We love the king so much...we wear yellow.

One thing we have noticed since arriving is that the Thai really.....that's a REALLY...love their king. The past week was the king's birthday and every Monday is the king's day and everyone wears yellow in honor of him. In addition, you can sport your "I love the king" buttons and shirts or simply carry around a giant laminated photo of him in various stages of his life. There's the "king helping children" photo, the "king sweating profusely as he hands out aid" photo, and my personal favorite"the king feeding his dog" laminated placemat. They really love the guy.
One of the best things about loving the king is being able to pick out your wardrobe each day based on what color you wear to support him. Monday is yellow but we also have "blue Tuesday" and "pink Wednesday". After the rain came for a month it was easy to buy a new wardrobe to replace our moldy clothes. We have a lot of blue, yellow, and pink.

The morning ritual!

The morning ritual! All the students line up according to their classes. The band starts and then everyone watches the flag raise while the Thai National Anthem plays. Next a very long prayer is said for the King and how much they love him and for how much he has done for the Thai people. Oh and somewhere is the National Anthem is says that Thai people love peace but if they need to kick butt they will (Dez told me this so if I'm wrong blame him).
After the prayer, a teacher will speak to the students as they sit on the ground for 10-50 minutes depending on the announcements needed to be made. Whether 1st period starts on time depends on the length of announcements. I love first period.

Peace!

It's a proven fact that Thai students will flash a sideways peace sign in 84% of all photographs taken of them by farang.

Riding bikes in the rain and night

The guy riding the bike is Scott. He's from Florida and works with us at Super English. He normally looks less crazy. Caleb is getting a bike ride down to the night market with Scott.
It rained for a month straight, and I mean rained. Codie is soaked through here after riding home from school.

Hi!

We just got back from vacation in Southern Thailand for the King's birthday! We'll write more later.

Our Bungalow

Once again, accomodations here are ridiculously cheap. We stayed on the beach for about $8 a night. Check out the moon rising. These pics are all from our bungalow's restaurant.

Joy

Our guide Joy. He was very quiet and slept a lot. God, I love his hair.

Stripey Rocks.....

The stripey rocks that we did NOT take one of even though Caleb's mom loves shells and rocks from places. We wouldn't want to put a curse on her or us (you're welcome Patty).

The second place we stopped on the tour has these beautiful stripey rocks that are found nowhere else in the marine park. There is a legend that if you pick up a rock...read the most awesome sign...

We saw a Lionfish (they can kill you!), a 4 foot shark (Caleb saw it and it swam away), a sea snake, an eel, sea horses, jellyfish, puffer fish, and tons of beautiful tropical fish. Please note, however, that the majority of the aquatic life we have mentioned can hurt you. Oh pretty (dangerous) ocean.

Snorkel!

The guy in the back with the awesome mullet is a local Chao Lay guy. For $16 we got a 7 hour snorkle trip, lunch and total awesomness. The people with us were cool and the coral and sealife was the best I've ever seen.

We went snorkling in the Koh Tarutoa National Marine Park on the MOST BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE WORLD--the day the rain finally stopped. We are very happy here. We still can't believe it.

Sunrise on Koh Lipe

On to Koh Lipe--the island where the rain finially stopped. Isn't it pretty? You can see the sky. Sigh.

DINOSAUR BIRDS = new animal impressions!

This bird was amazing. It looked like a dinosaur. This picture isn't very good, but really, you should see these birds. It's called a hornbill something or other. They move around like giant creatures out of some Jim Henson sci-fi fantasy film.

Koh Tarutao

So this is Koh Tarutao where .... Survivor 2002 was filmed!!! Wow! Yea! And I am NOT being sarcastic. Anyone who says Survivor is stupid is a moron. Anyways, we were sort "surviving" because it poured rain the whole time = boring = boooo! = lots of Settlers of Cataan! Wow! Yea! And again, I am NOT being sarcastic. Anyone who says being obsessed with Settlers of Cataan is stupid and lame and has obviously never played. Oh, and this is a picture on top of a lookout / tsunami safty place. It will start pouring rain within 2 minutes of this photograph being taken.

