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When we last saw our hero, she was escaping her imprisonment in a terribly dangerous Thai dungeon, then valiantly defeating the nefarious Suphan dragon in battle. No jail cell was too secure, no nemesis too strong, no opponent any match for her bravery, tenacity, and sharp-wit!
And then came this guy:
Monkey face-off
And this guy:
deranged monkey; photo (c) Clare McLaine
And these guys:
tug-of-war
AHHHHHHHHHHHH!
wah-waaahhhh…
Welcome to Lopburi. The monkeys run this city and they are not shy to let you know who’s boss. In the days leading up to our Lopburi weekend (purposefully coinciding with the city’s annual Monkey Festival) my friends were all expressing their apprehensions about visiting the macaques that populate this city and their anxiety about rabies. But me? Oh no! I wasn’t scared. Scared of getting my camera swiped by a monkey, maybe, but not scared of getting bitten. Big hero… remember? And so, like so many other heroes (Hercules, Anakin Skywalker…. I count myself in the same ranks as these men), my hubris was my flaw. Sure enough, the Lopburi monkeys put me in my place.
Walking around Lopburi was a lot like being inside of the movie Jumanji, but instead of 1990’s computer animation, these monkeys were real. Lopburi is over 1000 years old, and ancient temple and palace ruins dating back to the city’s prominence in Khmer and Ayutthayan empires are scattered throughout the city, towering proudly over modern urban architecture, traffic lights, and food markets with the wisdom of the ages. Years ago, I imagine that kings and monks tread these grounds, but now it is the monkeys that reign over these ruins. And monkeys there are… by the hundreds.
Katrina, Clare, and I woke up early on our first morning in Lopburi, eager to see what the city was all about. Katrina is my super quirky, super awesome friend from our orientation week in Bangkok, and by sweet coincidence I ran into her this weekend en route to Lopburi. The first monkey we saw was a thrill! Clare spotted it from down the street and Katrina scrambled to get her camera out but, alas, that sly little sonuva-monkey slipped away from view before she could get her shot. The novelty quickly wore off, though, because as we got closer to the Phra Prang Sam Yot (a temple from the Khmer ages) we found that they were all over the place: scaling buildings,
…. perched on the power lines,
… chilling in truck beds,
… stopping to enjoy a cool and refreshing beverage,
… and swinging- yes, swinging- through the streets on broken power lines.
And our hero cowered in terror. Ohhh, the shame! I was focusing on my camera viewfinder, trying to capture the monkey mayhem that surrounded me, when all of the sudden I felt a cold pressure on my foot. I looked down and there was a little monkey, paw outstretched, staring right back up at me, as if to say “I am climbing up your leg right now whether you like it or not, so you better like it.” The moment our eyes met I shrieked and jumped about three feet in the air. I don’t think that the monkey appreciated this, because he bared his teeth at me and his posture took on something of a fighting stance, and that’s when our big hero started running down the street, away from Mr. Monkey. But Mr. Monkey seemed to take this as an invitation, so Mr. Monkey and friends started chasing after.
Our hero escaped, unscathed except for her ego. Clare and Katrina were cracking up behind me. I was laughing too, of course, and I imagine that plenty of Thai people who witnessed this scene while passing in their cars and motorbikes probably got a good chuckle out of it, as well.
Once I had recovered enough from this initial scare, we went on to Phra Prang Sam Yot to see the monkey-infested ruins. If the streets of Lopburi were like Jumanji, visiting the temple was like stumbling upon King Louie and his gang from The Jungle Book (if you aren’t sure what I mean scroll to the bottom of this post). Monkeys are everywhere. Exploring the ancient temple, Clare, Katrina, and I were all nervous and jumpy, trying to avoid becoming jungle gyms to potentially diseased primates. Looking back, I am really rather embarrassed by how much anxiety I felt, but every time I turned around there was another monkey around me. And some of them did look rather… deranged. We were given sticks to shoo them away, but the monkeys would often grab onto these and try to steal them or climb up them instead.
mid-day nap time
Later that night, we relaxed our nerves by frolicking in fields of sunflowers and exploring some monkey-free ruins– free to wander and admire the architecture without anxiety about the furry demons. But the next day it was time to face my fears. Sunday was the Lopburi Monkey Festival, an event held on the last weekend of each November to thank the monkeys for bringing prosperity to Lopburi. A lavish feast is laid out and the little simians are free to indulge to their furry-hearts’ content. The banquet tables were unreal. Tables upon tables of food in bright colors and beautiful designs. It was a spread fit for a king, but to be demolished by a community of monkeys.
