September, 2007

Wow, September started with a bang!  We took a fantastic trip to Pong Nam Ron near the border with Cambodia, for a river rafting trip.  Here's the trip report.  And here's a picture that David drew about our raft trip.    (Click on the picture to see a larger image.)

I also start coaching basketball this week, so I'll be pretty busy.  (Coaching the HS Girls Basketball team.)  But I'll try to post a report or two over the next few weeks.  Life is good.

Sunday September 9th - A very eventful day.  (Pictures too.)   Sunday Sept. 16th, I realized I hadn't made this link yet...so check out this page...sorry.

Update Sunday September 16th, 6:15 AM.  It's a sad day over here in Thailand...as I woke up around 4:45 AM to hear the end of the Husky football game against Ohio State.  And we got our tails kicked.  Oh well...life is still good. 

Earlier this week, I took David to get his first haircut since we moved to Thailand.  Here's a picture of the place we went.  (Click on the picture to see a larger image.)  It's right up the street from our condo.  And the cost:  40 Baht, or about $1.15.  Oh, and I gave a 10 Baht tip, so the total price was 50 Baht, or about $1.35. 

I took a picture of David afterwards, but it didn't turn out very well, so I'll post another picture later so you can see his new haircut.  Don't worry...it's not as short as mine.

When we walked into the bar ber, one of the guys that was cutting hair looked at David and me and said, while pointing to David, then to me, "same same?"  Meaning, was David going to get the same haircut that I was sporting...  Guess you had to be there, as it was funnier than it sounds while writing this.  Oh well.

And this picture serves a few purposes.  This was taken Saturday afternoon, while riding in the back of a Baht bus, looking back up Naklua Road at "the dolphin."  (The dolphin is a landmark in north Pattaya, it's a roundabout, aka traffic circle, that serves as a focal point for traffic jams almost every day.)  Two things here about the picture:  Look at the power lines.  They are all over the place.  Each power pole here has a huge mass of lines on it.  The second thing to notice is the white van behind the blue truck.  It's an ambulance.  First time I've seen one in my entire stay here so far.  I didn't get my camera out very quickly to take the pic, but it seemed significant to me, since I hadn't seen one yet.  It's just a converted van.  It had lights, and the sirens seemed a bit quiet, and the cars didn't seem to get out of the way.  But it was an ambulance. 

Anyway, our weekend has been quite mild.  Devin is working a few days here and there as a substitute at my school, which is nice. She hopes to make some extra money to support our travel habit.  It's definitely addicting.  I'm still studying Thai, trying to learn the alphabet now.  I've already learned three consonants.  Only 41 more to go!  And I've learned two vowels.  Only 30 more to go!  So at last count, I've learned five letters, and only have 71 more to go.  Oh yeah, I guess I still need to learn the tone marks, also.  But I'm having fun.  One of my coworkers at school, Khun Chok, loves language, so he helps me every day with a new word or two, and pronunciations, etc.  I'm really enjoying the immersion process of learning language.  I'll realize in trying to communicate an idea that I need to learn a new word or phrase, so I'll look it up when I get home, then try it out the next time I need it.  For example, we frequently hire a baht bus to take us home from somewhere, and we have to give them directions.  So I needed to learn the numbers to tell them we lived in soi 16.  (soi sip hok)  Then, I figured I needed to give them a better idea of where we lived.  Long Beach is a huge hotel near us, but you have to turn left to get there.  So I tell them, "near Long Beach, don't turn left, go straight a little."  (In Thai, roughly translated...  Long Beach, mai lee-o sai, trung pai nit noy.)  Needless to say, it's been a great deal of fun to learn the language.  I figure I've only got five and a half years before I'm fluent!  No, no, no...we haven't decided how long to stay here yet.  But truthfully, we're having a good enough time that I can see staying here for a while.

Now I'm off to take a nap after getting up way too early to listen to the Huskies get beat in football. 

Another update:  Sunday September 16th.

I never got the nap I wanted...oh well.  But we had a fun day.  Below are some pictures I took while we went out for breakfast.  As usual, click on the picture to see the larger version.

The pictures here are meant to show the simple beauty we get to see every day.  There are times when it's easy to forget we live in a place filled with interesting plants and animals.  (Stuck in traffic around the dolphin, while seeing three huge tour buses, 30 cars, and 100 motorcycles all trying to use the same round-about., for example.)  So on our walk to breakfast this morning, I decided to take some pictures of the flowers in bloom. 

  On our walk to breakfast this morning, David had a little accident with a bird.  Reminded me of a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon titled "Bird's Eye View of the World."  The bird was looking down at objects, and they all had bulls-eyes on them showing "targets" for waste.  Hehehe...we washed his shirt in the bathroom, and it was dry by the time we walked home.  That's our friend Elaine pointing at the bird poop.  She and her boyfriend Mun are teachers at my school and invited us to their usual Sunday breakfast buffet.  (By the way, it only costs about $7 for all of us for the buffet.)

 And the ubiquitous "mass jumble" of powerlines that always amazes me when I see it.  So what the heck...another picture.

And one of the cooler things I've observed...a "traveling" grill on the sidecar of a motorbike.  This was on one of the quiet roads we used to walk to breakfast.  This guy wasn't selling anything yet...he was just getting his grill fired up. 

The first time I saw one, it was actually driving down the road, chicken satay grilling away.

And you know you're in Thailand when.......

...you see Ronald McDonald giving a "wai."  I saw this today on my travels down to Pattaya to shop for a video camera.  I'd seen this before, but never had my camera.

Amazing how far across the globe western culture has traveled...and that's not always a good thing, in my opinion.   Oh well, at least he's honoring local culture.

That's all for now.  I've got to get ready for school tomorrow.  We have a school holiday next Friday, and we're planning a mini-vacation to a local resort.  Should be fun!  I'll post pictures when we get back.

Saturday 22nd September - Diving Day for Lowell!

Sunday 23rd September - Visit to Nong Nooch Tropical Garden, Thai Cultural Show and Elephant Show