Give em that 'ol Razzle Dazzle

Where to even begin writing about my crazy life..........
Well first of all some good and exciting news. I'll be coming back to Thailand to teach again at GES for another year and I get to teach grade 2 again! So I'll be going back to Seattle on April 8 and then providing everything works out with some scheduling stuff I'll come back to Bangkok right after Jen's wedding in June. It will be hard to leave everything behind for another year. My family, friends, Target, Goodwill, Ben and Jerry's and all my scrapbooking stuff... :( But I'm excited for what the next year will bring. This time I'll know everything I need to bring back with me and I'll have a lot more room in my suitcases since I'll be leaving almost everything here when I go home for the "summer." I put summer in quotes because in Thailand my life is an eternal summer and although it will be summer break I'll be going home to MUCH colder weather.

For the rest of this I'll work backwards.

Last night a huge group of us teachers went downtown to see Chicago (the musical). It's on a world tour or something like that and they're in Bangkok for 10 days, and yes it was AMERICAN actors. It was really cool to see it in person. We had the cheapest seats in the second to last row but because of the way the theater is designed we could see everything but details. The one thing I will say is I shouldn't have watched the movie right before going because the stage show is definitely different and I was comparing it the whole time but it was nice to have the songs fresh in my head. Now Mamma Mia! is coming in August and I totally want to see it.



For awhile now I'd wanted to see the movie "Defiance." I have my degree in history so obviously these type of movies appeal to me :) Well a couple weeks ago so of my friends went to see it in the theater but I decided to go bowling instead. On Tuesday Tiffany came into my classroom and asked if I wanted to go see it with her that night downtown at Siam Paragon because that was the only place it was still playing. Since it was a school night I had to think about it (I know I must sound so lame) but I decided to go. AFter eating an awesome dinner at the Dairy Queen Grill we still had a little time before the movie started to Tiffany went to Starbucks to do some stuff on her laptop (something I sadly cant do since my laptop battery is crap and I need to buy a new one as soon as I reach Us soil) and I shopped around a bit. Now, mind you we traveled to downtown Bangkok to see this movie. Movies at Paragon usually cost 140 Baht (about $4) so imagine my shock when I walk up to the ticket counter, say Defiance and the man proceeds to tell me 500 Baht. 500 Baht! That's $15! American Prices! This was in the premium theater so we ask are there any other theaters? No go. So what are we going to do now? So me and Tiffany looked at each other and thought for a moment and then I said "let's just do it." So we did. Now in Thailand this is what $15 can get you. We had our own movie lounge to wait for the movie to start in. The lights were dim, there were crystal light pieces and a bar. Best of all there were massage chairs and not just any massage chairs, the best massage chairs I've ever sat in. Then a waiter came over and gave us free drinks and cookies. This is all before we even got into the theater.
Inside the actual theater there was maybe 30 seats and there was only 8 of us actually watching the movie, but honestly I never knew such theater seats existed. They were separated into groups of 2 seats. We had a big shell around the back of our two seats. The seats were made of leather and were almost twice as wide as regular seats with a foot wide armrest between the two. They had electric reclining capabilities and they came with a blanket and a pillow. It was a good movie experience to say the least. Worth $15. I tried to find some pictures online of the seats but there weren't any to be found. Tiffany took some pictures of us in them so when I get those from her I'll put one up.

And finally, another beach story.
Last weekend we had yet anther 3 day and instead of heading to Koh Samet once again a few of us decided to go to Koh Chang instead which is much farther away, only a matter of minutes from Cambodia but it was a new adventure and Koh Chang is also the one Island I had been dieing to go to since I came to Thailand.
We hired a van and left right after school on friday. Because the narley Bangkok traffic gets even Narlier on friday nights it took us forever to get out of the city and we didn't make it to Lame Ngob until 12:30. Ferries to Koh Chang stop running at about 7pm so we had to stay the night on the mainland at the Lame Ngob in which reminded me scarily of a summer camp. Oh well it was only 100 Baht. After arriving on Koh Chang the next morning we spent a little time trying to find a hotel and we eventually settled one one that was a couple minutes walk from the beach. Not to bad except the sheer amount of stairs we had to climb to get to out room. It was a workout every time. After lunch we went to get our transportation. The boys all rented motor bikes and us girl rented a car. I must say all of us were pretty excited to try out driving on the opposite side and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be although I'm glad I didn't drive through the middle of down. Shaela actually sideswiped a truck but there wasn't any damage. It was a little scary though.

