school's out for the weekend

 Today I had my first of three practical exams. It went very well and was more like me and Melissa practicing on each other than an exam. This week we've covered head, neck, shoulder, face, back side-lying, back face down, leg, foot, arm, hand and abdominal massage with some stretches.  All in all it adds up to a 143 minute massage. It's been really tough trying to remember everything. I swear in my dreams I'm going to hear Kung (my teacher) saying "sit up please. sit down please. change hand. double thumb. no! cross thumb. other hand." I think after next week and some more practice it will seem a lot easier to remember everything. The second and third weeks will build on this and hopefully with a little practice when I get back things will go smoothly. I'm not sure how I'm going to condense it all into a 50 minute massage for work. I'm going to have to cut out things like face, some feet, legs depending on time. The stretches are the most fun to do, and one part of the legs is my absolute favorite to have done. We'll see.

Tonight I'm meeting some people from school for dinner and then we're going to a muay Thai fight. There will be dancing after. I fear that our 9am meeting time to leave for the lake tomorrow is going to be very tough. I should be getting ready. I'll report back post fight/dance.

you gotta have friends.

All day long I was kind of worrying about not having friends here and not really being able to connect with any of my schoolmates. It was really starting to bring me down around lunch when everyone was talking about driving up to the lake this weekend and no one was really inviting me. It was like being the new kid in school and no one wants to play with you and you don't really know how to tell them that you want to play because you don't want to impose and as an adult you have this self-doubt and wonder if you're just not like them and they'll never like you and you'll be all alone in Thailand for the next three weeks. Wow, that was a run-on sentence. Anyway, hopefully that won't happen.

Gina, our new classmate,  had invited me and Melissa to the pool at her guest house after class today so I went, super excited to be invited to do something. The pool ended up being closed for cleaning but Warner, who is in the teacher training and seems to have a thing with Melissa, Sarah, who is staying at Chaba and I think I might have mentioned before, Gina and I got a bottle of wine, some snacks and hung out under an umbrella near the pool for a few hours and then went to this slightly overpriced restaurant inside the old city walls to celebrate Gina's friend Jasmine's birthday. The restaurant is balled Brix and it was somewhat fancy but not that delicious. I could probably get better curry off the street for 20 baht instead of 80. But, 80 baht is still just a little over $2 so I really shouldn't complain.



While at dinner Melissa invited me to the lake with them this weekend, so it looks like I might have a chance to connect with some schoolmates and enjoy a lake in the mountains outside of town.

I'm starting to feel more comfortable being alone here. If I can just keep some friends I think I will be ok. I've never really traveled alone or stayed in guest houses. These people that I meet here are real travelers, a lot of them haven't been home in months or years. I don't think I could do it. I have too many roots. I needed to do something like that when I was young, but I didn't have the money to do it until now. Sucks how that works.

I realized when we were all done eating that I left my room unlocked. The doors are locked by these big pad locks and I keep forgetting to take it with me when I'm leaving in the morning. Usually I'll remember soon enough and am able to lock the door, but today I didn't even think about it. When I got back to my room, it was padlocked, which is nice since all of my electronics are in here. The problem with that, though, is that my key is sitting inside the room, hanging from the keycard that turns the electricity on. I had to wake the owners to get the spare key so I could get in.

We drove by the jazz club that I tried to go to the other night on our way home and there was live jazz happening. It seemed like a lot of people were there. I'm going to try to go back, maybe Sunday night if I'm up for it.

 

Melissa and Warner

 

Neil and Gina

 

20 baht pad thai from down the road

not lost, yet

I've done pretty well for myself. Yes, there has been some wandering, and yes, there have been times when I didn't necessarily know exactly where I was but I have yet to be not be able to figure it out with the shitty free map that I grabbed from the train station.

Today I stopped by Chaba House, which is the guest house where a bunch of people from my school are staying. My room was definitely nicer that Melissa's, but there was a very lovely courtyard there. I found out that Andrea, Mike and I were so close to it when we went searching for it, but we would have never found it. Things are on these little lanes and sorta streets here, called Soi and then a number. It makes things a little confusing when all you have is an address.

When I left, I made a wrong turn on the Super Highway, but was able to figure it out. I seem to have packed my hatred for taking taxi's when I came here and have been walking everywhere. It's good to try to work off all the rice, noodles and thai sweets that I've been eating.

I had to walk past the building where the little boy, maybe about 10 and maybe a little mentally disabled, said hi to us and then proceeded to run at us when we waved back and hugged me and tried to pat Mike's ass. He followed us for quite a while, so much so that Andrea suggested we cross the street. I knew he was harmless, but still.

