Hua Hin



Last weekend I went with 12 other teachers from American School of Bangkok down to Hua Hin, which is located out on the Gulf of Thailand heading down the east arm towards Phuket. We took a big van down there and stayed in a little hotel right on the water – infact, most of the rooms were over the water in high tide. Friday was my 25th birthday and we all went out to a restaurant and had drinks and some people sang karaoke. They sang happy birthday to me and gave me a tiny butter-flavored cake. Yum!

This is a typical food vendors cart - he's selling ice cream - cones for 10 baht, which is about 10 cents - coconut ice cream drizzled with condensed milk!


Saturday I explored the long sandy beach with Spencer. The water is so warm you could stay in all day long! Hua Hin used to be a small fishing village – and there are still dozens of brightly colored fishing boats anchored along the beach. They sit in the sand as the tide comes in and out. When the King moved to Hua Hin, the little village became a lot more fancy and now there are large hotels along the shore. It was still very nice for swimming and picking up shells and star fish and poking at jelly fish washed up on the shore. We met a guy who was skim boarding along the shore, and he brought out two more skimboards for us to borrow. We spent hours running in the shallow water and hopping on the little plywood boards and skimming along or falling off and rolling in the water. Made me want to surf!


That night we watched a muay thai fight – like boxing except they spend more time kicking each other in the chest than punching each other in the face. It was very interesting, definitely more of an art than boxing, incorporating a lot of rhythm. It was disturbing, however, how young some of the fighters were – I think the last one must have been 6!





On Sunday the man who was supposed to pick us up in the vans and take us home didn’t show, so we took the train back. It was a 4 hour ride and the “regular” seats without air conditioning (but open windows…it was almost cold) was 80 baht, which is $2. The train had a drop toilet where you put your feet on the metal footpads and squat (pretty common in public restrooms)– and you could see right down to the tracks! On the way home we passed a lot of flooded rice fields with palm trees sprouting out of their middles and little shacks built along the sides. At most of the train stops, local venders would get on, selling hot meals wrapped in leaves or boxes for 20 baht (50 cents) and it was a bit of a gamble what you would get, but always turned out good.

What a weekend! My first outside of Bangkok since I have been here! On Monday I was totally whipped out! Next weekend I think we will be going up to Kanchanaburi to explore the waterfalls and forests and do a bit of hiking.

This is a typical street in Bangkok - very narrow sidewalks and walls right up against the sides. The lanes are so narrow its sometimes hard for two cars to pass - and a hazzard to walk on the side. Most of the time I have to straddle the gutter. It's fun.













This is the soi (street) infront of my apartment building. It's nice and quiet, but close to a larger road where there is lots of food, shops, and motorcycle taxis to catch. To the left is the police training center and I watch the Thai police in training in the mornings as I walk to work.















On my back deck.

Last weekend I visited my friend Spencer, a teacher at the other American School of Bangkok campus. He lives on the outskirts of Bangkok in a giant condominium complex, complete with an Olympic sized pool, bars, a hair salon, and guards who click their heels and salute at you as you drive past. The condo complex overlooks a small lake, with small communities of thai shacks clustered along the edges. Spencer and I went out exploring these communities. Many were built up above the water on stilts, pieced together with aluminum or pieces of wood. A few little bungalows tucked in. You could look right in and see mothers taking a shower and husbands preparing food. In each community there were little stores, little food vending booths. Men sat along the concrete walkways, fishing with lines attached to sticks in the murky water. Bottles floating, plastic floating, green or grey looking water. We walked through some of the communities and the people were all very nice, most knew a few words of English, and most warned us about giant cobras lurking in the grasses just down the way.

So we went just down the way, but didn’t see any. We found old women fishing on the side of the lake. They wore ski masks to keep the sun off their faces and giant hats. They think that the lighter their skin is the more beautiful they are. Many face lotions here have whitening agents in them. Dark skin is a sign of poverty – outdoor manual labor. The women were catching tiny fish, 4 or 5 inches long, and keeping them for supper. We ran into other people fishing, a whole group of them in the water, in an area that was netted off, with really big fish trying to jump out of the nets. They were swimming around pulling out the logs from inside the giant nets, I couldn’t really figure out what they were doing. They were all very friendly, but eyeing us like we didn’t really belong there. There were so many people fishing in that little lake that I don’t know how it isn’t over fished, especially with all their houses built right over the lake and no central plumbing.

We also talked to a group of men who were sitting out on a dock that was almost falling in, drinking shine (moonshine) and singing and clapping. They offered us some, which was pretty tasty, and also passed around a large plastic bowl of clams mixed with spices – clams they had obviously caught from the lake – but we passed on those, not wanting to spend the next 70 hours on the toilet. They were very impressed with Spencer’s tattoos, and most of us showed us theirs - black dragons or people’s faces or weird circles with English words like “never die” – one of the guys had done them all, by HAND, the community tattoo artist. One of them was playing with a lighter that ran out of fuel and he just flung it into the water without a thought – no concept of “keep the water clean – you depend on that water to live”.

It was strange to look out across the lake and see the giant condo just on the other side with air conditioning and massage centers. One of the men that we met that day, living in the dirty little shacks, was one of the condo guards.

My decision to move to Bangkok was made on a whim at the international teaching job fair last February in Iowa. I had actually turned the job down on Saturday, and came back to the fair on Sunday just to pick up the rest of my things, when I saw Tom Dellario walking out the door. He had interviewed me for the American School of Bangkok position the previous day and I asked him if he had filled the position. He said no, he wanted me. Half an hour later I had signed the contract and was driving home thinking, “what did I just do?”

The week before leaving for Thailand, Josh, Sea Captian, Mighty and I sailed the Pony Dancer from Marquette Michigan, through Lake Superior, down the Soo Locks, through Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, down to Charlevoix. The voyage was amazing – beautiful, peaceful, exciting – and punctuated by the biggest heartbreak of my life. So when I got on the plane two days later, I left behind all of my safety nets - my favorite things and places and people. And when I landed in Bangkok 22 hours later, I was thinking, “What am I doing?”

I think that blogs are kind of silly things, but I created this one so that my friends can know “what’s she doing?” Much better than mass emails.

My first week…I stayed in a hotel for the first 5 days while looking for an apartment and got right down to work. I am teaching Environmental Studies, Biology, ESL Biology, and Science Interactions at the American School of Bangkok. The school has two campuses and I am working at the one right downtown. There are about 500 students K-12. Most are Thai, but there are also students from the USA, Canada, Pakistan, India, and other places. Everything is taught in English. This year there are 13 new teachers at my campus, and most of them are in their mid 20’s – instant friends! It’s nice to have people around who are also adjusting to this new big city – friends to stumble through hooking up cell phones, explore the weekend market, discuss the ethics of tipping and bartering.

Today I moved into my apartment – it’s a studio, a glorified hotel room, but there is a pool downstairs, and a water filter, so you don’t have to haul jugs of water from the store, and the leaves of a giant palm tree spilling over into the big balcony. And a king sized bed – the thais are very short, and their beds are shorter than American beds. My bed is actually wider than it is long. I get to ASB on a motorcycle taxi – guys all over the place on bikes with orange vests. You sit on the back of the motorcycle (women sit side-saddle) and hold on to the back as they zip around stopped traffic, between cars, in the other lane, on the sidewalk…I can also get to the BTS (the skytrain) easily, which takes you many places in the city.