Exam Week and Goodbyes

1,620: the total # of individual sheets of paper I was handed in an unstapled stack on the Monday morning of my "Exam Week"...approximately 30 minutes before my first exam was scheduled
35: the # of staples I was allowed to use to staple the exams for my first class on Monday morning
45 + 49: the # of exams I had to give on Monday morning

Part of my excitement about being a teacher was admittedly/definitely linked to the exam portion of the school year. Not because I liked the idea of inflicting pain on the students by giving them an exam but because I actually liked the idea of creating the exam. Maybe that's weird of me. Maybe what I actually liked about the idea of being on the teacher side of Exam Week was that I started reminiscing about that post-Exam feeling of relief. Finishing an exam and handing it in always filled me with some sense of accomplishment (sometimes masking an awareness/dread about my performance on the exam) but the satiation with my own intellectual abilities was quickly overcome by the much more adrenaline-pumping realization that I WAS FREE!!!!! The Exam Weeks of my Middle/High School years were always deeply tied to that sense of freedom and relief experienced after an exam. For those hours immediately following the handing-in of an exam, I was seriously at ease (and usually treated myself to an overpriced Ciao Bella gelato). This relief? This freedom? Yeah, it absolutely and totally disappears when you're on the Teacher Side of Exam Week. As in it is utterly destroyed and reversed and the post-handing-in-of-the-exam feeling I was met with during Anuban's Exam Week was definitely not of the "Now I get to have a $7 cup of raspberry gelato!" variety. 

A little bit less than 450 is the total number of exams I ended up grading in about 2 days. It was terrible. Namely because that's just a whole lot of sameness to be looking at for hours on end, but also because there's nothing quite as depressing as looking through a student's exam and seeing blankness or (sometimes an even worse feeling/realization about one's own abilities) the words of the questions' instructions copied down into the blanks. I should say, though, that that exam o' blankness happened about once in each of my nine classes which is, I think, pretty good considering my (admittedly very low) expectations of the performance on the exams. To refer to the statistical jargon of my psych studies, the data (ie exam scores) were normally distributed. Which is actually really great news and something that I'm proud of myself for accomplishing. But, at the same time, I should acknowledge that a fair amount of that middle-range grade percentile cheated. As in literally copied off one another's exams even while I stood over them and switched them around and made people sit outside or on the floor. Exam Week was an interesting experience, to say the least. 

The week after Exam Week was my last week of teaching at Anuban so I used the last bits of class time to take some pictures of the students, all of whom were extremely excited about being in pictures and being around a digital camera that afforded them the opportunity to see themselves on the camera.

Still Life: Classroom

And here are some other random shots taken during my last week(s) at Anuban. 

These briefcases-as-backpacks were the best part of mornings at school. Seriously hilarious/awesome.

No shoes allowed in classrooms, unless you're the teacher. (Which is good because I don't tend to want to be shoeless anywhere unless I have to be.)

Those large aluminum vats are usually filled with water and those trays are the kids' lunch trays. Sometimes there are huge tubs filled with ice and jack fruit and a black jell-o type thing that is supposedly incredibly healthy but tastes like a locker room so...your choice.

Schoolyard, Thai style.

Sometimes I really feel like colors in Thailand are just kicked up a notch, as Emeril would say.

As of early February, I was assigned to teach the kindergartners at Genius. They are adorable (as you will see in the pictures below) but also hands down the most energy-demanding-and-draining set of people with whom I've ever interacted. Ever.

Balloons for learning about colors and counting...and fun.

Some of the kids at Anuban, namely those who understood what I was talking about when I started rambling about going back to America in two weeks and miming being on a plane, made me going away cards...the best of which I want to share because they give me that Warm & Fuzzy feeling.

Genies are always great ways to show someone how much they meant to you...

And just because I only have about a week left in Thailand and maybe one more blog post (don't get too upset, o blog readers), I will end this post with a picture of the sky and a picture of the Holy Trinity (see last post for clarification).

