in my 11th grade smart class after school, we were playing a game i've dubbed "category throwdown" for no other reason than i wanted it to have a name and didn't have one for it yet. there are two teams, and the game host (or hostess, in my case) names a category. each team goes back and forth, naming a thing from the category (no repeats) until one team can't name anything else.
so we're playing this game and i gave'em the category "body parts." we started out with easy things like hair and head and fingers and toes and elbows, but after 8 or 9 minutes of this game, the kids were getting creative. pancreas, thyroid, liver, kindeys. everyone was getting really into the game, shouting and pointing out the body parts as they said'em. the most excitable girl screams TALL FINGER! i would've had a hard time figuring out what she meant if she hadn't just given me the biggest, strongest flip off i've ever received.
indeed, my 11th grade student (unintentionally) gave me the bird in the middle of class. everyone busted up. she started doing this flailing, flapping-her-arms dance and going, "sorry sorry sorry teacha! sorry sorry sorry!"
so we're already in this laughy mood, and we must've been at least 10 minutes into the body part round by now. team 1 leaned in real close to each other and sort of started giggling, but it was the kind of giggle where they knew they shouldn't be laughing. something weird must be happening. one girl looks at me and, real shyly, goes...
"pussy."
i just lost it. broke into a hysterical laughter. everyone did. "EXCUSE ME! where did you learn that? you NEVER say that! it's so inappropriate!" i explained to everyone what it meant--learning is very important--but made all of them swear they'd never say who they learned it from.
teacher nicki's after school classes: semi-educational, mostly inappropriate.
7.1.10
5.1.10
ocean fireworks at midnight
i've started off the new year on a bad foot. we've been home in suphan for 29 hours and i've yet to give you any sort of blog indication that i had a good time or that i was even alive.
here: i had a good time, and i'm still living. i owe you stories, but i've been too tired/busy to get around to it yet (we didn't get home until 3:15 am early early early monday morning...555). but i'll add to this post later. right now i'm working on fbook picture captions and tags. oh, and i'm at school now, too, so i guess i have to teach and stuff. but in between all that, i'll get a good new year's post in. just you wait.
TIME FOR THE REAL BLOG TO START!
disclaimer: i'm gonna be real up front with you right now and tell you that i did indeed drink certain amounts of alcohol this past weekend. i haven't written the blog yet, but acknowledgment of copious drinking will probably occur in the course of my storytelling. if this sort of thing offends you, or if you'd prefer to believe that i only have a glass of wine here and there, please stop reading.
the plan for new year's eve was koh phi phi (pronounced "pee pee." thailand kills on the english pronunciations). ever since orientation, a zillion of us (read: maybe 40) had been planning to go to this gorgeous little island just off phuket to bring in 2010. so after much planning ahead--much more than is usually necessary in thailand--we were holding reservations of all kinds and ready to head down south.
wednesday night
on wednesday after school, maddy, sam, ally, and i hopped on the van to bangkok, did a little shopping on khao san (helloooooo new bathing suit for $11), and ate some delicious indian food before we made our way to the train station to hop on an overnight bus to krabi, where we'd planned to catch the ferry to phi phi. hundreds of people (all mostly white, btw) were gathered outside the travel agency at the train station, all waiting to hop on the bus to krabi. there were clearly more people than could fit on one bus, which caused much distress in the crowd. even though the travel agent guy (a thai who spoke pretty good english) assured everyone there would be plenty of seats, the crowd was anxious. everyone was shoving and really desperately pushing their bags toward the buses, like the buses were gonna leave without them or like they wouldn't get a seat if they didn't fight for it. like we didn't all buy tickets...like the thai company just overbooked their buses for fun. the four of us stood back from the crowd and said "mai pen rai." a thai woman giggled behind us and gave us the "white people are crazy, man!" look. the four of us and this thai woman were separated from the crowd and having a good laugh at how needlessly anxious everyone was.
