Yep, I’m way behind on this thing (as in I just had to go back and read my last relevant post and see where I left off at) and I’m going to give you the run down on where I live right now, what I’ve been doing since I left Cambodia and what I did last weekend (because I actually have pictures of that) all in one post.
We left the beach in Cambodia where my phone was stolen and I lost all of my pictures forever (I’m over it! Really!) and Rick, Katie, Marcellus and myself made the 4 hour drive to the border where our van driver kicked us out and left us to trek the wild jungles of Thailand and fend for ourselves. Well…sort of. He really did drop us off there. Apparently you cannot drive across the border? Still not clear on that but the road is definitely blocked. So we had to get out and walk to a building to get our passports and visas checked and then walk to another building and repeat and then…we were in. Pretty simple. We had another driver come to pick us up on that side and take us the rest of the way. Two nice things about the border: They have people who carry your bags across for your (for a dollar each of course, this is Asia, anything to make a buck) and the soldiers checking the van to make sure we were legal were pretty cute. Katie and I decided we liked Thailand already.
6 hours later, on a nice, paved, maintained highway (cough, CAMBODIA) we arrive in Pattaya, or as I like to call it: Las Vegas, Thailand. There are a few main streets in Pattaya: one direction is “North”, “Central”, and “South” streets. Perpendicular to that is “1st”, “2nd”, and “3rd” streets. Pretty nice of them to make it the easiest street names ever. I suspect that it is to help out the hordes of drunk tourists that flock this town, navigate even when they’ve spent too much time on the strip aka “Walking Street.” It’s called Walking Street because you can only walk on it (again, drunk foreigners, simple names). No driving allowed. This street in particular is why I have given this city it’s nickname. The bright lights, the tourists, street performers, outrageously priced drinks, sin and so on…Rather than ripping everyone’s pictures off the internet (mine turned out bad), I’m just posting the link to pictures that will show you exactly what Walking Street is like, here. The difference is that gambling is illegal in Thailand. So what Walking Street lacks in casinos, it more than makes up for in sex. All kinds of sex. Shows. Prostitutes. You name it, you can find it. Pattaya is the number one area for tourists on the eastern seaboard and Walking Street is why. Just be careful- some of those beautiful (and they are beautiful) ladies you are taking back to your rooms are not totally ladies for two reasons: 1) they’re notorious for drugging you and robbing you blind (not very lady-like) and 2) They have a penis. They were born dudes. And still kind of are. I’ve only been here two week and my ladyboy (the actual name for these people) accuracy has increased significantly but that’s because I’m suspicious of every “girl” with a slender body, masculine features, and perfect boobs now even if they really are a girl.
If you’re not looking for sex (me and the maybe 6 or 7 other not-there-to-prostitute-ourselves women in the area) they do have some good live music. I’ve heard rock and classic rock played at a few different places and enjoyed them. It is funny to hear Guns N Roses with a Thai accent though.
Thai Rock Cover Band
I haven’t figured out how to upload videos to this thing yet (bummer because you would laugh at the accent too. And I had a great video of a street jam band)
Anyway-like Las Vegas, you can only do it for so long before it gets tiring. You visit Vegas, you don’t live there and if you do live there, you don’t go to the strip (I have friends that live there, I have local people knowledge). We live about a fifteen minute walk north of the strip in a little side street village off of 3rd and South. At first when I learned we were going to be staying in Pattaya, I was like “awesome! beach! fun things to do! has to be cleaner than Cambodia” and was pretty excited.I think I’ve made it clear that Pattaya is not what I was expecting and is not really what I had in mind when I decided to move to Thailand. I actually found myself missing Phnom Penh. (When we had to go out and interview Thai people to practice the language, I was overly happy to have accidentally picked a Cambodian guy to interview. I told him thank you in his native language, which I was excited to purposefully use since I had been accidentally saying it since I got here to Thai people) Thailand looks small on the map. Me looking at a map on the computer: “Oh it’s not that big. It wont be too difficult to decide where to live. And everything is within reasonable travel distance.” EEHHHH. This is what Thailand actually looks like on a good map:
From the yellow circle (Pattaya) to the blue circle is about ten hours. From Pattaya to the other yellow circle up north is even further. Which means there are a LOT of schools and a LOT of places to live and I had to blindly choose one of them.
