Another weekend at home

It is unfortunately the end of the rambutan and mangosteen season, but my fingers are already stained with the stickiness from lang khang, the latest fruit crop. The fruit is quite delicious but the covering has a sticky sap similar to that of a dandelion when you open it. It has been a remarkably sunny week, which luckily started last weekend. On Friday, Ian and I joined some other volunteer teachers in Khao lak, the town about 30 minutes south of Bang sak, to celebrate a birthday at a local bar. It was a good time with lots of card games and music. We were invited back for a cook-out on Saturday, so I stuck around Bang sak and enjoyed the domestic comforts of my bungalow… hanging my new plant, washing laundry by hand, watching the frog that spends the day resting on my window, waiting for my seedlings to sprout, watching the ants that have a highway along the wall of my porch, marking the progress of the snail that crawled up my drain and into my bathroom, playing with the dogs that belong to the owner of the bungalows, etc…





I also spent quite a bit of time studying how to read and write Thai. I try to study speaking a little bit each day, but reading and writing has been a more daunting challenge that I’ve avoided diving into for a while. But I’ve made my flash cards now and will hopefully begin to recognize and correctly pronounce words soon. I think that writing Thai script is similarly difficult to Japanese and Arabic. However, the number of vowels that change form when combined with one or two other vowels, placed in a medial instead of a final position in a word, or when spoken with a particular tone make Thai much harder to read and write than either Japanese or Arabic in my opinion.

The cook-out on Saturday night was another enjoyable evening with the volunteer teachers in Khao lak. We shared many stories about life in Thailand and America as well as much good food. On Sunday morning, since the weather was so good, I drove to Phuket to surf. The drive is about 2 ½ hours, which wasn’t bad on the way down because I got to see the towns that I am usually oblivious to while riding the bus. In Thailand, there are these public rest stops about every 10 km. It’s really nice to see drivers from many different towns taking afternoon naps or eating their meals with other travelers. However, making the round-trip drive in one day was a little too much for me, which contributed to the road rage I felt by the end of the drive at the approaching cars that wouldn’t turn off their blinding high-beams! The waves were big and ultimately worth it though. I’m still only able to stand shakily, if at all, on a long board, but I’ve got many more weekends to work on it. Unfortunately, but for safety’s sake, surfing and driving don’t lend themselves to photography, so I don’t have many pictures to share with you.


My week of teaching was cut short by a couple of events. First, Ian and I had to apply for our work permits as Thai ‘aliens’ on Monday, which took most of the day. Our quest was only partially successful since we were granted our work permits but denied visa extensions. The government has recently tightened their restrictions on farang who can live and work in Thailand, so it is now not uncommon to have difficultly getting these necessary documents. However, we apparently only need one or two more pieces of signed paper work and will then be able to reapply. This week is also midterm week at R35, so classes for the Matayom (middle and high school) students were restructured for test taking. We were still able to have Tuesday puzzle and art hour though, which was highly attended. There were many more beautiful paintings! The highlight of my week though was definitively walking into my Patom 5 class on Thursday morning and having the quite boy in the front right corner of the room smile up at me with a full grill! I don’t know where he found the foil, but he was sure proud of his glimmering new smile and I couldn’t help but laugh.