adventures in Ayutthaya & Lopburri

    Just three weeks into living in Bangkok and two weeks into teaching, we were rewarded with a long weekend. Thai's hold their monarchy in very high regard, and as such the Queen and King's birthday are what designate Mother and Father's day. They are also a national holidays... I can and did get on board with that.

I think this is a good time for a mother/grandmother/godmother shout out...  Mom, Nanny and Colleen - Happy belated Thai Mother's Day! I'm blessed to have such amazingly strong women in my life and I miss you all dearly!!

Mom, Nanny & I on Canadian Mother's Day 2012

    Expats are wanderlusts so it wasn't difficult to get a group together and head north for a couple days to celebrate the holiday properly. After school on Friday, Kels and I headed out with two other teachers  to check out the ancient capital and location of the former Siamese kingdom, Ayutthaya. We spent the night Friday and most of Saturday there, and then continued on to Lopburri  for the night Saturday and Sunday morning.

You can see Ayutthaya north of Bangkok, but Lopburri's
too small to be included on the map - We covered it pretty well
on foot Sunday morning. Worth the trip to see
the Land of the Monkeys!

    For a history geek, this trip was heaven. Both locations have ancient ruins scattered amongst and across the city, buildings and temples that were nearly annihilated during the 18th century Burmese invasion. Half-standing structures and decimated statues symbolize the destruction (burning, bombings, ransacking) and terror (mass murders, rape and enslavement) the invasion brought upon the city and its people. A particularly striking characteristic of the temple grounds were the beheaded statues of Buddha, a tragic target of the Burmese soldiers who knew how deeply religious the Thai people were, and still are today.

Beheaded Buddhas

Love this picture with the roomie.

Seeing a historical landmark in person that I recognize from various
textbooks/online articles took my breath away.

    For anyone who has studied history or is simply a historical enthusiast, this may seem par for the course when it comes to wars, even in modern times. However, as someone who grew up in Canada (a young nation with a short history) and has done almost zilch traveling in my life (its embarrassing, really) being able to visit the grounds where these types of atrocities took place was a phenomenal experience.

    Plus, in Ayutthaya, there were elephants. In Lopburri, monkeys. Everywhere.

Dumbo?

Watch out for elephant dung, you won't get rid of
the stench for the  rest of the bike trip.
This was probably a dangerous picture to take
while biking, but sooo worth it.

Jumanji!

    Double plus, this trip was CHEAP. From the onset, we all pooled 1000 baht ($30) with one of the trip-goers. He was responsible for paying for transportation, meals and lodging from this collection, so that we wouldn't all have to be searching for our wallets constantly and splitting bills wasn't always a hassle. $120 covered:

1. Four 3rd class (no air con but open windows and fans, wooden seats, many stops along the way as locals use the train for their commute) train tickets to Ayutthaya from Bangkok (15 baht/ticket = 40ish cents)
2. Four 3rd class train tickets to Lopburri from Ayutthaya (12 baht/ticket = 35ish cents)
3. All of our meals. All of them. We ate breakfast and dinner together and snacked throughout the day.
4. Hour-long cab ride to see the Ayutthaya grounds at night - all of the buildings are lit up (I *think* it was 400 baht for the trip total)
5. Two nights in hotels for four people (2/room, no air con but a fan, each room was 250 baht = $7). They weren't the Hilton but they were clean and protected us from monkeys.
6. Four bike rentals for a day (40 baht/bike = $1.33)

    We paid for our own snacks, water, alcohol, and any other necessities we found out we needed (always bring your own toilet paper and soap. Full bath towels are for the highly maintenanced, but a hand towel at least is recommended), and for our last train ride back to Bangkok, we decided to spring on 2nd class tickets (comfy seats, leg room, air con) for 154 baht or $5.13 each.

Kelsey, Justin and one of the Ayutthaya temples seen on
our night tour - This is a favourite shot of mine.

Floating in market in Ayutthaya that we
checked out before we headed to Lopburri.

