Here are some pictures from our trip to Ayuttaya - a formal capital of the Siamese kingdom. Our first evening there, we took a night tour by tuk tuk and enjoyed the temples (Wats) lighted up at night. The next day we rented bikes and toured around a few of the temples we had seen the night before.

In the tuk tuk for our night tour

the night tour

A mama and her baby who is only about 20 days old - so cute!

Kat and Emily at the temple of the three kings

Kat and Emily at Wat Mahathat

Kat and I spent much of last week in the town where I live. We met up with many of my co-teachers and friends and Kat had a small taste of what life is like in rural Thailand. Here are some pictures from her visit:

Kat releases a bird to "make merit" - albeit, not sure how far 10 Baht of merit will get you?

Kat and Emily at Phi Mai Khumer ruins - about an hour from my town

The temple / palace

Emily and Kat at Phi Mai - the main temple

some carvings over a doorway

I got the pictures from Kat's camera. These are from our first snorkling trip from Railey beach:

Boat ride out to sea

Our cute guide. LOVE the glasses and hat!

Snorkling in the crystal water

On the beach

The phallic offerings Thais make to the fertility godess of this cave....interesting!

Just a few more fun pictures from my trip with Kat to Southern Thailand.

Going out in the boat, looking back at land

In the hotel pool with the sea in the background.

The inlet where they filmed the movie "The Beach"

Emily and Kat at "The Beach"

Yesterday before we left the island, we "hiked" up to the viewpoint to see this marvelous vista.

PhiPhi Island is really more like two islands connected by a central area of sandy land. This central area (that you can see in the photo) is where the town is built. Unfortunately, it is also the area that the tsunami hit the hardest. Though the wave was only a couple of meters here (I say 'only' in comparison with the 10 meter wave elsewhere) it hit from both sides and washed nearly everything away in the central section. One lady we spoke to lost her daughter and sister in the tsunami as well as five people that worked at her restaurant. She was spared, along with her husband and infant son, as they huddled together on the second floor. She resisted our sympathy and told us that hers was the story of everyone on the island. In fact, she was lucky.
The rebuilding effort has happened quicky and though there is still a lot of construction, there is again a town and thriving community - Thai and tourist alike.

What a day we've had!

Phi Phi island is beautiful -vistas to die for. Here are some views from our hotel:

The view from our room.

A quick dip in the pool.

However, the trip we went on to day was less than what we expected to say the least.

It started out alright. We left the island in a long tail boat.

Then visited monkey beach.

We had a little snorkling where we saw some really neat fish. In fact, I swam through several schools of striped and brightly colored fish.

This is when the trouble started. As our boat (overloaded with 13 people) slowly chugged on to bamboo island, we had a suspition that we were in for some trouble. The spray from the waves (windy day) pelted us constantly on the journey out to the small island. We were cold and all wanted to be at the beach. Once we finally reached the beach, we were given our boxes of fried rice and sat on the beach to eat. Though we'd been told that we had an hour, after about 20 mintues, we were hurried onto the boat because the tide had "suddenly" gone out. We spent about 10 minutes pushing and pulling the boat out to a depth that it could move in.
Finally we were off! However, the good luck was not to last long. We got in one more short stint of snorkling and headed off to the beach where the movie "The Beach" was filmed. However, about half way there, our boat decided that it no longer wanted to work. We sat for a little while, then our 'captain' tied our boat to tow behind another boat of similar side and passenger capacity.

We slowly made our way to the beach and depite the breeze, which made it quite chilly, enjoyed some time there.

We were supposed to return to Phi Phi Island around sunset, but, yet again, our boat would not go. The one that had initially towed us had already moved on and had to return to "rescue" us. Again, we chugged along slowly. After mostly missing the sunset, we were worried that it would soon be dark.

Indeed... Our rescue boat, soon let us loose in the open sea as another boat came to switch out. Because we were going slowly, the first boat wanted to get its passengers back to shore before it was totally dark. An empty boat came and we were instructed to get aboard it. The first girl who tried to climb aboard was literally suspended in thin air. The 'captain' of the second boat was holding her arm and her toes were curled around our boat as the two began to drift apart. She made it on safely, but it was a scary moment.

