Anassa Kata

For those readers who go/went to Bryn Mawr or for those who have heard me talk about Bryn Mawr enough to know what it means to Anass, bear with me for a sec.  Bryn Mawr College has a cheer.  Only a senior may begin the cheer and it is something that I personally looked forward to for the first three years of college.  We use this cheer a lot.  And every time it gives me that warm bubbly feeling that travels up through my belly and sits right at my heart, giving everything the golden glow of too many good emotions (even when I wasn't feeling bubbly, golden, or good).

Outside of Bryn Mawr, sometimes its hard to remember that starting the Anass (the cheer) is not normal.  No one will join in, chanting and shouting at the top of their lungs.  It would be strange to start shouting in Greek.  But since we use the Anass to recognize something or celebrate something (or be excited about something or just want to shout about something) it makes sense that this kind of action - a public display of support - would take place at, for example, a performance.

Tonight I wanted to Anass.  I wanted to Anass Thailand, I wanted to Anass the teachers and the parents, I wanted to Anass G and our TAs, but most importantly, I wanted to Anass my kids.

We have spent the last two weeks practicing for tonight.  Our big show.  A chance to show the parents and the school that in Our English program you get to have fun and learn cool songs in English.  We have worked so hard.  Tonight it all paid off.  Tonight my kids were brilliant.  Tonight they danced and sang in-sync with each other.  Tonight I couldn't get the smile off my face.  Tonight I was so so proud.  Tonight, well, tonight I wanted to Anass my kids.

So here's to them, and in memory of all the children of Newtown, CT who should have had more opportunities to make their teachers proud:

Anassa kata kalo kale

ia ia ia nike

Bryn Mawr, Bryn Mawr, Bryn Mawr

An Island Interlude: Ko Phi Phi and Phuket

The morning after our tour in Krabi we got on the ferry to Ko Phi Phi (pronounced Ko Pee Pee -hee hee).  This was probably the first stop on our island tour (since Ko Samui) where we hadn't made sleeping arrangements in advance.  Its one of the advantages to having a travelling companion with a phone!  With Ko Phi Phi we had looked in Lonely Planet and called a few places but the prices seemed steep.  So when we got off the boat we were accosted with people trying to book guest houses for us.  They had a wall set up where we could see all the different options, including pricing, which was really helpful.  It was also ridiculous.  Somehow in the time it took for us to get from the East side to the West side (remember that 16 hours on boats and buses) it went from low season to high season and prices sky-rocketed.  Granted, we still weren't paying that much and since we were going to spend a little more anyway, the 3 of us decided that it would be nice to stay in a place we liked.  So we chose a guest house that would give us a little bungalow (complete with a hammock!).  After we booked our room the lady told us to wait and a taxi would come pick us up and take us to the guest house.  As it turned out, "taxi" meant a guy with a platform wheelbarrow where we could put our backpacks and as he set quite a jaunty pace so we focused our efforts on following him instead of looking at all the people and merchandise we were passing.

It was one of the things I liked about Ko Phi Phi was there was no transportation.  Your options were walking or walking.  Obviously, some locals had motorbikes or bicycles (which was sometimes frightening when they were trying to pass you on the road), but the roads were too narrow and too filled with people to make room for anything bigger than a motorbike.  All of the roads were also lined with shops selling clothing, souvenirs, jewelry, bathing suits, etc.  As a whole it seemed like there were 3 things to do in Ko Phi Phi: shop, relax on the beach, and party on the beach.  Of course, there were also diving opportunities and tour opportunities but since we had gone diving for much less in Ko Tao, and most of the tours were of the limestone cliffs that we had seen the day before, we opted out of doing either.

So on that first day, we settled into our bungalow and then promptly went to find food since we hadn't gotten breakfast before we left Krabi.  After that we went down to the beach and spent most of the day relaxing, swimming, and reading.  The weird thing about the beach in Ko Phi Phi was that the tide was very very low. The whole day we were sitting up by the restaurants and bars and the water started probably 10 meters out. In the evening the tide rose to be about 1 meter from where we were but by the time we were back at the beach dancing that night the water had gone out again!  Shortest "high" tide ever!

So after relaxing at the beach all day we went back to our guest house to shower and change.  We went out to an Indian restaurant for dinner (it was yummy!), walked around looking at the shops, and then bought a bucket mix from the street.  Buckets are definitely the most popular drink in the south, however, the difference between buying one in a bar and buying one that you mix yourself (except not really, the woman we bought it from still mixed it for us) is about 200 baht.  After we got our bucket we made our way over to one of the bars that had a hoppin dance party.  We didn't want to have something slipped into our bucket so we enjoyed the drunken antics of this man while we sipped.

It started with 2 guys

And turned into a one-man show!

And then we danced.

yeah... that's all sweat :)

Fire show!