we've clearly been in this country for a while now. we're adopting the mai pen rai lifestyle hXc.
anyway, we got on the bus, left bangkok by 8:15 pm, and had popped otc sleeping pills by about 1030, i think. around 2 am, all the lights came on inside the bus. "GOOD MORNING! GOOD MORNING! eating! go down!" a thai man shouted at us. so people got off the bus and ate noodles and chicken and drank beer. AT 2 AM. WHEN IT'S TIME FOR SLEEPING. that was terrible.
thursday
anyway, after that stupid hour-long stop, we made it to krabi by 830 am and hopped on the 9 am ferry. we arrived at the pier a couple hours later, followed a guy to the tropical garden bungalow (sweet set up complete with a pool, swim-up bar, and hammocks), set our stuff down, put bathing suits on, ate stuff, and immediately went to the beach.
living on islands is the best. the tide was out, but the water was the perfect amount of warm and the sand was fine and white. because it was new year's eve, and because we're 20-somethings on vacation on a beautiful island in thailand, we decided it was time for fancy beach drinks.
we met up with a big crowd for dinner on the shore (mmm seafood on an island). after we were well fed--we had a big night ahead of us, you know--we dashed between bars handing out free/nearly free buckets, then all ended up on the beach between two bars about 50 feet apart. both bars were complete with fire limbos, fire twirlers, and loud music. we were covered in glitter, glow sticks (thanks mom!), tattoos, and maddy and i even splurged on fake eyelashes. i was thrilled to be living in that precise moment, being reunited with so many awesome people i'd met during orientation and dancing and laughing and generally loving the last minutes of the new year.
the countdown happened, and for the first half hour of 2010, a handful of us ripped off our clothes (duh we were wearing bathing suits. you always wear swimsuits when you're at a beach.) and spent the time in the ocean, watching multiple firework shows, frolicking, and hugging. not half bad.
friday
because we got home around 3 am the night before, we slept in and wandered to a late-ish breakfast in town. we spent another couple hours at the beach, then hopped on a boat for a snorkeling tour around phi phi.
pause here for a phi phi explanation. it's made up of two islands--phi phi don and phi phi ley. everyone stays on don cuz ley is protected and you can't develop on it. plus it's gorgeous, so why would you ruin that with buildings and people?
so this boat takes you around phi phi ley, and holy crap the water there is gorgeous. i mean, the water is a spectacular color where we were on phi phi don, too, but around phi phi ley...that was something else. it was like somebody ordered the teal-blue color up special. nature couldn't have gotten it that completely right.
the boat stopped for snorkeling (which the thai guy pronounced something along the lines of "snoockling"), so i grabbed a pair of fins and mask and lept (okay, fell really ungracefully off the back of the boat) into the water. i looked around and noticed i was swimming in a sea of brilliant yellow fish. all around me, just like i was one of them.
holy crap.
i saw little swimmers of every color. nemo-like fish were making homes in sea anemones. for a while, i just floated and watch a sea urchin because i wanted to see one move for once--and i did. i understood immediately what everyone was talking about when they told me to at least go snorkeling in thailand.
after we did some kayaking (sorry, friends, for delaying the boat trip by staying out too long in the kayak), the boat made its way around phi phi ley for what many people call their ultimate destination in phi phi: maya beach, aka that spot where leo's The Beach was filmed. we jumped off the boat, swam to the island, walked over some really hurty coral, hiked through forest for about five minutes, and popped out in this stunning bay with huge rocks jutting hundreds of feet into the air all around.
my words and pictures do it no justice.
i touched a sea cucumber in this bay. i touched it sort of inappropriately cuz nancy told me it would squirt some stuff if i pissed it off enough. i couldn't get it to squirt stuff, despite big efforts.
we watched the sun go down from the boat in the bay, took a million trillion pictures, and ate delicious green curry, veggie, and pineapple dinner. by 7 pm, we were back on phi phi don, unloading and heading home.
