Sensitive Stomach: Time to Teach

     Well hello again to anyone surfin the big waves of that even bigger internet ocean to my little secluded cove here in cyber-Thailand. This last week I had the misfortune of coming to know just what others mean when they say be careful with the food in other countries. The oddest (and in one particular way STUPIDEST) thing of it all is that it came from a rather unlikely source and clearly could have been avoided if a particular individual.... this guy writing you all.... would have heeded the advice of his oh so loving girlfriend, who took care of him all the while anyway.

     Just to clear up any worries for would be travelers about the food here I think I owe a small explanation. Ryoko often brings some food home from her school where she works. It's a Japanese school and generally has quite good meals. At the end of the day, extra food is bagged up for any teachers that wish to bring it home. That on its own, would have been fine... I however thought it might still be okay several days after the initial preparation. It had been refrigerated, but apparently in areas of the world where preservatives are used less frequently, a few days is a few too many. To make it worse, Ryoko tried one little bite and said, "No, I think it tastes funny..." Now, I rarely break out the "stupid" word... but I took a sniff and indicated no real problem, and proceeded to eat. It wasn't a whole lot, but it was too much. A few hours later, my intestines worked themselves into a knot for the following 24 hours (with another 14 hour echo).... so I'm going to have to play the stupid card on that guy who seems to follow me around in all those mirrors....

A view of a small part of city... from someplace still in the city, out of the center.

     On the more positive side, I learned another life lesson. It struck me this week that before now, I've always eaten like a guy who's never been made sick by what he eats... imagine that.

    Continuing on the positive side, Ryoko and I moved into an apartment. We are now living with an interesting, friendly, lively and intelligent individual who is also from Japan. He's working for a Japanese company in Thailand. They do something along the lines of providing internet and digital TV for Japanese expats who live and work here. His company recently moved him into a fairly large apartment. We actually met him a little over a month ago in the very first hostel Ryoko and I stayed at when we arrived. As we were looking for a place these days and he some roommates, we managed to work something out. Our location is just a short walk from the BTS (a local sky train) which can drop me off not too far from where I work. Ryoko takes it a few stops in the other direction each day to find herself in a similar situation, and Moro actually works in the building where we live so it's pretty nice for all three of us.

     Also, this week I started work. The school is quite large with around 1700 to 2000 students. The exact number has not been expressed to me so that estimation is based on a rough assessment made during the morning assembly. Each day all the students sit in the main open corridor before the day begins. Its rather impressive to see them all lined up and seated out in the open. Uniforms are the policy here and also there are strict regulations on hair length for students. Guys must keep there hair no longer than an inch or so max, certainly not over their ears. Girls must maintain their hair somewhere between the bottom of their ears and their shoulders. (I've been making sure to keep mine tied up close to my head for these first few days and nothing has been mentioned to me directly as of yet.) The hair situation of the students creates a unique affect while observering them from near by, a large see of bobbing hair and heads, all of the same color and length. Teachers then pace the rows, taking morning attendance, and occasionally whacking any students who are "out of line".

     There are a total of five foreign English teachers, all guys. It's a little like a foreign boys club in the middle of a Thai ocean. In the foreign language teacher's room, there's the five of us native speakers and three Thai teachers. Our desks are pushed together, facing each other, conference style and we all have 2-3 hours between classes each day so there are some interesting conversations that go on during the breaks. Everyone is a character and it's quite fun to see how the dynamics change as the cast shifts in and out. It makes me a bit curious to know what's going on when I'm not around, but some things are better left unknown.

     Anyway, this will be a pretty regular situation for me over the next time period so I'll stop here for today. Over the coming months, I'm sure there will be plenty of time to get to know these guys, the other teachers, my students and the sort, with plenty of anecdotes to follow. Thank you again for joining me here. In the near future I'll break out my camera at school to see if I can't capture what there is to see. I'd like to keep a low profile for a bit before I become a full time photographer at work. There is very little direct oversight for us, but either way, it's always good to get a feel for a place before stepping on too many toes. My own are sore enough from my poor steppin' this week, not to mention my stomach..... So as I mentioned before, thank you for reading along and I look forward to hearing from you soon!

Playing in Penang, Malaysia

     Welcome back everyone. I apologize for the time between my posts. I still have a bit of catching up to do but as of late I've been pretty busy. Recently I became certified to Teach English as a Second Language. The last week of the course was primarily dedicated to applying what we learned. Two days we spent teaching a group of 40 police officers in training and one day was spent teaching a small group of students at a temple school.