From Survivor to Lost to Fantasy Island....all in one week

OK….. to start with, Codie and I are not dead or trapped in a Bangkok airport trying to overthrow the government. Second, those of you who have been commenting on our posts on our blog, we can read them, are enjoying them, but have no idea how to write back to you. Sorry. If you have questions or want us to talk back shoot us an email…or just comment on our blog and know we are enjoying hearing from you.
What does the overthrowing of a government look like in Thailand? A lot of people wearing opposing T-shirts and some graffiti, if you’re living where we are in Surat Thani. The protests that have shut down the airports in Bangkok and have led to the loss of lives and injuries from both police and protestors have manifested in Surat in the form of a few posters and T-shirts. We’re about ten hours away by train to Bangkok. There are some people in town who are very political and attend nightly political functions by the river but we haven’t seen anything other then some passionate pamphlets and t-shirts accusing the prime minister of being a criminal. Bottom line is we’re safe and Thailand will be having elections soon for a new government head.
So why haven’t we written since this whole mess started? We’ve been busy enjoying two major holidays…..Thanksgiving (Thai style) and Father’s Day (aka The King’s Birthday)
Thanksgiving was a let down on the traditional Thursday. As we sat eating springrolls and Vietnamese pancakes we were a little bummed but on the following Saturday our faith in gorging ourselves was renewed. We headed, on Saturday, by air-conditioned mini-van for Khanom where we celebrated Thanksgiving at a restaurant on the ocean owned by some American s who had turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, and gravy along side Isaan curry and som tam (papaya salad). It was the best of both worlds, we watched football (British soccer matches) and I ended up with me following through with another favorite Thanksgiving past time when I fell asleep in a booth.
We have had the past week off due to the King of Thailand being born 80 some years ago. We decided to head out of Surat and head down the Andaman Coast to a place that I'm sure has been in all of your hearts since 2002 where they filmed Survivor Thailand, the island of Tarutao.
Being on the island where they filmed Survivor was most things one would expect a tropical paradise would be. There are monkeys in the trees (more than one species), beautiful Hornbill birds that look like dinosaurs, and palm lined beaches. Just the type place where you would be happy to hear the words "the tribe has spoken" just so you could go sit under a tree and let the waves lap at your feet. Codie and I arrived to gray skies and misty rain but it didn't stop us from hiking to the next beach where we saw the side of Tarutao that was edited out of Survivor. The pristine beach, with shimmering blue water, and a layer of garbage stretching from one end of the beach to the other about five feet thick and containing everything from crab traps, to flip flops. The rainy season is on its tail end and that means, according to the park rangers, that clean up is pointless. Every time they clean up the beach, the great ocean spits out a layer, just as thick, of garbage. We decided to keep heading down to the next beach 4KM away.
This beach was inaccessible by the one truck on the island because they were building a road and its remoteness promised to be a true Survivor experience. As we prepared for Jeff Probst to start grilling us, we realized something was weird.
The signs along the road were all in Thai (obviously) but they also had Buddhists symbols all over them. We walked through crazy looking jungle and emerged upon a futuristic looking station that appeared abandoned. We kept walking and stumbled on dozens of empty modern houses. There was not a soul in sight. We realized we had crossed channels. We had gone from Survivor to Lost!
Monkeys began to shriek in the distance, I thought I saw a polar bear and we got out of there before a hatch opened.
Tarutoa is a pretty remarkable place. It has miles and miles of untouched wilderness, stunning animals, and form what we hear, amazing sunsets. It's too bad it rained the entire time we were there and we left to the neighboring island of Koh Lipe.

See the above pictures for visions of the tropical paradise that was LIpe. We are now tan, rested, and ready to teach for the next few months.

The Thai Visa

A month ago Codie and I had to have our photos taken at a photo studio to make pictures that would go in our Thai Visa. We went to the studio not wearing T-shirts but also nothing particularly fancy. We were told not to smile..... wait smile, but no teeth.....wait too big of a smile and we went on our merry way. This week we got our Visas.
The photo studio superimposed a suit on me, a businees suit on Codie, and airbrushed both of our faces to make us look more "professional" (including putting pink lipstick on me). Here are the results. I look like a linebacker heading to clown college. God I love Thailand.

Teenagers!

My level 5 students in their normal uniform (16-17 year olds). Thai kids love to flash the peace sign, take note.