Someone's Very Special Birthday is Today!!!!!

It is only so many times in one's life when one can expect to have a blog on which one can make a birthday shout out to someone who had her own blog at some point in time that was itself utilized for a birthday shout out circa 2009. So...this is for Emily Bennetts Gerard on the occasion of her 22nd birthday.

Emily Gerard was born on March 8^th,

Exactly five months after my own birth date.

A giggling girl of bright yellow curls,

She just couldn’t wait for the fun to unfurl!

To Farwell we went with trunks of candy,

We had big dreams of Danny and Sandy.

I auditioned with something by Brandy,

Em landed Teviah which was just dandy.

Long before inebriated parties,
Prior to knowing stories of Mardi,

TP games and dress up were all the rage

At birthdays that we thought made us so sage.

Now I am in a very far time zone

(But I still will call so pick up your phone)

As you ring in your twenty-second year

While sipping on shots with Mardi Gras cheer.

So HOORAY for you and for twenty-two,

And for all the times we’ve yet to accrue.

We’ll be It Takes Two till the very end,

Happy birthday to the bestest best friend!

Motorbikes and Food

Driving a motorbike around a rotary in Southern Thailand is probably the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done. I would not say that I am necessarily someone to whom the adjective “reckless” has ever been attributed. I have, however, done “risky” things like climb up and jump off of slippery, barnacle covered rocks into bodies of water whose depth I have pre-determined as OK by watching someone else jump in and surface. 

(usually the "someone else" who jumps in first)

At least with “cliff” jumping, or rather my own personal experiences with it in Thailand, I am aware that my fear is really only a slightly exaggerated fear of the possibility of hitting literal rock bottom and lying tangled in a mass of seaweed and rocks until the mermaids take me away to a castle/jail at the bottom of the sea. Usually, this fear subsides (after I’ve watched at least three other people successfully complete the jump, surface, and breath). Usually, my feet leave the slippery rocky surface and I’m in that couple-second-long-limbo between “so this is what flying feels like” and “oh wait now I’m falling into waters of questionable depths, I really hope it’s…” and then I’m underwater. Usually, once I surface and re-adjust my bathing suit I comment on how fun it was (because it is, honestly, very fun) and calm my breathing down as inconspicuously as possible and decide to do it again.

I wish I could say that after I come to a rotary and wait about three minutes for the small break between cars and motorbikes that drive at literally 100 km/hour through the rotary I am filled with the excited fear with which I am imbued when I jump into the water. But as soon as I’m in the rotary usually one of two things occurs. A truck either stops in the middle of the rotary, in the smaller inner circumference of the rotary that is clearly not meant for large trucks dispelling large quantities of ambiguous black fumes, or it decides that it wants to go in a different direction or maybe take a sudden turn off the rotary to further contemplate which of the various roads it wishes to take (clearly things that should be thought of before one enters the rotary). Back in the US, I drove around a rotary in my trusty Rav-4 approximately three times, all of which were on the Cape. The experience always made me nervous (I really dislike driving in a circle around something, my abysmal performances in bumper cars and Mario Kart are testaments to that), but at least on the Cape the Range Rovers and Land Cruisers and convertibles and pedal bikes were manned by people actually in possession of driving licenses who did not appear to be contestants on the Mow Down the Foreigner on the Fino Game Show. Driving a motorbike around a rotary is an exceedingly more mentally-taxing endeavor than driving a car, especially when one has to get ¾ of the way around the rotary as I do practically everyday. Driving a motorbike is like driving a bike only if you tell yourself that too much and then put your feet down to try to stop the bike or slow down you will be a very sorry person indeed. The real similarity between the two is, obviously, that they both necessitate a sort of rhythmic oneness with the bike. I was watching the Martin Scorcese documentary on Bob Dylan (No Direction Home, seriously great way to spend 3 hours) and there’s a part where Allen Ginsberg is describing Bob Dylan as possessing a breath that was one with his songs. That is the best way to describe the optimal motorbike rider. Bob Dylan is not the kind of person that probably fretted about driving around rotaries on a motorbike, but imagine the opposite of Bob Dylan on a motorcycle and you get me. The real problem is the swaying with the motorbike as it turns because, given the insanity of how your fellow road-travelers drive, you have to be ready and are usually forced to stop at a moment’s notice. The action of swaying on a moving vehicle tends to make me nauseous and also nervous (in other words, I am definitely not one with my motorbike or my breath). That game where people move from side-to-side in a van? It always made my palms exceedingly sweaty and me want to throw up/cry. The same reaction occurs when I turn around the rotary. It’s just one long, terrifying, extended circular swaying motion.