To be honest, the banquet was a bit of a disappointment. I had watched YouTube videos of the Monkey Festival and arrived Sunday morning expecting the monkeys to ravage the feast. And I guess this is what they normally do, but this year they had either learned some table manners or were just not that hungry. The banquet tables were all together on one side of the temple, but the monkeys didn’t really attack until the festival staff had divided them up and spread them out around the ruins. They still went nuts, but it wasn’t quite the chaotic scene I was hoping to see.
The real excitement of the festival was my second chance with the monkeys. Having been complete wussies the first time around, Clare and I made a pact that we would both have monkeys climb on us this time. When that first monkey came around and grabbed hold of my dangling tie-dyed gaucho pants, I took a deep breath, braced myself, and let the monkey have his way with me. And before I knew it, I had four on me at once– gnawing at my beaded bracelet, climbing up my purse, grabbing for my water bottle, rummaging through my hair. It was awesome. But also disgusting, and I jumped in the shower to scrub every inch of my body the moment I got back to the guesthouse. 🙂
(And here’s King Louie…)
Umm… no. I have not been passing time in Thailand playing fantasy nerd games. This blog entry will recount the epic tale of my escape from a Thai dungeon, and my heroic encounter with the infamous Suphan dragon. All in a weekend’s work, my friends. All in a weekend’s work.
My story (dramatic pause) begins here…
Clare and I had big plans for Bangkok last weekend. Well… that’s not entirely true. Plan. We had one big plan. And that was food. Ally and Clare (you know Ally and Clare– my seasoned-Suphan friends who I refer to in just about every entry because they have been my guiding lights) have made it clear that there is one real motivation for a Bangkok weekend, and that is to eat foreign food. Don’t get me wrong– I think I’ve made it clear that Thai food is da bomb, but sometimes you just want to gorge yourself on delicious cheese and bread and other wonderful goodies that the Thais just don’t seem to understand. So Mexican food and Western-style bagel sandwiches was the plan… plus a jazz club and temple, you know- while we digest.
But, alas, the plan did not come to fruition. On Friday afternoon, mere hours before our intended departure, we heard word that the commute to Bangkok might be much longer than expected. The flooding is under control enough that the highway to Bangkok has been opened, but people have supposedly been moving the sandbags lining the highway because their homes are still underwater. Can’t say I blame them. If my house were flooded and its drainage was being sacrificed so that foreigners like me could satisfy their cravings for enchiladas, I’d be angry too.
But, there was a perfectly good weekend in front of us yet, and still so much Thailand to be explored! And, what is Thailand if not a chance for adventure? Clare and I set our dreams of cheese aside and went to the bus station without a plan or destination to speak of. After a quick assessment of our options, we boarded a bus bound for Saraburi.
Saraburi. It was about 3 hours on the bus to reach the province’s main city, during which we scavenged my Lonely Planet guide for some travel advice only to find that, like Suphan, Saraburi is a bit too off-the-beaten-track for inclusion in the L.P. This was okay– I’m cool with finding my own way, and luckily we had Clare’s fine Thai language skills to help us along. The problem is that no Lonely Planet-mention means no hostel listings, and arriving in a strange city around 8:30 pm, we were keen to find ourselves a place to stay as quickly as possible.
