do what some of these volunteers do on a daily basis but I could see myself helping at least once a week.

I hope when I get to Bangkok I am going to able to help the way that these volunteers have helped these children. My week in Phuket was quite tame and I didn't do too much but eat, drink, sleep, read, and have fun. I will miss my time in Phuket but alas I have a job interview in Bangkok and must head out right away because even though I love the island lifestyle I need a place of my own and some funds because mine are starting to dwindle.

2nd week in Pattaya

Two of my students.

This week was a little bit harder to wake up to teach. I feel like I am worn out and tired. This week we have to start worrying about where we are to going after we graduate. I am trying to figure out my job situation and prepare for the final test before graduation. My classes this week were ok it was a little bit more difficult. I had a hard time finding and doing new activities with my students. My classes also got smaller this week I had a couple of ladies go on vacation and one lady had to go into the city to go to the doctor. I could also tell my ladies were burned out on the book work so I needed to do activities that had nothing to do with the book. The week ended off with our hardest class to date. The ladies had a difficult time understanding when to use should, would, and could so I decided to try and teach it, I reward them with their favorite game at the end of class. It was a difficulty class and I think the ladies kind of got it but I know it is a difficult subject to grasp especially if it is the first time they have been introduced to it. It was a great last class I brought in gifts for my ladies since the previous two weeks they had brought me sweets, water, fruit, donuts, and made me coffee.To top it off they got me a beautiful jewelry box for being their teacher for the last two weeks.  I gave them some cookies and candy, but because I brought in such a nice gift they made me an omelet and spicy papaya salad. I was so spoiled by these ladies they were all so sweet and I am going to miss them tremendously. I did so much work for that class, but was rewarded with their genuine desire to learn and great attitudes.

The rest of the week we tried to figure out our job situation and the next step on our adventures. I had applied to about 10 positions in Chiang Mai, Phuket, and Nakhon Si Thammarat. I heard back from 1 school saying that the position had been filled. I decided I would go to Phuket with the girls and continue my search down there since I mainly applied to schools in the south. We decided to take the bus to Phuket which was extremely cheap $37 for first class the only downside was it was a 14 hour bus ride. As luck would have it friends of my parents have a home in Phuket and would be there when I arrived so I was invited to stay with them as long as they were there which was about 2 weeks. So things were beginning to fall into place. 

Our second week of class was mainly Thai lessons, working on lesson plans, and job hunting. I continued to really enjoy Thai class I couldn't believe how fast the class would go and I felt like I was learning. If I practiced more I think I could get it down. Hopefully once I am settled that will happen. We had our Thai test at the end of the week and I did pretty well I believe  I had the second highest grade. I was really proud of myself especially since I was having so much trouble with the listening exercises we did earlier in the week. 

Friday finally came and my room is pretty much packed, I get to see my church ladies for the last time, and I have my exit interview with Jam. The exit interview was fun. Kimber, Jam, and I all just talked about our experience what we did well, what we didn't do well, and what to improve on. When that was done I was finally done. I just have to grab my graduation certificate and its official. It is quite sad this is going to be the last time in a while that we are all going to be together. I have grown so close to these people and now I have to leave them. I really enjoyed my month with LanguageCorp it was a nice little bubble to be in. Now I have to grow up once again find a job and get a place to live, I am not looking forward to it. Our graduation dinner was really fun we went to this BBQ buffet restaurant. 

An example of what we did none of us took pictures at dinner.

When I say BBQ it is nothing like the United States. BBQ here means we cook it ourselves. We sit at a table with a hole in the middle where they put hot coals in a bucket and put this dome like bowl with like a moat surrounding the dome. Once the dome like bowl is placed over the hot coals water is put into the moat so that you can boil vegetables or cook some noodles. On the dome part you place the meat and seafood to be grilled. At this buffet there was such a variety of food items: pork, beef, chicken, liver, fish, shrimp, squid, jellyfish, vegetables, and salad ingredients. There was also a station that would cook any kind of seafood you would like we got crab, shrimp, mussels, and clams. Then there was a cooked food station with spring rolls, dumplings, chicken wings, fried chicken, rice, pad thai, and french fries. There was a make your own spicy papaya salad station or make your own pad thai station. Of course there was wonderful desserts all kinds of cakes, ice cream, and sno cones. We had an all around great time with Jam. 

After being fully stuffed we got back to our rooms to get ready to spend our last night on Walking Street. Of course the others decided to pre-game so needless to say the night was full a lot of indecision and bar hoping. Even though it was a chaotic night we all had fun and made it back to our rooms at a decent hour. 

Our last day in Pattaya was subdued we were all finishing up packing and just kind of spending time with one another before we split up. During that time I applied for some more jobs hoping to hear from something early in the week while I am in Phuket. We left Pattaya at 6 and thank goodness I upgraded to first class there was so much more room to sleep and 16 hours later I am in Phuket where meet Suzi for the first time. Let's see how Phuket treats me.

