people of pattaya: part one

 all i need for an entertaining weekend night out is a 7/11 beer, a plastic chair on walking street, and when i’m feeling ambitious, my camera, to work on my self-appointed “people of pattaya” photography project. people watching is priceless here. the shirtless man with the hugest beer belly i might have ever seen, ever. i guess he’s right to leave it uncovered, it really is quite spectacular. the ladyboy with the completely unnecessary skirt that doesn’t even cover 2/3 of her butt cheeks. they really know how to make us 100% females feel bad about our bodies, given our genetically inevitable cellulite adorning the upper thighs of even the slenderest of girls. these lady boys prance around with the uniqueness of their particular gender circumstances giving them the best damn ass and legs you can find. not fair! then come the fanny packs. no eager lady-eyed pattaya explorer is ready to go hit the town without this essential accessory that *surprise* apparently didn’t go out of style. bright red mesh on bright red boardshorts. matching pink plaid ensembles. men looking like they wandered accidentally straight from the nursing home. fake boobies at breaking point pushed up out of teeny tops adorning an all-too muscular set of arms and shoulders. and more fanny packs, fanny packs, fanny packs. then comes the sporadic “good guy goes to heaven, bad guy goes to pattaya” tee shirt. just in case you were doubting why this guy is here…

language lessons

every once in awhile, the idea of thai language classes makes its appearance in my brainstorm of ways to keep myself entertained aside from work…then my day to day experiences just living, eating, wandering on the beach remind me that i’m HERE in THAILAND. ha! language school, schmanguage school.



let me tell you how i’m practicing my thai. emily’s guide to learning a language: wander around by yourself. bypass the inviting restaurants that scream: WHITE girl! ENGLISH speaker! WESTERN food eater! come to me! instead, wander quite uninvited into the areas of picnic tables on the dirt across from the beach that bear very few indications of being a restaurant at all, let alone actually being open, or open to serving to clientele like me, for that matter. it’s hard not to feel uncomfortable barging into these areas, because many clearly double as the family’s home in the back. but hey, get over it. stare at the all-thai menu for some time, maybe deciphering a word here and there. inquire in your best thai about your favorite -and few- meals you order in thai. wait smilingly and innocently despite possible looks of whatthehellisthisgirldoing…soon, they realize you’re happy to be there! in thailand, at their eatery (whether it was open or not), and in their company. get invited to sit with drunkhappyoldthai man (only other customer/husband of the cook/my new “buddy”!) add sangsom and soda, and let the language lessons begin! after becoming incapable of looking politely confused at everything the drunkhappyoldthaiman says in slurred thai, and learning some new words from the other nice lady cook, say goodbye to your two new friends (“om” and “noi”). come back on set day (wan sao, aka saturday) loaded with new happy phrases to test and a new dish to order blindly from the unreadable menu!

koh chaaaang.

koh chaaaaang. “elephant island.” after a week of experiencing miscommunication chaos similar to a game of telephone gone wrong between stickler parents, traditional grandparents, giggly ex thai hookers, nosy grandmother in laws, thai teaching assistants, chinese school owners, and too-happy thai principals, i was ready for the four day break for buddist lent. any kind of break. i was not picky at all. that being said, without really knowing what to expect of our planned 4-day excursion to thailand’s second largest island, my sole expectation of koh chang was sitting on a beach all weekend. i didn’t need anything spectacular. no blow-your-mind photo ops or super nice beachside accommodation. just sand, water, and a lack of crazy kiddies running in circles around me. not asking for too much, i thought.


but this undemanding fantasy was crushed right away. seconds after boarding the koh chang ferry, equipped with backpacks full of bathing suits and tanning oil and chang beers in hand to celebrate the long blissful weekend, the island loomed straight ahead with a thick grey mass smothering the peaks of the green mountaintops. oh ya, it’s rainy season. up in pattaya, this means sporadic and crazy rainstorms every day or few days. here in koh chang, resting over 4 hours southeast of our homebase and nearly bumping butts with the cambodian border, the rainy season doesn’t mess around.