I should explain what the road through town looks like to enhance the visuals of what it’s like to drive here. 

Me + bike...it is a very good looking bike, I will give it that.

Each side has two lanes, although “lane” would be misleading since cars and motorbikes that are parked along the sidewalk invariably take up the entire outer lane and then 1/3 of the second lane. There is no speed limit anywhere in Thailand, as far as I can tell, so those people (usually sinewy young men driving bikes that I’m convinced have been altered to be as “vroom-y” as possible) who are in an apparent rush to get somewhere (which is interesting because nobody in Thailand has ever been on time to anything) speed up at what seem like the worst possible times to be maneuvering a motorbike as though you are in a high speed car chase. They not only speed up, but they zigzag between trucks and cars and motorbikes and pedestrians and around corners and then around the rotary, which is where the maniacal driving exacerbates the innate confusion of a rotary. And that is my motorbike story.

So motorbikes are, needless to say, something that I will not miss about my experience in Thailand. Although there are certainly moments on the empty back roads of Phang-nga where I can drive at relatively fast speeds alone on the road and pretend I’m Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider (and my coiffure has grown to the “Goddamn hippies!” length of D. Hopper, for those of you who remember that most iconic of motorcycle movies). And those drives are thoroughly enjoyable.

Six months and about two and a half weeks ago, when I mentally prepared myself to move to Thailand for seven months, I made a list of things that I would miss about the US and a list of things that I would love about Thailand. As I packed my L.L. Bean turquoise lunch box with what would be my airplane meals for the flight to Thailand, I remember being vaguely aware that it’d probably be difficult to find whole wheat bread in Thailand. That proved to be accurately prescient but what I did not anticipate not having was any sort of meat besides chicken. I do eat shrimp and fish occasionally, but chicken is the real protein in my diet. One trip to the market or Big C and a glance at the meat section (intestines, pork belly, tongue, little bone/fat balls of something simply labeled “pig,” chicken fingers…as in the hands of chicken which actually have nails/talons and look like everything I’ve ever thought a witch’s hand would look like, etc.) sort of dampens my desire for anything other than chicken or shrimp. Since I’m on the topic of food, I might as well admit something. I went a little bit overboard with the Thai food during the first threeish months here. Paht thai gai/paht thai gung or khao paht gai every day for lunch and one of the many varieties of Thai soup (tom yam gung, the ridiculously spicy/infamous Thai soup, and "bus station soup"...a brothy noodle-based soup with a chicken leg that is absolutely delicious and served from a stand at the town's bus station, hence the sobriquet) or chicken dish (the favorites being gai paht met mamuang, aka cashew nut chicken, and khao man gai, aka market chicken I've described in a previous post) for dinner. I was sort of addicted (probably because they use enormous amounts of MSG in everything they cook…a fact that I finally realized after noticing most of the shop ladies pouring spoonfuls of something white and crystallized into everything they cook). Here are the highlights from the Thai dishes that I’ve eaten, aka Food Items I Will Definitely Miss. 

The best paht thai "shop" in town.

And far and away the best paht thai gung I've ever had.

