Siam Teaching English: living for the weekends

Wow. We have officially been here two months on the 13^th. That date when by without even a second thought. It has been a blur of a 2 months. On one hand it seems like time is flying by, I mean we are already almost at mid-terms that’s one half of our first semester here done. It is almost new years (Christmas is just not that big of a date in a country where no one celebrates it) and a new year just seems crazy, good bye 2010 hello 2011! Weird.

Lately I’ve been going a little crazy, everything has been bugging me, the other Thai teachers, the students, the people on the street who walk at a SUPER slow pace and somehow take up the entire side walk, and even the food, I mean come on, cant you eat something other than rice!? But the weekends here have been amazing and that is making it all worth it, we just got done with two three day weekends in a row so we were able to travel a bit further than normal. The first 3 day weekend we went to a beach town about 3 hours south of Bangkok called Hua Hin. It was awesome! It I high travel season right now and it was a 3 day weekend but this little beach town was not very crowded, and the first place I’ve seen in Thailand that has been relatively clean! We were able to find some non-Thai food there (thank god) and it was real good. On Sunday we rented some motorbikes and drove about 60km out of town to this beautiful national park. Normally for tourists the fee to get in is 400bht (and since we don’t have our work permits yet we are still tourist) but because it was the kings birthday all the parks all over the country were free! Happy birthday to the king! The waterfall was beautiful (we posted some of the pictures on facebook) and the drive was a really nice drive through the countryside.

The next weekend was spent on an island paradise called Koh Chang. It is the second largest island in Thailand and in the north bay near Cambodia so it is not as popular with the tourists. It was kinda a bitch to get to but so worth it. The water was warm and clear. The beaches were not crowded. We had our own cheap bungalow right off the beach and the place we stayed at had an awesome restaurant. The best bacon cheese burger I have found in Thailand so far! We spent two lazy days on the beach soaking in the sun and playing in the water. On the second day Jeff, Josh and I rented a kayak and decided to paddle out to one of the small islands we could see just off Koh Chang. It was a really fun, I actually didn’t kayak they only gave us two paddles so I just sat in the middle and let the boys do all the work! (I offered to paddle but they turned me down) One more day on the island would have been perfect, it was hard to leave.

I think those longs weekends were just what I needed. Im feeling a bit more cordial to the Thais around me. I know there will be more that drives me nuts throughout the year, but as long as the weekends continue to amaze me, and Jeff can deal with my bad moods (which he has wonderfully so far!), I think everything will be just fine.