Team Uno!

My adorable team "Uno" who won this weeks team point challenge. Winners get a photo taken with the trophy as well as one, yes one, jellybelly jelly bean imported for the United States. They love them so. Notice today was there one hour a week "sports day" so they are wearing their Thai sports uniform.

The King's sister's funeral

A couple Fridays ago, all of Thailand was in morning because the King's sister was having her funeral. She died over a year ago but Thailand needed a year to allow foreign dignataries to pay their respects. Everyone was sad, memorial services were everywhere, children read poems and... first period was cancelled!

The Thai Office: The Decor

Hanging in our office are strange signs like, "A kiss after a kick", "All cats are grey in the dark", and "Call a spade when it's a spade". Interesting.

The Thai Office: Kasorn!

Oh how I love Kasorn! The Thai teachers at our office LOVE to tell us about themselves and Kasorn is the best at this. She is the BEST cook, has the BEST garden, lives close to the BEST market in town, has raised the BEST and SMARTEST children (I am supermom)... She is wonderful and wants us to try her food from home everyday. Eating in Thailand is an event and lunch at school is no different. She is holding some sort of homemade elixer in a whiskey bottle. She made me drink it and said I would be young forever if I did.

The Thai Office: Napping!

Notice the Thai teacher sleeping behind Caleb. Yes, frequently the Thai teachers take naps back in our nice airconditioned office.

The Thai Office: Leisure Activities

Hard at work in the office...
Matt checking sports scores or writing his memoir.
Dez playing games on his cell phone.
Lizzy on Facebook. Another favorite activity at the Office.

The Thai office

Some of the Thai teachers as seen through our glass partition. Yes, the farang teachers are on one side of a glass wall and the Thai teachers are on the other. Our side has air-conditioning, there side has a computer. Frequently we venture on the other side and mingle.

More Photos of Loi Kratong

Loi Kratong: Banana leaves, boats, and discarded body parts

If last week was supposed to be the moment of shedding all the bad luck of the previous year, well, it looks like the gods have decided to scoop an extra helping on my plate for this year right from the get go. Like some sadistic lunch lady of bad karma, this has been a tough week of bad luck.
Last week was Loi Kratong, the festival in Thailand where people build small boats made out of bananas and sugar cane stalks and sail them down the river. Now, these aren’t just empty vessels to race down stream. Some people go for the simple green leaf boat shape but for most Thai families the boat you build is more like an episode of “Pimp my Loi Kratong Boat”. The most lavishly decorated are covered with flowers, plastic hearts, bead work, ornate pins, and sparklers. At the bare minimum they need to have three sticks of incense, small coins, and discarded body parts. The coins are put in to bring wealth in the next year and the discarded body parts (a healthy sprinkling of fingernails and hair) are the physical shedding of all your bad ju-ju from the previous year. At the actual festival you can launch your boat at the riverside or hire a longtail boat to drive you out to the middle of the river where you can light your incense, birthday candles, and sparklers to give your tiny S.S. Bananarama a proper send off. The overall effect has the river glowing with smoke and the red eyes of incense sticks while above your head people are launching paper lanterns that give the same speckled effect to the night sky. The only way you know up from down is from the constant lapping of water into the boat on each side rhythmically reminding you that the longtail boat could fill and go belly up in seconds. You got to love that about Thailand. Each festival we have gone to has at least one moment of “Wheeeeee…this is fun” followed by a moment of “Wow, we almost just died in that boat” or “Jeepers, that firework almost blew off my ear” or “Hey, that tree is on fire.”
Well, we sent off our bad luck twice this year. Once with our friends from SUper English and once with our Thai neighbors across the street. Maybe it was the double dipping into launching the boats but I have not been having a good week.
It started with an eye problem (see: eye infection/allergies/pink eye/ glaucoma) that has made my eyes feel like they are being inflated from behind by a pressure hose. This was manageable thanks to glasses and constant blinking that I think students are mistaking for some type of cryptic Morse code to help learn English. To make matters worse my eyes are bloodshot making me look like some creepy prize bunny at the state fair.
This was followed by a bout of disagreeable food (see: tapeworm/ giardia/ food poisoning/ hours in public squat toilets that won't be discussed on this blog). All these trials have been minor compared to my Thursday night.
Now, I have blogged before about the dogs in our neighborhood and around Surat Thani. Some are just your typical third world fast breeding dogs that seem to swagger on every street corner dodging motorbikes, lounging in their own feces, and randomly chasing other dogs but for the most part not bothering humans at all. Other dogs are not so nice. One in particular lives by the furniture store that lies between our house and the houses of the other teachers that teach at our school. It has, on more than one occasion, chased Codie and myself down the street nipping at our pant legs and sliming our heels with its big scary dog drool.
So, now when we near the furniture store we get ready. We pick up a rock, swing our bike lock, or pull up a hood so it doesn't have the immediate thoughts of "Oooooh farang (foreigners)! Mmmmmmmmmmmm!". We're like a giant hamburger in a world of curry and pad thai. This Thursday night we had spent the evening playing a heated game of Apples to Apples and were on our way home in the rain getting closer and closer to the "giant evil furniture store snarling demon of doom" and we got ready. I pulled my coat up, took out my bike lock (the kind that is made of metal with rubber wrapped around the coils) and we began our descent down Amphur Road. Twenty feet away Codie gave the battle cry of "Ready?". I shouted "Ready, Captain" and swung my bike lock mockingly like a mace. That's when the night turned into a white flash and I almost toppled over my handle bars.
Had the dog jumped through the air and sunk its teeth into my cranium? DId an angel come down to protect me from Cujo? Nope. I had swung my bike lock, full force, right into my left eye. I'm talking "fully opened, hyper aware of dog" left eye. Codie stopped her bike and the outpouring of sympathy gushed out of her newly blinded husband with waves and waves of laughter. That's right. Codie came seconds away from having a pirate husband with a patch and all she was able to do was laugh. I guess that's the best first aid in a country where you need to laugh off many of the scary things that happen to you and smile at the craziness (rabid dogs and eye infections included). I'm not blinded but I think I'll stick to tiny rocks from now on when fending off Fido.