The above dish definitely takes first place but a close second is som tam, aka spicy papaya salad. Papaya here refers not the really delicious salmon pink/blood red (depending on how ripe the papaya is) fruit but the raw/unripened version which is more akin to a vegetable. Som tam is the ultimate in spicy Thai food and it's made by putting a variety of ingredients into a mortar  and grinding everything together into what resembles a julienned vegetable salad. The key ingredients that are put into the mortar (other than the obvious slices of papaya) are whole chilies, slices of limes, long beans (the Thai version of a green bean only thicker and more bitter), dried shrimp and roasted peanuts. I've tried a couple of varieties all over Thailand and my favorite is definitely a place in Phang-nga that Giggs took me to last week that included small blue crab legs in their som tam and a side bowl of sticky rice to dip into the leftover som tam juice (limes + chilies). It was just spicy enough that my nose started to run but not so spicy that I started to cry (which has happened more than once in my various attempts to find the Ultimate Som Tam). I forgot to take a picture of the som tam so...your imaginations will have to suffice.

The last thing on the Food Items I Will Definitely Miss list is the Holy Trinity of papaya, mango and banana. The latter item actually deserves four separate entries on this list as there are four types of bananas available in Phang-nga. I have yet to understand how to pronounce the varieties in terms other than "big," "really tiny," "resembles a finger," and "somewhere in between big and finger." The finger ones are the best but they are also the hardest to find. At the night market there is a lady who sells boiled sweet potatoes (which are delicious) and bananas and I've been going to her stand often enough that she's figured out that I'm a true banana fan and hands me the group of bananas that she describes as "alloy" (Thai word for "delicious). We have established a wordless communication/understanding via our mutual love of bananas. So that Holy Trinity has truly been a staple of my daily food intake since arriving in August. I'd only had papaya once before and I remember being obsessed with the lime-juice-squeezed-on-papaya breakfast dish at some tropical family vacation. That is a basically daily constant of my post-work snack. Mangoes, on the other hand, were on Becca's Blacklist because of a sort of terrifying experience when I was ten with a rotten mango that I opened and smelled and never once looked upon a mango again until coming to Thailand. The mangoes here are perfectly sweet and delicious and orange-y yellow whereas the mango of my ten year-old trauma was more of a greenish red and unnaturally large. I don't want to dwell on it. 

Papaya.

Typical side-of-the-road banana tree. I've been tempted to snipe a banana or ten from these trees but I'm very afraid that a rabid dog or an armed Thai banana farmer will chase me for miles.

These are of the "somewhere in between  big and finger" variety.

Mango salsa on the left, which is my new favorite thing to make here. Suggestion for anyone who wants to make his or her own mango salsa: add a little bit of sliced basil. (Honey, lime and ginger chicken on the right...I've been forgoing the MSG-heavy Thai food recently and cooking new and exciting things.)

My time here is coming to an end (I leave for Bangkok on the 14th) and so I'll end this post with some pictures of the sky while I still have the chance to and because...well...I'm obsessed with the sky and have taken way too many pictures of it at various stages of the day/weather to not share them. These were taken last night right before a torrential thunderstorm. None of these were altered at all...the streets and sky truly had a nightmareish look to them.

Classic!