I ate at the Mexican restaurant that everyone is raving about

 

The Salsa Kitchen, pretty good burrito and cheap margaritas

Tonight I met a couple of girls who are going to ITM and staying at my guest house. They invited me out with them on Friday. There was a third girl in my class today, named Gina. I guess she started last week but had to drop out because she was ill. She's from the L.A. area and is really nice. We were supposed to try to go to the jazz club again tonight, but she wasn't feeling well. I might make friends yet.

Melissa and I went to the market today at our lunch break. They were selling a lot of fresh produce as well as some clothes and eels!

 

Bucket o' fish and bucket o' eels

 

Birds. 

 

Melissa at the market with a 59 baht wife beater 

I guess the birds are wild birds that they catch and then sell to people to set free and then they catch them again. They're stuffed into these tiny cages. I'm not a huge fan of birds, but I still think that's pretty wrong.

i totally forgot

I forgot to talk about what's been going on after yesterday morning.

I started school at the Thai Massage School of Thailand on Monday. I'll be doing levels 1, 2, and 3. So far I've learning so much that it's hard to keep it all straight. There's only one other girl in my class. Her name is Melissa and she's a Canadian who's been living in Taiwan for the past six years. She's super nice. She doesn't have a massage background, but she's doing really well and picks up on the stuff quickly. I mean, I have a massage background and it still get tripped up sometimes. When I get home from class I'm absolutely exhausted and now that Andrea and Mike have left, it takes a lot to convince myself that I need to go see the city. It's not as fun alone.

On Sunday we went to the Sunday Night Market inside the old city. It was insanely busy, filled with stands selling all kinda of goods and food. I bought some key chains and a little box with an elephant on it. I tried on a bunch of dresses but my stupid boobs ruin everything. There were so many people there that you can't really barter to get prices down, but you really don't have to. I mean, the key chains cost me like a dollar for six of them.

We ate at this burrito place call El Diabo outside of the old city wall, because Mike and Andrea hadn't has decent Mexican food in so long. The food was ok. It's owned by an American. It was nice to have a mojito.  I took pictures of all the food we ate, or places we ate it.

 

  

chocolate chip waffle with banana

water beetle

ancient ice cream

the slower side of the market. near the middle it was almost impossible to walk

I guess I should explain the beetle, huh. Not far from the waffle lady there was a lady selling fried bugs and I sorta thought that 'hey, we're in Thailand, let's try one' so Andrea and Mike bought one to see if I would eat it. It totally grossed me out and I couldn't bring myself to actually put it in my mouth. Some couple with their kid were walking by as we were trying to get it out of the bag and asked if it would be ok if they took video of us eating it. The guy told us that here they remove the head and suck out the insides. Andrea was eventually able to get the head off and I was able to convince myself to actually put the thing up to my lips. The video is here 

After class yesterday we wandered around looking the guest house that a lot of people from my school are staying. Mine is super lovely, called Ban Kong Rao. The room is clean and the bed is huge. Andrea, Mike and I all slept in it and there was a couple of feet between me and Andrea and she said she wasn't even touching Mike. I like the neighborhood it's in, there just aren't very many people here and if there are they all keep to themselves. It's very close to ITM, the other big school in town. I did meet one person yesterday while I waited for my school taxi but haven't talked to anyone else. 

Tonight I wandered around looking for this jazz club, which I found but no one was playing so I wandered back to my neighborhood and stumbled into this girl named Joy who speaks english and asked if I needed help and then insisted I have a drink with her. There was a guy playing an acoustic guitar and singing in Thai. I wanted live music, I got it. 

I'm getting pretty good at looking right before crossing the street instead of left, although it's still very difficult to cross the streets here. There are a ton of motorbikes and they don't really follow any traffic rules. Today I pressed the button to get the walk sign and got it and people still drove through the red light. I almost got hit by a motorbike because I was trying to figure out what kind of fruit this guy was selling from the back of his truck (maybe watermelon, but a little different). 

I'm so tired I might die. I'll post pictures of my room later.

stuff i wrote before

I wrote this stuff on the train about my time in Bangkok.
 

