Now I sit listening to my new favorite Thai pop song, I wish i could tell you the name, but its something about giving you the phone number to my heart. Around me the teachers chattter in the staff room. I have no idea what they're saying, as usual. My belly is full of oyster mushrooms, green onions, and what i believe was seitan( wheat meat for those of you less than familiar). I officially left for Thailand 2 weeks ago, it's been such an incredible time and i just keep falling into these amazing adventures!
Last Friday after teachers day, my co teacher Kru Kung left to go to Camodia for the weekend. That left me to teach my friday afternoon class, all by myself, no thai interpretor! I was more than a little nervous! I stood in the room waiting for the students to arrive. I was reminded of my first few (hundred) yoga classes in which I would be so nervous before class, that i would hope that no one would show up. Just like all those classes, no such luck....all my students came happily to the classroom. At the beginning of classes all the students stand and say "Good Morning/Afternoon Teacher" and i am expected to reply: "Good Morning/Afternoon Students, How are you?" to which they respond "I am fine, and you?" I like to say, " I am very happy, thank you!" and then they all sit down. It's very formal and adorable and makes me grin ear to ear everytime it happens. Really everything went great and no nervousness needed. I reviewed their vocabulary over their emotions and then I somehow got them to divide into teams and taught them charades. It was fun, though towards the end of class the game had been going on a long time and I still had about 5 minutes left....ummmm...then Kru Su came in to the rescue and had them perform our favorite thai pop song for us. Then they just got carried away and performed a bunch of fun thai songs, and I played the yellow ukelele along with them. It was a ton o fun!
After class Kru Oy #1 and 2 offered to take us to Aranya Prathet (or Aran, say Alon). On the way Oy number one put in a cd called top twenty country hits, first song? John Denver, country roads.. Also included simon and garfunkels homeward bound, cotton fields, and a vunch of songs that seemed out of place here but reminded me of home. they took us by the Sdok Dok Tong ruins to view the temple. They weren't accepting visitors but the Oy's were able to talk our way in, they even convinced a fellow to lend us his motorbike for the ride, yay more motorbike! This time in classic thai style with 3 riders on the back. You'll see the best combinations of humans on motorscooters here. A baby in the handlebar basket, mom, toddler, dad and an another toddler or two thrown into that as well. It's amazing! Anyhooo....we had a fantastic time viewing the temple it was simply breathtaking! I love being in places that are ancient, we just dont have anything like that in the states! It was a hindu temple, later taken over by buddhists. The imagery had both a dancing Nataraj and the Sleeping Buddha.
Then on to Aran where we viewed the largest swapmeet/flea market in southeast asia called the Rong Kleaua market. Men pushed huge carts overloaded with goods. There were stalls and pickup trucks and food carts and bins and barrels full of every imaginable thing! Heaps of garlic and onions, stores ceiling high with packages of noodles, second hand clothes, bicycles, everything! Very chaotic and a dingy feast for the eyes. Our sweet teachers them took us to a " steak house" oh boy! Ha ha ha! Well they seemed very happy to go eat some American food, I got spaghetti with mushroom Alfredo sauce and boxed mashed potatoes with gravy. My favorite. It was a sweet gesture though. The best part of the meal was the street food they bought as an appetizer, a paratha like creation stuffed with fried banana and drowned with a goopy sweet sauce, it was scrumptious! We stopped by Kru Oy number twos house to water her plants and check out her beautiful new home. It was quite a lovely modern bungalow with three bedrooms and two bathrooms, only cost about: 1,700,000 baht, about$50,000! Our favorite part of the house we commented on we're all of the pictures of her son, Satang on the walls. When we commented on them, his mother told us there was also one in the bathroom. We go into look and there is a poster sized picture of him when he was three years old sitting naked on the toilet playing with the sprayer. Side note: most thai style toilets when not the infamous "squat" style toilet, are far superior to most western toilets in that they have a sprayer,
exactly like one you would find on your kitchen sink attached to the toilet. Whatever could this be for? It's for washing your butt! I'm a huge fan of this! We are one of the few countries that uses toilet paper as a sole method of cleaning ourselves. It's a pretty ineffective method, and most visitors in our country find it very difficult to get used to. Well that's a tangent I didn't plan to go into but these are
the subtleties of my travels that you were really after right?!