Two weeks ago, Giggs informed me that she was going to Bangkok the following week to take an English scholarship exam. "In English?!," was my first response because it seemed utterly impossible that she had signed up for an English exam and informed me of its existence one week before its scheduled date. She kept saying that it was "no big deal" and wouldn't be difficult and that it was just practice (all reassuring things to here if only for purely selfish reasons, namely I didn't want to be fired from my teaching gig because I failed to adequately prepare my student for an exam I didn't know about). And then she came back from Bangkok, having taken the exam, and her reaction to it can best be summed up from the text message I received upon her return: "Now I am home! The exam was very difficult T__T (which is the Thai equivalent of the American :( emoticon)."
So for the past week we have shifted the subject of our lessons from general conversation/pronounciation activities to vocabulary drills from her TOEFL Vocabulary Practice Test book (whose validity is questionable at best). The exercises range from the "find the best definition of this word" to the "substitute a synonym for underlined word" variety. The sentences' subjects are mostly random and their difficulty for a non-English speaker is undoubtedly exacerbated by their arcane subject matter (17th century city planning, various types of "aromatic, medicinal Asiatic herbs"). Some of them are also worded in very non-eloquent English. Take, for example, "The practice of lynching was started by a man who was a most law-abiding citizen." Some of the sentences are also just wrong. A sentence describing a "sprawling metropolis" had "C. straggling" as its correct answer.
One of the sentences we recently went over was about Louis L'Amour, a 20th century writer of Western novels. The sentence read, "Although Louis L'Amour wrote a multitude of fictional narratives concerned with the lives of the American Frontier, his works are not considered classics." The correct synonym for "classics" was "masterpieces." This sentence then sparked a discussion about what a "classic" is and what a "masterpiece" is. (Side note: way for the TOEFL practice people to choose someone who no one would ever free associate the words "classic" or "masterpiece.") I started listing a few examples of the most widely known classics in the literary world (Shakespeare) and the musical world (Beethoven, Mozart) and then went onto Andy Warhol and Picasso (neither of whom Giggs had ever heard). I stuck with the Shakespeare/Beethoven explanation and stressed how they were people to whom there has been no equal and whose work is considered the best of its kind. And then Giggs said, "Like Harry Potter." I quickly retorted something about how Harry Potter is popular (widely, mind bogglingly popular) but that doesn't mean it's a classic. "A classic," I said in more or less these words, "is something that people will read or listen to or look at for hundreds of years after its initial popularity."
And then I realized that in Thailand, Harry Potter probably IS a literary classic. It's been translated into 67 languages, including Ancient Greek (talk about a fantastic way to get young kids to learn the Classics, as in Latin and Greek) and Basque. I'm all for the bagillion dollar franchise of HP and its addictive story, but in my opinion popularity does not mean "classic" status. In fact, it was somewhat horrifying to me that she equated Harry Potter with "classic" but has no idea who J.D. Salinger or Robert Frost are. I guess the subject matter of Harry Potter is so disparate from any reality of any country that it is truly universal, in the sense that it can be translated into any language and still have the same resonance. Perhaps the same cannot be said of Salinger although I wonder which of (or whether) the works we consider "classics" in the US are translated and read in other non-Western countries. Aside from Harry Potter and the Twilight series, are sci-fi series like the Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials (Golden Compass, Amber Spyglass, Subtle Knife) known outside of the US/Europe? I asked Giggs about Pullman and she said she recognized the name "Golden Compass" from the movie (a truly terrible rendition of the book). In my opinion, encouraging the reading of these books (HP, Pullman's series, even Lemony Snicket) in English is something that should be done more in schools and tutoring programs in Thailand given the pop culture status of many of their movie incarnations. If there's one thing I've learned about Thailand since arriving in August, it is that anything associated with the label Western (particularly American) automatically gains credibility and popularity. So why not apply this to learning English?
Giggs asked what classics she should read and the first thing that came to mind was Roald Dahl. Now there is a classic who could easily be translated and understood by people of a whole slew of cultures and backgrounds. He is magical and fantastical and yet his stories have some moral issues, just as HP does. I wrote down some Dahl titles (Matilda, The Witches, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and told her that it'd be a great idea to find these books in English. We started going over a synopsis of Matilda at the end of last week and during today's class she brought in the rest of the synopsis with all the words underlined that she didn't know. We worked on reading out loud as well as creating synonyms for the unknown words and I have to say that I'm very impressed with how much better her English has gotten since we began our classes in October. So for anyone in the publishing world, here is a marketing idea: translate more verifiable literary classics, sorry J.K. Rowling, of the Dahl/A Wrinkle in Time caliber, into English and have them readily available. Just a thought.

My 'Hood

This post is dedicated to my 'hood, which here refers to both my literal neighborhood (as in the roads that run perpendicular and parallel to my house) and the larger "neighborhood" of the province of Phang-nga. My town, Phang-nga, is one of many towns within the province of Phang-nga (kind of like "New York, New York" but this is "Phang-nga, Phang-nga"). But I'll start this post with some pictures of my soi (soi is Thai for road). I live on Soi Rung Ruang and it looks like this...