    And that was my first Thailand travel adventure! But certainly not the last. Pay day comes at the end of the month (Thank. Christ. Moving overseas is expensive. Write that tip down so you don't forget it). Another long weekend coming up in the next few weeks and a week break in October... Stay tuned kids.

 


PS - Getting home Sunday afternoon of a long weekend means you can still head out for some more Bangkok evening adventures...

Khoasan road, popular with backpacking tourists.

<3

A few new friends. Plus the guy on the right... I have no idea who that is.

Don't ask me what the song was.

worst blogger ever.

     I know, I know. My blogging of late has been less-than-stellar. In teacher talk, you could say that I'm not meeting expectations. We did just get our internet set up in our new place, and by the end of the day I will have finished my first full week of teaching. A yeah wah hoooooo.

   This post is just to offer my apologies and to get out my excitement about being Ayutthaya (an ancient capital north of Bangkok)-bound for some Temple exploration this weekend. Monday is the Queen's birthday, and it is celebrated as Mother's Day and a National Holiday in Thailand. Two days of travel, one to finally wrap my head around my courses' syllabi...

   So hopefully some more posts soon about our trip, how the new job is and the like. 

    Oh and a quick note- If you're friends with me on Facebook I finally posted our new mailing address... My eternal love to those that send me postcards! They're good decoration for a Geography classroom!

Temples in Ayutthaya

home sweet Bangkok home

    We're not homeless anymore! Not that we were living in squalor out at the Golden Pearl, but it's a relief to finally have a place. After a week of balancing our teaching orientation with appointments to see endless listings, we finally decided on Le Premier 2 on Soi 59 in the Thong Lo area:

• 2 bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms
• A third bathroom bathroom
• Maid's quarters (smaller room that could probably fit a double bed that we'll use for storage of luggage, visitors, etc)
• Open and large living + dining room
• 2 small balconies
• 16th floor
• 24 hour security
• Fitness room (it's a little weak but we're supposed to be getting deals on memberships for the fitness center directly behind our school)
• Outdoor pool, jacuzzi and sauna
• 20 min walk to the school, 5 min to the main road and 10 min to a sky train stop
• The price is right - the rent is covered by our housing stipend included in our salary. This was more difficult to find because the stipend was determined years ago, rent prices have been on the rise here and our school is right downtown where prices are higher on average anyway. Oh, and appaaarently teachers are paid more than doctors here, so the giant student debt thing wasn't flying with the plethora of real estate agents we dealt with.

My adulty-looking room.
Those pillows looked larger at the market.
God dammit.

     More pictures of the new place once we've spruced it up a touch. Canadiana courtesy of Momma Urban, which will soon be decorating my new classroom (N206, ya know, if you ever happen to drop by the school).
     Kels and I went to the Chitachuk (or Jitajuk, depends on with whom you are speaking with) market today. It's technically an outdoor massively massive market but most of the stalls are covered and it had a huge variety of things for sale- knick-knacks, furniture, incense, toiletries, clothing, food, jewelry, exotic animals (from ducks to peacocks) and odds and ends for the home. We were able to pick up some things we really needed for the new place (linens, towels etc) and will go back once we figure out the Bangkok lifestyle beyond our tourist-y experience so far.
   With the move and the settling in, guess who still knows veeery little about the courses she starts to teach in 3 days? 

   This girl!

   Icebreakers, icebreakers, icebreakers.

teaching schedule

Final Schedule

Grade 9 World Geography

Grade 10 World History

Grade 11 U.S. History*

Grade 11 English

Grade 12 English

Grade 12 British Literature   

     Whomever says that teaching is easy because you can just "use the textbook" can show themselves directly to the dark depths of hell.

PS - There's some missing.



*UPDATE* - That wasn't my finalized schedule. They worked some magic and switched out my U.S. History course and gave me another World Geography. Which is good because I can prep the same things (for the most part) for two classes, but also sucks because I have no geography experience whatsoever, and my schedule is still at max capacity.