ciao bella helped us start our evening out by providing us some fine red wine and delectable bruschetta (well, okay, we gave them money). that night was spent atop a rooftop bar (banana bar is the best on the island, btw), though we had our choice of bars. koh phi phi is essentially a place for tourists, and that's it. i'm not sure if anyone's actually FROM phi phi. for the first time in two and a half months, i was part of the majority group again. because pretty much everyone's on phi phi for vacation of some sort, there are bars aplenty, and they do everything to attract customers. at reggae bar, you could beat up your friend for a free bucket. at apache, if you showed up between 10 and 10:10 pm, you could have a free bucket. if you showed up at ibiza between 10:45 and 10:55 pm, you could have a free bucket. if you planned it right, you'd never have to pay for a drink on this island.
ally, nancy, and i were wrapping up the night on the beach in the baby hours of the morning when we looked over and saw a gang of ladyboys. maybe seven of them. YES. one of them pulled her shirt down and just hung her (obviously fake) boobs out for the world to see. "check these out, guys. i'm a woman. look. i have boobs." night complete.
saturday
this is so weird...i have to really think about what we did each day before i remember it...
AH yes, okay, it was nancy's birthday. so we ate some breakfast (good eats on that island...lots of bread, which i don't eat nearly enough of) and went to the beach.
predictable. beach vacations can be that way. it's why they're the best.
pedicures were a really important thing for us to get (even sam! what a softcock!), so midafternoon we headed to a nail/massage salon and sat down for a hilarious and delightfully long pedicure. (random jokes i want to remember in life: oohhh, 94. expressway. strong ladies. these three ideas are really only good for the people involved in the pedicure situation.) btw, sam totally wasn't digging pedicures, despite how much we told him about their awesomeness. he got a massage.
mexican food and margaritas went in our bellies that night, which always makes me super super happy. we grabbed some cheap buckets (from a dive bar whose flyer literally said "chicks love it!" we went it just because we're chicks, and flyers don't lie) and walked to another part of the island to bora bora, another bar right on the beach with an ultra relaxed atmosphere. we got two more alcohol buckets for free here.
i need to tell you about buckets on this island. they're nothing like buckets i've seen in america. on phi phi, you don't get buckets when you want to get so drunk you twirl and fall down all over the dance floor. they're just the more practical way to drink: you get more alcohol for less money, you get to share all kinds of drinks with your friends, and broken plastic on the beach doesn't suck quite as much as broken glass. also, drinks in thailand are REALLY weak, and remember that i went to a school with a certain "party" reputation, so i can sort of handle lots of thai drinks. we drank a lot, but i'm not sure anyone was ever waaaaaaaaaassssssssssssssssssssted.
anyway, we decided that night that we were all gonna quit life and move to phi phi. we even assigned jobs. nancy's gonna work at banana bar/the mexican kitchen just below it; ally's gonna run a kids' camp; maddy's gonna be a fire twirler at bora bora by night and sell floaties on the beach by day (maybe nancy joins); sam had a job, but i forgot it...probably just existing on the beach; and i'm gonna be one of those people who organizes/leads adventure trips. so if the world ever sucks and i quit trying in life, you know where to find me.
sunday
we woke up on our last day of vacation *weeps* and after we checked out at the hotel, we ate bagels and spent even more time on the beach. it was a little overcast that day, and it even started drizzling a bit, but nobody gave a crap. it was still hot.
the 1:30 pm ferry took us to phuket, where we had some time to kill before we got on our 11 pm flight to bangkok (lol...more on this in a second). so guess what we did.
sat on a beach. 555. predictability!
we ate dinner at a thai restaurant, where i realized i hadn't eaten thai food in like four days and i really missed it, and still had time to kill after, so we went to starbucks around the corner. it started pouring rain while we were there, but we figured that it'd stop eventually.
it didn't. we walked back to nancy's hostel (lucky bitch still has until jan 11 for vacay) in a torrential downpour. i've never used that word more accurately. for the 10 minutes our walk lasted, we wet dogs of white people were the laughing stock of a street in phuket.