     This post however will be dedicated to recapping the final leg of the trip that Ryoko and I took in early April. When I left off, we just were finishing up with Krabi and starting to head to Penang, Malaysia. Just getting there was an adventure in itself. All the direct buses were booked for several days and we were on a schedule so we had to get a little creative in how we made the trek. Normally, the trip from Krabi to Penang would take only 6-8 hours but we managed to extend it a bit. 

Near our hostel in the City

     Since all the direct buses were booked for several days, we asked around and were told that it would be possible to get there by first taking a short trip to a town a few hours down the road and book the rest of the trip from there. However when we got there, we found that all of those buses were booked as well. So we took another minibus (large van really) to the boarder crossing where there is another town. There again, we found all the buses to Penang booked up for the next two days so we took the old shoelace express across the boarder. We had to walk not much more than half a mile or so with our bags. Once there, we took a taxi 45 minutes into Malaysia to the nearest bus terminal. We thought we would have to spend the night there, as it was getting a bit late, but we were pleasantly surprised to find there was actually one more bus leaving in 20 minutes or so. We hopped on that and an hour and a half later we found ourselves at the city center. After that we took a 15 minute fairy ride to get to the section of town where we were staying (a fairly large island just off the coast). After another shorter taxi, we finally made it to our destination, only 6 hours later than we had hoped, but as far as I'm concerned, all that matters is we made it safe and sound.

     We had three days to explore Penang. This is an interesting region because it is really a diverse melting pot of cultures. The city is bright and vibrant. There's clearly some money floating around this city, made apparent by over the top luxury and sports cars from various decades that occasionally pass by (they stand out quite drastically among the grand majority of clunkers). The architecture and beauty of the location is what really makes it stand out. There are heavy influences of Chinese, Hindu, Buddhist, Western and Muslim cultures. The city went through bombing during World War II so on the same street you may see buildings from the 20's, 50's and 90's all side by side. Each era has its own unique style. Many travelers mentioned to me that parts of the city had a very European feel. I'll have to take their word for it seeing as I lack any European experience for the time being.

     As I mentioned before, there are many cultural influences in this city and there is a diverse number of temples to showcase this, coming from all of the cultural heritages I mentioned before. One day, Ryoko and I rented a Moped and spent the whole day just cruising around in the sun, checking out the sites. Although one can hear bells five times per day, indicating time to pray for Muslims, Buddhism is the most wide spread philosophy for the people of Penang. Buddhists generally value complete acceptance and openness to all other "wisdom" traditions (some refer to as religion) so this is a primary reason for the diverse number of practices observed in this region. The same is true for Thailand as well.

     The largest temple in the city is in fact Buddhist but is a perfect example of its acceptance of other cultures. It lies on a forested hill side overlooking the city. It is called "The Temple of 1000 Buddhas" (or maybe it was 10,000... I lost count somewhere around 489 ;-)  ) Its' predominant feature is a statue, perhaps 70-100 feet tall, of the goddess of Mercy. Also, the influence of Chinese culture is very apparent there. There are statues of the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac, a small Chinese style shrine near the foot of the aforementioned statue. Not to mention the architecture is more Chinese than Buddhist. In front of the statue are two temple guardians that I'm pretty sure are traditionally of Japanese origin as well.

     One of the Chinese temples we visited had some especially interesting art. There wasn't a single painting in the place. Instead, it was adorned with stone carvings that tell a myriad of stories. Personally, I have rarely seen that level of craftsmanship even with wood. It's hard to imagine how much work must have gone into all of the images, so perfectly sculpted.

     Later, we took our bike up a long winding road around to the North part of the Island where there's a national park. Once there, we took a 20 minute boat ride around the bend to "Monkey Beach". We hung out for a short bit in the shade near the sand before snapping some pictures and hiking back through a jungly beach side trail. It was a hot day, not much different than any other day since we've been here, so we enjoyed the tree's protection from the Sun. They couldn't, however, fend off the humidity. As we returned to our bike, we enjoyed an ice cream before heading back to the hostel. Even with the beautiful temples and scenery, I think my favorite part of the day was just cruising around with Ryoko on windy roads overlooking the water. Everything seemed to be either green like the trees or blue like the sky and ocean, two colors that I think put us naturally at ease.

     Our last day, we took it rather easy before catching our afternoon flight back to Bangkok. We haven't been in South East Asia long, but Bangkok was already a familiar location to us and we couldn't help but have the feeling of returning home. The trip to Paneng from Bangkok took more than 28 hours split between a number of days and vehicles, traveling at all hours of the day and night. The two hour flight back seemed more like teleportation than traveling... seriously... "Beam me up Scotty". Overall, this initial journey was an amazing way to start our experience down here. I daresay our future adventures will be a bit less diverse but increasingly intimate with this region of the world as we become more fluent with the language and location. Thank you again for joining me here. I wish you all the best adventures wherever you find yourself on this journey. I hope to hear from you soon!

