Wednesday, April 28, 2004

1:08 P.M.

I've updated the thoughts section and ported over my list of "Things You May Not Know About Thailand" and added ten more to the list. Enjoy.

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

11:25 P.M.

Songkran Festival (April 14, 2004)

On Wednesday, Christina, Stevi, Pek, Tom and I all went out to experience the holiday that is Songkran. Songkran is the Thai new year and is the Thai equivalent of our Christmas-New Years holiday. There’s a mass exodus from Bangkok and most people go celebrate with their families in the provinces.

There were two telltale signs that Bangkok was empty:

• Our favorite restaurant, which is never closed, was closed for seven days. In a row.
• I had to wait more than five minutes to find a taxi.

Traditionally, Songkran is a festival of spiritual and physical cleansing. Friends and family are lightly splashed with water and even Buddha images are cleansed to bring in the new year “freshy.”

From what I’ve read in the papers, water was traditionally poured very slowly over different body parts. If the cleanser was younger than the cleansee, the cleanser would not think of touching the face or head or any other sacred part of the body.

This is how Songkran was celebrated traditionally.

Today, things are done a little differently.

To give you a little idea of how Thais like to celebrate these days I’ll give you two interesting statistics from last year’s Songkran festivities

• Over 900 people died of road accidents in five days.
• 80% of those who died were on motorcycles at the time.

This is primarily because people all over the country arm themselves with the most powerful water projectile devices that they can afford and spend the entire holiday (April 11-16) shooting anything and anyone that crosses their path with water. Those who can’t afford pressure washers or water guns go for the pickup-truck-driveby-watering.

The pickup-truck-driveby-watering is when one Thai person with a pickup truck finds a large cylindrical container (not a trash can, they don’t have trash cans in Thailand) fills it with water, calls about fourteen of his buddies and they all drive around the city and toss bucketfuls of water on pedestrians, motorcyclists, cars, buses, police officers, food vendors and anything else they see that looks dry. Oh, did I mention they’re all drunk and dancing while doing it?

Shouldn’t this be illegal?

It is.

In Thailand, lots of things are illegal. The problem is that usually the police don’t really feel like enforcing the law. They aren’t paid very well and will overlook laws if it happens to be profitable or entertaining.

For example, our friend told us a funny little anecdote about what he saw on the way to get some lunch Tuesday.

At the end of our soi a police officer had pulled over a pickup truck containing about 27 drunk Thais because they were throwing water at passing vehicles, which is against the law. He directed them to the side of the road and pulled out his handy pad in order to write a ticket to fine the troublemakers. While the young rabble-rousers were distracted and distraught another policeman drenched them with a well-planned bucket-ambush and a good laugh was had by all.

The death toll at Day 2 had already topped 400. Shocker.

The serious problems usually occur out in the provinces where the traffic thins out and the people have plenty of room to drive much faster. Instead of the pickup-truck-drivebys in the provinces smart Songkraners will actually set up roadblocks to slow the traffic down to drenching speed.

One bucketful to the face of a person doing about 40 on a motorcycle equals at least a hospital visit.

I’d think eventually the people would react by saying something like “Oh my god” instead of “Hahahahahahahahaha.”

In Bangkok, the prime party-zone is the infamous Khao San Rd., home of thousands of budget-seeking backpackers from every corner of the globe. It also has a Burger King, which happens to be why we like it.

We hopped in a taxi around 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday night ready for one hell of a night. Tom had gone on Tuesday, so he gave us a heads up.

“It’s crazy. I got out of the taxi and four drunk girls dumped buckets on me. I got a water gun and drank a lot. It’s the best holiday ever.”

Also from Tom: “It’s like Mardi Gras, with water. And without the fat shirtless foreigners.”

By the time we got to Ratchadamnoen Road, the traffic was already clogged, so we hopped out since we were only two blocks from Khao San. We were planning on eating when we got there, since they have a bunch of places with good western food, but we found some good, cheap omelets from a street vendor and were on our way.

As we were walking a few kids squirted us with guns, which was cute, and approximately seven people smeared this white pasty stuff on my face, which was not cute. It’s supposed to help you ward off evil spirits or something but really it’s just an excuse to smear white pasty stuff on other people’s faces, necks, clothing and whatever else they can touch.

At the Democracy Monument circle all hell had broken loose. People were throwing water at each other in the middle of traffic and there was a grayish-white film covering everything. There were pickups pulled over, blasting loud Thai dance music with inebriated young Thais groovin’. Well, most Thais don’t really groove. It’d be more accurate to say that they jerk to the beat. It looks like they are having a seizure or something.