poncho-less, flashlight-less, and with nothing but my 3 sundresses to help soak up the monsoonage, my simple expectation of a restful beach weekend was washed away, along with the powerlines, roadside trees, and bright orange clay hillsides of the tiny island. and this made for the best of weekend adventures i could have ever imagined. koh chang trip quickly became an exciting blur of rainforest explorations, wild motorbike rides, elephant encounters, and a twist on the usual backpacker bar scene with the lack of electricity creating a stunning backdrop of candlelight and lightning over the ocean. what more could i have asked for. case-in-point: leave the expectations at home, and you never know when a simple beach weekend can morph into a crazy rain-filled vacay adventure.


our wild ride ripping from the pier to white sands beach hanging off the back of a baht bus over steep and windy rainforest roads takes us to the best deal on motorbike rentals ever: 400 baht for three days. it being the low season, we are struck with good luck on deals. apparently no one else decides to brave the island monsoons for their quiet beach weekend getaways… everything goes better than we can imagine. with teacher misty riding on the back of our speedy little teal and white honda, we roam on paved but nevertheless thrilling narrow and hilly roads down to lonely beach. dangerous enough with our lack of experience on the crazy roads dipping up and down with sharp narrow turns, an abundance of potholes, and no warning of the next obstacle, the breathtaking ocean views between the breaks in the lush untouched rainforest hills makes keeping my eyes on the road quite a challenge! i am already pleasantly astonished by the lack of complete commercialization and overdevelopment of this island, and the tiny dirt sois and family-owned beachside restaurants and guesthouses of lonely beach completes my picture of paradise. here we stumble upon another too-good-to be true deal brought on by the deterring rain of low season: 200 baht a night to stay at paradise cottages. the amazing hammock setup, open-air bathrooms, and simple palm leaf-roofed huts are too good to be true. siah, the owner, is more than welcoming and accommodating. we spend the first day on a nice little foot exploration of lonely beach, finding our instant favorite restaurant/bar: “stone free.” a tree-fort-ish setup run by a young thai hippy couple and their young son pin, whose english skills and work ethic are ridiculously impressive. our love for this family and their amazing food and ambiance is likely not reciprocated to the same degree as we spend the next three days closing the place down after midnight with intense jenga matches then ignoring the close sign (we hopefully assume they just forget to turn it…) as we lumber back every morning for the hangover-curing brew and my obsessive orders of every type of curry on the menu, even before 10 am. at least our combined orders of beers, fresh fruit shakes, tofu, curries, and obscene amounts of american breakfast items hopefully made up for our constant presence in profits…the other noteworthy late night spot we find on the first night is the ting tong, with 4 happy hours of 2 for 1 bucket deals, live music, and 24 hour food service.


day two: RAINforest hiking. (i came to learn, during this trip, the meaning of “rainforest”). as much as i would have enjoyed a more lengthy and challenging hike to the waterfall, the hiking path turned rushing/flooded bright orange clay river makes the short hikes quite exciting in itself. and who doesn’t like waterfalls! more motorbike explorations in our soaking clothes take us all the way down to the bottom of the island to ban bang bao fishing village (fun just thanks to the detail that the entirety of the village is on stilts our into the water) then back up to lonely beach for a wet night of tranquilizing thai massages and socializing with other wet but happy explorers.


day three: elephants! yes, we actually get to swim in rivers with the elephants! my day is just great. afterward, the slow but bumpy elephant-paced trek through the amazing mountainous jungle land is just right for taking photos in the unexpected short break from the monsoonage. my anxiety about the viability of this sanctuary’s animal-friendly claims is not completely assuaged until our ride home next to elephants freely roaming and having snacktime in the grass. with clearly no cares in the world.


we arrive back home to the late afternoon sun in jomtien. with the looming prospect of just another day at school tomorrow, it’s hard to believe i am still so content to be back on my home turf.


oh wait.