The second or third night we were here I had some mild anxiety (stayed up till 2:30 in the morning rocking myself while thinking “holy shit I moved to Asia why did I move to Asia that was dumb this place sucks it doesn’t look like the pictures this is not what I thought who let me do this why am I here and how am I going to leave”). Luckily the next day Jam, our director, watched me student teach and was talking to me about where I wanted to live and I told her politely “not sure but definitely not in this freakin place”. She was like, “Nooo, this is not Thailand. This is something else! The rest of Thailand is nothing like this!” I wanted to hug her for saying that so dramatically because drama loves drama and I was feeling pretty dramatic about this little living situation. She gave me some names of some non-touristy beach towns to check out down south (my task for next weekend).
Rick came with us to Thailand and his daughter is from Laos so she came to visit for the weekend. Katie’s one and only wish when coming to Thailand for the summer (she’s going back to Nebraska to finish school after our graduation) was to ride an elephant. Rick and his friend Mike (an English guy who I liked very much) played tour guide and showed us around some nice places outside of Pattaya on Saturday. One thing that I have learned from this trip is to always let Rick be a tour guide if he volunteers. He’s lived here 30 years and knows all of the ins and outs and places to go. Plus he speaks Thai so he comes in handy for that too.
Our first stop was the Million Stone Park. “Are there exactly a million stones or am I going to have to count?” I joked. “It’s actually called that because the stones are a million years old. …Which is funny because so is every other stone in the world” said Rick. We are a funny bunch. So we fed some crocodiles (which was terrifying- I don’t do crocodiles/alligators or sharks. I highly respect them and their personal space and usually about another 100 yards distance on top of that)
And took pictures with some tigers (sorry, I have a double chin in my picture so I’m not sharing) and while Katie rode an elephant, I trained them
and then Katie, Sarah (Rick’s daughter) and I took a picture with one while it peed (one for the photo albums!)
and then I took a selfie with a giraffe who surprised me mid picture
and then we went to a crocodile show where the guy puts his arm in a crocodiles mouth, and then puts his head in, and then puts in money (because: priorities). “Katie, do you think he’s cute?” She agreed about the soldier thing so I thought she would agree…”Uhh no..”…hmm must be the bad boy thing he had going for him then. Or maybe big muscles from dragging crocodiles around all day. Here’s him with his head in the mouth.
After that, we went to a Chinese temple way out in the country. There is a hillside that they (idk who they is- Thai people I guess, or maybe Thai Chinese people) carved a giant Buddha into the side of and then filled with gold. You can see it pretty well from the temple but you can’t go near it. Soo my picture of it was blurry. Here are a few of the original Terracotta Soldiers that are on display though. These were pretty cool. 6,000 of these were discovered in the 70’s and each of them are different to represent real soldiers.
And this is me appreciating art.
(I made her take 4 pictures until I had the pose half way right. I can’t be taken anywhere.)
After this, we went to a beach (a REAL beach) and ate a late lunch. This is more of what I had in mind when I thought of Thailand. This beach is outside of Pattaya and is mostly a local spot. Aka we were the only white people. But again- Rick knows a lot so we were welcomed and had a really good meal. For dessert (which we ate first) we had this weird green pancake looking thing with horse hair textured stuff to put in it like a burrito. It was good though. Like a pancake wrapped around cotton candy. Pretty much completely sugar.
It was a very complete and nice day. It completely changed my attitude and worry about being here and my decision to move. That evening I hung out on our patio and had a drink with Rick and Mike while I looked at my little neighborhood. It was pretty lively for a side street, lots of food and shops. Dogs that come by for a pet or a scrap of whatever you’ll feed them. Even though I didn’t like it at first, and I knew it wasn’t for me long term, I decided it wasn’t really so bad. My little Las Vegas (Pattaya) has a wide variety of cultures here (It’s completely normal to have Swedish and Middle Eastern food in the same day) which I like a lot. And the staff and people I’ve met that work around here are nice and helpful. I should have known from Cambodia that everything is not going to be what I expect and that finding the good in the situations I’m in is what makes this whole experience a lot better. Plus, now I know where to bring my friends when they want to go party.
Rachel's Lesson Plans 