So the Thais were seizure-dancing in the middle of the street, on top of pickup trucks, on the sidewalk, on the back of motorcycles, and god knows what else. I was distracted by the people throwing water on me and continuously smearing the white stuff on me. They especially seemed to enjoy getting foreigners. One guy tossed a huge-bucket on us and then smiled a big goofy grin and said, “Welcome to Thailand.”

Even though we were outnumbered we fought together. Since we didn’t have a water gun, our prime weapons were the water bottles we bought while we were walking and these tiny little buckets that held about a bottle-full of water. When one ran out we just bought another. There were people selling water every five meters or so (yeah, meters, we use the metric system here).

Whenever one of us would get hit, the other four would retaliate in force. Several cute little Thai people who managed to drench one of us were surprised when the other four foreigners opened fire with a relentless barrage of water.

Tom, armed with one of the largest squirt-guns known to man, seemed to enjoy squirting the kids of the vendors. Some of them were sitting in back of their mother/father, looking relatively dry and calm and harmless; perfect targets in Tom’s opinion. He got at least three right in the face and one poor little chubby kid right in the crotch. HI-larious.

From Democracy Monument we made our way onto Tanao Road, where traffic had been blocked off and thousands of soaking-grayish-white Thai people were parading through in a wet mob. At this point I was still slightly dry in some places, but after about five minutes on this road I had been completely drenched and repeatedly err, protected from the evil spirits. As soon as I would wash the white gunk out of my eyes someone would promptly be there to reapply it for me.

We tried to get onto Khao San but the Thai police had blocked off the entrance and were only allowing people to leave. Apparently the police had decided it was okay for the thousands of drunk-driving Thais to rampage around the city in their pickup trucks but it was not okay for people to enter Khao San on both sides of the street. They subscribe to a logic that I certainly don’t understand.

On the way to the other entrance we stopped off at Seven Eleven for a few beers.

Seven Eleven was ridiculous – full of drenched, powdered people buying products that contained some type of alcohol.

We got some great pictures of our group, soon to be posted on Christina’s website. Inside I found a rather disheveled and befuddled looking foreigner who asked me if I knew the way to the Green Guesthouse. Unfortunately, I didn’t.

I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for people arriving into Thailand during Songkran with no idea of what to expect. If my first night in Thailand had been like this I certainly would have been a little befuddled too.

We eventually found our way to Khao San after working through an alley where the white-powdery stuff was some-sort of menthol flavor and it burned like hell. I kept trying to wash it off and people kept smearing it on me and then we saw this throbbing mass of wet, wasted, and dancing Thai people and I just wanted to get the crap OFF MY FACE and I couldn’t. Fortunately, that white stuff was not allowed on Khao San – the guards at the entrance just tossed the stuff in the trash.

Khao San was nuts. The bars were all full and there were lots of annoying foreigners running around with high-powered squirt guns all vying for the spot of “Most Annoying Jackass with a Watergun.”

The winner was this Irish idiot who was camping outside of a bar with this painfully-powerful squirtgun. His favorite game was to find the most unsuspecting looking person within 10 meters and attempt to shoot them in the eye so that their eyeball would pop out of the socket. Not really, but you get the point. Most people were doing it all in good fun, a bucket or a few squirts and saying “Thank you!” when you drenched them back and laughing quietly. This guy, however, after he shot you, would cackle like some cocaine-addicted hyena.

We found a place to camp out for a while and discovered that when you stopped moving around it got really, really COLD. I’d never been this cold outside in Thailand before. It probably had a little to do with the fact that I was sick, but the others said the same thing.

I ate some Pad Thai to try and combat the shivers. It worked for a little while, but we had to call it a night around midnight because it was too cold to continue. We found a cab and got drenched by a passing pickup as we got in - the perfect ending to the evening.

Monday, April 26, 2004

6:30 P.M.

Redesign of Image Galleries

I redesigned my image gallery formats today. I hope you like the new style. If you have any problems seeing the images, please let me know.

I'm still in a great mood. Chris and I have gone out a lot in the last week and celebrated our two year anniversary in style. We've been trying to squeeze as much fun out of the last few weeks as possible.

Last week we saw the highly overated DJ Paul Oakenfold come to town disguised as a fifteen year old kid. Not really, he just grew his hair long and looked like a high-school freshman to me for some reason. Music was really good for Bangkok...that sort of tells you how bad the situation is here. Narcissus usually plays some okay tunes, but overall it's too intense and fast for me.

We're looking forward to the Full Moon party and visiting Koh Phangan for a week. We leave this Thursday. It's a really remote island with supposedly the world's largest party. Should be interesting. We're probably the only teachers that have yet to go to one.

Other than that I'm still just loafing around -- pulling myself out of bed at noon and trying to find a job for when I come home.

The thoughts section is still empty because I've been too lazy to write anything for it. However, I'll try to get some stuff up there before leaving for Phangan. I'm finished the Songkran article, I've just got to proofread it.

