After multiple mass emails were sent out and long winded Facebook posts filled my timeline, I came to the conclusion that a blog would be the easiest and most organized way to chronicle my time in Thailand. I’ve been traveling and now living in Thailand for a little over a month. So far this experience has surpassed my expectations in ways big and small and it’s still just the beginning as I have a four month English teaching contract to complete. The first three weeks were spent attached at the hip to the other twenty something teachers in training throughout Phuket and Bangkok in a blur of class, beach, partying and waking up to do it again the next day- like a lather, rinse, repeat cycle. As to be expected, we formed pretty solid connections only to then be separated into various provinces that none of us had ever heard of or could much less pronounce.
I’ve now been living in my town Phayao (sounds like pie-ow) for
two full weeks and let me just say, it’s a VERY different world than the rest
of my Thailand
experience has been. For weeks I was
staying in tourist friendly areas where your average tuk-tuk driver speaks enough
English to understand where you need to go and many restaurant menus are in English. Now this is Thailand for real and it’s a whole
new ballgame. For starters, I’ve never
been stared and gawked at so much in my entire life. I feel like a celebrity wherever I go and am
honestly overwhelmed from all the attention.
Phayao is a province of 400,000 but I’m one of the few “farang”
(pronounced fuh-rang) meaning foreigners in town. To add to that, unlike Los Angeles where your
average girl is frying herself in a tanning salon, in Thailand and most of Asia
for that matter, having fair skin is quite fashionable and “whitening” cream is
in pretty much everything you put on your skin.
Therefore, with my snow white complexion, I’m considered quite a dish
here. No complaints on that front, it’s pretty nice
to be told “so beautiful” wherever I go.
Literally, I get told on the daily from my students, other teachers and
random men, women and children in town “soo-ay mahk mahk” (very beautiful). That my friends will definitely never get
old! I could definitely get used to
that.
It’s amazing to me that when you live in a new country,
every single little thing is an exciting adventure or a daunting task. Any sense of “normal” is utterly turned
upside down. From navigating the menus
solely written in Thai, using the wonderful “squat pots” or the “bum gun” as my
Canadian colleague so appropriately calls the spray hose attached to nearly
every toilet here, or simply trying to find tampons which for some reason are
impossible to come by in Thailand. Every day is full of new challenges and
exciting small achievements. I have been
learning the basic numbers “neung, song, sam, see….” and was ridiculously proud
of myself when I asked a street vendor how much the noodles cost and actually
understood her without my typical reliance on a calculator or charades. Mind you this only happened once but it was
still SO exciting for me.
They say it’s the small things in life that bring happiness
and I think that that is doubled when traveling. It’s the seemingly insignificant moments like
the smile exchange which crosses all language and cultural barriers, seeing
monks bless people on the street while walking to school or popping some new unidentified
concoction in your mouth and praying that it’s delicious (most of the time it
is) or even that it’s just not revolting like the dried fish snack I had today
that I thought was candy. UGH, FAIL!
Although there are many things that frustrate your average
expat in Thailand,
I’ve been shocked to find out that I can be surprisingly easy going and open
minded when out of my comfort zone. I
think I’m adjusting quite well considering I don’t speak the language of 98% of
those around me, I can’t wear tank tops because it’s scandalous to show your
shoulders here, there are oodles of pork in everything which I never eat back
home, I sweat profusely all the time, my peculiar “wet” bathroom which requires
leaving toilet paper just outside the door, living up four flights of stairs,
spending more time alone than I ever have in my life, the lack of Hot Cheetos
(my guilty pleasure back home)-the list goes on and on.
Despite all the change and adjustments needed, the ONE thing
that has been my pet peeve so far is the napkin situation. Imagine a mix between a tiny piece of scrap
paper and one small thin sheet of toilet paper and you have what Thais believe
to be appropriate restaurant napkins!
They do not do their assigned job well and especially because half the
things I eat are crazy spicy, creating a leaky faucet situation, it is very
annoying not having napkins handy! It
may seem like a silly stupid non-environment friendly thing, but I miss puffy
American sized napkins. I guess if
that’s my only real complaint after being here over a month, I’m probably going
to survive the next few months…maybe even thrive.
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