The joys of teaching!

staff picture day

Ready for my close-up.

green tea soymilk, fresh cola Mentos, green melon #newthingstriedtoday

Green melon, peeled and unpeeled Rambutan

    

    Continued the condo hunt today but I'm going to keep mum on that for now as to not jinx some of the good luck that finally came our way. I am, however, going to brag about the phrases I was throwing around like I was some Thai pro (or you know, someone who has been here almost a week and really should know these extremely simple phrases).

   Pay attention those who plan to visit (all of you):

Sa-wat-dee + ka (If the speaker is female. Which I am. For men the suffix is + krap)   -   hi/hello

Khob-khun + ka  -    thank-you

  That was the extent of it. But I used them A LOT. Another I wrote down at our shortened version of Thai culture training (more to come on a weekend in September) is

Khor-tod + ka  -  sorry/excuse me

   A key phrase because I'm Canadian and apologize and exorbitant/unnecessary amount daily.

   Thai's seem to LOVE IT when you attempt to speak their language. They may also be laughing at me because I'm absolutely butchering it, but it's certainly a very different experience from the French-Canadians* in the Ottawa/Gatineau area. They are responsible for the cliché "if looks could kill"'s creation, which is something I experienced frequently when using a broken version of French (affectionately referred to as Franglais) back home.

   That's all for now, I'm off to the dinner/social scheduled for our orientation week. Tomorrow our pictures are being taken for the staff wall/yearbook/etc, we'll learn about the curriculum and I will finally hear my finalized schedule!



*Granted- French-Canadians have not always been treated well by the English-Canadian portion of the country. I don't mean to stereotype, this is not the case for all the French persons that I've attempted to communicate with... But it did happen to me A LOT.

Bangkok condo-hunting through trial & error

    Spent three and a half hours this morning and four hours this afternoon condo hunting with Ms. Swarup. After going bug-eyed looking through endless listings, emailing countless property agents and browsing maps with varying ratios of English to Thai labeling, we decided to set out on foot to check out properties on our own. This was recommended by the admin at our school. While the suggestion had its merits, it is still a very daunting and exhausting process for a pair who:

1) Are not at all familiar with the area of gigantic proportions.

2) Have never looked for a place to live in a city larger than Peterborough and Kingston, Ontario.

3) Have student loan payments haunting their consciouses.

4) Confuse office buildings with apartments at a surprising rate... The heat apparently affects our ability to think clearly. Should make for interesting lessons.

5) Include one person who is wondering what the Thai health system's policy is regarding the removal of hip flexors, and if their employer-provided health insurance plan will cover the procedure.

   The search was not in vain. While it had its discouraging moments, I know I at least returned to the hotel in a better mood than I did leaving it this morning. Walking the different neighbourhoods with each other and other new teachers in the afternoon gave us a better idea of what's out there, for what prices, and gave us a great feel of the different neighbourhoods. We're also now pretty much pros at navigating our way through crazy Bangkok traffic, and can even take our eyes off of those crackhead sidewalks once or twice every other block.

This is most definitely not the type of traffic
we navigated through, but I thought this picture
taken from Asoke sky train station stop looked
damn cool.

   Hopefully there will be a post in the near future about our recent lease-signing for our wicked condo. As for now we still get to enjoy the res-feel of being surrounded by our colleagues that are also new to the school at the good ol' Golden Pearl, all of whom I am very excited to be working alongside for the next two years. 

Last piece of news - my schedule was apparently set as of 2pm today! Although my Principal couldn't remember what it was by the time he mentioned it to me while the group of us were having drinks and dinner tonight (he joined the hunt with us after CPR training this afternoon, we've been very well taken care of), it's still a bit of a relief to hear about the progress. And, I have my very own classroom! Should be setting that baby up come Friday!
 

Can you spot them?

WORMS! Om nom nom. *
*Correction: These are apparently actually chicken intestines.
EVEN BETTER!

Didn't even recognize this Jamaican delicacy 
last time I stopped by - Chicken kicks.