Mid-terms and Monsoons

I thought I hated mid-terms when I was in school. I didn't know what hate was until I had to grade three sections of English mid-terms. Like every other english teacher here at Assumption University, I spent my week grading mid-terms. Grading on the bus, grading during breakfast, during lunch, during dinner. Grading in the classroom, grading in the bedroom, grading in the elevator! the number of tests was not nearly so frustrating as the quality of the responses, or, should I say, the attempts at responses. Much of our time was spent deciphering just what it was the student in question was attempting to say. Which wasn't always anything at all to do with the question they were answering, because they're reading isn't much better than their writing. Add to that the fact that the test itself is rife with awful sentence structure and poor grammar because the silly Aussie who wrote the exam is even more incompetent than the rest of the administrators here, which is saying something. But that's the subject of a different post to come in the relatively near future. Anyway, I am glad to finally be done with those. In the mean time my other assignments have been piling up on me, so the grading is not nearly done. I am happy to report that a little over two thirds of my kids are on a path to pass the class. I can't take any of the credit for that, since I just started with them, but if I can keep them on that path I'll have a higher than average pass percentage. Which, from what I can tell, will be frowned upon by the English Department which apparently looks to fail somewhere around 50% of the basic english students.
It wasn't all work though. Last night four of us went to Ponthip to buy some DVDs and get dinner at an Italian restaurant. The food was definitely Italian, and by that I mean expensive and more pomp than circumstance. We had another fun ride on the Khlong, which is a much better ride during rush hour when the boats are so frequent that the collective wakes send water up over the canal's banks. I also got to ride on the back of a Bangkok Mini-Bus, which is a covered pick up truck. And by "ride on the back of" I mean stand on the metal running board and hold on to the outside. Like I've said before. Enclosure while traveling at speeds isn't really an appreciated concept in this country.
At the moment there appears to be a large thunder and lightning storm headed our way. As this is Monsson season this isn't that unusual. However, it hasn't rained here in two and a half weeks, which is unusual, so the Thais seem very excited about this storm. I guess I can understand. If you lived in San Diego and the sun didn't come out for two weeks you'd get pretty excited about it's return too! And while I share their excitement over a good rainstorm, it's time for me to get inside, because my laptop doesn't react too well to Monsoon conditions!

Koh Samet

What's the first thing you should do when you land in a foreign country and have to take over three sections of English 101? Go to the beach of course! In fact, you might as well spend a weekend at the beach. And go ahead and pick a beach on a small island off the coast and stay at a resort hotel catering to foreigners. I could tell you that I was hesitant about going on a vacation so soon after I'd arrived at my new job, but then you'd never trust a thing I said here. It wasn't my idea, however, I certainly wasn't about to say, "Hey guys, I think I'm gonna stay behind and grade mid-terms all weekend!" in a city where I know maybe a dozen people, nine of whom were headed for the beach. I was a victim of peer pressure, I swear.
All rationalizing aside, it was an incredibly good time and while I didn't get much grading done at the beach--it being extremely difficult to concentrate on poor attempts at English when there are people to watch and BBQ pits to inspect--I have no regrets. While I may have traded jet lag for sunburn (No, Mom, I clearly DIDN'T put enough sunscreen on!) the weekend at the beach was an excellent way of slowing down the whirlwind of arriving and jumping into the deep end of things.
Our beach excursion party was made up of the following persons: Myself, Brigid, Lauren, and Greg representing the basic english teachers at the Bang Na campus, Reavey representing the basic English teachers at the Hua Mak campus, Morgan, Sharon, and Sara representing the teachers at St. Gabriel's, and Dan, Pressanta, and Navene representing Assumption University residents and Sri Lanka and India, respectively. We gathered at 5:30am at the University gates and caught a cab to Ekkemai bus station where we purchased round trip bus tickets for approximately $7.50. The bus ride was nearly three hours long, and pretty much everyone but yours truly was able to sleep nearly the entire way. I spent most of those three hours watching the Thai countryside go by. A note on Thai buses: They are all oversized charter buses, normally with two levels of seating. They play pop Thai music at nearly ear crushing decibels. They reserve the right to make any necessary (or unnecessary) unscheduled stops, pick-up hitch-hikers, or ignore what few traffic laws other Thai vehicles would normally obey.
When the bus finally stopped at OUR destination, we gathered those still sleeping and stepped down into the glaring coastal morning. Here the sun is at roughly the same angle and intensity as it is in the Mojave desert at noon. Sunglasses are not a fashion accessory. The bus had delivered us to a pier where several companies (or one company with several names) offered transportation of various forms to the Koh Samet (or Koh Samed or Ko Samed or Kohsamed depending on who you ask or what sign you read) which was our final destination. Koh being the Thai word for island, our options were a ferry, which would deliver you to a pier on the far side of the island, or a speed boat, which would be considerably faster and would deliver us to the beach of our choice on the island. Obviously, the speed boat was considerably more expensive, but my companions who have made this trek a few times, determined that since we were such a large group it was more convenient and efficient to get a speed boat. With the cost spread amongst the eleven of us, we each paid roughly $3.00.