Tiger Temple, Krabi Cont.

     Thanks for joining me again. When I left off, we had just made it through a full day of climbing and a tsunami scare. The next morning, Ryoko and I slept in and enjoyed a slow start. After eating breakfast and organizing a bit, we left for a very special place called Tiger Temple that is located just a short trip outside of Krabi. We took a local transport (a truck bed with a bench running down either side and a canopy for shade) and made our way.

     Tiger Temple is specifically located at the top of a large steep hill. This whole region is known for its jutting limestone high rises. It will be flat as far as the eye can see in one direction, then out of no where, several of these rather large features present themselves. On this particular rise, someone has been kind enough to lay a cement staircase that zig-zags all the way up to the top. There's exactly 1237 steps in total if I'm to believe the sign at the bottom. The steps are a bit taller and skinnier than we are accustomed to back home which means it must be over a 1000 foot climb at least.

     The trek to the top is really amazing. Its sort of like ascending into a higher state of awareness as you continue up. At the bottom, there's all sorts of things going on, firecrackers, travelers, monks, Thais, kids, adults, food, fountains and more. So as one starts the ascent there can be a lot on the mind. As I continued up though, my mind became focused on the climb. It was hot and humid, too much so to hold a discussion even when traveling in pairs. After a 1/4 of the way up or so it becomes sort of an inward journey. The scenery was spectacular and I coldn't help but just try to absorb it. Each time we would stop for a break, many were required, we would turn around and reflect on how the ground just kept moving away like a distant floor. At the same time, there was never much of an indicator as to when the top mind present itself, so we just kept moving. Apart from the beautiful foliage, there were little monkeys all the way up. We read before hand that they can get a bit grabby. Some say they've been jumped and had their earrings or other shiny items taken but we just kept a respectable distance, when possible, and they never bothered us.

     By the time we were close to the top, my mind was nearly silenced. Step, step, step, step, I just tried to focus on my balance and I make sure not to skip a single step up or down. I figured they were there for a reason and I wanted to be sure to experience it fully. Looking past the hand rail to the extremely steep hill side made me thankful someone before me had laid the path. More than once I felt a little shaky in the knee and was happy I had something to hold onto. I got the impression that a fall down may require less effort than continuing up.

     Finally we made it to the top where there was a water cooler with some of the best tasting water we've had in a while. There were several statues of the Buddha in various postures, including one that sat more than 15 feet tall, overlooking the countryside from his seat atop an enlarged blossomed lotus. There were incense stored away near the foot of various statues that one could remove, light and place in the holder next to the hundreds of others. Their sent was everywhere. The view was incredible. A few hundred yards away were the top of several other similar growths of limestone Earth, still rugged and untouched yet similar to the pillar where we found ourselves. Beyond them you could see the ocean and the area where we were just the day before. One couldn't help but take a seat in the shade and reflect. Reflect on the amazing scenery, reflect on the work that must have been done to create such a place, reflect on the imagery of the statues that were both beautiful and perfectly placed, reflect on life, the experience and the seemingly natural energy of the location.

     On the bottom level of the temple was a prime clue as to how the temple must have been constructed. Bags of unused cement, awaiting a future repair or minor alteration sat stacked in a pile 9 wide and 5 tall. Each must have weighed 40-50 pounds and surely arrived there by none other than man power. No beast of burden or any machinery would likely have been able to assist their arrival, and hundreds, even thousands, must have been used for the initial project. Of course there were easier places to build such a thing, but I think the labor involved really shows the dedication of the people here to work towards states of awareness that expand beyond one's self. The experience for me could be likened to walking through a filter of consciousness that helped strain out some of the impurities. Perhaps I'll have to make the voyage again someday.

     As some ominous clouds began to move in, we decided our stay was just long enough. The decent proved to be a much quicker trek and soon we found ourselves at the bottom with ice cold freshly blended real mango  fruit smoothies. It was a satisfying end to an experience well worth the effort.

     Thank you again for joining me here. Believe it or not, Ryoko and I had a couple more nights in Krabi, and yet another novel experience during the event of Sankran (Thai New Year), but that I will have to share with you on another day. I truly hope all is well for you wherever you are, and that this life is being as generous to you as it has been to me. I appreciate you spending your time here with me and please feel free to send me a message/update if ever you feel so inclined.