The thing about Thailand is that it models itself after the national flower, the orchid. Everyone knows that the orchid is beautiful, often fabled to have rare strains so magnificent they'd knock any Rico Suave to his feet in tears of joy. That is how I find Thailand. I just can't get enough. Though I have complaints about the air quality in the cities and roadway customs, it's nothing you can't find pretty much anywhere else these days, so it isn't worth the verbal lashing. LA driving is probably just as dangerous really. I guess I should stop my blathering and tell you all a little about he last few days:

I've mostly been around Kate's school, it's pretty hard to walk anywhere without getting stopped and chatted to by the students. But if I'm with Kate it's even more ridiculous. I forgot how much Kate just stops and talks with people even if she's late for something... she'll just walk through the school like nothing is more important than meaningless chit chat. I love it. Then when we get to the Teacher's room that's when things get weird. There's this one teacher who looks like a Thai version of Cher and just stares into my eyes all day long and repeats in English, "I'm in love with your eyes. I want your eyes." It freaks me out. Then whenever I talk to her, she turns around and repeats the exact conversation we had 1 minute ago to Kate, who heard it all, and probably doesn't care about the woman's constant flattery towards me.

One of the coolest places we went to was the Samkamphaeng hot springs. It was an obvious tourist spot as opposed to my favored secluded spots, like Sykes Hot Springs, but the fact that they created a tub specifically for boiling eggs blew me away. It was too bad that the suggested times for boiling was all wrong and my eggs were still runny, therefore ruining my entire trip to South East Asia. But the hot springs made up for it by having a sign next to a restaurant claiming that they had "clean food and good teste".



It was a good thing I got my haircut because the next day we went to the Consulate General's for lunch. It was just Kate, another Fulbrighter, myself, the two co-teachers, and the CG's family. It was a pleasant Thai lunch with lots of lip-flapping from the CG's husband. I got pretty annoyed with the other fulbrighter's ass-kissing and shameless self-promoting, but it paled in contrasting embarrassing behavior. Kate burped in the Consulate General's face while in exclamation of pumpkin pie. Then after getting my camera back from security, I pulled a move my mom would do and started taking pictures after I was told not to--but they gave me my camera back, so screw them--and the guards got me busted for doing reconnaissance work on the residence like the terrorist I am.

That evening we motorcycled into town and met up with Kate's friend Maam and ate dinner at her work, which is a cashier at Thailand's equivalent of Costco, dubbed Tesco Lotus. I couldn't control myself and ended up buying things that I have struggled to find in Korea, i.e. Nutella and undershirts. But of course we couldn't help but stop at the photo booth and create some of the raddest photos ever. I wish I had a scanner to put them up. It was about as hilarious as the class in which we taught "give me some dap". After our stunning model shots we went downtown, because we couldn't figure out how to leave the city, and we saw a baby elephant being taken for a walk. It reminded me how much fun it'd be to have a tame jungle cat as a pet.


Kate just made me get up and try her papaya. I told her, "I hate fucking papaya", but she didn't believe me. She claimed that it's the best papaya ever, but I tried it and only tasted vomit inside my mouth. She's sitting outside offering it to all the students and staff that walk by, but she's been shut down EVERY TIME with her generous offerings... I think it's because Thai people are smarter than to eat papaya and it's a big joke Thais play on 'Farang'. Papaya sucks. Don't try and tell me different.

Yesterday was a strange one too. I was invited to Kate's co-teacher's birthday party in the English Department (they seem to be fond of luncheon parties at school). I failed to bring a present so I played and sang songs on guitar for about an hour and a half. They busted out these ancient song books and we played such classics like "Down on the Corner", "Horse with No Name", and "Leaving on a Jet Plane". Then I asked Kate to help me get a Thai massage, so she called the woman that normally comes to school and works on the teachers, but she was unavailable. So I was led to this place by another teacher. I wasn't told until I was inside the place, that this was a blind massage clinic. So yeah, instead of getting massaged by a sexy Thai woman, I was punished by a blind man. Seriously. I felt like I could have spent the same amount and it would have felt the same if I'd just propositioned a homeless man to beat me with sandbags. I'm hurting, probably from the cracking of body parts I never thought possible to crack.

Afterwards we went to the floral festival. We got there and turned right around on the shuttle because it was closed. Everyone told us that it was open until 8, but that was a damn lie! The outside looked cool though, real cool. As we waited for the bus, this woman asked Kate in Thai how many months pregnant she was, but when I turned around to shake my head no, she just nodded as if to tell me it was mine.

The rest of the evening went along like any would at the night bazaar. I bought pirated dvds, Kate bought some earrings, and we both steered clear of gypsies. In a nut shell, I love Thailand.