Koh Phi Phi

This weekend, some friends and

I took a ferry to Koh Phi Phi, a little island about an hour and a half from Phuket. It's one of the most surreal places I've ever been to...in a way it feels disconnected from the outside world. Everyone is so carefree that being there makes you just kind of forget about all of the trouble in the world.

You can walk from one side of the island to the other in the span of 5 minutes. If you walk out into the ocean, you can continue for about a quarter of a mile with the depth of the water still only up to your waist, and there are rock structures jutting out of the Andaman nearly in a full circle around you...the pictures don't do it justice.

We talked to multiple people who had come to Phi Phi for a short vacation, maybe a weekend, and had wound up staying there for years. Even saw a few "Quit Your Job" tee-shirts for sale. Just one of those places I guess.

It was one of the islands that was most affected by the Tsunami a few years ago, but it seems to have been rebuilt pretty well since then. Phi Phi is an amazing place and I'll probably end up going back before my time in Phuket is over. Week 3 of the TEFL course starts in the morning...going to get some MUCH needed sleep right now.

Monkeys

Not too far from the TEFL school here, there is an Observatory Mountain that has most of Phuket’s TV broadcast towers at the top. But the awesome part is that the mountain is home to thousands of monkeys.

There is a 2 km trail cut through the jungle to the top of the mountain, and as go further down the trail, there are more and more monkeys swinging from the trees, lounging in the grass, and following in packs anyone who is making the ascent. I had heard that the monkeys will start to accost you, especially if you have any fruit or try to take photos of them, but I found them pretty friendly. And definitely not camera shy.

In addition to the monkeys, the view from the top of the mountain really made the hike worthwhile. We could see most of the west coast of Phuket as well as some of the nearby islands in the Andaman Sea.

Today marks the halfway point of my TEFL course and it’s been going really well so far. I’ll be going to Koh Phi Phi this weekend, a beautiful little island near Phuket, and also the location where The Beach was filmed. Pretty excited about that. I’ll end here by wishing a happy Thanksgiving to all of you back in the States.

Loy Krathong

Sunday night there was a Thai festival called Loy Krathong, an annual celebration that takes place on many bodies of water here in Thailand. The festival is all about ridding yourself of negativity and bringing in good luck and happiness. We went to a lake first and then walked to the ocean where the celebration was continuing.

About 12 of us were driven to the festival in the back of a pickup truck. Only in Thailand.











People everywhere were lighting Khom Fai lanterns, which have a small hot wax ring at the base. When the ring catches fire, the lantern slowly fills with hot air until you can release it into the air, casting away with it all of your bad luck and bad feelings.








Eventually, the sky was lit up with lanterns over the ocean. It was pretty amazing to see all of the Thai people coming together and feeling so joyful...we really have nothing comparable in America.





One of our Thai friends explained to me that you must light the candles and incense, forgive the river that you are about to drop it into, and finally make a wish before dropping your krathong into the water. It was pretty windy and my candle kept blowing out so I had to forgive the river many times and make several wishes...



It was getting quite windy by the end of the night, and then began to rain, making it pretty difficult for people to send off their lanterns. And a few trees and tents were almost burned down...hopefully no one was hurt. But all in all, a really uplifting event, and it just made me thankful to be healthy and happy in this moment.

Back To School

Sawaidee krup...

Unfortunately, I have had a few Gluten Attacks in spite of my attempts to steer clear of gluten in restaurants. I have little index cards that are translated into Thai explaining my dietary restrictions, which I have been showing to waiters/servers when I go out to eat, but I have still gotten really sick a few times. I'm not sure whether it is just from cross-contamination or not, but one of my classmates, Joy, is originally from Thailand and told me that many dishes do in fact use some form of soy sauce (gluten) and that many Thai people may read my dietary restrictions and still neglect to alter their cooking. So I've made the decision to prepare most of my meals for myself so as to ensure that I can keep from getting sick. But amazingly, another one of my classmates, Alison, just so happens to be a gourmet chef who, though she doesn't have Celiac disease, is also on a gluten-free diet. She has been cooking meals with me and beginning to show me the art of cooking gourmet, gluten-free meals even when traveling in a foreign country and with very few resources at hand. This can't be a coincidence, or luck, or anything. Some things are just meant to happen, or so it seems anyway. But in any case, with a little help, I am confident I can now eat well and stay healthy.