2-21-2010 (maybe)

I feel like I have no idea what day it really is, or time for that matter. I think it’s about 11pm, maybe 11:30. I’m tucked away in my bunk on the sleeper car that Andrea, Mike and I are taking from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. I have a bottom bunk, which is nice and allowed me and Andrea, who also has a bottom bunk, to play cards and move about freely while everyone else on the train slept. These people started putting their bunks up and going to bed at 9:30. 9:30? I’m running on about four hours of actual, in bed sleeping and I’m listening to a sea of snores. One guy came up to me while I was shuffling and said “would you rather do this (made a shuffling motion) or let us sleep?” I thought there was maybe a nicer way to ask me to stop shuffling, but whatever. He’s probably an unhappy person. 

 inside my sleeper bunk. those are my feet.

My flight out of Seoul was delayed about 3 hours, getting me into Bangkok at about 3am. Despite the time and the lack of sleep I was still so excited to be in Thailand that I almost cried in the cab. I got to The Rooftop View Place at around 4am. Andrea’s smiling, and slightly tipsy face was waiting for me on the hotel’s porch. I’m so incredibly happy that she and Mike were here when I got here. It made it seem less scary to start this trip.

 

Mike and Andrea

We walked through Khao San Road and sampled a few different sweet treats that we bought from the vendors. Mike’s favorite, and probably mine, was this coconut custard that has corn in it and it sort of fried into these little shells. It also comes with tofu and something else that we’re not sure of. We also got these rice cake things topped with some sort of caramel-like good, and these really disgusting green jelly things that you dip in this maple syrup-like sauce. They were basically inedible, but hey, you gotta try it. 

The top are the rice cake things, the green things were basically inedible and the coconut pudding things are at the bottom.

At least Andrea Tried to eat them. We had to lie to her and tell her that they weren't disgusting. 

  

ice cream cone tasting taco type thing with maybe coconut. no idea. it was yummy

We walked down to where the Grand Palace where some guy tried to tell us that it was closed to tourist on Saturdays and Sundays and that we should take his friend’s tuk-tuk to some other place instead.  We didn’t believe him despite his annoying persistence. We repaid him by telling a group of unsuspecting tourists that he was talking to on our way out that it is, in fact, open, and that he was lying. He thanked Andrea and smarmy grin.

We decided that we didn’t want to pay the 350 baht that it would cost to get in, which is really only about $10 usd so probably should have, but took pictures of it from the courtyard just inside the palace walls. I was wearing shorts that went over my knee and they made me rent a wrap skirt to cover my legs. It was getting unbearably hot in the two layers, despite the heavy rain we got in morning, and, to be honest, I’ve seen enough palaces. 

 

Andrea. me, my stupid big skirt and the tank top that doesn't go with it

We made our way over to Wat Pho, where there are a whole lotta buddhas.  I’m sure I’ll be visiting several more Wat's, which are just big temples, while I’m here.

 

one of many buddha walls

We took a tuk-tuk over to Chinatown, where we hoped to sit and eat but apparently the only places in Bangkok to eat inside are where tourists go.  We ended up wandering around, through crowded streets filled with vendors selling old car parts and sex toys. All of the buildings that looked like they would be restaurants turned out to be jewelers. We ended up eating some toasted bread with butter and sugar served to us at plastic tables and chairs. None of the waitresses spoke English and only Thai people were eating there, I’d rather have it that way than eat somewhere less authentic. We ended up eating real dinner near the hotel and rushing to catch this train.

We met a guy on the train named Nathan, who is from Tazmania and seems to have been on holiday for months. He told us the story of some Thai girl making him drink a bottle of terrible tasting Thai whiskey and him waking up at her apartment sick from drinking. Hey, at least she didn’t turn out to be a ladyboy.

10:33am Feb 21 2010

This train sure does stop a lot. We're running three hours late, supposedly getting us into Chiang Mai at about noon. I swear we just went backwards. At least I'm getting a lot of knitting done. The bunk was comfortable enough to get some sleep in. Soon I'll get a full night in a bed. I look forward to it.

 

in front of our train before we left. I'm giving the peace sign like all the Koreans. 

school school school

I start school this morning. We got into Chiang Mai at about 12-12:30pm yesterday, three hours after we were supposed to. It worked out alright, though, since I had told my guest house that I would be arriving around 1:30, which was spot on.

We went to the sunday night market last night, which was pretty crazy. The street food tasting continues, and it's so yummy, for the most part. We ate these mashed potato balls and banana spring rolls, and this

 

yep. bugs. 

More about that later, video even. Right now I have to get downstairs to wait for my ride to class.

I wrote an entry from the train and made notes in my nexus one that I'll get on here later that will be about Bangkok.

i flew all the way from chicago and boy are my arms tired

I'm sitting in the Incheon Airport in Seoul South Korea after a day of running around in Seoul with Paul Kim (PK). This day has proven to me that if ever I have a 14 hour layover in a foreign country and want to travel into the city I should always have a guide because I would have been completely lost without PK.

