Tales of Teaching in Thailand: June 2015

This past weekend, I travelled to Phetchabun, a town in central Thailand and met up with some friends from orientation.

These little weekend trips teach me so much about Thailand and how this country operates. When I initially searched for a ticket from Kalasin to Phetchabun, the only available routes had me bus alllll the way down to Bangkok and then back up. YEA RIGHT, I thought, there has to buses direct from Kalasin to Phetch, because it is only about 4 hours away. I asked my fellow Thai coworkers and it turns out a bus does run through Kalasin, to Lom Sak, which is 30 minutes north of Phetchabun. I tried to by a ticket in advance a few days before but that was clearly way too much planning and I was told to come back the night of. I ended up getting a ticket an hour before departure.

The bus ride was really fun. I had the very front seat on the top floor, so I had a view of the road, and lightning storms in the distance. Phetchabun is in a more mountainous region of Thailand and we drove through some national parks on the way. We passed a few signs that said "Caution Elephant Crossing". Sitting in the dark, listening to music, I had a moment of like "wow, life is awesome".

I finally arrived at the Lom Sak station at about 12 at night, and waited for my friend to show up. The next bus to Phetch was at 2, so I hung out by my lonesome and made friends with the security guard and various street dogs. We didn't actually get to the hotel in Phectchabun until about 3:00 that morning. It was a longgggg night. And somewhat frustrating with the knowledge that a car ride would have been oh so much faster. Such is life.

The next day we borrowed another friend's moped and rode up to Tat Mok National park, which was about a 25 minute ride to the park entrance. What an amazing ride. The road twisted and turned up into the mountains (seriously steep inclines, the little moped was struggling at times), and in many parts, the vegetation was encroaching halfway into the road on each side. It felt soooo wild. ENORMOUS trees grew on the hillside, wild bananas lined the roads, and the jungle was so dense, you would need a machete to get through. You guys, the sweet relief I felt upon entering wilderness. I had not been in pure nature since arriving in Thailand, about a month and a week and my soul craved it (corny yes, but it's true). It was such a tangible feeling that I shed a few grateful tears (holy shit howwww did I get so corny, I'm turning into my mother). We eventually got to the Tat Mok waterfall trailhead, and from there it was about a 2 kilometer hike to the falls.

The trail was incredible! It meandered back and forth along the side of the river with multiple river crossings. We walked through giant banana groves, and encountered multiple plant species with leaves at least 2ft by 2ft large. There were these palm trees with fronds at LEAST 20 feet long each, it was incredible. It felt like we had had entered jurassic park (Just watched the new one last night btw, corny but entertaining, AND in english).

We finally reached the base of the waterfall, and the trail forked into two different directions. We weren't sure which way to go so we chose the lower trail. The waterfall is HUGE, and has multiple tiers, and apparently had we followed the other trail we would have encountered much more, but oh well, next time. We spent the next hour exploring, and climbing up the falls. It was AWESOME!!! The elevation made the air much cooler (still warm for most people's standards, but sweet relief all the same). The water was cool and refreshing as well. We definitely did some risky climbing and had we slipped, things wouldn't have looked too good, but we were careful and all was fine in the end. Twas a much needed nature therapy day.

Because we got into Phetchabun so late, I wanted to get an earlier start on the way back home on Sunday. I was hoping to catch a bus around 1 or 2. Ha, yea right. There are only two buses to Kalasin per day, one at 11:45 at night and one at 1:10 in the morning............... GREAT. I love how the times are so spaced out, really really helpful. Anyways, that was an unexpected change in plans. I don't consider myself a type A personality but since being here I have really had to tell myself to just keep calm and carry on. Life goes on and life works out. So rather than getting all bent out of shape about the bus situation, I accepted my fate and we spent the rest of the day exploring Phetchabun.

Somehow the day went by in a flash and suddenly it was 8:30 and we were at the bus station catching a bus back to Lom Sak. My friends bus for Mae sot was scheduled to leave at around 10:15 but didn't arrive until about 10:50. I thought to myself, "I hope to god my bus is not as late as his" ..... Anyways I had about an hour to kill before my bus came. Within moment of my friend leaving, this drunk Thai man (Joe is his name) comes and sits down next to me. We talked and he was a nice enough dude. He owned a furniture store down the road, where he painted artwork onto the furniture. His English was pretty good, although he reallyyyyyyy struggled with R's. Thai's speak with the back of their mouth, so it pretty much sounded like he was speaking with a golf ball lodged in his mouth. I commend him for learning English, it just sounded kind of funny at times (yea yea yea, being insensitive, I am no better at Thai, just an observation.) A common struggle for Thai people is switching R's and L's, so every time he would talk about learning English, it sounded like "running english" and for a good long while I was very confused. His dream was to ride the TransSiberian Railway, and to visit Alaska, he was a pretty worldly thinker. Things were fine until 12:00 rolled around with no sign of my bus. My hopes would rise and fall with every bus that entered the station. 12:30 and no sign of the bus..... And then Joe starts to get on my MOTHEREFFING NERVES. Joe, do you not having anything else to do?? No, all Joe wanted to do was talk. At one point he wanted to find me on Facebook, and y'all, his name on Facebook was Tiger Joe. Fortunately the Facebook gods were working in my favor and neither profile was found so I avoided that unwanted friending.

With each bus that came, I was getting more aggravated, and Joe just could not contain his giggles at the sight of my irritation. He kept joyously saying "this is the Thai way, smile, smile! heeheeheeheee" OH MY GOD GO AWAY. He smelled strongly of alcohol and some cheap cologne and the combined odor was the most cloying claustrophic smell. It was almost one, and I asked the security guard if the bus was actually coming, he said yes, but he didn't know when. I was starting to get pretty tired and closed my eyes. I open them a few moment later to discover Tiger Joe giggling and taking a photo of me!!!!!! At that point I was over it, and moved to a different part of the bus station, and fortunately he did not follow me.

It was 1:30 and there was still no bus. I had to be at school by 7:30 that morning. I hid in a corner and found a plug to charge my phone and bought myself a coconut taro filled bun. I thought, this is an annoying situation, but a bus WILL eventually come, and soon enough I will be back in Kalasin, with familiar faces.

FINALLYYYYYYYYYYYYY the bus appeared at 2:00 in the morning, although there was some confusion because the ticket I had bought was for a different bus that apparently never came. I was like OH HELL NO I am getting on that mothereffing bus and you can't stop me. But yes, they let me on, man the relief of actually hitting the road, and getting away from Tiger Joe, it was a very good feeling. I attempted some heavily interrupted shut eye, and finally awoke dreary eyed at 5:45 in the morning in Kalasin. Our contract allots us a few sick days and I thought to myself, I need to do this. There is no way I can teach six classes today, starting in about an hour and a half. So I did. And it was glorious. And i slept, cleaned up my room, bought some groceries, watched the Leogang World Cup (congrats aaron gwin) and wrote some blog posts. FIN