The trip out to the island was pleasant and the water was very calm, so there was little of the jostling usually associated with going 40 knots on the open ocean. Okay, it's the Gulf of Thailand, but it's basically the open ocean. Our boat took us to the resort we hoped to stay, Sai Kaew Villa(pronounced Sigh Cow Villa--Thai meets Spanish) and literally dropped us off in the shallows on the beach directly in front of it.
Nearly all of us managed to disembark without incident, bags and all, save Brigid who took a spill off the little gang-ladder on the back of the boat. Her ego was the only injury. We were able to book four rooms for 800 Baht a night, roughly $20.00.
The rest of the weekend was spent eating, sleeping (mostly on the beach), drinking, swimming, and reading; roughly in that order. Our first night we ate at a place called Jeps, a tourist-trappy establishment (same as all the others on the island) that served a large menu of Thai food, pseudo-American food, and seafood. Many of our party (I should note that all of these were of the female persuasion), having been in country much longer than I, were excited about the quesadillas that had had here in the past. Being a fan of Mexican food and not having been led astray by their suggestions before, I ignored the rest of the menu and ordered the chicken quesadillas as they did. Well, needless to say I was a little disappointed (though not particularly surprised) when a chimmichanga looking tortilla stuffed with unseasoned chicken, american cheese, and cabbage arrived. I'm told there will a come a time when I crave such faked foreign foods, but I have a hard time imagining ever ordering the chicken quesadillas at Jeps again. We stopped for drinks at a bar on the beach called Tok's, where, just like every other bar on the island, young Thai men (in some cases boys) spin staffs with lit kerosene sponges at either end out on the beach. This is an impressive visual, though one gets the impression that somewhere in Thailand there is a place where those who are very good at spinning these staffs go to make money, and that Koh Samet was one of perhaps many farm teams of young men who are still learning the craft. Most of us made it an early night, as we'd spent the morning traveling and most of the day out on the beach or in the water, though Sri Lankan Dan and several others bar hopped their way halfway around the island and were not to be seen again until the following afternoon. A note on Sri Lankan Dan: Dan is a large fellow with an extremely amiable personality and either as a result of this or some other unidentifiable trait, seems to know nearly everyone in Thailand--most notably its women. Dan is extremely useful as he speaks more Thai than the Americans in our party and he has a way of befriending those who stand to help him, and through extension, help us. Dan is essentially a real life version of those many characters in classic film and literature who are simply able to procure that which is necessary and grease the appropriate wheels, through no talent apparent to the rest of us.
Our second day at the beach was spent much as the first. I took a walk to some nearby rocks which yielded a few interesting tide pools that were clearly susceptible to some large predators, as I found nothing that wasn't either very small and fast or employing a highly developed defense system centered on a hard, thick shell firmly anchored to the rock. One interesting find though, a nine fingered sea star that looked like a very large (roughly eleven inches in total diameter) brittle star with alternating brown and white coloring. My inability to positively identify virtually ANY flora or fauna in this country is frustrating.
For instance, the birds pictured here are extremely entertaining, producing at least five completely different noises. I have no idea what their local name is, let alone their scientific name. I see them in the trees but they seem to spend most of their time on the ground. Perhaps when I have some free time I might be able to do some research into them, but I'm sure the list of such creatures (let alone the plants) that I'd like to know the name of will soon be depressingly long.