Wednesday night, I would call it last night but it's Friday evening here so..., I thought getting to the airport was going fine. I was all packed, actually ate dinner, took a short nap, picked Micheal up when I told him I would and then realized when I got to my gate that I had left my cell phone in the car. Not a big deal, I can't use it over here anyway. Then, maybe ten minutes later, I realized that I had forgotten my credit card and debit card. I was thinking that I might not have enough cash and if I ran out I could just use credit, until I discovered this. I freaked out just a little but, but was relieved when some kind strangers let me call Micheal with their phone and he brought my stuff back to the airport. Life saver, that brother of mine is.

There was a nicest couple sitting next to me on the plane. They were older and traveling to Singapore to visit their daughter and granddaughter. The women seems to never sleep. If I had to guess I would say that she is Philipeano. She talked to me about my knitting, which I did quite a bit of on the plane. I got a hate and a half done, in addition to watching three movies and sleeping like four hours. Every time I was awake she was too, and she told me that she didn't really sleep while I was asleep, but they were getting a room at the hotel in the airport (there's a hotel in the airport!?) so she would sleep there. Lucky lady.

 

hello from korea. it's chilly and both of us are tired

Anyway, PK was nice enough to come get me from the airport at 7am. I got in at 5:20am, but I was more than happy to wait for him to get here. We took the train into the city, which took about an hour and a half and involved two transfers. It was so crowed due to morning rush hour and people just shovel you to get on. It was really great for my hatred of strangers touching me. I came up with a couple of things to say about the experience in general; I think someone impregnated me on the train this morning. I fell asleep standing up but was cushioned by the strangers around me and didn't fall, and I sure hope that Korean business man enjoyed my breasts on his back for 20 minutes of his commute.  So maybe none of them are funny but after 3 hours at O'hare, a 14 hour flight and a two hour wait at Incheon, it's what came into my head.

Anyway, Paul and I got to this shopping area where all the shops were still closed and no one was really around. He kept telling me how busy it gets there, and I believed him. It was just nice not to be cramped in an airplane seat or touched by strangers. We stopped by a little second floor restaurant and ate "rice porridge," mine was mushroom and beef and PK got chicken and vegetables. They came in huge bowls and Paul and I split them. Everyone in the restaurant was a 22 year old Japanese girl, a fact that kept freaking PK out but in a good way because he likes 22 year old Japanese girls.

Post breakfast part 2 for me, we headed over to some underground shops, most of which sell glasses, and then to the Gyeongbokgung Palace. The Palace was a complex of courtyards and smallish buildings. Of course in our haste to get in, we totally forgot to grab any sort of informational pamphlet and had no idea why anything was important or it's historical context. It was really muddy but also really beautiful. You could see mountains in the background if you looked in one direction and modern buildings if you looked in the other direction.

 

part of one of the buildings with beautiful mountain background

The weather was pretty nice, but it could have been ten degrees warmer for my taste. It was super sunny and maybe in the upper 30s. I took a bunch of pictures, which I will post later when I'm not in the airport. The Museum of Folk is inside the palace so we checked it out. It contained a lot of replicas and recreations, which I thought was a little disappointed. Paul told me that the Korean people are very protective of what they have left of their historical artifacts because they have had so many people steal from them and invade them. That's understandable. He said that the national museum would have much more. What can you really expect when it was basically free. Admission to the palace and museum cost about $3 USD.

Post palace we visited two statues, one of a general and one of an emperor that were important to Korean history. Of course I can't remember their names, but PK told me their stories. He was a super tour guide and gave me a lot of historical facts and cultural tips. He tried to teach me a little Korean, which probably would have gone better had I been running on more than four hours of sleep.

 

king who's name i don't know

 

 general who's name i also don't know

We walked around some more shops and eat lunch at a place called Pork Cutlet Restaurant, which had super tasty breaded pork cutlets. PK said it's his favorite in the city. We also ate these compressed rice cake things that had a spongey consistency. One was a little sweet and fruity and one was a little more savory. It's tough to describe them in my tired state, but PK said they are a traditional Korean snack.

We got some tea and then took the train to Paul's neighborhood where I caught a "limo bus" to the airport. I took it because PK thought I would get to see a little more of the city, but I fell asleep for most of it. Now I wait for my flight to Bangkok, which seems to be delayed. We were supposed to board ten minutes ago and as far as I can tell our entire flight crew is sitting two rows away from me in the waiting area.

Sorry for mistakes. I'm pretty tired.