mai pen rai.
part of this whole crazy new year's eve holiday plan was to fly back to bangkok really late at night, sleep in the city, and come back to suphan at 6 am on monday morning, just in time for classes.
i know.
after our flight landed and we got a cab to khao san road area, we looked around for a long time for our hostel. we had NO IDEA where it was. whatever, we'll just pop in to another hostel; there are hundreds in that area, so someone's gotta have room. but almost no luck. it was edging on 2 am when a brilliant idea finally dawned on me: why don't we just take a taxi back? sure, it's probably 100 to 200 baht more expensive than the van we usually take, but it eliminates the cost of the hostel, and it gets us back to suphan asap. we magically negotiated a cheap 800-baht ride back to our little city and finally made it to our rooms around 3:15 am on monday morning.
mpr.
(oh, man, i got tired of writing this. that means you got tired of reading it. whoops. we're staying in suphan more this month, so i'll have more catch up entries, and hopefully they'll be filled with less chronological boringness.)
TIME FOR THE REAL BLOG TO START!
disclaimer: i'm gonna be real up front with you right now and tell you that i did indeed drink certain amounts of alcohol this past weekend. i haven't written the blog yet, but acknowledgment of copious drinking will probably occur in the course of my storytelling. if this sort of thing offends you, or if you'd prefer to believe that i only have a glass of wine here and there, please stop reading.
the plan for new year's eve was koh phi phi (pronounced "pee pee." thailand kills on the english pronunciations). ever since orientation, a zillion of us (read: maybe 40) had been planning to go to this gorgeous little island just off phuket to bring in 2010. so after much planning ahead--much more than is usually necessary in thailand--we were holding reservations of all kinds and ready to head down south.
wednesday night
on wednesday after school, maddy, sam, ally, and i hopped on the van to bangkok, did a little shopping on khao san (helloooooo new bathing suit for $11), and ate some delicious indian food before we made our way to the train station to hop on an overnight bus to krabi, where we'd planned to catch the ferry to phi phi. hundreds of people (all mostly white, btw) were gathered outside the travel agency at the train station, all waiting to hop on the bus to krabi. there were clearly more people than could fit on one bus, which caused much distress in the crowd. even though the travel agent guy (a thai who spoke pretty good english) assured everyone there would be plenty of seats, the crowd was anxious. everyone was shoving and really desperately pushing their bags toward the buses, like the buses were gonna leave without them or like they wouldn't get a seat if they didn't fight for it. like we didn't all buy tickets...like the thai company just overbooked their buses for fun. the four of us stood back from the crowd and said "mai pen rai." a thai woman giggled behind us and gave us the "white people are crazy, man!" look. the four of us and this thai woman were separated from the crowd and having a good laugh at how needlessly anxious everyone was.
we've clearly been in this country for a while now. we're adopting the mai pen rai lifestyle hXc.
anyway, we got on the bus, left bangkok by 8:15 pm, and had popped otc sleeping pills by about 1030, i think. around 2 am, all the lights came on inside the bus. "GOOD MORNING! GOOD MORNING! eating! go down!" a thai man shouted at us. so people got off the bus and ate noodles and chicken and drank beer. AT 2 AM. WHEN IT'S TIME FOR SLEEPING. that was terrible.
thursday
anyway, after that stupid hour-long stop, we made it to krabi by 830 am and hopped on the 9 am ferry. we arrived at the pier a couple hours later, followed a guy to the tropical garden bungalow (sweet set up complete with a pool, swim-up bar, and hammocks), set our stuff down, put bathing suits on, ate stuff, and immediately went to the beach.
living on islands is the best. the tide was out, but the water was the perfect amount of warm and the sand was fine and white. because it was new year's eve, and because we're 20-somethings on vacation on a beautiful island in thailand, we decided it was time for fancy beach drinks.
