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Anyone who knows me knows that my attention span for athletic events– any athletic events– is pretty short (read: nonexistent), and my understanding of athletics, even less (read: negative existent). My uncle loves to tell the story of the time when I sat by him at a Hartford Whaler’s hockey game and earnestly asked why a player was sent to the penalty box for “stick holding”… aren’t they all holding sticks? And it wasn’t but three or four years ago that I turned to my older sister while watching a Red Sox game from her couch to declare that the “back-catcher”‘s pants looked far too tight, and he should really loosen his belt. Once she understood that I was referring to the umpire, it was a hot second before all other members of my immediate family caught wind of my idiotic remark (thank you, texting). And, lest I forget… perhaps not just a testament to my lack of sports sense, but common sense too… the time, MANY YEARS AGO, when I asked how many quarters were in a football game. Good one, Christine.
But, the Olympics I can get behind. There’s something special about an event that can incite so much patriotism and camaraderie… even I have to jump on the bandwagon. Politics and religion and Sox versus Yankees and everything that we feud about are set aside, and so long as we’re all tuned into NBC, we’re all on the same team. Team USA. I always laugh at those guys who get so invested in their team that they won’t change their underwear or brush their teeth until the championship is through. Honestly, do you really think that your ugly, patchy, grody whiskers are so divine that you’ll squander a Superbowl victory if you so much as give ’em a trim? Yes, I do realize that this is often done in jest, but then I have to wonder: is it really? Some part of them, I think, really believes it.
Well, this is a shout out to all you grody bearded fellas with the foul-smelling breath! This is to say, that while I will continue to wash my underwear, I can kind of almost see where you’re coming from. Because when those Olympians stand up on that podium, the American flag triumphantly billowing behind them and the Star-Spangled Banner sounding out of my television set, a part of me truly believes that I have a claim to some of that gold hanging around their necks. And when they’re blubbering into the reporter’s microphone that “this one’s for you, America!”, some part of me really does swell with pride. You’re welcome, Michael Phelps! You are welcome.
So, yesterday morning I suddenly got very excited for the big event, and was quickly disappointed to find that the Internet had failed me. Alas, I’d been able to find next to zero coverage on YouTube so early in the morn, and no satisfactory streaming sites. I’m going to keep hunting, but, as chance would have it, I did manage front row seats to Suphan’s own little version of the Olympics this past week. And, while perhaps it was no London 2012 Opening Ceremony, the students at Sa-Nguan Ying did put on quite the impressive show!
Imagine the curiously Thai love-child of the Olympic Games and a U.S. Field Day, at a Lady Gaga concert, and that was the Sa’Nguan Ying Sport Festival. Schools and universities all over the country shut down for this annual spectacle of color, choreography, competition, and camaraderie. And it was awesome.
The students were divided into teams and assigned a color, around which the older kids led the littles in designing costumes, banners, chants, and cheers. On the first day of the Sport Festival, the kids paraded from the market in the city-center to school, banging drums, twirling batons, and pushing home-fashioned floats down the street as cars, motorbikes, and tuk-tuks weaved in and out. Yes, remember that this is Thailand, people… no streets were shut down in the making of this parade. Instead, the children and motorbikes shared the road peacefully as one.
They looked so grown up… It was hard to believe these are our kids!
Some of the older girls donned traditional Thai dress, poofy princess gowns, or Gaga-inspired warrior dresses, while the M1’s and 2’s charged into battle with cardboard swords and pompoms in hand.
Eyeballs and the Earths seemed to be reoccurring themes, but I’ll have to ask my kids for more on that on Monday.
After the parade, the students stood in groups behind their team banner while the National Anthem was played, opening remarks made, and the torch– yes, the torch– was lit.
Next came the cheerleading competition. But Thai cheerleading, I learned, is far more theatrical than any I’ve seen stateside. In a word, it was a production. While the kids danced and cheered in funky and elaborate costumes, equipped with sets and props, their color teammates in the stands had their own choreography to perform, waving flags and fans and pompoms, while others chanted and amp-ed up the crowd with their drum beats. Every kid in the school had a role to play, and each one carried out their duty with heaps of enthusiasm!