Which brings us to the “dungeon.” Upon arriving in Saraburi, we asked the first person we saw where to find a hotel, and he pointed to the “Saraburi Hotel,” right across the street. We booked a room and were led up an elevator with missing buttons and down a dingy white-turned-grey hallway with exposed piping and chipped paint. Imagine an old, abandoned 1960’s psychiatric institution. The hospital from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but how it would look now, comes to mind. And inside our room, Clare said she felt like she was contracting an STI via osmosis. We came to know it as the dungeon, and we vowed to find a better spot first thing the next morning.
Later that night, as we wandered back from exploring the Saraburi night market and sharing a dinner of plaa yung (grilled fish), we realized that we weren’t sure of the way back to the hotel. When Clare asked a Saraburian, we were shocked and appalled to hear them say that the Saraburi Hotel was a very bad place for us to stay. When we “finally” arrived “home,” we barricaded ourselves inside the room, just in case.
The door still opens to the outside, so it wasn't much of a barricade, but at least any potential harm-doers would make a noisy entrance.
But don’t worry, Mom… I never actually felt threatened. It was more amusing than anything else. And next time I will shop around before settling myself into a Thai dungeon for the night.
True to our promise, we woke up early the next morning to move the furniture back into place and break out of the dungeon, and found our way to a much more agreeable housing arrangement. Here, the hotel receptionists pointed us in the direction of Wat Prae Phuttabat, about 40 kilometers outside of the city. Prae Phuttabat was absolutely stunning, and housed a Buddha footprint around which Thai people knelt to deposit coins, flowers, and small bits of white paper, the significance of which I am still uncertain. I had a delightful afternoon wandering the temple grounds and interacting with some friendly temple staff who enthusiastically led me around the shrines, miming and modeling to guide me in paying my respects to the various statues. One woman also read my fortune to me, but seeing as it was in Thai, the future remains as much a mystery as ever.
My temple friend with the laughing Buddha-babies
While I had visited the beautiful Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok’s Grand Palace, Wat Prae Phuttabat wasn’t nearly as tourist-ridden, and most of its visitors seemed to be worshipers. I loved the peaceful and spiritual energy that emanated from this beautiful temple.
Later that night, Clare and I hit the town for SARABURI PUB CRAWL 2554 woooooooooooo (according to the Thai calendar, it is the year 2554 right now, btw. And let me tell you, the future is looking grand!)!!!!!!!! We went to three bars and ordered a Leo and a bar snack at each one, and just narrowly avoided Typhoid fever when we discovered one pork dish to be exceptionally rare. Our Saraburi weekend was officially deemed a success having hung out with a fun group of locales at our final stop of the night.
The next morning, after a glorious night’s sleep in a hotel room that didn’t require fortification, we left Saraburi and returned home to Suphan. But the story doesn’t end here. Oh, no. Recall that the title of this post is “Dungeons and Dragons,” and our protagonist has yet to come face-to-face with the Suphan dragon. Well, wait no longer… here she is:
I knocked that smile off her face real quick
Meet the Suphan dragon, also known as the Dragon Descendents Museum. She resides in Suphanburi’s own little Chinatown and I rounded out my weekend by paying her a visit. Whoops… cough cough… I mean slaying her. It is a random and quirky little pocket of Suphan, this Chinatown. I wandered around (you know, in search of my foe), but didn’t go into the museum because, first of all, it means voluntarily entering a dragon’s belly (and every good hero knows that that’s a stupid idea), and second, because it is something like a 500 baht entry fee (about 15 USD), and that is just absurd.
Tomorrow I’m off to Lopburi for the annual monkey festival. Tune in next time to read about my battle with the ravenous monkeys that live among the ruins of this ancient city. That’s right– no villian is too large nor small for this hero.
For now, I am on my way to a “Thanksgiving dinner” of burgers and pasta salad with my fellow foreign teachers. I may not have turkey, but I have plenty to be thankful for. A very happy Thanksgiving to all of you. Eat an extra helping of mashed potatoes for me, please!
