Thailand is Like a Box of Chocolates.

You really never know what you are going to get. This applies to pretty much everything here, from ordering food to spending time with Thai people. You think that you know what you are in for only to find out that you really have no idea where people are taking you half the time. It can give me a sense of excitement as well as annoy me, depending on my mood.


One of the Thai English teachers, Cru Fah, and I have become “friends” over the past few months. She is really sweet and is married with two sons, ages four and 6 months.As you can see from the photos, I love to spend time with her and her children, the little Buddha and Pukan. The little Buddha is one of the happiest (and chubbiest) babies I have ever met. I don’t think I have ever heard him cry, and he smiles and stares at me all the time, which is typical for a Thai person, but it is much more endearing coming from him. In fact, in a lot of ways, I see him as an equal when we are out and about; neither one of us ever understands a word anyone is saying and we are both pretty much just along for the ride.

So, it was nothing strange one Wednesday at school when she invited me to have dinner with her. I told her I would be at her house at six o’clock. Upon arriving, I immediately realized that we were going out somewhere; she was more made up than usual. We get her kids packed up and into the truck to take them to her parent’s house. This is when she tells me that the dinner is a work function (she sells insurance on the side) and I would be her date because her husband could not make it. Okay, I think, Mai Pen Rai! This company she works for in Thawangpha is small, maybe 20 employees, so I picture a dinner party at her boss’ house or something. However, once we leave her parents house, I notice that she turns south, heading out of town. Now I am really confused. Where are we going? It appears that her boss lives in Nan, 42 kilometers away. I am still a little confused, but as you do with everything in Thailand, you just kind of roll with it. She tells me that her boss has an exchange student living with her from Australia and they thought we would enjoy talking. Sounds cool, why not? We get into Nan by 7 o’clock and pull up in front of the biggest and nicest hotel in town. Apparently we are late because she rushes us inside and at this point is when the realization finally hits me. There in front of me is a massive sign-in table and a huge poster welcoming the employees of AIS Insurance to the Annual Blue Jeans Night company party. We walk into this large banquet room, filled with close to 400 people, all wearing their favorite jeans. I just smiled and thought to myself, “…of course you have ended up at Blue Jeans Night, Kelly, you’re in Thailand. Duh.”


We proceed to hang out and eat dinner, the whiskey and beer were flowing and there was even live entertainment, which was like a 15-year-old dance group, but entertaining nonetheless. After some employee sales awards and a cheesy company slide show, I meet the only other Farang that is there. After introducing himself to me, we start doing the typical Farang in Thailand Q&A: How long are you here? Where have you been? Do you eat the Laap Gai? The hilarious part was when he started to ask me about Australia.
I confusingly tell him I have never been there and he confusingly says that he thought I was from there, upon which I say I thought he was from there. Turns out he is from Switzerland and I am from America and we had no idea where the Thai people got Australia from. The night ends when Cru Fah realized that she had to get home to get her son because he is hungry. We head back to Nan and she drops me off at home, still slightly bewildered by my night. I realized that this was probably the most eventful Wednesday night I could have had.

The moral of the story is, if you ever come to Thailand, I suggest you never try to predict or expect too much. You will always end up at a random person’s house or in a random person’s car. That is what makes Thailand so fun most of the time. In fact, even purchasing items can bring excitement. For example, I was given two power strips when I first moved into my apartment. I opened the box of the first one to find that it came with a free miniature screwdriver. I thought it was weird, but could see the relationship a little bit. I opened the second box to find a free spoon.

Like I said, Thailand is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.

Viewer Discretion is Advised.

Since I have to decided to throw chronology to the wind, this post will be of a video I made about a month ago. Now, I was hesitant about posting it, because I come off like a pretty big dork, but after some positive feedback from a few folks that have already seen it, I decided what the heck?

This is a video tour of where I live in Thawangpha. Post-production took a lot longer than actual filming and no script was prepared. There wasn't enough money to pay for hair and makeup and lighting was free. The actor was not paid and no harm came to any of the animals in this video.

Enjoy!

