Korean Barbecue: Head vs. Taste Buds

Korean Barbecue is my favorite meal in Thailand, but it is also my least favorite. Let me explain...

Why its awesome:
- 100 baht (about 3 bucks) for an all you can eat buffet.
- fruit, veggies, pre-cooked items like spring rolls and fried chicken, raw meat and fish you cook at your own table to your liking, sauces galore, kanoms (small gel desserts), and coconut ice cream with peanuts.
- picking what you like and cooking it yourself
- staying warm by the firepot on a cold night with the whole thai family.
- awesome restaurant atmosphere
- live music

Why its incredibly stressful:
- placing raw meat on the fire with the same chopsticks you remove cooked meat with.
- soaking said chopsticks in boiling water every time you touch anything with them...in an effort to stave off salmonella.
- being just about ready to pull off a wonderful piece of bacon, when someone plops down some raw liver right on top of it.
- you never know when someone is going to put a questionable item on your plate. maybe its a little undercooked, maybe its boiled blood, maybe its an entire squid. you've picked your own food from the buffet, but somehow you're expected to taste "chim" whatever is placed on your plate.
- No one else seems to have the same concerns as you.

That being said, I can't wait for the gamble that is my next Korean barbecue meal. (knock on wood) I haven't been sick yet!

Nong Khai

This past weekend was another 3 day weekend (or 4 day because of a WorldTeach meeting in the city on Thursday).  Although I would have been happy to stay and relax in Kut Chim, I felt a need to wander and explore.  Rita, Ben, Peter, and I made plans to travel to Nong Khai to do just that.

After our meeting, we thought it best to crash at Jes’ house so we’d be able to leave early Friday morning.  It was nice to relax in such a cozy setting.  We went to an amazing restaurant for dinner, and even baked M&M cookies for dessert. Ovens are few and far between, so when Jes acquired one, we were all pretty excited to use it!  Pi Nok helped us with the bus schedule and we were set to leave at 5:30 to catch an early bus.  Sure enough though, we found out that the earliest bus wasn’t running so we’d have to leave at 9 instead.  Mai pen rai, a lazy morning sounded nice, and we’d still get to Nong Khai with enough daylight to find our way around.  The next morning, Pi Nok went to the bus station before we woke up just to ensure we’d get tickets and the right information.  She came back with tickets (just 2 for the boys…) for 11:30 am.  Turns out something happened to the 9 am bus and we’d have to leave even later! Such is life in Thailand.

The bus was pretty uneventful, except that it stopped quite often to let people on and off the bus – making the journey much longer than it needed to be.  We arrived in Nong Khai right after sunset and needed to find a place to stay ASAP.  After spotting a farang couple on the bus, Peter, in typical fashion, started jabbering at them in English. Turns out they spoke French, woops. Mai pen rai, Peter speaks French too!  They told him where they were staying and gave us directions and we were on our way! They turned out to be staying at a hostel that was raved about in our Lonely Planet guides, so we knew we were in for a lot of tourists, which wasn’t exactly what we wanted, but we just needed a place to call home for the next few days.

What we neglected to think about though, was that it was a holiday weekend, and even Thais would be traveling to Nong Khai because it is one of two cities with a friendship bridge to Laos.  So the cool looking hostel was booked, and so was the next one, and so on all the way down the riverwalk.  We started to get a little nervous that we would be sleeping on the street, and I could sense Peter’s dad instincts setting in.  No chance he’d let us be both hungry AND homeless. But once we reached the end of the walkway we saw a little shop with a sign “wanna guest house.”  Well in fact, yes, we do wanna guest house.  There was one room left, on the third floor, with its own private balcony overlooking the river, AC, hot water, and 1 king sized bed.  What luxury, especially at about 4 dollars each a night.  Being used to sleeping on rock hard mattresses, the boys graciously let Rita and I take the bed – Thanks guys!

Despite our sleeping predicament, we immediately fell in love with Nong Khai.  It had a riverwalk just like NKP, but shops separated it from a busy road instead.  It’s a quiet, and clean, and also has everything you’d expect to find in a city.  We were, of course, taken a back by all the tourists and giant ex-pat population, but we took the opportunity to meet some of them.  We met a guy, Ryan, from Oregon, who’d just finished a month of teaching in a small village in another Isan province.  He was then taking the opportunity to travel around a bit, and was paying for his stay by playing guitar at the hostel’s restaurant.  He had similar stories to share, and it was fun to converse with someone outside the WorldTeach circle.  He even led us to an awesome sidewalk restaurant away from the fancy dancy riverwalk where we feasted on som tom, sticky rice, and rotisserie chicken.  It was so much fun to wander this beautiful city!

On Saturday, we spent a few hours at a sculpture park.  We’d read about in the guidebook, but we weren’t expecting much at all.  We pulled up, and were blown away by the sheer size and number of all the bizarre sculptures.  Unfortunately all the explanations were in Thai, so we didn’t really understand the purpose of the sculptures. We started out taking normal pictures, but then we decided it would be fun to pose in the same positions of the statues.  And thus began a hilarious photo shoot.  We probably made quite a scene, but we enjoyed it immensely.

One of the best parts of the weekend was surprising all the locals with our knowledge of the Thai language.  Being a pretty large tourist town, people would just start speaking English with us.  We'd try to reply in Thai as much as possible, and everyone was so impressed with what we knew. It was definitely an awesome feeling.

This weekend reinforced what I LOVE about traveling.  Finding yourself in a new place without a plan and just wandering around for a while.  Meeting new people, seeing new sights, and enjoying whatever happens. 

