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Published: December 25th 2008
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Merry Christmas everyone! Or as we say here in Bangkok "Merry Chrismat!"
So our flight from HK to BKK was uneventful. Thankfully.
Suthep picked us up from the airport in his new truck. It was great to see him and Thailand as well. The airport contained no signs of the protests which had gone on there just a couple weeks prior to our arrival. The new airport is quite expansive and I'm pretty sure we walked about a mile inside the airport just to get to the exit.
Coming to Thailand felt completely different this time. In the past I remember it feeling like i had just arrived on another planet, with everything feeling new and different. This time it just felt like coming home. Everything felt quite comfortable and familiar. So we headed to Suthep's house and dropped our stuff off. He quickly dropped us off and headed back to work out in the province. He had taken the afternoon off to come and pick us up from the airport.
After dropping off our bags, we headed to visit our friends at the coffee shop near Sutheps house. It was awesome to see them. We had kept in touch through
email and so we were abreast of the happenings in Bangna and in their lives. It felt really good to sit down and have a "Gafe Yen" (Thai iced coffee) just as we had just before we left nearly three years ago.
Boy, our Thai was sucking. Whereas, communication was relatively easy before without resorting to pulling out the English-Thai dictionary it was quite difficult. Three years is a long time to not practice speaking or listening. So we were excited to see one another despite the fact that communication was difficult. It's getting better now, but it was a but hairy at first.
At any rate, it was great to see them and we hung out for a few hours and then headed back to have dinner with Chudatorn and the rest of the family.
I forgot how awesome Thai food is. It's so frickin good. I like the stuff we get in American Thai restaurants a fair amount, this is especially true in our neighborhood in NYC as the food is much more authentic there, but really it doesnt even compare. Everything is so savory it's incredible. We have been stuffing ourselves at pretty much every meal. Correction,
I have been stuffing myself while Emily watches, eating normally. So the food is still awesome. I wont even go into the fruit. Actually, I will. The fruit is amazing. The next morning I headed to the market early and got some Champu (rose apple) and Som O (Pomello). They were everybit as good as I remembered, maybe even a little better. They still don't compare to the mango and sticky rice that we had with lunch that day. And the guava. Hot damn!
Anyhow, lots of eating and ratting around in Bangna.
Then we headed to Koh Samet for the weekend.
Koh Samet is an island a couple of hours from Bangkok. Lots of foreigners and Thai students head there to escape the city for the weekend. It's pretty, although quite touristy, which means it contains minor annoyances like mediocre resort food and constant attention from vendors while on the beach. We mostly sat around and stared at the ocean for a day then the next day we headed out on a speedboat tour. It was pretty standard: snorkeling, swimming, remote islands, fishing and then a trip to a fish farm which also had sea turtles. The fishing was
awesome. Typically, foreigners do not go fishing on these tours, choosing instead to lay on the beach for a couple of hours while the Thai people head out to catch dinner. We decided to skip the sunburn and head out fishing. Emily was cleaning up. I caught some big ones. and we had the chance to bond with our Thai companions and catch dinner. I caught an orange fish with crazy huge eyes that was the biggest fish of the trip (see picture below). Yeah me!
The fish farm was pretty fresh too. We got to feed the fish and turtles. The turtles were super cute and surprisingly inept at eating.
Overall, a brief but relaxing trip. Just what we needed to relax away the New York tension that remained. Back to Bangkok on a bus. Almost left 2 of the Thai riders at a rest stop. Good times.
Back in Bangkok we were still chilling out. Got a 2-hour Thai massage. For those who havent gotten a real Thai massage before its a mixture of very hard rubbing mixed with painful stretching and contortion. A strange mix of pain and pleasure that might not suit everyone. But we like
it overall and considering that it costs between 2.50 - 7.50 an hour its a great value especially when compared to any body work in the US.
Fast-forward to Christmas. We headed to the school early in the morning and were taken on a whirlwind tour of the classrooms. In every room the students would shout "Good MORNING TEACHER" and then sing We Wish You A Merry Christmas. Did I mention that they did it in every single classroom? The school has more than 5000 students. Did I mention that we heard it in EVERY CLASSROOM! So we got our fill of Christmas spirit. Then we watched an elaborate Nativity play, featuring plaster camels on rollerskates. Very impressive. Next was the Christmas dance show. Then lunch. Then the Christmas Dance show again, in case we had forgotten any of the dance moves. Then we escaped the school and headed to the coffee shop to relax a little before christmas mass.
Christmas mass was nice. They finished a new church which made it more comfortable then the Christmas 3 years ago which was in an outdoor pavilion. They even had a quintet playing the Christmas songs which I thought was nice.
After mass it was time for the venerable Christmas tradition of BINGO! They served dinner as well, which was good. We got skunked at Bingo but had a great time chatting with Bap and his friend Mike.
Christmas is always a little tough here because it is very dissimilar to Christmas at homes. We miss our familes the most at this time of year and this year was no exception. So for all our family and friends reading this, we love you guys and Merry Christmas!
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Mark Sperry
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I didn't even know you were going to Bangkok! What the what! Have funnnnn.