The next morning Kru Su and I were picked up by Kru Oy squared and Kru tat, Satang, and our driver mr. Thong. We stopped at the headmasters, Kru Thavee, for breakfast before we let out on our journey to the Lalu rock formations, or as Kru Tat called them, mini Grand Canyon! Kru Thavee a home was beautiful and decorated with really nice sculptures of elephants. They brought us and Idelicious pad sae ew, fried rice noodles with egg and a veggie that I love that's a lot like broccoli stems. have encountered a new veggie food substance here known as egg tofu, looks like little circles of tofu but is soft with a taste and texture like egg, I'm into it. Back in the car and we are on our way!
So much to absorb, I just soaked my eyeballs in my surroundings: fields newly cultivated with cracked dry plods of dirt, fields flooded with water and whole families camped under tarps in the midst of it sewing rice, fields of tapioca trees, their spindly y-ed notched branches creating new geometric shapes as they flew by at120 kilometers, a grandfather and grandson playing atop a mountain of yellow hay, toothlessly smiling to one another, mountains rising green and tree topped in the distance, scrappy towns and houses, a raven stands on the smooth arced shoulders of a white cow, animals I don't understand, they look like pigs and water buffalo mixed together, so many motorbikes, there's just so much y'all I try to take down the details as I go but I am overwhelmed by the amount of wonderful things to remember!
We pull up to the "cultural museum" and in the parking lot are three " e- taks". These are a comical looking vehicle that Su has been fascinated with. Hard to describe please see Facebook for pictures, they are like a very long nosed tractor with an odd turning radius, on the back Of these particular e taks are wagons and big rainbow umbrellas. We hop on board and start slowly choogling our ways through the now familiar scenery of a small Thai town, corrugated tin small stores selling chips and water and phone cards and small food vendors, scrawny cats, hammocks and clothes strung
from trees and tropical everything, clusters of bright red flowers pop at the top of long spiky cactus
like plants. We start heading out of town we cross a small bridge with deep dark water, a tall windmill fills a nearby water tank, we are all smiling and laughing as we bump on down the road, coverup our faces with fabric to avoid the diesel exhaust and red road dust. Put if nowhere we are surrounded by the rock formations, Satang and I jump off the etak and start clambering around on them, it's beautiful and yes just like a small Grand Canyon! Feeling very happy to get this unique experience. We climb aboard to make our rounds to he next stop and the driver lets ten year old Satang take the wheel, we are in absolute hysterics as he tried to maneuver the awkward etaks steering column. We arrive alive at the next formations and I venture far out on my own to climb and take in the panorama. Weeetak it back to the museum where we go in to see the relics, a three thousand year old mummified arm, lots of shards of ancient pottery, always gets me hopeful that my pieces of pottery will be unearthed by future civilizations. Nothing to spectacular when you don't have much of an explanation to go on.
Back on the road we stop at a precious restaurant for lunch, where I have the best Thai omelette of my life and my new staple Thai dish, pad pak, fried vegetables! A Roy mahk! Delicious! Stuffed in our bellies and back in the car. This time it's along haul to the Phnom Rung temple. We really start to head up into the mountains, my full tummy is gurgling in an unpleasant manner, but we arrive at the top with all the trappings of tourist attractions. We walk past the souvenir stands that are being parused by a small group of orange wrApped teen monks. The climb is quite steep to the final temple but Satang and I take it with speed! The sun is warm and the temple is even more massive and intricate than the one we saw the previous day. This one is also Hindu temple and most of the carvings depict scenes from the holy book the Mahabharata. And for Marin and elysse, yes there was a massive shiva lingham inside for puja rituals! Awwww yoga ville memories! I am lost in the maze of corridors and buildings and the thought that this was built housands of years ago! University students sit with huge art canvases taking drawings of the temple. They look just like your typical big city hipster art school students! After innumerable photographs we make the trek back and down and out of the temple. It's been a long amazing day, we are super tired. We watch an amazing sun set
behind the mountains. They insist on taking us out to dinner, and there is karaoke! They sing great Thai songs but there's a huge American selection that they sing along with, their favorites;? My heart will go on! My performances? CCR bad moon rising, everly bros, bye bye love, hey Jude, and runaway! Epic performances I'd say! It cracks me up what bits of American culture trickle into other countries, at some point in none of our drives kru Oy turns to me and says" dream, dream, dream," and I immediately sing" when I want you in my arms when I want you and all your charms whenever I want you all I have to do is dream dream dream dreaaaam" and she sang right along with me! Incredible day, it's taken me three days just to write about it! Love to you all thanks for staying with me on this trip!
No comments:
Post a Comment