we met up with a big crowd for dinner on the shore (mmm seafood on an island). after we were well fed--we had a big night ahead of us, you know--we dashed between bars handing out free/nearly free buckets, then all ended up on the beach between two bars about 50 feet apart. both bars were complete with fire limbos, fire twirlers, and loud music. we were covered in glitter, glow sticks (thanks mom!), tattoos, and maddy and i even splurged on fake eyelashes. i was thrilled to be living in that precise moment, being reunited with so many awesome people i'd met during orientation and dancing and laughing and generally loving the last minutes of the new year.
the countdown happened, and for the first half hour of 2010, a handful of us ripped off our clothes (duh we were wearing bathing suits. you always wear swimsuits when you're at a beach.) and spent the time in the ocean, watching multiple firework shows, frolicking, and hugging. not half bad.
friday
because we got home around 3 am the night before, we slept in and wandered to a late-ish breakfast in town. we spent another couple hours at the beach, then hopped on a boat for a snorkeling tour around phi phi.
pause here for a phi phi explanation. it's made up of two islands--phi phi don and phi phi ley. everyone stays on don cuz ley is protected and you can't develop on it. plus it's gorgeous, so why would you ruin that with buildings and people?
so this boat takes you around phi phi ley, and holy crap the water there is gorgeous. i mean, the water is a spectacular color where we were on phi phi don, too, but around phi phi ley...that was something else. it was like somebody ordered the teal-blue color up special. nature couldn't have gotten it that completely right.
the boat stopped for snorkeling (which the thai guy pronounced something along the lines of "snoockling"), so i grabbed a pair of fins and mask and lept (okay, fell really ungracefully off the back of the boat) into the water. i looked around and noticed i was swimming in a sea of brilliant yellow fish. all around me, just like i was one of them.
holy crap.
i saw little swimmers of every color. nemo-like fish were making homes in sea anemones. for a while, i just floated and watch a sea urchin because i wanted to see one move for once--and i did. i understood immediately what everyone was talking about when they told me to at least go snorkeling in thailand.
after we did some kayaking (sorry, friends, for delaying the boat trip by staying out too long in the kayak), the boat made its way around phi phi ley for what many people call their ultimate destination in phi phi: maya beach, aka that spot where leo's The Beach was filmed. we jumped off the boat, swam to the island, walked over some really hurty coral, hiked through forest for about five minutes, and popped out in this stunning bay with huge rocks jutting hundreds of feet into the air all around.
my words and pictures do it no justice.
i touched a sea cucumber in this bay. i touched it sort of inappropriately cuz nancy told me it would squirt some stuff if i pissed it off enough. i couldn't get it to squirt stuff, despite big efforts.
we watched the sun go down from the boat in the bay, took a million trillion pictures, and ate delicious green curry, veggie, and pineapple dinner. by 7 pm, we were back on phi phi don, unloading and heading home.
ciao bella helped us start our evening out by providing us some fine red wine and delectable bruschetta (well, okay, we gave them money). that night was spent atop a rooftop bar (banana bar is the best on the island, btw), though we had our choice of bars. koh phi phi is essentially a place for tourists, and that's it. i'm not sure if anyone's actually FROM phi phi. for the first time in two and a half months, i was part of the majority group again. because pretty much everyone's on phi phi for vacation of some sort, there are bars aplenty, and they do everything to attract customers. at reggae bar, you could beat up your friend for a free bucket. at apache, if you showed up between 10 and 10:10 pm, you could have a free bucket. if you showed up at ibiza between 10:45 and 10:55 pm, you could have a free bucket. if you planned it right, you'd never have to pay for a drink on this island.
ally, nancy, and i were wrapping up the night on the beach in the baby hours of the morning when we looked over and saw a gang of ladyboys. maybe seven of them. YES. one of them pulled her shirt down and just hung her (obviously fake) boobs out for the world to see. "check these out, guys. i'm a woman. look. i have boobs." night complete.
saturday
this is so weird...i have to really think about what we did each day before i remember it...