The Thai teachers have some sort of mystery meeting today (presumably professional development). In the United States when this happens, the students get a half day while the teachers stay late and discuss how to make their goals SMARTERR. In Thailand (at least at Sa-Nguan Ying), the students stick around until the end of the day to clean the school until it shines like the top of the Chrysler Building. Haha… what a country this is!
I owe you the deets on the Sa-Nguan Ying School! I feel bad that I haven’t written about teaching yet, but I got started with my little blog guy a bit late, and the good times just keep a-rolling… it is hard for me to catch up! I’m working on it, though. Here’s a brief (?) portrait of my life and times at Sa-Nguan Ying School:
> I work in the Sa-Nguan Ying English Program. The English Program is a high track division of the Sa-Nguan Ying School in which the students are taught all of their subjects in English (except for Thai and Chinese, of course). Students have to place into the school, and then must maintain a 75% in all of their classes in order to stick around.
> I teach Mattium 1 and 3 in the English Program; roughly equivalent to grades 7 and 9 in the United States. Actually, I team-teach with my friend Clare. Because it is an intensive English program, the director of the EP program has us double-teaming the kids with two foreign teachers in each English language classroom. Thus, the kids get more attention and Clare and I get to share the responsibility of planning and delivering lessons. It makes for a much easier work-load than many of our teacher friends throughout Thailand and even in the normal track of Sa-Nguan Ying; and certainly loads lighter than my preparation as a teacher in the United States. On the other hand, as teachers in the English Program we also get much less holiday time and are expected to work late during English camps and test preparation periods.
I feel very lucky to be in the Sa-Nguan Ying EP– the kids are awesome, my colleagues are all so friendly and welcoming. I am also super grateful to be teaching with Clare. We make a good team, and I think that observing her work with the Thai students is helping me to improve my own teaching, specifically my pacing in the classroom. We also get to bounce ideas and jump in when the other is having difficulty explaining a tricky concept. Team-teaching is where it’s at!
>The students here are great. They are all so sweet and bright. Standing in front of a classroom full of their cheerful faces leaves no mystery why Thailand is known as “The Land of Smiles.” Clare and I have one exceptionally cute group of M-3’s who have a penchant for breaking out into song. On our first day in class, they serenaded us with some lines from a Bruno Mars song. That’s another reason why I’m digging this team-teaching. Every teacher has those moments in the classroom when a kid does something utterly ridiculous or makes a comment that comes straight out of left field and you just wish that there was another adult in the room who you could turn to and laugh or roll your eyes with. When the M-3’s break off in a chorus of “Just the Way You Are,” (or whatever the song of the moment is), Clare and I gape at one another from across the room, our laughter saying, “Is this really happening right now?”
> I’ve got a real gem of a roster. Thais are all given nicknames by their parents, and this is usually the name they go by. Many parents choose English words for nicknames, so my roster resembles a bake shop, with a Donut, a Cake, a Mint, a Cherry, and two Pears. I’ve also got an Atom, Rum, Bam Bam, Go-Go, and the sweetest, most smiley little M-1 girl named Gun. And, to this motley crew of pastries, particles, and pistols, I am “Teacher Christine.” Or, more accurately, “Teachaaa Kiisstiiine!”
It is only in the past week, though, that I’ve really begun to master the names of the M-3 classes (I still have a ways to go with my M-1’s who we meet with fewer times each week). I don’t mean to play into stereotypes (but I totally am going to)… they all look the same! Well, that’s not true at all, but they do all wear uniforms and have the EXACT SAME HAIRCUT! There is a regulation length and style, and if their cut isn’t uniform they’ll be sent right down to the teachers’ room where one of my colleagues will take out a pair of scissors and chop chop chop before sending them right on back to class. It’s made it a real challenge to learn names!
students' shoes outside classroom
> Finally, I teach barefoot! Feet are considered to be the lowest part of the body and very dirty, so we’re to leave our shoes in the hallway outside of the English Program office and work in our bare feet all day long. Teaching in Massachusetts, I’d often take my shoes off underneath my desk when I was alone in my classroom, and then scramble to put them on when someone unexpectedly showed up. Now, I keep having momentary brain-lapses where I feel terribly unprofessional for forgetting my shoes. Then, I remember that I’m just following Thai custom and I feel relieved and relaxed in my shoeless feet.