We did eventually make it back to land - in total darkness (without a light on our boat) but we were frazzled. Fortunately, there was a delicious Italian restaurant waiting for us in town where we downed a pizza and pasta.

We've had our adventure for the trip! Thai customer service leaves something to be desired. But, we're back safe and sound and I"m happy for that!

Katarina and I had a great time in Bangkok. We had an easy day, as seen previously, then met up with my friend Ben that evening and went to the night market and beer garden at Lumpini park.

This is us at the night market. Fun fun!

Monday we flew down to Krabi province. We have been soaking in the rays and enjoying the crystal blue/green waters and white sands. The beaches are absolutely gorgeous! It is heaven. We may never leave....

Monday through Wedednesday, we were on the mainland at Railey and Ton Sai beaches.

Kat and Emily at Railey West beach at sunset

The sunset

Kat at Pranang beach

Railey East as we took the boat to Koh Phi Phi (pictures to come)

Sawadee Kah from Bangkok!

I had a lovely morning this morning. Katarina's flight was late, so I found a Catholic church and attended mass. It was so refreshing and joyful. Here is a picture of Assumption cathedral near the river in Bangkok.




Then, Katarina arrived safely. We traveled back to the hotel, showered and then headed out for foot massages.

It was fabulous.

Now, we've dropped off the goodies she brought me at Peace Corps and will head to the night market for dinner. Tomorrow morning we fly down to Krabi. It is so exciting to have her here and be on the eve of a grand vacation!j :)

The rain has found us again. We have a new tropical storm that has come up from the Philippines. It hit yesterday as I drove to Korat city with a friend to buy some kitty litter, bleach and tortilla chips (ah the things you'll drive 1.5 hours for!) Today I did have time to defrost my freezer outside and clean out my fridge (spring cleaning before Katarina visits next week) before the downpour started. Then I donned my raincoat and umbrella and rode my bike to the office to use the internet since my home connection has decided that it no longer works. Ah well, the office is dry and has airconditioning.

Now...about the English camp.

Thai people LOVE English camps. Generally students spend two to three days at the host school - sleeping, eating and breathing English. Well, some English. Songs are plentiful. Microphones are used way too much. And as many foreigners as possible are recruited to help with the festivities.

I've done countless English camps during my time in Thailand, but had managed to pass several months without so much as an invitation for one. Until last weekend.....

Actually, this one was not bad. It was a day camp, so the students AND I went home around 4pm. It was only two days and I was only responsible for one rotation.

We started out in a big group. We had some songs

Line B dances to the banana song.

students and teachers sing La La La (because that's English!)

And the students had to interview all the teachers in English. As I was the only foreigner, the Thai teachers pretended they were from various countries. This group of teachers is really fun and silly, so they had a great time with it.

AJ Peturi, aka Miss Universe
AJ Kannika loves to talk to the boys!

And we broke into color groups - where the students would stay for their five rotations.

AJ Wasana and the students introduce themselves.

After the big group, we had the rotations. I decided on an activity that I thought would be really fun and challenging for the students. The activity was called Sentence Story. It was an attempt at creative writing with the students. I divided them into pairs and gave each pair a picture.

(I am having trouble uploading more pictures....to come later)

There task was to write a story about the picture for three minutes. When the timer went off, they were to pass their picture/story to the next group who would add to the story for three minutes, then pass....and so on.

Dictionaries were used, but only very minimally helpful because this school (as most here) had only English to Thai. So, they had to know the English word before it was helpful.

I tried to pick entertaining pictures that would give them a good starting point for a story. We talked about how to go about writing the story. I reminded them to think about things that they could not actually see in the picture. What happened before? What happened after? The whos, whats, whens, wheres and WHYs of the people, thoughts and feelings involved.

I guess it had just never crossed my mind that Thai students do not, in the course of their education, learn to write from their imagination. They regurgitate. They don't create. The idea of a story simply stumped them. Granted, having the assignment in english certainly makes it more difficult, but I don't think it was the root of the difficulty. Here are some examples:

• Where is it? He come from Thailand. He is swimming in bathroom. He is brushing his teeth. He has dark hair and black eyes. He is strong His Dreaming His swimming in Dream He is don’t wear clothes. He is close eyes. He enjoy very much.