One of the best parts about my area is that it's removed from the main street of town. It's relatively quiet (except for that rooster and the occasional 12 year old on a motorbike) and it's the perfect area for an afternoon walk. I walk to my after school tutoring at the Genius School (where I get to play/teach this adorable little boy...) but that walk requires walking into and through town and Phang-nga is not exactly pedestrian friendly (read: no sidewalks and buses that barrel down the road at speeds of approximately 100 km/hour) and the whole experience usually ends in me showing up to Genius either 20 minutes early or 10 minutes late and sweating profusely and vowing never to do that walk again.

The other route I like to walk is on the roads behind my house which run parallel to a river and lead to a pretty fantastically green landscape of limestone cliffs and rubber trees. Here is the photo tour...

Total number of squashed frogs on a 1 hour walk: 8

That small row of buildings is Anuban Phang-nga, the school where I work.

The road that runs behind Anuban is empty except for some barbed wire squares that hold various livestock. The houses that dot this backyard area are sparse but they coagulate around the river. Some of them appear to be simple family homes and small children are usually running around outside dousing each other with water bottles.

Others are fancier and seem to function as coffee houses or karaoke bars. Karaoke is huge here and the only karaoke bar I've attended was a windowless cube on the side of the road a little bit past the main part of town and the experience was...interesting. That is to say, karaoke (for me) has always been sort of a "let's all forget our tone-deafness and sing those songs we used to love in middle school" experience. In Thailand, karaoke is an art form. They are good at singing and they sing long, slow, intense ballads in Thai and if you try to sing a Backstreet or Eagles song, you are ocularly booed off the stage.



Right next to this strange marble-square-courtyarded house is the river. And the river is really quite breathtaking. When there is no rain the previous day, the river is shallow and the water flows over the stones of the river's bottom in the most perfectly meditative way (as in "I could stand here and watch the water flow over these stones until the sun goes down").

The road on the other side of the bridge that traverses this river runs along the base of the cliffs. The intensities and varieties of "green" are astounding. See below picture:

This is one of the many rubber trees that populate the province of Phang-nga. They are planted in perfectly symmetrical rows that extend as far as the eye can see over fields that dot that cliffs and roadside land. The effect is spectacular and on misty mornings the fog is trapped within the endless rows of trunks.

Now onto the other 'hood...Phang-nga Province. About an hour away from Phang-nga is a little place called Bangsak. The drive to Bangsak is largely a trip over winding roads that cut through the spectacular landscape. This is an example of the roadside vistas...

Side note: The sky in Phang-nga has been particularly surreal as of late. Here is the view I got while walking back from Genius one afternoon...

And here is the view from the road on the way to Bangsak. The beams of light are celestial and mythical and it really makes you think that Zeus could very well be up there behind the clouds shining a flashlight onto the mortal world.

The town of Khao Lak is on the way to Bangsak. Khao Lak is super touristy but the plus side of the tattooed and sunburnt population that it tends to attract is that these people also, apparently, like the same kind of food that I tend to crave. The exception to that is the McDonald's in Khao Lak which is always heavily populated and serves (me) the sole purpose of providing iced coffee with real milk. They also serve something horrifyingly green that they call "apple juice."

My two favorite food haunts of Khao Lak are the Deli-Butcher, run by an awesome Irish couple named Richard and Trish who provide percolated coffee, jazz music, homemade cheese, and hilarious stories of their time in Thailand, and The Rusty Pelican, a Mexican restaurant run by an ex-SoCal dude (which is truly the best way to describe him) named Mo.

This past weekend a couple of us stopped by Mo's for his burritos and mojitos/Fat Mexicans (a tequila shot with Tabasco sauce). After gorging on some burritos (pretty sure I ate mine in less than 5 minutes), we ordered a bowl of incredible mussels cooked in white wine and butter (two things that I haven't enjoyed since arriving in Thailand). And they were turquoise.