- SY students at Friday morning assembly
Sa-Nguan Ying is a good place. It’s got good energy. The entire SY community has welcomed myself and the other new teachers with open-arms. Last Friday a school-wide assembly was held during which we were presented with bouquets of baby roses, and on Monday we were the guests of honor at an English Program dinner, where we were again introduced and then asked to entertain the room in a karaoke song of our choosing. Bohemian Rhapsody is wayyyyy too long a song to sing in front of a large room of non-English speaking strangers, by the way. Should’ve had hindsight. But sing, we did, and we kept on fighting until the end… of that very… slow… 5 minutes and 55 seconds.
EP karaoke night is supposedly a common occurrence, though. I’ll knock their shoeless-socks off next time with the Barbie Girl song or My Heart Will Go On, or another hit the Thais love!
I guess the slide show was more entertaining than our Queen cover.
View of the River Khwae from the VN Guesthouse hostel
I’m sitting on the porch at my bungalow-style hostel along the River Khwae (Kwai), enjoying a peaceful Sunday morning in Kanchanaburi. I feel a small amount of shame allowing myself a lazy Sunday morning– we’ll be catching a bus back to Suphan in just a few hours and there is still so much that I want to see here. But the weekend was non-stop action up until now, and I remind myself that I live here now– there is plenty of time to explore Kanchana in the future.
Besides, it is Loi Krathong! My entire weekend has been centered around the glorification of water, and the serenity of the morning on the River Khwae seems a fitting bookend to this beautiful holiday. Loi Krathong is celebrated on the first full moon of the 12th lunar month of the Thai calendar. Forgive me if anyone out there has a better handle on this than I do, but I’ve tried to put the pieces together…
On the main day of Loi Krathong, the Thai people handcraft their “krathongs,”– small boats constructed from a slice of banana tree and folded banana leaves, decorated with flowers, candles, and sticks of incense– and these krathongs are set afloat on rivers, ponds, lakes or at sea; a gesture meant to give thanks to the river goddess and beg apologies for polluting her precious gift. Yes, many have pointed out the irony of giving thanks to the water right now, with so much of Thailand submerged beneath it. The other blatant irony is that they apologize for abusing the waters by polluting them more, though people are encouraged to build environmentally conscious krathongs.
Loi Krathong also coincides with another festival originating from the northern provinces and the ancient Lanna Thai Kingdom called “Yi-Peng.” Sky lanterns made from rice paper are lit and released to dance upwards through the night sky as an offering to the Lord Buddha. In modern Thailand, the traditions of Loi Krathong and Yi-Peng have merged to become one beautiful, bright celebration of spirituality in water and in light.
Yi-Peng festival in Chiang Mai (flickr.com)
The most well-known display takes place in Chiang Mai, as thousands of Thais and tourists flock to the northern city to see the sky and water ablaze with spellbinding candlelight. Before arriving in Thailand, I naively assumed I’d be able to make it to Chiang Mai this Loi Krathong to see the magic firsthand; but, alas, the festival took place mid-week, and Chiang Mai is quite a hike from Suphan. And so, this past Thursday, myself and a few other foreign teacher friends hailed a tuk tuk for a ride to the Suan Nam River to participate in Suphan’s observance of Loi Krathong.
