I think I need to clarify a few things about my living situation, as I led many to believe that I’d be doing things quite differently from the way I’m actually doing them now.

Firstly, I moved off the site really quickly. Pretty soon after I got sick actually (which was, I think day 3 of my being here) I decided that I wanted to have a bed and running hot water and a facility whose toilet gave you an option other than a cold hose to clean up with…and I didn’t feel like being woken up by kids doing chores at 4:30 in the morning every day. So I moved into an open guesthouse. It’s about 10 minutes away on my moped and it’s got a nice cozy bed, a western style toilet and a shower that has lukewarm water sometimes. Some of you might call this a big cop out from the essence of simple living, but for a whopping $100 a month, this was a concession I was willing to make.

They really like me at this guest house. I leave the key with reception every day (It’s a lot like a hotel) before I leave my room, and one day when I came back, I was given a note with my key. It read:
“ To Wood, James,
Today they made-up your room.
If you have anything else you can tell me, I can help you. And whenever you go far away from Mae Sai, to anywhere, please tell me.
If you don’t see me, you can leave a message with reception.
I worry about you. Thank you.
Good night
(reception)”
Before I say anything else, I just have to say that at this point, I was home every day by 8:30 PM because I was sick, so there was really nothing to worry about. Secondly, this woman who works at the front desk spends her entire day watching American mysteries and thrillers, and so I think the vocabulary she’s used makes her sound like a spy or a damsel in distress-esque character out of a work of fiction or something.

Today, I came to my door to find a plastic bag around the its handle. It had two donuts inside and another note. It read:

“To Wood, James,
Hi! Today is my birthday. So I bought Mr. Donut (2 pieces) for you. I want to give you by myself but I got up late this morning. I’m sorry for I didn’t see you this morning. Drive carefully.
See you.”

Mind you, it’s her birthday. Not my birthday. It’s such a nice gesture, but…does this seem peculiar to anyone else?


My moving off the site also means that I’m totally not vegan, like I thought I’d have to be. Mae Sai’s got a stretch of road that’s got quite a selection of restaurants. They’re all thai and they all more or less serve the same thing, but the point is, I can get my chicken fix whenever I want it and I haven’t been hungry since I was sick for four days.
Moving off the site also means I use my moped at least twice a day to get to and from school. Having only learned to drive this thing a week ago, I’ve had my share of clumsy mishaps, all thankfully resulting without injuries, except for one minor scratch. I emailed a few people about the first time I tried to walk my moped down the steep driveway of my guesthouse. Well, obviously what happened was that it was to heavy for me to walk from the side and I when it started rolling down the hill really fast, I panicked and didn’t think to put my hands around the front break. So I broke its fall with myself and scratched my leg and the side mirror a little bit. A couple of really nice local Thais helped me and the bike up, trying their damndest not to laugh in the process. A couple of days later, I had a mishap with the choke of the engine. My moped’s kinda ghetto and sometimes I can’t kick start it unless I open up the choke, but apparently you’re never supposed to drive with the choke open after you’ve started up the engine, because the whole bike will stutter while you drive and it’ll eventually stall out on you in the middle of traffic.

Mae Sai is not the barn I was expecting it to be. Sure, there’s no movie theatre and you’re kindof shit out of luck if you want anything other than Thai food…though there is a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Tesco as you go South and approach the neighboring town. The street that I live on is a very busy market place during the day. At night, it’s totally deserted other than this one bar called “Johnny’s,” which sketches me out with its revolving door of expats with checkered pasts and tattooed faces. The owner, Johnny, is renowned as an alcoholic who jumps up ontop of the pool table barefoot if he’s having a good game and uses the back end of a mop as a pool stick. He swears to me that I met him months ago in his bar, even though I’d never even been to Asia as of last month, but he’s perfectly friendly and happy whenever I see him, nonetheless.

Finally, the kids at the site. I have to say that I haven’t interacted enough with any class long enough to chart any progress. I haven’t even started working with the scholarship recipients yet (which is going to take up my life, 2 hours a night Monday-Friday along with my daytime responsibilities). I do really enjoy all of them though, and I think I’ve even learned a thing or two on how to tame the beasts in my lowest level class. My higher two level classes have never had English-Thai dictionaries, and so I splurged and bought them each one so that there wouldn’t be any dead ends on the homework assignments or communication with me (there’s only about 17 students total in those classes). I haven’t seen them yet, but I’ll give ‘em to them on Monday when I meet with them again. Cindy was telling me some absolutely horrid stories about the nature of their refugee lives (most of them are from Myanmar), and they display the kindof strength I would never expect out of anyone, let alone from a group of 9, 10, 12, 14 year olds.

When I work in development in the office, there are a couple of kids that meander about into our door. I have one particular favorite, his name is Se-Dtang and he’s about 6 years old. He insists on climbing on my shoulders while he wears this cardboard mask. It’s got scissor hole circles for eyes and he roars like a dinosaur while I put together lesson plans or write up help wanted ads over the computer. Se-Dtang has had a piece of gauze taped to the left side of his nose ever since I’ve been here. It’s masking a very suspicious and nasty looking cigarette burn, the second one of the last couple of months, I’m told. And whenever anyone tries to bring it up with him, pointing to their own faces asking, “Tam arai nii maa?” (what happened here?) he looks in another direction and changes the subject. I don’t really know when the site decides that a student is a candidate for boarding the school, (as opposed to just being a daytime student) but this sortof thing is not irregular, from what I’m told.

I think that’s enough for now. I don't get to update this blog as frequently as I like, that's why these last couple of postings have been so long. This weekend, I’m goin horse back riding and kicking back a little bit. Next weekend, however, I think I need to start moving around and see things in Thailand other than Mae Sai.