And, finally it was onto the football and basketball tourneys. On Day 2 of the Sport Festival I watched my M4 boys face my M5 boys in a bball match. Torn between my babies, I found myself cheering for both teams.
In the end, M4 was no match for Nai and his jump shot
Luckily, this won’t be a problem during the Olympics. The US has my allegiance, of course, but still, it doesn’t feel right rooting against Thailand, which has been my home for nearly 10 months. So, I’ve decided that since a Muay Thai gym here in town has welcomed the other farang and myself to work out with them for free, and because it is a super bad ass National Sport, Thailand can share my support in the Olympic boxing ring, and the U.S. can have the lot of it everywhere else.
And, of course, I’ll be cheering for Donn Cabral, the baby brother of an old high school friend, as he represents Team USA in the Steeplechase. If Michael Phelps and his 12,000 calorie diet can win this anti-athlete’s attention, you better believe that I’ll be tuning in to see Donny kill it on the track. Still, finding a place to watch the Games while I am weekending on the tropical island paradise of Ko Tao next Friday might prove difficult…
… I’m crying you a river as we speak. 🙂
Why, hello! It’s been a while, and quite a lot has happened. I’ve had difficulty as of late getting these first words down on the page. But, here they are! And the first hurdle is cleared.
The new school year is in full swing here at Sa-Nguan Ying. The Thai academic year runs from May until the end of February/ beginning of March with a mid-year break in October, and in the case of my super-ambitions English Program children, portions of the interim periods are dedicated to extra classes, summer school, and competitions. When I landed in Thailand in October, I arrived just in time to take on the 7th and 9th grade English classes with the start of the second semester. Now, it’s 8 months later and I’m kicking off a new academic year with the sophomore, junior, and senior classes.
The school year is off to a strong start, and I find myself much more at ease in the classroom than I did in my first years of teaching. I’ll go ahead and take a small share of the credit for that– my organization and time management, I think, have improved quite a lot– but the real delights in working at Sa-Nguan Ying are my wonderful, remarkably adorable students! Their joy is truly infectious and, working with these students, I don’t think anyone could help but camouflage right in in the Land of Smiles.
This past month, Sa-Nguan Ying students participated in Wai Kru celebrations. The hands held in lotus, or prayer stance, known as the “wai,” is the Thai sign of greeting, thanks, and respect. “Kru” is the word for teacher, and thus Wai Kru Day is Thailand’s national Teacher Appreciation Day. Teaching is a highly revered profession here in Thailand, and this holiday in which students show their respect and appreciation to their mentors is upheld in schools throughout the kingdom. Students recite a wai kru chant asking for blessings from their teachers and present them with ornate flower arrangements– the blossoms traditionally symbolizing intelligence, perseverance, and respect.
The day before Wai Kru, the students in each class at Sa-Nguan Ying collaborated to create two flower arrangements, which representatives from the classes carried in procession during the next day’s ceremony. They were presented in homage to some of the school’s most distinguished and long-serving professionals, then judged in categories of “beauty” and “creativity,” and displayed in the classrooms.
Pear, Aoy, View, and Boong representing their M2 (8th grade) classes
some of our M3 kids (9th grade)
Cee with the M6 “Angry Bird” arrangement
The Wai Kru ceremony was neat to see, but my real reason for writing today is to “wai” my super students, who make teaching at Sa-Nguan Ying such a pleasure everyday. Here’s why…
1) They’re super affectionate
Each morning I am greeted by so many bright and happy faces calling out “Hello teachaaaa!” from down the hall. My Thai students are all a bunch of little love-bugs, and their love is unconditional. The students love to give us hugs (refreshingly uncontroversial here), and every so often our days begin with tiny little Kaew with her squeaky little voice darting all around the office and distributing fragrant white flowers cupped in banana leaf vessels. A deep respect for elders and especially their caretakers has been ingrained in them from the time they were wee babes, and though I don’t know that this unconditional love is always warranted, I do revel it. Reading my students weekly journals, I once came upon an entry where the student wrote “Teacher is like second parent.” I can’t speak for Thai student-teacher relationships everywhere, but I really do think it is a special bond that the students and teachers share here in the English Program.