When we arrived at Suam Nam around 7pm no one was setting their lanterns out yet, so we killed time walking around the “Siam Carnival Funfair,”, and nearly killed ourselves by purchasing tickets for the Tagada (dum dum dum). There are many cases in which we refer to Thai laws as “suggestions,” driving on the correct side of the road, for example, or stopping at red lights. The Thais take a much more… how should I say this?… “relaxed” approach in their regard of safety. The Tagada was a prime example of this. It would have never been legal in the U.S. It was a flat-bottomed bowl of a carnival ride that spun and rocked and gyrated and bounced its loose contents (read: my friends and I) while we held white-knuckled death grips to its *metal* railings to avoid being flown from our seats. The general consensus was that it seemed a lot more fun in theory than in practice, as we all exited the ride with sore arms and scrambled brains. Below is my friend Kaitlin showing off her Tagada battle wound:
After the Tagada had had its way with us, we went down to the water to celebrate Loi Kratong and were greeted by the one of the most stunningly bewitching scenes I have ever witnessed. The entire experience of Loi Kratong and Yi-Peng was like something out of a dream. Shadows of families gathered in circles around paper sky lanterns, only their faces lit up in the soft glow of their lantern’s light, as each person held to the rim and watched it inflate until the time of release. Friends and lovers knelt together at the river’s edge as they pushed their krathongs away from shore, splashing water after them to encourage a successful voyage. My friend Sam, with the help of her students, had made her own krathong at school, so we all looked on as she lit the candle and sent her offering out to the spirit of the water, then we bought sky lanterns and watched them soar up to the heavens.
If only words could do justice. I was entranced. There was candlelight, everywhere. Flying through the sky, reflecting on the water. And everywhere you turned you could see other lanterns, far off in the distance, flying above some other festival somewhere else. Families were camped out on picnic blankets as the kids waved sparklers through the air. It was so, so beautiful. And while I still do hope to make it to Chiang Mai someday, there was something so personal and so spiritual about Loi Krathong in Suphan.
The next afternoon, after the last bell rang to announce the end of school (which I still need to, and will very soon, tell you about), I caught a bus out of Suphan with a group of teacher friends, bound for the province of Kanchanaburi. If there is a limit for the amount of beauty that one person is allowed to experience in their lifetime, then I think I may have had my share in just these past few days. Kanchanaburi is a popular travel destination in central Thailand, with easy access to limestone caves, forests, and wildlife, but our main objective on this particular trip was to visit the Erawan Falls.
We arrived at the park around noon and left a little after 4pm. It was quite a long and surprisingly strenuous trek up to the highest level of the falls, but we still had plenty of time to swim, take photographs, do some *minor* spelunking, and visit with some monkeys chilling in the branches on the way up.
My first time seeing monkeys in the wild!
But it was truly Erawan that stole the show. Talk about glorification of water! Erawan is a seven-tiered waterfall named for its top level, which supposedly bears a resemblance to the three-headed elephant of Hindu mythology, though I failed to see the likeness. Elephant or not, the falls were absolutely majestic. Each tier was more awesome than the last, and the water spilled into pools of aqua so crystal-clear you could see straight to the bottom, and all of the little fishies in between.
Perched on a rock on the 7th tier
On the hike up to the different levels of the falls, I was intrigued by a number of large tree trunks adorned in brightly colored cloth and traditional Thai dress. After a short stint on Google, I’ve learned that these are meant to represent spirit houses. The Thais are traditionally animistic, so the physical and the spiritual are intertwined. Spirits inhabit all people and things, and as we learned during our teachers’ orientation as our “village elders” welcomed us by tying thin white strings around our wrists so that our “khwans,” or inner spirits, wouldn’t be scared away, these spirits must be cared for. In Thailand nearly every building and home has a spirit house on its property– a shrine and shelter for the protective spirit of the place. These spirit houses are usually small huts set upon alters and surrounded with offerings to appease the spirit, but in the park forests they consisted of cloth tied around trees… perhaps, again, to hold the khwan inside.
The clothed trees of Erawan were home to the same spirit of the water that I had expressed gratitude to at Loi Krathong two days earlier, and in seeing the magnificent falls of Erawan my gratitude to these spirits is only deepened.
When I found out I’d be teaching in Suphanburi, I was thrilled. But thrilled not so much because I was placed in Suphan (read: supan)– thrilled because I had a job. Yeah yeah yeah, I know… all of this talk about voyages and sailors and the south seas yadda yadda yadda (I’m on a boat mother****** don’t you ever forget)… but a girl still needs to make a living!