The next day we did more of the same.  We went shopping during the day only to discover that its better in the evening.  But spent most of our day just hanging out.

Overall, I had a great time in Ko Phi Phi.  I am SO GLAD that I was with Lieke and Kimsha though since its not really my style to go out dancing alone and that was easily the best part.  I had so much fun.

The next morning I left Lieke and Kimsha in Ko Phi Phi while I moved on to Phuket.  I believe I mentioned towards the beginning that Phuket was one of the places I really felt the need to go because it was probably the only city I knew of in the south before I moved to Thailand.  I was sad to leave my new Dutch friends but my vacation time was ending!

I'm going to include Phuket here because I don't have much to say.  I didn't like it.  Phuket was dirty, overpriced, and there was a lot of sex tourism.  I only had a day (I arrived in the late morning and left the next morning) so in all fairness I didn't really get to go to the city of Phuket since I was staying on the beach.  However, driving through the city both on my way in and my way out I was not impressed.  And the fact that the cheapest breakfast I could find was 300 baht (for the same meal that had cost 150 in other southern cities) was irritating.  On one side of the street there was a bunch of bars which at night started advertising people in cages, topless ping pong, and other such entertainment.  On the other side were fancy resorts where families stayed.  It was odd and kind of uncomfortable.  So that was my Phuket experience.

The next morning I was on a bus out of there and on my way back to Bangkok.  The only notable story about the bus ride was that there were 4 buses - a minibus that picked me up, a bus that took us to another bus station, then there was some confusion about our recipts/bus tickets so we had to go to a different bus station, and finally we got on our overnight bus to Bangkok.  It was so much better than the train though.  The only problem was that the bus driver did not take us to a bus station in Bangkok, he just kind of stopped, unloaded all our bags, and told us to get off.  So for about 10 minutes there were 20 farangs standing on the side of an empty road in Bangkok at 5 in the morning.  Most of them seemed to be heading to the same place but since I needed to get to the bus station I went towards an intersection hoping to get a taxi.  I think this made some of them thing that I knew where I was going (which I didn't - I had no idea where we were)... Anyway, I got to my bus station OK, got on the bus back to Chaiyaphum, and whew!  Vacation over.

An Island Interlude: Krabi

* Some of the formatting of the pictures in this post is weird.  Forgive me - it is way too much effort to fix it when in the big picture, does it really matter? <3

 Day 13 of our travels was a travel day.  We went from Ko Phan Ngang to Krabi which was a bit of an adventure.  We knew we needed to take a bus and a boat but were not completely aware of how many buses we would be taking!  We were taken to the boat pier by way of pick-up truck from our travel agency.  When we got there it was not the boat pier we were expecting but because our tickets seemed to be in order we got on the boat.  When we got off the boat we were ushered onto a bus headed for Surat Thani.  This is where our first bout of confusion set in as we thought we were taking the boat o Surat Thani and then a bus to Krabi.  But we were assured that we took the bus to Surat Thani and then another bus to Krabi.  So we got on the bus, traveled for about 45 minutes until we arrived in Surat Thani.  When we arrived we were taken in a taxi to another bus station where we picked up our tickets for our bus to Krabi.  We had about 45  minutes before our bus was scheduled to leave so we ordered some food while we waited.  At 2:15 we started walking towards where our bus would leave from and by 2:30 we were on the bus and on our way!  When we arrived at the Krabi bus station we were the last 3 people on the bus (everyone else had gotten off at one of the stops before) but we were lucky enough to find a woman there who got us a taxi to our hostel.  It was a really long day - I think 16 hours travelling!

The hostel we chose in Krabi was dorm style and very modern.  It was also just up the hill from one of the night markets (the bigger one with more prepared food) so we went down there for dinner and talked about what we wanted to do the next day.  So all in all the day was uneventful but still tiring...

the night market

reading lonely planet, looking for things to do!