I'm going to move the Mai Khaojai archives over here as soon as the administrator for my server gets me an account to work on the software, so it will be more than a few weeks before that is done.

Okay, that's enough of an update for now. I'm off to the gym for a little while.

Tuesday, April 20, 2004

5:00 P.M.

I was working on my website today and I happened to notice a new website at Loyola called "Slashdog." From there I browsed over to the Greyhound to see what the haps were at the old alma mater.

To my horror, I discovered a public debate raging, still related to the Iraq conflict. Now, I'm not one to respond to these types of issues normally, but I decided to butt in with my opinion again.

It seems that the homosexual awareness club Spectrum had staged an anti-war protest and some idiot decided to put his foot in his mouth and write an angry letter to the Greyhound about it.

Quite a few people responded by saying (this is a paraphrase), "What is your mental malfunction, homophobe?"

So, he responded again and despite his best efforts to remain neutral and sound intelligent, sounded biased and moronic once again.

Click here for the original letter.

Click here for Mr.Yen's response.

Click here to see some other responses.

Click here to read that ridiculous evergreen story I mentioned.

My response:

Woe was I, when browsing the latest issue of the Greyhound, to discover that self-righteous arrogance still abounds on the Loyola campus.

Mr. Stephan Yen has claimed it is a “socially poisonous” for those with an opinion to publicly state such a thing. Wait, wait. Not only is it poisonous, it is sinful.

Listen up protestors (especially the Christians): You can pretty much forget about heaven if you decide to voice an anti-war opinion. Seriously. You might as well start eating meat on Fridays.

About this time last year I wrote to the Greyhound in response to a very similar article (similarly clouded by its own self-righteousness) insisting that all anti-war protests should stop since the war had already begun. My response was essentially that, regardless of what issue we are debating, a person has no right to condemn others for publicly stating an opinion. It’s important not to lose sight of the freedoms our country is fighting for.

I happen to personally agree with Mr. Yen on his Iraq stance now. War has started, it must be finished or we will indeed have created a monster.I’m not here to debate about that.

What I do find nauseating is that a person, even one with the cogent prose of Mr. Yen, believes that they have a right to tell me what I can or cannot believe in and that it is a sin to display my opinion in the public arena. This is the kind of ridiculous attitude that has people removing, of all things, evergreen trees, from a holiday display because of religious overtones.

This country is a democracy. The public elects leaders and ultimately creates our foreign policy. If enough people decide that the war should be stopped, it is their given right to assert that opinion just as it is the right of those nutballs in New York to decide that evergreen trees are offensive.

This past week, the people of Spain elected a new prime minister on his campaign promise to withdraw troops from Iraq. Some people decry this as a terrorist victory. I see it as democracy in action.

Condemning others for what they believe is not going to persuade anyone. Mr. Yen, I suggest you choose a different strategy if your ultimate goal is to gain support for your opinion.

12:00 A.M.

Feelin' Good

Well, my time in Bangkok is running out. As of today there are 26 days left until I come home.

I'm ready to come home, but I'm still really sad about leaving. I have a dreadful feeling that about three weeks after I get home I will be desperately missing the Land of Smiles. I'm not sure if I will miss Thailand or the fact that I've had no obligations or responsibilities for the last two months. Sleeping late every day, traveling and partying a few times a week sure is a tough life.

Whatever. I'm not worried about life in the U.S.. I'm still a little up in the air about what I want to do with my life, but I know what I want and that's more than I could ever say about my life before. I've done a lot of thinking and reading and thinking and reflecting and writing and making lists and after all that I've started to feel really good about my life. Better than I can ever remember feeling.

The time off has given me a chance to reflect on my time here and the last few years of my life. I've made lots of mistakes, some blunders, a few snafus here and there. Luckily, I've got a great family and an incredible girlfriend who've been there to support me through thick, thin and some extremely large pants.

I feel upset that all this is coming now, as my Thailand experience draws to a close. I mean, it's only lately that I've been really enjoying the company of the other teachers (those who are still around) and only lately that I've really enjoyed meeting and greeting Thai people.

It's only lately that Thailand has really started feeling like home -- poor timing -- as soon as I've really grown to love this place I have to leave it.

The other teachers here, all of them, are really great people and I'm going to miss them dearly as well.

A combination of culture shock, a lack of confidence and the fact that I was still doing a bit of soul-searching robbed me of a lot of good times I could have had. Only recently have I really seen what culture shock did to me. The first few months in Thailand I was a complete basket case. It's a great deal of pressure moving to a new country, with new people, new food, and a new job. I got stressed and buried myself under it. It's not that I'm trying to justify my actions, because I'm not. I accept that I didn't handle the situation in the most intelligent or mature way, but I handled it. When I came here, I wasn't intelligent or mature, so I have no justification for the way how I reacted.