So I was thrilled. Thrilled to have a job secured and to know that my adventure was underway. But Suphanburi? I had never heard of Suphanburi, nor had my beloved Lonely Planet apparently, because no where in the Thailand guide book or website was it mentioned. I hoped this meant that I’d have a truly authentic Thai experience– not one where I could easily run off to the nearest hostel to party with backpackers and avoid culture shock. But on the other hand, maybe this would mean boredom.
While it is true that Suphanburi has got little in the way of tourist attractions, it has got wonderfully warm people, awesome food (did I mention that the food here is great?), and a few little charmers that the Thais sure love, even if the backpackers don’t come a-running. Because the flooding has made travel a challenge, I took the opportunity to spend this past weekend in Suphan and see just what my little province had to offer. Here’s the play-by-play:
On Friday night, after a delicious dinner at Som Tam Sawng Nuu (Ally’s boyfriend’s awesome restaurant) all of us farangs gathered together for a lively, if musically challenged, karaoke sesh in a swanky private room at a nearby hotel. You’ll notice that the boys were less than keen on Frankie Valli. Other hits of the night included a smashing duet of “My Heart Will Go On,” a couple Spice Girls’ jams, and my personal favorite, Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch.”
I spent Saturday doing some errands and studying Thai, and then around dinner time when no one seemed to be around I put on my brave face and ventured off on my own to Cafe Art, a chill and artsy bar in Suphan. Turns out you’re much more approachable when you are not traveling as a giant mass of foreigners. By the end of the night I had two new boyfriends. Or so they thought… I think I’ve squashed that theory since. One of them plays for the Suphanburi football team; you know… local celebrity… nbd. But the real point of this story is that their names are Tony and Bernard. Tony and Bernard(o)! I think they should rumble. Anyone? Anyone? (That was one for the musical theatre junkies out there)
Sunday was super-tourist day! We set out at 8am with a car and van-full of foreigners to see the sights of Suphan…
First stop was the 100-year old Sam Chuk market, which had everything from food to clothes to scary angry baby dolls. The market wasn’t nearly as big as the Chatuchak in Bangkok but it was certainly friendlier, and I didn’t have to worry about exercising my terrible negotiation skills because the vendors here gave us the same prices that their Thai customers got, rather than the special “foreigner price.”
From there we went to the aquarium where, turns out, I was the main attraction. I guess that sharks and crocodiles and people dressed up in giant Nemo costumes have got nothing on a curly-haired white chick!
photo cred to Sam Brandolini
Having gotten our fill of paparazzi shots and men tempting fate by sticking their heads in croc-chompers, we went on to Bungchawak Zoo where I got to chill with ice-cream eating orangutangs, a couple of gorgeous giraffes, and a bear with an afro. Best of all, I got to BOTTLE FEED A BABY TIGER CUB! Look how friggin’ precious he is! Just look at that FACE!!! And the pawssssss!!!!!!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
By the time we piled back into the van and drove away from our adorable new feline friends, we were completely exhausted, but there was still one more stop to go on this epic Tour du Suphan. I fell asleep during the car ride and was shaken awake by Clare so not to miss the late afternoon view of the largest Buddha statue in all of Thailand, towering over the horizon. This Buddha wasn’t actually in Suphan, but right over the boarder into the neighboring province of Ang Thong. Upon arriving, we were welcomed by a mirror-lined temple that literally glittered, and leading up to the Buddha we explored a garden filled with monk statues and an exceptionally crude and gory depiction of hell. We arrived just shortly before closing time, so I missed my shot to get up close and personal with the big guy, but he was pretty spectacular nonetheless.