Bangsak is about 20 minutes past Khao Lak and the plan for Friday afternoon (no work because of a Buddhist holiday) was to meet up with some friends on the Bangsak Beach and go swimming/build a bonfire. We arrived as the sun was beginning to set and after a cloudless day the effect was incredible. I really am obsessed with the sky here (as Steve and anyone with whom I've had a conversation about the sky will attest). I think it has to do with growing up in a city and never really spending serious amounts of time in a place where I the sky was something that ended at the horizon and not at the roof of a building.

 But I think you will agree that that cloud is perfectly placed. How could I not take a gazillion pictures?

(Caption: Steve entering the ocean.) Bangsak Beach has remained untouched by the tourists who flock to Khao Lak (for the most part) so on most days there are only one or two other people in the water.

The beginning of the bonfire. For the past few months, a movie has been filming on the Bangsak Beach (starring Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor) about the 2004 tsunami which destroyed pretty much all of Bangsak. The replicated damage of the tsunami is right on the beach (kind of disconcerting) but the various wooden objects that the production crew left behind made for great bonfire-starting material.

Once the sun was below the water line (ie. it was too dark to take more pictures), my friend Leise and I headed into town to pick up some Thai take out. As we walked back down the beach, bags of khao paht gai (fried rice with chicken) and curried vegetables in hand, we saw the enormous cloud of fire rising from the beach and realized the bonfire had finally ignited.

The next day, everyone woke up early to head out to the Similan Islands for our day of snorkeling. Leise planned a day-long adventure for a group of about 11 of us and it started at 7:45 on Saturday morning. After being herded into a minivan and taken to a "briefing room" (which was a wall-less atrium with picnic tables), we listened to a 10 minute presentation about the day's plan (the guide mimed "snorkel" and "hike" approximately three times in the space of five minutes...I counted) while dousing ourselves with high SPF sunblock. We gathered our snorkeling materials and headed to the motorboat that would serve as our tour bus/boat for the rest of the day. The ride to the Similan Islands (one of the top ten diving spots in the world and ergo an ideal place to do some snorkeling) was about an hour. For some reason, our group decided to sit in the very very very front of the boat with me sitting at the crux of the V of the bow. Needless to say, I spent the majority of the ride clutching on for dear life while also trying to convince myself that I didn't need to pee because the bathroom was a very treacherous leap from my seat. Once we got to the Similan Islands and I stepped onto solid ground (in other words, I literally hurled myself from the boat onto the sand), I forgot all about the ride.

This picture needs an explanation. The lady on the right is of a certain type of tourist who takes it upon herself to be photographed in a bikini while posing in rather salacious ways on and around the various boat decks/rocks/sand dunes/waves/beach swing sets of Thailand. This is a phenomenon that I've noted since getting here in August. If she was going to pose, I figured I'd snap a shot too. The man in the background is her boyfriend and he got vehemently macho when his gf needed help from Steve to cross the rocks. He walked over (while clutching onto the boulder) and literally puffed his chest out.

The day's trip included stops at five of the nine islands of which the Similan Islands consist. Two of them also involved short hikes through the jungle to less populated beaches. The snorkeling itself was unbelievable. As you can see from this picture, the clarity of the water was astounding and it greatly facilitated optimal fish stalking. Our guide informed us that we might see a sea turtle but not to get our hopes up because they don't like being followed so they usually swim away quickly. I was content with spending hours gazing at metallic rainbow fish (just like in the book) and swimming through schools of fish (it was the ultimate Nemo experience). But then I saw a group of people all swimming in one direction and I figured I would follow them. By the time I made it over (rough current + awesome fish = slow movement on my part), they were all shouting about seeing a sea turtle!!!!!!!!! Which I had missed. I was pretty upset because I've never seen one in the wild but then I saw Steve jet off in the opposite direction of the crowd. I decided to follow him and when I put my snorkel mask underwater I saw him swimming along the bottom of the ocean floor right next to the giant sea turtle.