i AM in thailand. on a beach. just got back from four days of ripping around on motorbikes past monkeys and watching crazy storms from the safety of my personal beachfront hammock and hanging out with elephants in rivers. can’t let the monotony of the 9-5er let me forget the crazy reality that i am so grateful to be experiencing here in the land of thai…

daycay

the poor teacher’s guide to taking a free ritzy daycay: pool crashing the royal cliff. i am in no way discontent in my poor traveling teacher’s budget place of street foodies and towels on the jomtien beach. if anything, i am glad to not be part of the opulence of the overdone beach resorts that verges on disgusting. but everyone needs an escape every once in awhile! our’s comes in the form of wandering with foreigner confidence straight into the huge glass doors of the royal cliff resort, straight to the overly-cushioned pool chairs. when lounging gets old (not that it does…), wander on over to the poolside elevator –yes, the elevator- that will conveniently take you down to your own private beach. a little excessive, yes. unnecessary, definitely. but transforming every now and then from a goodwill educator of young pattaya half-breed minds to a rich vacationing honeymooner without a care in the world is not so bad!

thai massage

amazing!



thai massages are very different from traditional oil Swedish-style massages that are pretty standard back home. ever since i got to pattaya, where there are 10 massage parlors on every block (most are mainly to complement the prostitution scene, though apparently they still offer traditional massages even without the desire for a happy ending…) i’ve been dying for a good thai massage. like a good poor teacher on a backpacker’s budget, i held off until payday. even though massages are only about 150-200 baht per hour, i’m still in the mentality that treating yourself to a massage is a huge splurge, so i waited. i mostly hear great things about thai massages and people have compared it to doing yoga or pilates without any of the work. i was intrigued! though the motivation was really more fueled from needing to relax my tense muscles after my first month of teaching.


we chose healthland, recommended by several different people as having a really nice legitimate spa atmosphere, but still good prices, which sounds better than choosing one of the random shops on beach road, where you really don’t know where the woman’s hands have been before your body…


all three of us are in the same simple room with mattresses on the floor. we get into our awesome pajama-like outfits to allow full mobility of the limbs. i lay there for the full two hours in complete noodled-out bliss, in a half-dreaming trance of complete relaxation as i let the little thai woman do who knows what to my body. she throws my legs across my body, swings my arms over my head, bends my hands backward, presses my feet into the floor, walks across my back, and pulls my head out of my neck. and man, it feels uhhh-maazing! this splurge might have to be a weekly activity here in the land of thai!

พิธีไหว้ครู wai kru ceremony

as i am finding teaching more of a stress than a heart-warming source of pride and joy, i was quite looking forward to the prospect of a whole day dedicated to honoring the grueling hours us teachers put in for the selfless cause of filling young minds with knowledge. the actual ceremony was somewhat of an anticlimax, given that we spent weeks and weeks preparing for it. not that i’m complaining about the hours of practice that cut into my classtime…the two hours that wai kru practice took out of every few days for the past weeks were definitely the best hours of my day, sitting in the shade watching cute little kids perfecting their bows in front of the teachers really beats standing in front of my class hearing myself repeat the abc’s over and over, intermittently raising my voice every few letters for the necessary exclamations of “sit down!” “no jumping off tables!” and “it’s not nice to hit our friends!” to keep the kiddos at least semi in order. not quite as cute up close in contained classrooms as they are when eloquently practicing their wai kru bows… but after so much intensivepractice to perfect the singing (beautiful!) and line reciting and praying to Buddha and bowing to the teachers and offering the flowers and candles, i came to school on thursday happy to be there, excited for the prospect of a day of ceremony and celebration and festivities, with not even the slightest thought of teaching, only to find out (after having to teach before and after the much too short ceremony) that i had been sorely mistaken in my expectations for the day.



aside from my personal whining about not getting a day off from teaching, the ceremony is beautiful, and the little ballerinas and thai dancers that performed are adorable and i really enjoy the traditional ceremony music. it would be nice if the foreign teachers got informedat least a little about what was going on though. with no real knowledge of Buddhism or thai customs, our small group of farang teachers is shunned to the side of the ceremony, completely in the dark (as usual) about what is going on. we’re used to it. the lack of communication is now understood as a given that comes with the territory.


i later find out, through my own investigations, that wai kru ceremony, or teacher appreciation day, is a traditional thai ceremony held in the beginning of the school year for the students to show gratitude and establish a respectful and formal student-teacher relationship. the ceremony is traditionally held on a thursday as this is the day of brihaspati, vedic god of wisdom and teachers. student representatives present the teachers with offerings of various flowers(symbolizing student qualities of wit, humility, and discipline), candles, and joss sticks presented on a thai tray called a phan. thank god for wikipedia…