So this is where I live! It is a bit off the beaten track but it’s got some real personality. Perhaps by next October Lonely Planet will want to hire me as their new Suphan-specialist??? 🙂
Coming soon: teaching in the Sa-Nguan Ying English Program, the Loi Krathong festival, and my trip to a Thai hospital (much less dramatic than it sounds)
On my second night in Suphanburi, myself and the five other new foreign teachers at Sa-Nguanying School went to dinner with our new friend Clare at “the restaurant near Nasa Mall, as we have come to call it. Clare is a cool 22 year old Aussie chick who visited Sa-Nguan Ying on high school exchange years ago and, upon completing university, returned from her home in Tasmania to teach for a year at the same school she had once attended as a student. Now that Clare and an American teacher, Ally, have been here for a while (6 months and two years respectively), they’ve graciously taken the lot of us under their wings to show us the ins-and-outs of Suphan and all of their favorite hot spots.
Our first night in Suphan was a wash after the one and a half hour ride from Bangkok turned into a tolerable three and quickly from three into a painful five plus. Still, I shouldn’t complain. Five hours was nothing compared to the 14 that some of our fellow teachers in other parts of the country had to endure to bypass the flooding. And so, on our second night in town, Clare took us out to a celebratory feast at the restaurant near Nasa Mall.
And man, does Suphanburi know how to do food! Clare asked if we’d be bothered if she ordered on behalf of the table, and we all eagerly obliged her with the responsibility; the bunch of us having spent the past week wandering up to random Bangkok food vendors and motioning uncertainly for “neung” (one) of whatever they were dishing out to the locals. When our food arrived, our table was transformed into heaven. Chicken in a creamy red curry sauce, Thai cashew chicken, and a completely unreal fried catfish called yum plaa dook fuu. A week later, I still dream about this catfish, and am entirely perplexed by how it is made. I’ve settled on the belief that it was conjured by some culinary magician at the restaurant near Nasa Mall, because the only way I can think to describe its taste and texture would be to ask you to imagine eating a deep-fried cloud.
We all tucked in and enjoyed our Thai feast, passing around the plates in true Thai style, tasting a bit of this and a bit of that. I went back in for seconds on the cloud, of course. Partway through our painfully long van ride from Bangkok, we had broke bread with our school coordinators in the same fashion, and each time our posse of foreign teachers has gone to dinner (dinners out in Thailand costing about 3 USD a head including beverages, mind you) its been the same. It’s great because I usually want to try everybody’s everything anyways. And all along, dinner becomes a Thai lesson. We ask Ally and Clare what to call this? How do I ask for that? Pointing all around the table and prompting our new friends/ walking dictionaries to identify everything that we think we might want to order for ourselves later on. It makes for a delicious little study session!
Thai is a tough language, and the experience of learning it is worlds apart from my experiences with Spanish. Everything is different. It contains 44 consonants and 5 phonemic tones: mid, low, falling, high, and rising. The real trick is the tones. Once I finally commit a word to memory, I might repeat it ten times and a Thai person still will not understand me because my voice rose when it was supposed to fall. The word “suay,” for example. If you pronounce it with a rising pitch on the “ay,” it means beautiful. If you say it at mid-tone it means ugly or unfortunate. Similarly, a famous Thai tongue twister “mai – mai – mai – mai- mai” (high – low – falling – falling – high) translates to “new wood doesn’t burn, does it?” And I’ve been warned that the Thai word for banana is easily mistaken for the word for male genitalia, and a Westerner would do best to avoid saying it altogether.
Small bites. Little family style tapas. Before coming here, I felt no urgency to learn the language. I practiced on Rosetta Stone a bit, but I never really committed and I didn’t get much further than learning some animals and a few prepositional phrases. Now that I am here in Suphan where the only English speakers are the farangs (foreigners), I am overwhelmed. I want so badly to be able to communicate like Clare or Ally, but I know I need to start small. And so, I am starting with food. What better motivation for a girl who loves to eat? I carry my little leather “nomad” journal around with me everywhere I go and write down the meanings of everything delicious… everything aroi maak. I still can’t ask for a toilet plunger, as would have been useful the other day when I was playing charades at the reception desk of my apartment building, but I can eat plenty. It is amazing how fun and… ahem… digestible a new language becomes when you know your efforts will be rewarded with delicious cloud-like goodness.
Chronicles of a Travel-Bug 