AH yes, okay, it was nancy's birthday. so we ate some breakfast (good eats on that island...lots of bread, which i don't eat nearly enough of) and went to the beach.
predictable. beach vacations can be that way. it's why they're the best.
pedicures were a really important thing for us to get (even sam! what a softcock!), so midafternoon we headed to a nail/massage salon and sat down for a hilarious and delightfully long pedicure. (random jokes i want to remember in life: oohhh, 94. expressway. strong ladies. these three ideas are really only good for the people involved in the pedicure situation.) btw, sam totally wasn't digging pedicures, despite how much we told him about their awesomeness. he got a massage.
mexican food and margaritas went in our bellies that night, which always makes me super super happy. we grabbed some cheap buckets (from a dive bar whose flyer literally said "chicks love it!" we went it just because we're chicks, and flyers don't lie) and walked to another part of the island to bora bora, another bar right on the beach with an ultra relaxed atmosphere. we got two more alcohol buckets for free here.
i need to tell you about buckets on this island. they're nothing like buckets i've seen in america. on phi phi, you don't get buckets when you want to get so drunk you twirl and fall down all over the dance floor. they're just the more practical way to drink: you get more alcohol for less money, you get to share all kinds of drinks with your friends, and broken plastic on the beach doesn't suck quite as much as broken glass. also, drinks in thailand are REALLY weak, and remember that i went to a school with a certain "party" reputation, so i can sort of handle lots of thai drinks. we drank a lot, but i'm not sure anyone was ever waaaaaaaaaassssssssssssssssssssted.
anyway, we decided that night that we were all gonna quit life and move to phi phi. we even assigned jobs. nancy's gonna work at banana bar/the mexican kitchen just below it; ally's gonna run a kids' camp; maddy's gonna be a fire twirler at bora bora by night and sell floaties on the beach by day (maybe nancy joins); sam had a job, but i forgot it...probably just existing on the beach; and i'm gonna be one of those people who organizes/leads adventure trips. so if the world ever sucks and i quit trying in life, you know where to find me.
sunday
we woke up on our last day of vacation *weeps* and after we checked out at the hotel, we ate bagels and spent even more time on the beach. it was a little overcast that day, and it even started drizzling a bit, but nobody gave a crap. it was still hot.
the 1:30 pm ferry took us to phuket, where we had some time to kill before we got on our 11 pm flight to bangkok (lol...more on this in a second). so guess what we did.
sat on a beach. 555. predictability!
we ate dinner at a thai restaurant, where i realized i hadn't eaten thai food in like four days and i really missed it, and still had time to kill after, so we went to starbucks around the corner. it started pouring rain while we were there, but we figured that it'd stop eventually.
it didn't. we walked back to nancy's hostel (lucky bitch still has until jan 11 for vacay) in a torrential downpour. i've never used that word more accurately. for the 10 minutes our walk lasted, we wet dogs of white people were the laughing stock of a street in phuket.
mai pen rai.
part of this whole crazy new year's eve holiday plan was to fly back to bangkok really late at night, sleep in the city, and come back to suphan at 6 am on monday morning, just in time for classes.
i know.
after our flight landed and we got a cab to khao san road area, we looked around for a long time for our hostel. we had NO IDEA where it was. whatever, we'll just pop in to another hostel; there are hundreds in that area, so someone's gotta have room. but almost no luck. it was edging on 2 am when a brilliant idea finally dawned on me: why don't we just take a taxi back? sure, it's probably 100 to 200 baht more expensive than the van we usually take, but it eliminates the cost of the hostel, and it gets us back to suphan asap. we magically negotiated a cheap 800-baht ride back to our little city and finally made it to our rooms around 3:15 am on monday morning.
mpr.
(oh, man, i got tired of writing this. that means you got tired of reading it. whoops. we're staying in suphan more this month, so i'll have more catch up entries, and hopefully they'll be filled with less chronological boringness.)
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