All good (sort of) in our hood

Our teaching schedule has us getting up for school at six but thankfully Surat Thani has provided a fail safe way of making sure we don’t miss class. Alarm clocks entirely unnecessary! What a score! Instead of using an alarm we have our initial wake up call of the 37 roosters that our neighbors keep in their yard. It’s pretty easy to hit snooze on the roosters so thankfully our neighbor in the next flat like to start hand scrubbing their laundry outside of our bedroom door at 5:35 sharp. The vigorous scrubbing of clothing, after a ten minutes of listening, actually takes on a soothing rhythm, like ocean waves. You hit a second snooze. At 6:30 the cacophony really begins. Cue the barking yipper dogs dressed in sweaters across the street, now slowly bring in the putting and whizzing of tuk tuk, motorbikes,and song thoews (mini trucks with benches in the back to carry passengers), build the final crescendo by adding our creepy German neighbor across the street blasting THE ONE mix CD he owns. If the track list of Steve Miller’s “Abracadbra”, Celine Dion, and crappy German techno do not wake you up, consult a doctor.
The alley we live in is quite a mix. Poor neighbors who collect bottles and seem to have barely enough to get by. Kids who wash themselves outside out of a garbage bin used to collect rain water. Rich neighbors with huge gates and expensive TVs inside. The internet cafe owners who have invited us over to have guitar jam sessions to Thai pop songs. And, our creepy German neighbor who has said fewer than 15 words to us since we moved in. He is about 55 years old, has a younger Thai wife, and runs an ice cream stand from his living room. It’s just a giant cooler where school kids grab a cone on their way home from school. His hobbies appear to be staring out of his house into ours (which became evident when nine of the fifteen words he has said to us included “I can see you at night in your house”), staring at his TV, and drinking an excessive amount of alcohol. Not really into the music, but kind of scared to question his passion for Kraut rock.
Our alley is also home to an adorable dog that follows us everywhere, two dogs that want to bite us, an unknown number of mice and cockroaches, a teenage girl who we pay to do our laundry (who has a dog so mean she makes us hand the laundry through a side window so the dog in the front room won’t eat us) and a small store that sells cups of noodles, jugs of water, and various canned and dried ocean products. Ahhhh! Home sweet home.