I'm now a day away from being done with my first week of school. The ESA teaching method that we are learning is really interesting. It involves a 43 minute lesson with three phases: Engage, a 5-minute "ice-breaker" that tries to get every student in the class speaking a little bit of English as a warm-up, Study, a 20-25 minute lesson that involves board-work and handouts, and finally Activate, which is usually a game played for the remainder of class where students interact with one another to use the grammar and vocabulary that has just been introduced. Also, the TEFL school offers free classes to Thai students who want to learn English, and allows the trainee English teachers instruct them as practice, in a mutually beneficial exchange. Today, I taught a class of adult beginner students a lesson about the correct usage of the indefinite articles a/an/any/some, along with some common food vocabulary. This was the first of 6 lessons I will teach over the next 4 weeks, and I think it went pretty well. We had to make a lesson plan and prepare all of the worksheets and make copies - basically do everything that a real teacher would have to do. I think the hands-on approach will give us much more confidence as teachers, and as public speakers in general, which definitely can't hurt.

Today we had also had our first "Unknown Language" lecture, where one of the TEFL instructors comes in to conduct a 43 minute lesson completely in Thai, basically to simulate the experience of our prospective students by forcing us to sit in class and be instructed entirely in a foreign language. It was pretty overwhelming, but by the end of the 43 minutes I had actually figured out a little bit of what was going on, and was able to work out that we were learning how to say hello (Sawaidee Krup/Ka depending on if you're male/female), ask how you are, ask what's your name, answer these questions, etc. Language is such a crazy thing. I think having taken classes instructed entirely in Mandarin in the past definitely made it a little less daunting, but still, I didn't know a single word of Thai before today, and I will say that my head was spinning by the end of the class.

So it's been pretty demanding so far, but it's also been a lot of fun at the same time, mostly because my classmates are all so amazing. I've already had so many great conversations with people I have known for less than a week. Everyone has such a compelling story to tell and have had such profound life experiences. I am one of the youngest in the class, and I definitely have very much to learn from each of them. And we don't spend ALL of our time in the classroom...we do get the afternoon off two or three times each week depending on our teaching schedule. Yesterday some of us took advantage of this time to go to Katama Beach. From left to right are my classmates Lily, E, Nizy, me, Chris, and Jason. We have quite an eclectic mix of nationalities in the class...people hail from the UK, Australia, South Africa, Ecuador, the Maldives, Thailand, Canada, and of course the good old US and A.

Bob's Bar at Katama Beach...probably the best reggae music I've ever heard at a bar. They were playing Damian Marley and the Gladiators and Jimmy Cliff and all sorts of great stuff. And it was literally on the beach. Amazing.






A cruise ship just off Phuket











And you gotta love that sunset. Just another day in paradise.

Scuba Diving

To start, my luggage is here and not in the hands of some Hong Kong triad member, which is sweet. My first weekend in Phuket has been pretty amazing...and exhausting. On Friday, I started my PADI Open Water scuba diving certification course with Phuket ScubaCat. The first day of the course consisted of five 40 minute lessons in a classroom with short quizzes afterward, followed by a "fitness test" which is a 250 meter swim and 10 minutes of treading water (waaay more challenging than it sounds, or maybe I'm just out of shape?), then practicing about 30 different skills in an enclosed pool of water. Then on Saturday we finally got out into the open water for three practice dives, and I finished the course today with another open water practice dive and then two exploration dives.

In a way, diving reminds me of yoga...or at least some sort of underwater meditation. You're just taking very slow, steady, deep breaths through your mouth and if you don't relax you will overexert yourself and use too much of your air tank too quickly. And apparently, fish love to eat bananas.

On the first day, I discovered that I'm not very buoyant. But once I was in the open water I definitely got the hang of it and made a pretty significant improvement. I guess seeing all of the amazing fish and coral reefs serves as better motivation than the bottom of a swimming pool.

So many fish.

That's all for now...I start my TESOL course in the morning. Good times in Phuket.