 The next day we decided we would explore Krabi a little bit on our own.  The hostel we were staying at had a bike map and on the map there was a little island called Ko Klang that listed a Tsunami memorial museum, a handicraft museum, and a cultural center.  Since the part of town we were in didn't have nearly so many things to do (just a Modern Art museum) we decided it would be fun to go over to this little island.  So we walked down the beach (seeing some interesting animal life on the way), got a longtail to cross the water, and got onto the island.  Once we were there we started walking in the direction our map pointed us to the Tsunami memorial museum.  We were probably 10 meters down the road when we ran into an American couple who had been walking around the island.  We stopped and talked with them for a bit, asking if they knew where the TMM was but they said they had walked all over and had seen no such thing.  In fact, they said the island was pretty much devoid of anything to see or do other than people watch.  So we went our separate ways and we kept walking until we came to a government building.  There we asked if anyone knew where any of the things on our map were.  They said they had no idea what the map was talking about - there was no TMM, handicraft center, or cultural center.  At this point we were all kind of laughing at ourselves and our faulty map but decided that since we were already on the island we might as well just explore.  So we kept walking down the road.  It was really hot and the road was in the open, direct sun, so when we saw a little place with some tables set up we stopped and asked if we could buy some water.  It turned out they weren't a "restaurant" like we thought but they did have some water for us to buy and were even kind enough to give us a sweet desert type thing (coconut, condensed milk, tapioca balls?, corn? - it was a bit mysterious and very very sweet).  After taking our little break we continued walking until we came to a fork in the road.  There were buildings to the left and trees to the right so we chose the left fork and continued walking.  I should say that during our little walk we saw very few people.  There were a few motorbikes that passed us but for the most part it felt a little deserted.  It was also immediately obvious that this island was predominantly (if not totally) Muslim from the few people we passed and also because it seemed the only thing there was to see was the island's mosque.  As we continued walking we passed an open room with a mural of a mosque on the back wall.  We were welcomed in by some people there who told us it was similar to an after school program.  It was cool because they had all sorts of pictures and drawings up of the kids doing activities, including writing to pen pals in the U.S.!  Similar to the people in the "restaurant" these folks were really friendly and excited that we were on their little island.  After we finished talking to them we continued walking, found the mosque, and then decided to turn around and head back to Krabi.  We all thought it was a very happy accident that we stumbled upon this little jewel of an island.  Even though there wasn't much to do or see the people we met and the things we observed definitely made me feel  like we had stumbled upon a piece of Utopian society.

breakfast the next morning

weird salamander things

Crabs!  (in Krabi, lol)

The only sign we saw on Ko Klang talking about the Tsunami were these 

 

Kimsha and Lieke 

looking at the crabs

the pier to Ko Klang (Ko Klang is the trees right across the water)

Mangroves on Ko Klang

we walked along this road for a while

stopped for a snack

kept on walking

the Muslim after school center

That night we went over to the other night market which had mostly fruit or other things for locals to buy.  We didn't end up eating there since there wasn't much prepared food but we did go to a restaurant across the street that was so good we went back the next night too!

The next day we chose to do the James Bond tour.  I want to preface this by saying that one of the things I really wanted to see in the south were the limestone cliffs that seem to appear in the middle of the sea.  Like this:

So doing one of the tours where we got to see such beauty was definitely a priority for me.  After getting picked up at our hostel we were taken to Phang Nga Bay and from there we took a longtail to James Bond Island (called such because it appeared in "The Man with the Golden Gun").  On the way we passed goregous scenery - the colors were so vibrant in both the water and on the limestone formations.  We were given quite a bit of time to explore James Bond Island - there was a cool cliff, the James Bond rock itself, and you could take a little hike to a cavern area.  There were many tourists but it just means that there's always someone willing to take your picture, right?!  After we got back onto our longtail we cruised around the area a bit, even going under some precarious looking rock formations!  Our next stop was at the floating village for lunch.  The whole village is built on the water - essentially on stilts - and it was cool to walk around after lunch in the market area and realize the "road" we were walking on was suspended above the sea.  Lunch itself was Thai food for tourists (aka, bland).  It didn't taste very Thai to me, but the other people in our group seemed to think it was really yummy so I tried to let it go.

boat ride to James Bond Island

limestone formations

some of the folks in our boat

 

at the island!

there it is!

 

There was a guy who we asked to take our picture... He took it really seriously and took  5 or 6 all from different angles

The cavern just down the path

Another cool rock formation

looking up!

on the other side

lots of tourists

the Floating Village where we ate lunch

lunch

After lunch we took the longtail back to the mainland via a mangrove forest area and took a bus to Suwankhuha Temple (aka, the monkey cave).  Here we saw a lying Buddha, a whole bunch of monkeys, and if you went a little deeper into the cave there was a cool area to explore.  It was also blissfully cool which was nice since it was quite hot out.  After the temple we were taken to a waterfall but the group declined to go swimming.  Unlike the waterfall in Ko Samui, the pool where one could swim at this waterfall was not a wading pool.  Getting to it involved a perilous climb over slippery rocks and the water was moving quite quickly.  Watching a man carry a baby over the rocks was enough to make me decide that that was definitely not happening.

Mangrove forest

lying Buddha and entrance to the cave

go up some stairs and you reach the "Light Cave"

Looking back towards the "light cave" while entering the "dark cave"

Kimsha in the "Dark Cave"

back at the entrance

Monkeys!

 The waterfall was the last stop on our tour so we were taken back to our hostel.  That night we went out to eat, saw a different market (its only there Fridays and Saturdays so we lucked out), and then walked around Krabi for a bit.

children climbing over rocks to get up from the waterfall

a car outside the Night Market - puurty

Our next stop: Ko Phi Phi!