For pictures of the crazy sculpture park:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2072718&id=1326450028&l=a9f5e654e1

The Perfect Week

This past week has been incredible.  I’ve been experiencing such highs and lows lately that its been kind of frustrating not feeling in control of my emotions.  This past week, however, I gained some control of emotions and was able to really enjoy the week.

First things first, I was able to convey the importance of me needing to bike/run alone everyday after school, if only for 20 minutes.  Nit understood and now allows me this freedom.  It’s incredible what this has done for my happiness in general.  It certainly helps that by the time I can go for a ride the sun is setting over of the rice fields and Kut Chim is absolutely beautiful. I’ve also felt so much more a part of the community here because of the rides.  Everyone is out and about and I say hello to everyone I see.  They always ask where I’m going “bai nai” or tell me that I’m strong “kang lang.”  Nit has even allowed me to go for short runs alone (she thinks biking is much safer, so I was pleasantly surprised at this).  As I started my run, all of my students were leaving school and started to follow me – I felt like Forrest Gump!  Although many of them couldn’t keep up (exercise doesn’t really exist here) it was just a hilarious feeling.  Just running through the village and saying hello to all the people has really helped me feel more at home here.

Another event that really brought me into the community was a string-tying ceremony for a newborn baby.  The English teacher at my school had a baby the day before I moved in, so all my teachers headed to her home after school one day last week.  String tying ceremonies are always special, but this one just felt really significant.  The only attendees were teachers at my school, so it was much more intimate that others.  As I tied a string around the infant’s wrist, I spoke in English all the things that had been wished for him in Thai.  It was a really special moment that I’ll never forget.

After meeting up with my fellow volunteers every weekend since we went our separate ways, I knew I needed to not make plans for the weekend.  It was a 3 day weekend because of the King’s Birthday and I was sort of worried about how I would fill my time.  I thought about going into NKP to meet up with friends, but I felt like I needed to stay in my village to prove to myself that I could spend all that time alone.  It’s definitely nice to look forward to some fun on the weekend, and now I’m so happy to know that even if I don’t make any legitimate plans, I can still have fun right in my own village.  

I woke up Saturday morning to some girls giggling outside.  I opened the door and found a group of students from That Phanom.  Their English teachers had given them an assignment to find a foreigner and interview them.  I’m not quite sure how they knew I was there, but word travels pretty fast.  I’d met a South African teacher from their school a few times, so I’m sure he told them that I lived in Kut Chim.  Once they got here, all they really had to do was ask anyone in town and they could direct them straight to my home.  I’m not sure how I feel about being so easily accessible (my phone number has been passed around as well – in the middle of the school day I get calls for “small talk” from people I’ve probably never met before) but I’m getting used to it.  Anyway, I sat through the interview – it was filled with questions like “Until you have been to Thailand travel to when?” and I managed to come up with answers that I thought might be the right ones.  I thought about editing their questions, but I didn’t really know what they were even trying to ask.  I asked about the South African teacher, and they told me that he only teaches the VIP classes (larger towns and cities have leveled classes – my village is too small).  This explains the fractured English from the interview. 

That afternoon I was reading on my porch and four of the neighborhood children came running down the driveway carrying hula hoops.  They started hula hooping and singing the ABC’s which I took as my invitation to join them.  They giggled at teaching me how (hula hoops are much bigger and heavier here and kinda hurt your sides) and we spent the afternoon taking turns hooping and singing and even practicing some numbers.  They even stayed and helped Nit and I make dinner (summer rolls – yum!) and I really enjoyed their company.  

Monday morning J called me up and said he was going for a long bike ride and that he would come down to Kut Chim if I wanted to join him.  J is in his second year of WorldTeach Thailand and has had ample time to explore nearby villages.  Living alone and being an older guy he never really experienced the independence issues the rest of us have faced.  We ended up spending about 2 hours on dirt roads around my village just seeing where the path would take us.  I was worried about Nit being upset that I’d been gone so long, but she didn’t say anything about it when I returned.  It was really nice to be able to feel so spontaneous.  That afternoon, J, Gen, and I headed into That Phanom, where we were dropped off and allowed to explore on our own a bit.  Again, more freedom!  We went to the temple, wandered the markets, and found a real café!

Back at school, I’ve really been enjoying my students.  I taught pictionary last week and they love it!  I also broke out a word card game, Scrabble Slam (thanks mom!), to practice making words with them.  Playing cards is actually illegal here (maybe it’s just gambling) so when they saw how proficient I was at shuffling they squealed with delight!  Through some miming and “tenglish” they explained about cards being illegal and I just gave them a little smirk and said “mai pen rai,” which I think really made their day.

I’ve also taught them the word “rules.”  We’ve had classroom rules since day 1, but “rules” is currently a vocab word.  Rs, Ls and ending consonants are difficult for Thai speakers…so imagine how this word really threw them off.  Discouraged, they seemed to almost give up.  Instead of letting them, I wrote a thai letter on the board, ง, and asked them to pronounce it.  They perfectly pronounced the Nga Ngu.  And then I tried…and failed.  This letter is really hard for English speakers.  Sure we make this sound at the end of words like sing and thing, but making this sound at the beginning is nearly impossible.  It seemed to be a really meaningful learning moment for them and they were more motivated to say the word “rules.”  

While not without some typical frustrations, there it is, the best week in a nutshell…no crazy festival, no traveling adventures; just small, unplanned, perfect moments.

For pictures of my hula-hooping friends:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2068466&id=1326450028&l=068b9d4011