Clean Food Good Tast

ACTUALLY, I am going to forfeit my ticket and take the best job I could hope for at a great school. I will be helping a Thai teacher do a grade 2 class, age 7-8. Lots of mask making and pretending to be animals. SO! I can stay in Chiang Mai , I can go to Critical Mass on the 28th, I can go to another Sunday walking street and eat  fried things at the temple, I can train to cycle up Doi Suthep, 13 km  no problem. Come visit me sometime  eh?

You will be denied boarding once gate closes

So I'm off now, taking an airplane, not a 40 hour bus journey, way way down south almost to the Malaysian border - no fighting, trouble not - to Songkhla province to the rubber factory transport hub of Hat Yai. What awaits me there? Buildings, roads, Chinese food, Malaysian tourists, not a lot of falang folk to Starbucks up the place. I have a job at the International School of Hat Yai, starting Tuesday.
woo!
Pumpkins are in season, the tastiest vegetable on this earth. Raw chocolate cake and veg soup tomorrow night at Giant Guesthouse, all us mucky hippy intellectual types will be scarfing down the deliciousness in the communal kitchen after a Doi Suthep wonder tour.

Amy Asks Too Many Questions, But Her Feet Are Wise

Quick update on my emotional state: I am stressed, homesick, tired, irritated by most westerners, in awe of the tropics, curious, inquisitive (is that an emotion?), grateful. There.

Suddenly I have 25 hours of work a week. So much for a 3-day silent retreat in some temple up some mountain. Lesson plan lesson plan flashcards simon says names of animals of numbers of months of the year of days of the week. Six-year-olds are ace, even the day after a very fun birthday celebration. They will be mental, chucking cushions at each other, falling over, shouting shouting, and as soon as you get a box of coloured pencils out, they go silent. Language schools are a good place to start, lots of small classes with all diferent ages. Administration is hectic confusing, lots of pink slips and green slips and even a punch card, like in a factory. For now, it'll do.

Thai people are just as smiley as everyone says. People greet you on the street, when you get into the same song teaw as them, and when they drive by on the road in the car next to you. Everyone says hello, and once you get talking to people, seeing them around a few times, they all want to help you learn Thai and teach you to draw.

In the past three days, a man has tried to snatch my purse (the indecency!),I've eaten a third of my weight in Japanese food at a buffet, I've been to an orchid and butterfly farm with the inimitable Amy, who also dared me to eat fried bugs, which were a grasshopper, a silk worm, a maggot, and a beetle. The maggots were long and crispy, void of taste. The silk worm was perhaps the least appetizing thing I've had in my mouth ever. Imagine crunchy burned leggy fish-tasting bits coating your tongue, getting caught in your molars. I've had an authentic Thai massage from an old blind man, who said I felt like a man, like a plank of wood. Ta. I went swimming in a lake by the mountain, so warm, so quiet, beauty beauty. I've played Jenga in the Griffin Bar (Moon Mueng Soi 7) with Egg and Amy, every night.

Amy was going to stay in Chiang Mai for a night and then go back to Pai, but she stayed here to play for my birthday. It was a dead good birthday. We arrived at the Reggae Bar early, so it was empty. We had a horrible pink cocktail. Then a Thai man with a dredlocked beard and many tattoos started chatting us up with the kind of abuse that's supposed to be funny. Then his mate Yawee showed up and it was his birthday too (the gayest man in Thailand, from Miami, got his nails done that day, and the tatooed man had no idea his best mate was queer, ("never, I never do that, why you say that, it disgusting"). So one small glass of strong clear liquid followed another and then it was two hours later and the band was singing us Happy Birthday. I woke up the next morning with all the lights on, but all of my clothes folded neatly in the cupboard.

I have an address now, send me a message if you wannit.

Milk Sandwich, Yam Sandwich

After 6 days of being in Thailand, I think I have arrived today.

A note on wildlife. Little lizards grip on to signs, gates, walls, mimicking colours. They are super quick, so no chance of catching one. Cows with sticking out ribs and shoulders have floppy ears and hump backs. They munch on boggy leaves in fields next to the main road. Dogs be barking, cats be slinking, kamikaze squirrels are bleached on their tummies and tails. After sunset, which is like a divine light switch being flicked at 7pm, crickets drown out the noise of the highway next to Wat Jet Yod temple, and the frogs compete for the best warble. Bats skim the river around Old Town. I saw a gigantic glossy rat streak behind a cupboard in the cafe I had dinner in last night. The day before, a beetle longer than my middle finger crawled out from under a table on quick spindly legs, wings clicking. Orchids languidly weigh down their stalks, hanging down from temple walls. Tiny fish swim in ornamental ponds, weird looking birds squawk in cages above bamboo furniture shops.

I got a little job at King’s School on Kaew Nawarat, Just west of the big brown Mae Ping river. I start on Saturday afternoon, and I’ll be on very part-time hours. Still, I feel good about having something to show for my first day hawking my wares. I got very muddled up in alleyways searching for the fabled AUA school, and after reading the guidebook I think it is far too good for the likes of moi. They have requirements for the dress code like shower every day, wear a bra, shave...

I went into Tesco (yep) and I have found my favourite food so far: Ovaltine snacks. Crunchy malt biscuits with a sweet gritty paste malt sandwich filling, only 35 baht for a pack. It seems there is a malt-based craze here, because Ovaltine is on every farang drinks menu. I have given in to it completely.

High Life Job Time

Today I have been delicately tramping Chiang Mai's east side, littering language schools and Christian universities with my qualifications and experience. At Payap university I asked a man where I could hand in an application, turns out he is the dean of students and was going to the big campus out of town where I could surely find something to do. So we got in his beige corduroy interior truck and drove 10 minutes on the highway. I did the applying thing and went to get a song thuew back to the other campus in town. well. the man says, "80 baht."
I say, "Kao rai?! 30 surely."
he says, "no, it is very far away, you must go this way and then that way and then around."
I say, "But 80 is too expensive I think so, how about 40 baht?"
he says, "only 80. All of Thailand, is 80. You don't want taxi you can walk to road and get bus."
I make a face like a stranded white girl in office clothes and I nibble my lip a little.
He walks to a table and pets a dog lying in the shade. Then I hear the clank of keys and he walks to the cab door.
"okay," he says quietly, "I go for 40 baht."
woop! But then, he tries to drop me off 500 meters away from where I want to be, turns around to me and says, "here bus stop."
I give him a big smile and wai right up to my nose, which tickles him immensely. He drops me off at the campus and I give him 40. He still overcharged me.

I have a job interview in an hour, for possible weekend work for the next few weeks.