Pattaya/ Koh Larn

Friday finally came and we had a night to go out and have fun. We had all planned to go to Walking Street get some dinner and spend the night having fun. Well it began to rain in the afternoon and that dampened some of our spirits especially mine. I had no real desire to go out in the rain to hang out on another "Duval" street. I was dressed in sweats yet they still made me go out. I wasn't too thrilled to go to Walking Street I felt that I had been on many streets like this and how is this different from anywhere else. We get to Walking Street and it looks like any other party street I have been to except this one has ping pong shows. A ping pong show is for an hour you go to a "strip club" and watch Thai women do things with their women's parts. For example, blowing darts and popping balloons, popping out ping pong balls, and opening a bottle. Of course everyone wanted to check out a show I personally could have done without. We went up to see the show it was quite sad and boring. The girls looked so miserable and the things they were doing wasn't too exciting. We left early. Everything was super expensive on Walking Street so I decided to be the sober friend because we were walking home and also people in my group had a habit of tossing their purses aside not realizing that they could be robbed. We went to numerous bars and got kicked out of one because the group did not buy five drinks. We went into this bar because that was playing cool music we wanted to dance and when no one got a drink right away we were sent away. It pretty much was the same story at every bar we went to. By 1 a.m. I was over being the sober friend and since we did not eat dinner I wanted out of there to go grab something to eat. We finally walked home getting to our hotel at 2 a.m. I ate some snacks and passed out.

The next morning we were suppose to get up early to go to the island of Koh Larn, but no one got up early and it was cloudy so we decided to have a lazy day. Some of the girls went and bought some movies we tried to watch a movie off her laptop but all fell asleep instead. That night we had a former LanguageCorp guy, Joe, come into town so we headed back down to Walking Street for dinner. This time we did go out to dinner at a place overlooking the water. It was nice to sit out under the stars and have a nice dinner. It was a pretty early night I wanted to get some stuff done for my Monday class and wanted to get some sleep before spending the next day at the beach.

We got up at 8 on Sunday morning and headed to the ferries at 9. It was $1 to take a 30 min. ferry ride to Koh Larn. Once we got off the ferries we went and grabbed moto bikes. The two guys with us Colin and Joe have driven motos before while Lindsay and I had never driven one before. Lindsay and I decided to get a moto together while Joe and Colin got their own motos. I once again let me state that Lindsay nor I have ever driven a moto so today was going to be very interesting. I was the first driver and I couldn't even get out of town the moto guy had to drive it out of the town for us. It was quite embarrassing. I was driving extremely slow because I was afraid I was going to kill myself on this thing. I had trouble making turns I kept making wide turns.  Of course I had to learn to drive a moto on an island full of hills and mountains. I realized my first problem was that instead of using the brake to slow down I was letting off the throttle because that is how I drive in the states. Lindsay and I had to pull over about three times because we lost our balance.

Finally we made it to the other side of the island to the beach we were going to spend our day. The beach was nice I thought the water was a little cold but everyone thought I was crazy. There were tons of Russians at this beach. There was even a Russian couple who sat behind us on the beach chairs that got married on the beach. The day was pretty chill we just sat around tanned and played in the water. When it was time to leave we decided that we would head up to this great viewing point up a mountain. The guys told us it had great 360 degree views of the island and a great view of Pattaya. As we were leaving Lindsay was the one who was suppose to drive but didn't know how to rev the throttle and when she figured it out almost killed a group of Russians by almost driving into the crowd. She was then told by one of the police officers that she was to not drive a moto. That meant I was the one to get us up the mountain. The mountain was for only motos and was a pretty narrow road. If you went off the road you would go down a steep hill into the water. The entire time I was cursing the guys and when I got to the worst part of the mountain I really wanted to kill them. The road at one point went practically straight up, if I let off the throttle for a second we were going to slide right back down and most likely down the mountain. Once I finally made it to the top it was so worth it.

The views were amazing and I was happy that I had done it. We walked around for a bit took some pictures and decided to head back down the mountain. Going down was just as bad as going up. My knuckles were white from holding the break the entire time. We finally made it to the bottom and decided that Lindsay should be able to drive the moto at least once so we took her to the flattest and longest road on the island to practice. We made it to the strip of road and Lindsay was finally able to drive the moto and she did great. We started to head back to the town to get on our ferry back to Pattaya of course there was no way I could drive the moto back into town so one of the guys had to do it for me. We grabbed some food and drink and got on the ferry for our 30 min. journey back to Pattaya. We had a pretty uneventful rest of the evening. We had dinner at a restaurant down the street and went to bed early. Our second week of teaching was about to begin and the end of training was nearing.