That first afternoon we drove up to a waterfall. It was SO hot out and it felt SO refreshing to jump into the pool. There was a little ledge on one side that you could climb up and jump off from. So we were constantly going up. At one time Jonathon, Aaron, Me and some random Thai girl all went at the same time. My picture of it is a little blurry but I think Lorrie got a good one. The one thing that was super nice about this pool was that it wasn't full of crazy nibbling fish like Erawan waterfall was so we were actually able to enjoy our time in the water.



After that we drove a little bit more down the coast the a look out to get a good view of the sunset. It was gorgeous. All different shades of orange. From that view point we could look down to the water and see all these little tiny specs walking out through the water to a close island. We though that was pretty cool so we went down to see. We didn't walk all the way out but we walked a little ways. We decided to come back again the next day to do some kayaking there instead.




Our second day started out by us driving to the other, less inhabited side of the island. We brought our breakfast and stopped at this big empty pier that went out into the water. I wonder what it was used for? We walked all the way to the end and sat down. A couple others jumped off the end. I didn't feel like sitting in my wet clothes for the rest of the day so I decided to wait.
Before we went to the beach to go Kayaking we decided to get some lunch so we headed back to the popular side of the island. Us girls were driving in the front of the pack with the boys on their bikes somewhere behind us. When we reached the town and saw that the boys were nowhere close we pulled over the stop and wait. A couple minutes later Tyler pulls up behind us. He gets off the motor bike and comes up to the window and says "I think I need to go to the Hospital, i wiped out my bike." We were all like what? And then we saw all his scraps and he lifted up his shorts to reveal his overly bloody knee. Immediately I said " Tyler I'll drive your bike, get in the car." I was lucky when I wiped my bike out in Chang Mai (yes, I did wipe out but I didn't say anything previously because of the potential freakout factor) I was wearing jeans and there was a nice patch of grass so I only had a few scrapes but Tyler wiped out in gravel wearing shorts and a t-shirt so it was a bit of a mess. So they drove off to the Hospital and Shaela and I stayed behind to catch the other boys. Driving to the hospital on the motorbike was a little interesting. I've never driven with a passanger (because I don't trust myself enough, I mean obviously I wiped out) and me and Shaela arn't the smallest girls at GES so the bike was a little wobbly. I could actually hear Jonathon freaking out when we first started to go, but we made it there ok. It took a little while for Tyler to get cleaned up so the rest of us went to get lunch. We were waiting for him to call so we could go get him but apparently he couln't get through to anyone so he just walked to the restaurant all bandaged up. He's such a guy :)

After lunch we made it to our beach to go Kayaking. Me and Ruth did a Kayak together and we rowed out to a little island (you can see it in the sunset picture). We had planned to just chill on the island and swim out there but the water was super shallow and there were a lot of rocks so we spent some time out there but we decided to only keep the Kayak for an hour. While we were out there Heidi and Ann and Aaron and Lorrie kayaked out too and Shayla and Jonathon swam out. Because he didn't want to swim back Jonathon asked if he could go on our Kayak with us so we put three people on a two person Kayak. It was very wobbly and we couldn't go straight for the life of us. Needless to say halfway back we flipped the kayak. Thank goodness I though enough to put my camera and Shaelas camera and passport in a plastic bag otherwise they would have been a lost cause. Everything got soaked and somewhere in the scramble I lost my favorite tank top. Boo! I can now say I've flipped a Kayak though. Good thing I didn't take my SLR out to the island. I just might have had a panic attack.


That night we went down to the beach for dinner. I am not a seafood person although I do like a small selection of fish so I ordered Tuna. I didn't expect him to still be looking at me. The lesson I learned that night, I prefer my Tuna from a can :)



Afterwards we went down the beach to watch some fire dancers and get drinks. It was fun :)




On monday we hired a van to take us home at 2 so we had the whole morning on the beach. We swam for a while and played frisbee. It was relaxing. Our van came to get us 40 minutes late though so we missed the ferry and didn't get off the Island until almost 4pm. Then for dinner we stopped at a Tesco Lotus were got ate at the Pizza Company and they took an hour with the pizzas. We didn't get home until 11:30.

And that is how my week has gone. I havn't had much time to do things at home. It looks like my closet exploded and I've gotten nothing done that I need to get done. In about an hour I have to go to Rattanathibet to sit at a mall booth for GES to talk about and promote the school. Should be exciting :) Then afterwards we're going to celebrate Singles Awareness Day by going downtown to eat dinner and see Confessions of a Shopaholic. I'm pretty excited. Should be exciting.


P.S. Thanks Melaine for always reading my good 'ole blog :)