a few semi-delayed stories from koh si chang

sorry i suck and didn't write about si chang until just now, four days after we returned from little koh si chang. nicki fail.

anyway, we left suphanburi friday evening around 6 pm. since we couldn't make it to the island (koh=island in thai, btw. and you thought you'd never learn anything from this blog) on friday night cuz ferries don't run at 10 pm, we decided we'd stay on si racha, which lonely planet and other travel guides made seem like a small fishing town with nothing in it. i was expecting one or maybe two hostels/hotels/places for strangers to sleep, mostly for one night before they hop on the ferry (just like we were doing).

so when we pulled into a town that had a brightly lit town square, multiple bars/dance clubs, and more than a couple thai hookers, i thought for sure the driver had taken us to the wrong place. i was convinced he was in pattaya. he started to guide this huge 8-person van down a tiny road that i would've struggled to put the xa down. we were absolutely convinced he was going down the wrong road, but alas, there at the end of the alley was the siriwatana hotel, our home for the evening.

GROSS. that's what the siriwatana hotel was (that it even tried to parade itself around as a "hotel" is laughable). it was on stilts over water, which sounds really nice, and would be, if there wasn't pee and poop and trash directly below. the ocean was a trashcan mixed with salt water. soupy disgustingness. the rooms were small; the beds were not even double-sized; cockroaches were abound. but it was after 10 pm, and we were tired, so we paid a guy some money and went two to a room. we pissed into a hole in the ground, watched in go into the ocean, and fell asleep.

the next morning we were up and on the ferry by 10 am, on the island by 11 am. we made our way to our hostel for the weekend, which was a huge upgrade from that siriwatana crap. we stayed in a hostel/hotel that was actually boats-turned-rooms.

 

the rest of the long weekend was typical. we mostly hung out on the beach in some floppy beach chairs, drinking fresh fruit smoothies, eating delicious thai food, and lazing around in the water. we explored the tiny island (maybe 15, 20 minutes to drive around the whole thing) a bit, but really, we mostly just hung out at the beach. it was a perfect way to spend the king's birthday.

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

i got a sunburn today and had a sweat river running down my back. my air conditioning is on. tomorrow's weather is supposed to be around 32 (which is celsius, not fahrenheit), so i plan on wearing a skirt and a short-sleeved shirt.

but with the help of elf, christmas lights, homemade no-bake cookies, and friends, it's sort of feeling like christmas around these parts.

how thai kids get on the naughty list

my m3s (9th graders) are doing comparative sentences with christmas vocabulary this week. both the vocab and comparative structure are review, so this shouldn't have been too hard. i gave them a worksheet to do, then walked around the class to make sure they were doing said comparative worksheet. from the back corner, i heard a loud, "teacher! teacher!"

me: "yes?"
student 1 (pointing to her friend): "stupid!"
me: "she is stupid?"
student 1: "yes, she is stupid!"
me: "NO! she is not stupid! are you stupid?"
student 2 (looks at me confused because she is sort of stupid): "no...uhh..." (says some stuff in thai)
me: "you are not stupid. this is hard. don't worry."

but the name calling continued, and after some debate about the stupidity of student 2 (who we determined was only a little crazy, but not stupid), student 2 pointed to student 1 and said, "she is bigger. her body is bigger. ugly."

i gasped and looked at her directly in the face. "NO! you are beautiful."

no wonder the thai teachers are so concerned with body image (in this office, anyway). they're terrible to each other from an early age. "you're bigger than me, so you're ugly." while i can appreciate some of the thais' frankness about image and learning ability, sometimes it's just too harsh (people are regularly described as "fat" or "dumb"). i used to parade around saying i hated political correctness and having to describe someone by every single other attribute they have other than "freaking huge," but really, i don't know how much of this harsh honesty is good for these poor pubescent kids.

blame it on genius

i meant to go to bed early tonight. i'm tired from a weekend in the sun on the beach, and i wanted to go to bed early so i could wake up early tomorrow to enjoy the morning and do some writing/picture uploading for you.

(side note: my flower lights just fell off my wall and scared the crap out of me.)

but now i'm here, 11 pm, still planning on showering and yoga-ing. aka i'm still an hour away from bed. itunes just made such a good genius playlist that i can't stop listening...every song has been flowing perfectly after the one before it, and it's put me in a great mood, and i just can't press pause.

oh well. if the nexus taught me nothing else (let's be real: it didn't), i learned there that sleep is for the weak.