• He is on a bridge. He is running. He want freedom. There are 100 people. Then people running. He is Tony, he is very tall and he is angry. The cold season. He is hanson nad long hair. The skyis beautiful. He carry big banner’s Argument. He is 29 years old. He shout

• It is office. There are 100 peoples. They are official. They are doing the work. She is presenting the project work. There are 4 mans and one woman. They are talking. There is 1 woman. She has the big project. She is beautiful. They are help. There are 6 books. The books are on the table. She is slim. The men is old. And woman is yunger. In the room is the big. In the room there are 2 men wearing eye-glasses.

• He comes from Japan. He is handsome so much. He stand in the sea. He want to play sea. But, he don’t have friend. Because, his friends is work in foreign country. But, He don’t work. So, he want to travel. He want going along. He love nature. He want to go camping at Island. He is wearing cream shirt. He don’t have hair. He doesn’t have got shooes. He is an old man.

• Today she want go to the birthday her friend. She have a gift for her friends. She stand by serprice for her friend by close your eyes. She is surprise and wait. In party she is a beautiful. She want her friend be happy in birthday. Because she very love her friend. And her friend is lovely. She from U.S.A. on yesterday. Because she wil go to the party. She want boyfriend and new friend. She is very sexy in party. Everybody is to be infatuate her. She have tan. After she go to back home and sleeping in my bed in bedroom at night. Today she is very happy in party of birthday girl friends
  
  
  

We're over the hump! And a beautiful sunny Wednesday and Thursday it was too!

The rain has finally let up, so I took the train out to a school about 30 minutes from my house yesterday. I usually come here on Monday afternoons to work with an additional drama group I formed a few months ago.

I decided to "take on" this school after meeting some of the students at an english camp. they are very smart and enthusiastic, so we started an English language drama group (or TYT - Thai Youth Theatre). We're preparting for a big theatre festival in February when all the volunteers that have TYT groups will come together, the students will have some classes in theatre and everyone will perform.

My group is working on "Cinderella Around the World". Since Cinderella travels to all seven continents, we decided to make a map as part of our backdrop. So, we came together yesterday and traced the world onto a blue piece of cloth. Lucky for us the school has a projector and we didn't have to use the grid method (which I used at another school last year and took forever!)



Today we painted in the countries.


There were a few moments when the students tried to create new countries, extend borders or erase contries all together, but with the help of two atlases, we managed to come out with a version of the world that is very nearly correct. :)



Yippee - the whole world!

Well, the rain just keeps falling. Today is not nearly as bad as yesterday and I've been able to leave the house. Apparently, we are experiencing the effects of tropical depression Chang Saen (or Big Elephant). The eye of the storm is over Ubon Rachatani. Much of the country is experiencing flooding, so I guess we are lucky that all we have is a grey sky and constant rain and drizzles.

Last night, I went to dinner with a bunch of my teacher friends for Ah Jarn Kanika's birthday. This is a tradition that we have. For everyone's birthday, we go to a nice restaurant and then split the bill. Everyone pays an equal amount except for the birthday girl - who eats for free. This may sound ordinary, but in this country it is quite amazing. Thais almost never split the bill. Typically, the oldest, wealthiest or highest ranking person at the table pays for everyone. In fact, most Thai people refer to the splitting of any bill as "American Share". So, my progressive group of friends is quite unique!

Here is almost everyone at the table. We all have on our Yellow King shirts because yesterday was Monday. (King Phumiporn's Royal color is Yellow and since this is the 60th anniversary year of his reign, all Thai people wear their yellow shirts at least every Monday.)