The second night we returned to Jeps and in an act of defiance associated with the previous evenings quesadillas, I ordered the grilled seafood platter, which consisted of a number of sea creatures that had been perfectly healthy and in the ocean earlier that morning. And despite the nose wrinkling and shuddering of many of my (female) companions, it was perhaps the best seafood I'd had in quite some time. It consisted of a steak of some unidentified white fish (best guess at Mackerel), some scallopini served in the half-shell, several large shrimp, and five or six prawns, all grilled and served with an extremely spicy lime and chili oil vinaigrette. Despite wagers to the contrary my intestines made no protest whatsoever and were perfectly happy to have pork fried rice for breakfast the next morning.
We made a longer night of it at the bars that second evening, making our way down to another resort where more locals partied, and joined in with the many Thais and Europeans dancing to the strictly American club music. The cost of alcohol here is staggeringly low, especially to someone who is used to going to bars where a shot might cost upwards of five dollars. Here, five dollars will buy you a bucket of alcohol. Literally. A bucket. I think perhaps I will leave this post on that note. Our return to Bangkok was relatively uneventful and essentially a backwards version of our journey there, and everyone arrived safely and at least mentally in a better state than they had left in.

Bangkok Boogie

I was schooled in the art of getting around Bangkok today. I needed to go downtown to the MBK, one of Bangkok's several malls. And while we could have taken a taxi directly from Assumption (or ABAC, as it is called) to the mall, but that would have been expensive and slow given the time of day. So the cheapest way to get there is the Khlong boat, a large, covered boat that motors up and down the Khlong, a canal that reminds me of a much dirtier version of the LA river during a storm. But I get ahead of myself. In order to get to the nearest Khlong stop (which is a dock at the end of an alley) one has to either hail a cab, which we didn't, or hop on a motorcycle taxi, which we did. This was my first experience on the back of a motorcycle, and I have to say that the speed and the proximity to other, less open-air, traffic left me grinning ear to ear when I put foot to terra firma again. While not generally amused by high speed and traffic cocktails, I have to say that motorcycle taxi is my new favorite mode of transportation.
The Khlong boats are everything they sound like. Their name is perhaps their best descriptor. They pull up along docks along the cement bank and pick up those passengers nimble enough to jump aboard while others scramble off. Benches running perpendicular to the long axis provide seating for well over 50 people, maybe 70 if they're all Thais. There are many of these boats running up and down the Khlong, in both directions, at relatively high speeds. The water they run in is perhaps best described as a combination gutter, sewer, thoroughfare, landfill, watery grave that the locals use for pretty much everything, including swimming in. I've been told that dog carcasses are not an uncommon sight and that human remains are a more uncommon but not unheard of form of debris. But all in all, an efficient way of getting around.
At the last stop we got off and walked the rest of the way. A taxi could have been in order, but the traffic is so bad that walking makes more sense. The MBK itself is an impressive monument to modern consumerism. It is a seven story mall, each story containing a different category of wares. For example, the fifth floor is all food and the sixth floor is a hodg-podge of non-permanent vendors selling everything from clothing to handmade furniture. We spent a good five hours starting at the top and winding our way down. The trick, apparently, is to see virtually everything. Which we did. I found a couple of pairs of much needed pants, a shirt, and some shoes. After dinner at Dunkin' Donuts (and no, that's in no way any more nutritious here than it is in the states) we decided to take the Sky Train home. The Sky Train is a relatively new addition to Bangkok's transportation options, and it runs over Bangkok on a raised track much the way a monorail at Disneyland does. This train took us to Ekkemai bus station from which we took a cab back to ABAC.
There are at least a few other ways of getting around Bangkok, including motorcycle/chariot hybrid called a tuk tuk, but I'll just give 'em to you as I take them. As for me, I'm feeling slightly less confused about the overall layout of Bangkok and how one might get from the University to, say, the Red Light district....but more on that later.