Blogs from Mae Sot, North-West Thailand, Thailand, Asia

I never imagined myself looking back at the past 6 months and wondering where they went, even though we've been doing that our entire lives. I went to Greece and was home before I could even understand I had actually left Canada. I did the same for Nicaragua, and for Spain and for England and Switzerland and Italy and France. None of those experiences were even longer than a month. And here I am today remembering the day I was accepted to go to Thailand and I looked at my future as if it was the only star in the sky. And now I look into the sky and see a full moon that is thinning and dimming and disappearing before my eyes to the point where I'm not even sure there was a full moon. ... read more

by Polona After a short stay in Sukhotai and in the hopes of taking an off-beaten track we decided to make a big U-turn before heading to Chiang Mai. Our next destination was Mae Sot. Mae Sot sits close to the Thai border with Burma and has become a big Burmese- Chinese- Karen- Thai trading location. The main source of local revenue is the black market trade between Thailand and Myanmar. There isn't much to do in Mae Sot, it is far from being a tourist attraction, but the thing that I guess was what attracted us to go there was the Border Market. The market is located next to the river dividing Thailand and Myanmar, connected by a Friendship bridge. At the time we were there the bridge was closed though due to the increasing ... read more

Not to sound like a drama queen hypocondriact, but I think I have a serious sensitivity to mold. For those of you who know me pretty well, you were probably aware of the FOUR consecutive nasal/ sinus infections I had back to back during second semester. I like to think that I am not usually a sick person; i might not be in the best of shape but i'm fairly healthy. During second semseter at BU I had four nasal infections that antibiotics couldn't get rid of because I was living in a rat infested, rundown piece of garbage moldy shit whole thanks to my greasy land lord Carl. My house was literally made from carboard boxes that had been previously holding asbestos. The point is, There was mold in my house and that was the ... read more

I stepped in dog shit, with my bare foot today. Full. On. Dog shit, it squished between my toes and i didn't realize for like 2 seconds,...and then I said YACKKKKKKk OH MY GODD ... oh I forgot to mention that this was at the front of one of my classes. Let me explain. Lhe Bee is my second priority school; I teach grades 5,4 then 3's for 45 minutes each- monday, tuesday, wednesday. and like i've said in many of my other posts- dogs are rodents here. they are disgusting- flee bitten disease infested, muts that are neglected and rarely deomesticated- so they are also not trained.. and therefore take dumps in front of class rooms ( how did they get in- well most schools here run by the open concept idea- so classrooms are ... read more

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience…I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked…. You’re not as fat as you imagine. Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing ... read more

What a nice weekend. I legitemately did nothing productive except .. nope WAIT I cleaned the spirit house. Oh you guys probably don't know what a spirit house is. Well let me tell you. Every single building here has a spirit house, for the spirits that lived in the area of the building before it was made. These houses are decorative you might say and stand on podiums in the yard of the house. The people make offerings to the spirits every day- light inscents, offer food, drinks, water and say prayers for the spirits. They do this out of respect for everything that was living in that space before. And every time the building gets an extension and becomes bigger, so does the spirit house. It is actually quite beautiful to see the respect between ... read more

Crap (said in american accent) Yeah..it has almost been one month since I left, how crazy is that... I thought six months was a long time before I left.. but it seems to be passing quite quickly surprisingly enough. Did I ever tell you guys that I was working with devil grade 3's? Wait, let me rephrase that: Did I ever tell you guys that the grade 3's I am working with appear to be devils? A BIRD JUST FLEW INTO MY HEAD!!!! ..that is not a joke by the way. There is a birds nest like right on a porch so I went to go look at the supposed baby birds and they flew out like rocket-ships full speed at my face.. there is a little cut on the side of my head.... hahaha that ... read more