Anyway, it was a nice dinner until the subject of AJ Kanika's husband came up. He was supposed to meet us at the restaurant, but unfortunately he was extremely drunk and unable to drive - stuck at the school (don't really know why he went there in the first place). I felt terrible for her. I had known that her husband was an alcoholic, but I hoped that for her birthday he might try and be on his best behavior. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

Soon, the school janitor "delivered" her husband (followed by his son on a motorcycle to take him home) to the restaurant. He came in and proceeded to stumble about and talk in a very loud voice. I wai-ed him (prayer hand greeting) as is customary, however soon wished I hadn't. His attention had been drawn to me and he began to talk...Well, shout...at me. This is not surprising behavior - most drunk Thais do exactly the same. However, I felt horrible because it was my friend's birthday and her husband that was shouting at me. Generally the remarks were things like "HOW ARE YOU? ARE YOU SURE?" or "GOOD MORNING TEACHER!" The usual phrases that Thais who don't speak English generally know. I basically ignored him, giving short answers when he got really loud and obnoxious to try and appease him. I couldn't look at him because if I did, I would see the tears welling in AJ Kanika's eyes and it just broke my heart.

The worst moment was yet to come, though. He was draped over Kanika's shoulders (again embarrassing for her as public displays of affection and touch are not appropriate here) and having trouble holding his head up. We were trying to make conversation at the table and with Kanika and pretend this wasn't happening. But then, in a break in the (forced) conversation, her husband asked me very loudly to be his mistress. Again, this is not terribly unusual drunk Thai male behavior, but I was horrified. I'd had enough. I told him that he was very rude and that he was sitting next to his lovely wife. Instead of talking to me and saying ridiculous things, I told him, he should be complimenting her and paying attention to her on her birthday. Being as drunk as he was, he probably couldn't register what I was saying. Honestly, it was more for AJ Kanika's benefit. I felt that I had to say something. It was terrible.

Soon the birthday cake came. The wishes written on it were for happiness and love. I told her to make a strong wish.

AJ Kanika made a strong wish and prayer. I'm sure we all knew what she was wishing for.


We cut the cake and tried to enjoy it while at the same time going quickly so the uncomfortable situation could end. I felt terrible for her.

What a way to spend your birthday...or should I say your life!

I am stuck at home again due to a very rainy day. I was supposed to go to a neighboring district to work with my drama group today. We planned to paint a world map for one of the backdrops for our play. However, the rain kept the students (and ultimately me) at home. To make things worse, the teacher I work with contracted pink eye (or "red eye" here as it causes bleeding in the eye - slightly different strain) this weekend, so he's sick in bed.

Quite honestly, I don't mind too much. I was in Bangkok all weekend and had a very long day of travel yesterday. Hopefully I can continue with plans tomorrow.

In recent news, yesterday General Surayud Chulanont was named the new interum prime minister of Thailand. When I was in Bangkok this past weekend, there was still a heavy military presence - including soldiers and tanks on the streets. This will probably continue to be the case, though General Surayud has been appointed, until national popular elections.

I thought I would share some of my recent "entertainment"

Last month I read the book Woman, An Intimate Geography. This has been the "hot" book being passed around between the female volunteers in Thailand recently. Though parts of it are a bit too overly feminist (in a preachy sort of way) for my taste, overall this is a very interesting book. Natalie Angier explores emotional, physical, sexual and anthropological sides of the human female. I learned a lot about my body and myself and developed some questions of my own. I"m not sure that I buy everything she presented (and it is about 6 years old at this point anyway) but it was a great read.




I am now in the middle of reading First They Killed My Father. Though the title initially made me hesitant to read this book, it is a valuable read. The author, Loung Ung was a child during the Khmer Rouge communist years in Cambodia. She was five years old and the 6th child of a wealthy family in Phnom Penh when everyone was forced out of the cities and into communist villages. This book describes her families trials and journeys through the years of the Khmer Rouge rule. She is an amazingly strong and resiliant woman. This has really increased my historical knowledge as well as given me an emotional association with all the terrors of that time. It is definately worth reading.







Lastly, I saw the World Trade Center movie in Bangkok this past weekend. I was a little nervous about seeing it, but I'm glad I did. I was happy that it was not politically charged, but rather a true telling of the stories of two of the NYC Police officers who went into the building and were trapped once it collapsed. I saw the movie with another volunteer (who is a native New Yorker) and we were both crying like crazy. However, I thought the movie was well done and I'm glad I saw it. The rest of the theatre was filled with Thais. I couldn't read how they felt afterwards, but I thought it was interensting that they saw the movie.


I hope everyone is having a nice fall day. Start arranging those cornacopias and carving up those pumpkins! :)