I've learned a lot about myself in the last eleven months. I'd say I've learned more about myself this year than any other year of my life. Probably more than all of them put-together. I needed to be on my own and get out into the world without my family there to take care of everything for me. I needed to deal with all of the problems and realities of life that I'd avoided during my first 21 years.

I'm proud of the work I did here, even though it drove me to the point of near-insanity a few times. I cared about my kids and I worked hard for them. I should have relaxed a little more, but I'm happy that I put so much effort into the job.

Although I wish I could have traveled more than we did, I have my whole life to travel. More importantly, I've discovered a love for traveling that I never knew I had. Suddenly I want to see everything, everywhere. I can't wait to get back to the States so I can see all of the stuff I've ignored before now.

Christina and I explored nearly every corner of Thailand so I have no regrets about that. China, Laos, and Vietnam were all amazing experiences and I'm lucky to have had the chance to visit them.

Vietnam, specifically, was my favorite trip for a few reasons. First, I'd never backpacked through any country before. I'd never lived out of a backpack for more than a few days and it was a daunting task for me. Traveling nearly every day for two weeks to a different location was exhausting and enlightening. I've discovered I'm a stronger person than I gave myself credit for. The fact that I made it through and enjoyed myself in the process was a great surprise.

Second, Christina and I traveled through Vietnam with our friends Pek and Stevi, who are much more seasoned travelers than we are. Frankly, I'm surprised Stevi suggested it to us in the first place. Before the trip I anticipated that we would probably have conflicts of opinion on a)where to stay b)how to get from point A to point B c)where to eat d)whether to go to point C or point D or something. However, we had no problems at all. I enjoyed their company immensely and would be happy to travel with them again if the opportunity presented itself. In fact, I've enjoyed hanging out with the two of them a lot recently and I'm sad that it's a friendship that occurred so late in the trip.

I mentioned to Christina that it was strange that we all got along so well, since we're all pretty different and before Vietnam we really hadn't hung out with Stevi or Pek that much at all. Christina, in her usual-wisdom, hit it on the head -- we all love Thailand. We're united by our partiality for all things Thai.

Well, maybe not all things. But we like most of it.

I also consider my parent's trip a great success and I hope they do too. They seemed to enjoy themselves. (Hi guys!)

Playing tour guide for two weeks was enjoyable and terribly tiring at the same time. I got to see lots of stuff in Bangkok I hadn't got around to seeing yet and I got to speak more Thai in two weeks than I'd spoken in the last two months. I was very flattered when a taxi driver asked me if I was a Thai person because I spoke the language well.

It was fun to see Bangkok from the perspective of a newcomer again. I remember my first week, but I really can't remember how it actually felt. Or more importantly, how it actually smelled. The looks on the faces of my parents and sister brought that feeling back very quickly. The sights, sounds and smells of Bangkok are one of a kind. It's so strange to me that people can come here and not like it for the same reasons I do or not even like it at all.

The Smiths got the Bangkok experience and after four days they looked ready to get the hell out of Dodge and spend a few days living it up in the south.

Krabi was enjoyable once again and we stayed in an absolutely immaculate place. Well, in comparison to the places I've been staying in it was immaculate. I mean, it actually had a television!

We lounged around the pool, swam in the beautiful emerald Andaman sea, ate lots of delicious Thai food, went kayaking and yes, even did some rock climbing!

After the Smiths were on their way home, we celebrated the Thai New Year over the next few days -- Songkran.

Well, most of the time I celebrated by staying in bed because I was feeling pretty sick. But on Wednesday we went out for what was probably my most enjoyable night-out in Bangkok and an experience I will never forget. I've started writing about it and I will be posting that adventure in the near future.

Until then, thanks for reading and I hope all is well with everyone, everywhere.

Monday, April 19, 2004

Welcome!

Welcome to the next incarnation of my web log. I've decided to continue a web log even after I return home so I can use it for my writings, images and to practice my web-authoring skills.

This is the first site that I am actually proud of, in terms of design, so it will most likely be around for a few months.

On the right, there are already a few different sections. Keep in mind that the site is still in its infancy and things will probably change or move around a little as I decide what I like.

The images section will house pictures that I take with my digital camera and eventually those I take with my SLR. When I have some free time and access to a scanner I'd like to post some of my black and white prints from last year.

The thoughts section will be links to my most coherent blog entries or other writings that I may do.

The links section will (obviously) have links to pages of my friends and other pages of importance. If you'd like to be linked, please let me know.

The archives section will house the archives of "Mai Khaojai" as soon as I learn how to write a database for this site and get them online. It could be a while, so don't hold your breath. :-)

There may be an audio section one day if I ever produce something worth listening to. As of now, that's not the case!