Life on the road: From Krabi to Chaing Mai

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After a grueling 3 week course, it was finally time to travel before the real teaching started. We began by heading back to Kho Phi Phi. My friend Ashlee was unfortunately sick the entire time but luckily we were able to meet up with another group that was there from the course. We decided to do an island boat tour which included snorkling and Maya Beach (where "The Beach" was filmed). Snorkling was great and we saw many cool fish...thankfully no sharks (though one guy claims he saw two reef sharks). The guides were throwing feed into the water for the fish and one of my friends got stuck treading water in a huge school of colorful fish..she was less than happy about it, and I can't blame her. After spending some time on Bamboo Island, we made our way to Monkey Beach, which, sadly, didn't really have any monkeys to be seen. Apparently they only come out in the morning. We did see one up in the trees, but that was the extent of our mokey encounters that day. Maya Beach was really pretty but extremely crowded. which kind of took away from the experience. Finally, we sailed off back home in time to stop and watch the sunset near some islands....amazing.

With Ashlee being sick, two days in Phi Phi was all we could handle...it is way too upbeat and crazy. We then headed to Ao Nang beach in Krabi. I highly recommend staying in Ao Nang because it is a smaller town but still has the toursit vibe...not to mention it is cheaper than Phi Phi. Here we met up with Jodi and Gavin and did another boat tour, this time to James Bond Island. This tour included a trip to a waterfall, canoeing under some caves, lunch on a floating village, a temple on Monkey Cove, and of course James bond island. The floating village was pretty cool. It housed 3000 people, all Muslim, and was literally in the middle of nowhere amongst tons of islands. It is really poor with streets about an arms-width apart with the smell of sewage filling the air. It was a cool experience, but we were more than ready to leave by the time we finished walking through it. James Bond Island was similar to Maya Beach in that it was crowded with tourists and markets on the beach. One lady actually grabbed me and tried to drag me in to her shop! My favorite trip of the day was to the Temple on Monkey Cove (I think its called). To my astonishment and delight, there were monkeys EVERYWHERE! Hundreds of them waiting to be fed. We bought some peanuts and were able to feed them. My dream of holding a monkey finally came true that day when a small one came up behind me and jumped on my shoulder and climbed down my arm to raid the pile of peanuts I was holding out in my hand. Luckily they don't have long nails, which made them climbing up your leg and over your shoulders actually enjoyable rather than scary or painful. I was hesitant at first about feeding them, but then I realized that they only attack each other, not humans. One thing to keep in mind is that if you are holding a bag of peanuts in your hand without feeding the monkeys, it is 100% guaranteed that a monkey will swipe the bag out of your hand and run away with it.

After sadly leaving Krabi, Ashlee and I headed up to our new hometown of Ayutthaya to see our schools and pick out an apartment. We only looked at two but were told that both are better than many other apartments in the area. I was pretty shocked to finally see what a Thai apartment is like, because they are essentially dorms. Ours have only one room (and I don't mean bedroom..just one room like a studio apt), a bathroom with the shower head almost right above the toilet, and no kitchen. Ours does, however, come with a queen size bed (with a standard Thai mattress..meaning hard as a rock), a wardrobe, two-person table, and a little desk. I am trying hard to be grateful for such a nice place, but it's kind of difficult knowing how apartments in the States are. Ayutthaya is pretty nice with all the ruins that are here. The only bad thing is that not many people speak English. Luckily, we met Julie from Boston, who taught here last semester and is staying for another. She is super nice and has a lot of Thai friends. We would be lost without Julie because she knows some Thai and her Thai friends have helped us out more than you know! Anyway, we stayed in Ayutthaya for a few days, taught a class to some incoming 7th graders at Ashlee's school, and then headed out to Chiang Mai for a week.

Some people call Chiang Mai the adventure capitol of Thailand....and I have to agree with them. There is so much to do there and it is such a chill city that we were dreading leaving it! We met up with a group from the course that had been staying up there and ended up going on a 2 day trek with them. This trek included elephant riding, hiking up mountains, spending the night with a hill-tribe, a trip to a water fall, white water and bamboo rafting. The hike up was bruetal because hardly any of us had the right shoes for it. Once we finally got up to the top by the hill-tribe, the view was breathtaking. The best part of this trek was the view at 5:30 in the morning. We were at the top of the mountains above the clouds...its so amazing that I can't even describe the view..you'll just have to take a look at the photos. The morning was beautiful but the decent down the mountain was not.....that was harder than the hike up because we were really just hiking down mud trails without hiking boots! Had it been raining, I think I would have just set up camp on the trail and waited until it stopped b/c of how dangerous it was.

We also took a half-day Thai cooking course which included 4 meals. I am now an expert chef in cooking spring rolls, massaman curry, sweet and sour mixed vegetables, and friend bananas in Thai toffee sauce with ice cream. Thank goodness we didn't take the full day course because I don't know how we could have eaten any more! We essentially had 4 meals in about 3hrs........think about it....

After sadly leaving Chiang Mai, Ashlee and I took an overnight bus to Bangkok in order to meet with Pook (the lady working for our placement company) to get our Non-Immigrant Visas. It turns out that we got the days wrong and came a day early. After getting over the initial fury of leaving Chiang Mai a day before we had to, we decided we had no other choice but to spend a day in Bangkok. A tuk tuk driver suggested we check out the TAT (tourism association of Thailand) for information on where to stay. So we obliged and let him take us there. Not to our suprise this was a scam and the people there tried to make us book a hotel through them. Oddly enough they didn't have any information on hostels in Bangkok, just expensive hotels. Luckily we had some friends staying there so we called them (at 7am, mind you) and asked where they were staying and decided to go stay with them on the main tourist street in BKK. After the people at the TAT realized we weren't going to be booking anything through them, they completely shut us out, ignored us, and refused to give us a map to the city...can you believe that a tourist information center didn't have a map to the city?! So they said. We booked it out of there and headed to our hostel and ended up walking around street markets all day and night. The following morning we finally made it to Immigration. 4hrs! later with the help of Pod (Pook's assistant) managed to successfully get our Non-Immigrant B visas. Pook took me to see my school where I was able to meet the non-English speaking Assistant Director...who I think was nice. Pook then took me and all 7 other ATI teachers living in Ayutthaya to dinner. This was the best dinner I have ever had because Pook ordered nearly every dish on the menu for us to try...stuff that I would never have ordered by myself but turned out to be delicious!!

So here I am now with less than a week to start teaching. Jodi and Gavin are coming to stay with us for the weekend so we will be exploring Ayutthaya finally. Details to come on what Ayutthaya is actually like (since I haven't yet explored it myself). I am considering buying a cheap bycicle since not having any form of transportation (other than taxis that significantly overcharge foreigners) is starting to bother me.

That's all for now folks!

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Comments

[Melissa]

Teaching in Thailand
I will be starting my venture to Thailand in mid September. My plan is to go over there, take a course to become certified to teach English as a Second Language...It seems that, that is what you have done too. What school did you get your certification through? I am currently looking at ATI...I haven't applied yet. Have you heard anything about it? If you were at another school, what is the name of it and do you recommend it? Also...did you have any problems getting a work visa? Thanks, Melissa