"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone"

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As life begins to become normal, or whatever my new normal will be here on the island my intention is to shift this blog from a diary of events, as it's been in the past, to more notes on the cultural exchanges between the Phukers and the Farang "foreigner". Already in my first week I've experienced a lifetime of events. I've been to two unbelievable beaches, two new islands, bungee jumped, eaten things I wouldn't have even kicked into a gutter at home and witnessed a mugging, don't worry it wasn't me and no one was hurt and I'll get to it later.

For the past week we've gotten a lot of "oh here comes the tourists" looks which I'm hoping will fade as Phukers realize we aren't going anywhere as our purchases have gone away from t-shirts and keychains and more towards the mops and dishes of settlers. I don't think we will ever blend in, but maybe, just maybe we will stick out a little less.

As soon as we got to the island our coordinators picked us up at our hotel and spent the day taking us house hunting. The night before we had all gathered as 4 farangs to come up with a plan. "Lets get a house" someone offered, "yeah, lets try to get something that feels authentic Thailand, I don't mind roughing it for a couple months" someone else threw in. Our new family consisted of 4 people: Lauren a Physical Education major from Toronto who will be teaching English and Basketball, Lara "Lala" as the Thais pronounce it, a recent Math graduate from Vermont who will be teaching Math, Tony our token guy, an Arts major also from Vermont who will be teaching Animation, Art and Professional Technology and myself, an Engineer from DC who will be teaching Earth Science and Math.

We all agreed that safety had to be our first concern, although we didn't want to miss out on an authentic experience by staying in a western-like condo. The first stop on our house hunting tour was just that. High rise apartment right in downtown, couldn't have been older than 5 years. Infinity pool, fully stocked gym and roof top included. This was above our per diem allotment and way nicer than any place I've ever lived. We all agreed it was nice but kept to our original agreement and asked to see other places. The second place was also an apartment building, but much older and the elevator was not included in the rent (I'm still not sure I understand that). It was much more family oriented, no gym, no pool and certainly no roof top. You could tell we were all regretting our "authenticity pact" as I could imagine myself curled up in the fetal position battling cockroaches for the next year. The third and final house we visited was a stand alone house outside the city. Since this house was away from city center, we'd have to get motorbikes to make the trek to and from school. We all seemed pretty excited about this until our suicidal bus driver started making hairpin turns around motorbikes, something not unique to our bus. Not ready to make peace with death we decided motorbikes probably shouldn't be in our future. Alas here we were, 4 Americans trying to rough it for the experience but not quite ready to take the plunge....so it probably won't surprise any of you to hear we took the nice western apartment in the middle of down town...hey, we tried!

We spent the first few days exploring our new town. After a 4 hour trek we eventually figured out the bus system...a $1 ride to the world's nicest beaches. Our first beach was Patong, where we bartered for towels and had our first burger king fries of the trip. Our second beach was Kata, a little nicer and a lot prettier. By this point we had also bragged enough on facebook to get our first visitors, 3 girls in our program from up North. We showed off by taking them to our favorite restaurant, introducing them to our favorite cab driver and even taking them to our favorite bar. Our new favorite bar is right down the street, and specializes in what I can only assume is the cheapest alcohol in the world. A really awesome Thai band plays there every night (or what I can only assume is every night since we've only been there twice). Its a local's bar so we obviously stick out, although this has played out in our benefit as the band keeps pointing and waving to us.

The second night the girls are here we had just left dinner and decided to walk to the convenient store right down the street to grab some snacks and drinks for that night. It was on this walk home that a guy ran up to one of the girls walking in the front, grabbed her purse and jumped on the back of the motorbike and sped off. The girls were up ahead of us because they wanted to stop in a bookstore on the corner to grab a translation book and the mugging happened right as the one girl said "oh no the bookstore is closed" which the second girl then answered "NOOOOOOOOO" and overhand tomahocked her bag of drinks at a guy riding his motorcycle away. At first we thought this was a gross over reaction to the book store being closed, it took us a few seconds to take in what had really happened. Unfortunately motorbike muggings, as we later learned they were called, are not all that uncommon. They are nonviolent and are often just looking for a quick bag to snatch, a lesson in fanny packs we all have now learned. This would eventually lead to a very entertaining police encounter when we went 2 days later to report the crime. We had kept it together with our broken Thai and the police's broken English until Awbrey had to explain that her iphone user name (for tracking purposes) was Sharklovin'...something which apparently doesn't translate well and involved a lot of very entertaining miming from the two of us.

We spent the next day island hoping around Koh Phi Phi in an attempt to salvage their trip. Between snorkling, sun bathing, feeding some monkeys and giant coconut drinks I think all was forgiven and Thailand was back on our good side.

Last night we even bought Phuket Islander Football jerseys and ventured to the stadium for our first Thailand Soccer game, where we looked like we just might know what we were doing...

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Photos

Kata
Maybe I'll pick up surfing to make up for not being able to snowboard here.

Fresh Coconut Juice
I bought it for about a dollar from a street vendor. I could get use to this!

Maya Bay
..yes the water is really that clear.