Bangkok: A Beginning

My first day in Bangkok was completely surreal. My sleep deprivation following a 20 hour journey was already intense, so seeing water buffalo walk down the street or people riding motorbikes with babies sitting loosely on their lap was somehow even more dream-like. Bangkok is lush and green, but also industrial and polluted. It seems like everything in this city is messy and spilling into other spheres. Children, dogs and food carts spill into the street, plants and vines creep up walls and spill into restaurants, water spills and flows pretty much everywhere.

I arrived at the Louis Tavern Hotel at around 2:30 pm Tuesday, and decided to conquer my jetlag by waiting to sleep until at least 9:00 pm. In an attempt to avoid napping, I wandered the city streets and kept running into people from my teaching program (they’re pretty easy to spot in a crowd). At least fifteen of us spent a few hours just sitting in a bar and clumsily practicing Thai with our waiter.

By the evening, I was ready for some of that famous Thai street food. My dinner cost a total of $1.35 US, and it was damn good. The girl I ordered from didn’t speak English, but another Thai woman who did happened to walk by as I was ordering warned that the chicken curry dish I ordered was “extremely spicy for a westerner.” But at this point I was committed, and was curious to see what this super-spicy-southern style was all about. It was spicy, yes, but I loved it.

I stopped at a great little shack with few new friends later that night—we couldn’t read what it was called, but we called the restaurant the “lizard place” because there was a lizard on the bamboo sign as we walked in. I’d eaten dinner, but I ordered some sort of slimy tapioca desert?

A few rules of thumb when it comes to dining:

1) You do not tip in Thailand, but Thai people are obsessed with good service anyways. They’ll open your door, pour and stir the drink sitting in front of you, and stand diligently waiting for you to order the moment you sit down (rather than leave until you’ve decided—it’s actually kind of high pressure).

2) You never put your fork in your mouth. You are given a fork and a spoon, and you use the fork for cutting, and the spoon for scooping things into your mouth. We had fun practicing this with noodles...

And a little note about the weather, it changes at any moment here. It can be clear one minute, and then raining and cracking with lighting the next minute. The humidity, however, always remains. There’s something charming about sitting outside in a tank and shorts at night, or taking a comfortable nighttime dip in an outdoor pool.


Orientation: A Crash Course in Thai Everything

We were up early this morning orientation, and I felt well-rested and ready. It’s a good thing, too; I had several hours of cultural and linguistic absorbing ahead of me, not to mention that there are over 90 teachers on my program and I’m trying to meet them all.

Language training was fun, definitely an exercise in cramming a little too much information into my brain. There are 44 consonants and 5 different tones in the Thai language, all of which sound almost the same two me. For example, the word “pa” can mean throw away, forest, aunt or dad depending how you emphasize the “a.” Yikes. We practiced our greetings (“wai”) and went around saying phrases like “hello, my name is Rochelle” and “what country do you come from” in Thai.

After a delicious lunch, we got a general introductory lesson on Thai culture. We covered the importance of “gam,” also known as karma, which influences a person’s future lives. Our teacher, who was a sweet and funny young Thai woman, told us an amusing story about a woman who killed a gecko and was punished in her later life. After that, everything she taught us was kind of a blur… lucky numbers in Thai culture are 9 and 8…. unlucky ones are 4, 6 and 13… do not touch a monk… the king’s color is yellow, this is also the color for Monday… wait, the days of the week have colors? Tuesday is pink, Wednesday is green, Thursday is orange… then we were quizzed on the name of the Prime Minister of Thailand, and no one could muster it. And to imagine no one knowing the name Barack Obama!

We also got a few tips on teaching English as a second language from several experienced teachers. Along with brainstorming exercises and classroom management techniques, we covered basic ESL problem areas such as plurals and the letter “x” (neither of which exist in the Thai language). I know my feelings might change when I step into the classroom, but all this preparing has inspired a grain of eagerness to teach… who knew?

Tonight a few friends and I are going to grab a cab into central Bangkok. Tomorrow we visit the Emerald Buddha Temple and the Grand Palace, followed by more training and meeting with our school coordinators… I forgot what it was like to be this busy! It’s actually kind of nice, I’ve needed a little kick in the butt since college has ended. Goodbye from the water buffalo wandering the streets!

P.S. I'll take more (and much better) pictures soon. I've actually been trying to experience my surroundings without my eyes behind a camera, at least for the moment.