2) They’re super expressive
These kids are super expressive, and the sound effects they make crack me up! They have this way of saying “oooooOOOOOooooo,” in unison when they find something intriguing that is really quite uncanny. I don’t know if it is a sixth sense, or if they all just have lightening-fast reaction times, but a nanosecond after one kid starts to “oo…” they all join in. Believe me when I say that this choral “ooooOOOOoooo” is one of the cutest sounds known to man. Put on a movie for these kids, and I’ve won myself 50 min of free entertainment without so much as glancing at the TV. When my M4 (sophomore) kids completed their first unit test, we decided to take some time to chill out a bit by watching the movie “UP.” I wish I had a sound byte of this for you. The room was filled with ooooOOOOoooo’s and Ahhhhhhh’s and Eiiiiiiaaaa’s and Ay’s! Sometimes I thought they were going to jump right out of their chairs and lunge at the screen. These kids are super enthusiastic, and it makes teaching them super fun.
3) They’re super not angsty
Okay, so I know that teenagers are teenagers and they’ve all got these rampaging hormones inside of them that make them momentarily insane for 3-7 years, but these kids are so happy! Then again, you can never be too sure in Thailand, because the culture discourages negative displays of emotion, but they sure seem happy. And yes, there are some that are more well-adjusted than others, and the occasional “Eeyore” that sits alone and rarely cracks a smile, but the angsty-years just don’t seem to be as much of a rite of passage here.
4) They’re super singers
My students love to sing. As a rule, Americans are exponentially more loud and boisterous than Thai folk… as a trend, obnoxiously so. But in this country, when it comes time to set up the microphone and let out your inner-rock star, nobody’s putting Baby in a corner. Uninhibited though they may be in so many ways, most people I know from home at least need some liquid courage before they’ll take to the karaoke stage, and that’s the brave ones. But in Thailand a party isn’t a party without karaoke, whether it is set up in a VIP room at a restaurant or hotel or out of the back of a pick-up truck. My students love to sing, and some of their (and my!) favorite lessons are when I bring in an English song for them to listen to, filling in the missing words on their lyric sheets by applying our new grammar rules or vocabulary words. After we listen, it’s time to stand up and sing, and most of them are not shy to belt out the lyrics!
5) They’re super sanook maak loi
That is, very fun to the extreme. And pretty gung-ho about whatever they’re asked to do, so long as there is a steady influx of fun. My Thai students have taught me to be less serious in the classroom. I’ve learned that in teaching language learners, my number one goal should be to encourage them to enjoy English class. If they feel comfortable in my class, they’ll feel more comfortable practicing their English and hopefully more inclined to use it outside of class. Fun, or “sanook,” is a big part of Thai culture– go “sanook” or go home, one might say. And these kids work so hard– attending extra classes after school hours and weekend enrichment courses as well… they get so excited when they get to let their hair down. That is not to say that we play games everyday, but we’re all around a more happy and productive whole when the fun keeps flowing. Of course, this is true of my students in the States, too, but somehow working with my Thai kids has really driven this lesson home for me. The kids are gung-ho about anything with an element of sanook, and they are especially enthusiastic when there are Reeses Peanut Butter Cups at stake. When these kids get competitive, man do they get competitive!
All in all, my experiences at Sa-Nguan Ying have been very positive. It isn’t always easy to be working in the education system of such a foreign culture– quite a few of the practices that I’ve encountered here have felt counter-intuitive to me. And it is the same in the States– there is so much “fluff” that can cloud your vision and make you lose sight of the main goal. But whenever I’ve felt frustrated with the system, I have only to think about my wonderful, narak-ah kids and none of the rest matters.
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…)
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.
Chronicles of a Travel-Bug 