GFMLs and Lost Luggage

I finally arrived in Phuket, but my luggage did not. Can't say I'm surprised. We were delayed in Vancouver waiting for a flight attendant to board the plane, so by the time I deplaned in Hong Kong, I had about 20 minutes to board my connecting flight to Phuket, which was conveniently located in a terminal at the opposite end of the airport from where I landed. I sprinted, took a shuttle, sprinted some more, went through customs, took another shuttle, and sprinted to the gate with about 2 minutes before the cabin door was closed. So I made it, but my bags are still in Hong Kong. I blame Canada. Anyway, I should be getting the bags tonight, and I haggled with the Dragonair agent at the luggage services desk until she gave me 1,300 baht as compensation. Not bad if you ask me...if my luggage actually comes tonight, that is.

It's raining here, so I'm just hanging out at the hotel with a bunch of my new TESOL classmates. Fortunately I'm not too jet-lagged. Here are some photos from the last 2+ days of traveling:

JFK airport...goodbye America.









GFML = Gluten Free MeaL (or more aptly put, Gluten Fucked My Life)








The first of four GFMLs - rice cakes, blackberry jam, steamed chicken/vegatables, white rice, fresh fruit. And it was actually pretty good.





Sunrise over Japan from my airplane window











GFML breakfast was subpar. Eating that..thing..in the bottom right was like biting into a brick...






...which is why I was so glad I brought sandwiches.

BOS > JFK > YVR > HKG > HKT

First of all, a big THANK YOU to all of my friends and family who have wished me well in these past few days. I was fortunate to spend some good time with many of you during my last week in the States and will miss everyone back home very much. Having said that, I am pretty pumped to arrive in Thailand and get to the beach. Just when I thought I had slyly avoided winter for an entire year, I saw snow on the ground yesterday morning in Boston… typical New England. I won’t be missing the weather back home at all.

Right now I’m in the JFK airport waiting to board the first of my international flights. I will be flying to Hong Kong via Vancouver, then I have another layover before I board my final flight to Phuket. In order to ease the jetlag that the 12-hour time difference will inevitably cause, I will try to confuse my body by taking a bunch of naps rather than sleeping for any long stretches of time, and of course drinking ample amounts of caffeine. We’ll see how it goes, but this strategy has worked pretty well for me in the past. Aside from the napping, during the next 28 hours I will be reading The Kite Runner and indulging in Cathay Pacific’s personal in-flight entertainment system.

Back to the diet: I successfully managed to spend my last week at home without experiencing any major Gluten Attacks. Although I do still inexplicably ingest gluten at times (and pay the consequences for it), I will say that my overall health has improved drastically in the past 8 months, and I would really like to avoid any relapses. Luckily, the Thai diet in itself is largely gluten free, with many of the most popular dishes based around white rice or rice noodles. Of course, I still have to be careful about sauces and the dreaded cross-contamination. But even if I do run into trouble eating in the restaurants, I checked a duffle bag stuffed with a staggering amount of gluten-free food, so I should be okay for a while.

Many more updates to come on arrival, and (hopefully) much more interesting. Peace out, America.

Five Days To Go

On Tuesday I will board my first of 4 flights en route to Thailand. Having a one-way ticket is a pretty liberating feeling... so far all I know for sure is that I'll be living in Phuket for my first 5 or 6 weeks abroad.

So the overnight lows in Massachusetts are already down to the 30s and it's only the first week in November. Meanwhile Phuket right now has temperatures in the mid-80s. It feels kind of strange to be wearing wool socks and a hoodie and at the same time filling my backpack with sandals and swim shorts and lax pinnies, but I can't complain. Bring on the heat.

I was never a huge fan of glutenous airline food, but as I learned on my trip to Vietnam earlier this summer, the gluten-intolerant airline food that Cathay Pacific offers doesn't exactly deserve to bear the name "food". So this time, I will be prepared: for my 26 hours of flying time, I will bring a few sandwiches made on homemade GF bread (probably the last time I can expect to eat bread in the next 6 months), along with Glutino breakfast bars, Udi's GF granola, and some fruit. On the way to Vietnam in June, I attempted to eat a meal in the Hong Kong airport, but this proved to be a mistake as my server had never heard of gluten, and I definitely learned my lesson. So now and in the future I will always bring a hefty supply of my own food.

That's all for now...