RetroPost - Sukhothai

I’ve obviously gotten very behind with my posts. A combination of holidays, travel, and pure laziness is to blame. To get all caught up I will plant some random retroposts in with the more recent happenings. Hope that's cool with you because that's what I'm doin' here.

Back in November, right before Thanksgiving a few of us decided to meet up in Sukhothai for a weekend. Sukhothai was the capital of the Sukhothai Kingdom in the 13th and 14th centuries. From what I can tell, it was one of the first capitals of what is now Thailand. Check out Wikipedia for more info on all that. Old Sukhothai (Sukhothai Historic Park), which contains all the old temples and ruins, is the main tourist attraction of Sukhothai, the ruins are about 800 years old and span a fairly large area.

Marianne and I arrived into Sukhothai late Friday night, around 2 am. It was an exhaustingly long day of bus travel and we were so happy to finally be to our destination. Our friends Lisa and Kim had already been there for a while making friends with Sergeant Smith, a local Thai man who didn’t speak much English but seemed okay to hang out and buy us beers anyway. After a few beers and some street food, we decided to get some rest for the long day of touristy stuff that would be ahead of us.

Our handy Lonely Planet guide informed us that the best way to see and get around the ruins is to rent bicycles and pedal around. Since the Lonely Planet guide told us to do it, that's what we did, just like the good little backpackers we are. Right outside the entrance to the park we each rented a piece-of-crap bike for the day. Each bike looks exactly the same, with the same number 9 painted on the fender. Oddly, no information was taken from us, no deposit was required, we just handed over 30 baht and pushed off. After paying our farang entrance fees to get into the park, we pedaled on over to the first set of ruins. We locked our bikes up in a group and walked into where the ruins were. The ruins are truly amazing and beautiful. It is unreal to think that these ruins are 800 years old and there was really nothing stopping us from climbing all over them. The entire place had such a calm and peaceful aura about it. I really just wanted to sit there for hours and soak all up all that wonderful energy. After spending about 20 minutes walking around these first set of ruins and taking an obscene amount of pictures, we walked back to where our bikes should have been locked up only to find that two of them had been stolen. I had a moment of panic where I was worried that we would have to pay the rental place a ton of money because we lost their bikes. But, once we started to think about the fact that they took no information or deposit from us, we realized it was probably all a scam anyway. It is likely that they were stolen back by the people that rented them to us in the first place and they just wanted a quick turnover. After debating whether or not we should steal someone else's bikes, we decide to just double up on the remaining bikes and take turns huffing it around the park. The park is actually quite large and there are even ruins outside of the main area that can be biked to. There were so many Buddha images of various sizes, including Wat Si Chum, which is truly a sight to see. This Buddha is the largest I have seen so far and as you can tell from the picture I wasn’t even as tall as the hand. It is sort of mind-blowing that something this huge could be built 800 years ago. The entire park made for a beautiful bike ride and was even more breathtaking around dusk. Once we were all biked out (actually Kim did most of the work while I rode on back, but my butt definitely hurt at the end!) we decided to just ditch the bikes and take a tuktuk back to our guest house where naps and showers were definitely in order. Once we are all clean and sparkling, we went to a place called Poo Restaurant (poo means crab in Thai), which is recommended in our Lonely Planet guide. Owned by a Belgian man and his Thai wife it was supposed to have good food and maybe even some Belgian chocolate for dessert. Turns out that the food was just okay, came in really small portions, and was way over-priced. The service was pretty crappy and the only people there were farang who also read about it in their Lonely Planet guide. As a side note, the Lonely Planet guide is good for helping you find a place to stay or to figure out how to get around Thailand, but it SUCKS when recommending food. If there are a lot of farang in a restaurant, be prepared to pay way too much for okay food. The best advice is to eat where the locals eat….on the street.



Anyway, we of course ended up at a Karaoke bar that night getting stupid drunk and singing to an empty bar. We were entertained though and I think the band thought we were pretty funny. When the Thai girl came along to show us up with her good voice, we decided it was time to go to bed, but not until after we made her sing Rok Som Sow! The next morning we started the long journey back to TWP. It was a nice weekend trip with the girls, though it was short. To see more photos, click here or check out Facebook.