Thai-riffic Weekend!

Saturday, November 6^th, 2010 was an amazing day. At some point soon my roommates and I will be moving out of our house and into a house pretty close by, that is closer to a lot of the other Super English teachers.  When I first saw the house, I was really against it.  The first time I walked into the house, after about 30 seconds I saw a real live scorpion.  It was crazy!  There were also cockroaches every was disgusted.  So we went in a second time, and found the house to be flooded because of the monsoons.  No scorpions, but plenty of standing water and dead cockroaches.  On Friday night I had a freak out about it and was like there’s no way in hell that I am moving in there!  But since I don’t really have much choice, unless I want to give up free housing and pay for it myself, I tried to talk myself into it.  On Saturday morning Anneliese woke up extra early and went to Big C (Thai Walmart) and bought us tons of cleaning supplies.  So like two silly farangs we walked the half mile or so to the house with tons of cleaning stuff in tow.

            When we got to the house we decided Anneliese was on inside duty and I was on outside duty.  This meant that I was in charge of cleaning out the front yard, which clearly hd been neglected for more than a few years.  I ended up spending about five solid hours pulling weeds out of the ground!  It was so crazy.  About two hours into it, some random Thai woman came into the front yard, and she clearly didn’t speak English nor have any interest in actually talking to me.  She watched me for a while, smiling and drinking an orange Fanta.  Then she screamed something across the street, to where this woman has a little corner store.  About two minutes later, the woman from the store, who is at least 60 years old, crossed the street with a hoe.  She didn’t say hi to me, didn’t look at me, she just started chopping away at the yard and ripping weeds up by their roots.  I couldn’t believe it!  I tried to indicate to her that I appreciated her brining the hoe but that I could do the actual work on my own.  She was having none of that and just kept going; it was amazing!  She really sped up the process and then all I had to do was bag up everything she had pulled up. 

            After she finished she went back across the street, until she saw me hacking away at a tree with gardening shears.  She came across the street with a saw and started sawing branches off of the tree!  Again I tried to show my gratitude and that I would be willing to do the physical labor, but this old woman just kept sawing away!  At one point while I was cutting small branches off of an overgrown tree, I noticed this gigantic weird leaf thing that looked like a bunch of leaves stuck together.  I cut it in half, and it turned out to be the mother of all giant red ant nests!  It was so crazy!  They were the size of carpenter ants but bright red.  I freaked out and got the bug killer spray that Anneliese bought at Big C… and that shit must be illegal in the United States because I a-bombed that ant colony!  I sprayed it all over the tree and it literally melted their bodies on contact, it was so crazy.  The old drunkard from next door saw me and started shaking his hands and his head and saying “No!  No!  No!  No!”  I was just like aiiight dude I already killed the shit out of them anyway, whatever, calm down.  Come to find out from Mitch that the old Thai people eat the leaves off of that tree!  Whoops!  Haha. 

            The ants did, however, get their revenge on me.  I was bit SO many times by those things.  I counted the other night and I think I have something like 16 red ant bites.  They killed at the time and they are still itchy as all hell now.  They are the battle scars of a successful day though!  The yard looks way better and all of the Thai neighbors seemed to approve.  Anneliese did an amazing job on the inside too.  She was cleaning out all of the trash, cleaned all of the windows, and she and John, Janet, and Mitch bleached the kitchen and got all of the flood water out of the house.  By the end of the day we were both filthy.  I mean, I was dirtier than I have been since I got here, and that’s saying a lot.  And I had got cocky – we had running water for about five days in a row, and on Friday night I had got the hot water heater to work and took an almost real shower for the first time since I got here.  I was, of course, counting my chickens before they hatched.  I got home and there was no running water at all.  It was to be a bucket shower for me yet again.

            This posed a problem for me because I needed a good scrubbing before going to dinner.  So the one school I work at is called Noonoy.  It is so amazing.  It’s this wicked nice private school owned and operated by a woman named Kru Ying.  Well, Kru means teacher of small teacher so really her name is Ying, but everyone calls her Kru Ying.  Kru Ying is so amazing.  She’s like a real Thai aristocrat.  She’s intelligent, rich, beautiful, fashionable, successful.  She’s just plain awesome.  On Friday at work she invited me to go out to dinner with her and some of the Thai teachers.  It is rude to turn down dinner invitations here, and she asked me out of nowhere, so I said yes.  Then I was extremely scared, because someone that perfect can be somewhat intimidating.  She told me to invite Chris because he used to work at Noonoy, so I said okay and convinced him to come with.  So I had been planning on a great shower before having to get ready for the dinner, but I ended up doing the best I could with a bucket full of cold water that had been sitting there at least a week. 

            Dinner ended up being amazing!  Kru Ying took us to this extremely nice restaurant on the river, and she brought red wine!  Red wine!  I didn’t even know you could get the stuff here!  And it was really good Cabernet Sauvignon from South Africa!  She got both herself and I pretty drunk!  And bought soooo much food!  It was so much fun.  These two really nice, really cool Thai teachers were with us; On and Angel.  On and Angel started to talk about Tesco-Lotus. If Big C is like Walmart, then Tesco-Lotus is like if Target and Home Depot and a small mall had a baby.  Everyone always talks about it and I wanted to go so bad.  I said something along those lines, and On and Angel immediately offered to bring me there on Sunday, and said that Anneliese could come too!  I was so excited!  So my Sunday plans went from more ant bites in the yard of my future home to a trip to Tesco-Lotus with two wicked nice Thai girls!

            Bringing me to Tesco-Lotus was a financially bad idea!  I bought a lot of stuff, including some really cute earrings and clothes!  After we left, Angel and On said that we should go to the river market.  We said okay, and I am so glad we did!  It was like the night market, only way cooler.  There were so many food stalls it was amazing.  I had chicken and some really great som tam.  Then we got to do something I have wanted to do since I got here – paint pottery!  It was amazing.

            So right now I am sitting at the pad kra prau shop and the adorable lady is trying to close up… have to go!  That was my weekend, what did you guys do?