To the Countries Formerly Known as Indochina! Part Three: Stranded

After unsuccessfully navigating the Vietnamese visa renewal process, I had a few more days to kill before I could even START the three week process by which I would get my new passport.

Having a little extra time to kill, Kia and I attended the Moustachio Bashio, and I grew in a little something to have to show. We stayed long enough for me to shamefully not win anything, but then again, there were some other very compelling moustaches. Kia flew out the next day, back to Soju and Pancake who were apparently very lonely and had forgotten everything about how to use a litter box or wait to be walked to go to the bathroom.

Getting terribly low on funds, I reached out to Tyson and asked if it would be cool if I crashed at his place for a little while. He talked it over with his roommates and told me that it was fine.

Back to couch crashing.

Still, the extra time in Ho Chi Minh City allowed me to visit Bien Hoa (pronounced Bee-ehn Hwa), the capital of Dong Nai province. Mr. Duc, my contact in Dong Nai, picked me up at the bus station and took me around Bien Hoa. It's a very nice place, as you can see from the pictures. However, most of the government schools there looked to be in good enough condition that there had to be some serious money being funneled into them. Probably not the place to send volunteers. However, Mr. Duc assured me that the places that volunteers would be sent would be in the far more rural and needy areas of Dong Nai.

Additionally, I got to meet with Saigon Children's Charity in Ho Chi Minh City, and blundered in looking for a Mr. Chinh. Shortly, I was awkwardly introduced to a Mrs. Chinh (whoops) and we began talking about more possibilities for volunteers in Vietnam. She corroborated what Mr. Duc had said about Dong Nai being badly in need of teachers and mentioned that many of their trade programs and English volunteer programs are out in that province. She gave me some very professional looking materials with information about the programs for at risk youth, and we had a very nice chat about the whole thing.

I spent the remainder of my three weeks in Vietnam attempting to do my job via e-mail, hanging out with Tyson, exploring Ho Chi Minh City, and talking to local business owners about the possibility of our trainees getting discounts on things like guesthouses and meals. Most weren't terribly cooperative, but all were very nice.

I also found an obscenely cheap Internet cafe with air-conditioning hiding out behind a convenience store on Doung Bui Vien. One of the reasons, I am sure, that the place is so cheap is that the owner has a pest problem.

Not ants.
Not rats.
Not roaches.

Feral...

Children...

I am NOT kidding. I felt bad for the kids, and I was horrified when the owner came after one of them with a billy club, but I could feel his pain, too. The children storm the store on an almost hourly basis, getting into fights with each other, smoking, annoying patrons (such as myself - one little girl started punching me in the arm for no reason, and I eventually left one day when I got hit in the back of the head with a wet towel - what it was wet with, I haven't the foggiest), and straight up stealing snacks in front of the owner.

When he threatened the little girl (she was maybe eight) with the billy club, she smacked her cheek twice and stuck out her jaw like, "Try it. I dare you." He didn't, and, frankly, I don't think it would have been wise. Granted, I don't think I could bring myself to hit a kid with a billy club under any circumstances, but if he had done it in that situation, I don't know how much of his store would have survived the ensuing bedlam caused by the street kids. I tried talking to them, but it didn't seem to do much good. All I could really get was, "Hello. How are you? F**k you."

Yikes.

Hanging out with Tyson and co. reminded me a lot of the life I had in Korea. Good pay. Decent hours. Constant parties. The life of an overseas English teacher is a good one, but it can be a trifle exhausting. I was sleeping on a couch and on what shall be referred to as the BahnFast diet - a bahn mi (egg and vegetable baguette) for breakfast, a bahn me for lunch, and a sensible dinner. I wasn't trying to lose weight, but it kept my budget at around five dollars a day - if that. The results were less than favorable as far as my health. Put these facts all together, and it started taking a bit of a toll on my health. Kia and I had both gotten some sort of respiratory goop cough in Phnom Penh, but I was starting to feel like I might be getting sick again.

Mercifully, one of Tyson's roommates went on vacation, and I was able to sleep in an actual bed. I felt like I had become rather soft, as for parts of the last several years I've been consistently sleeping on cots, couches, floors, mats, the ground, etc., etc. After having trouble sleeping on a couch, I was really feeling like a bit like a baby.

A few weeks later, I had my passport and was ready to ship back to Thailand on literally the next flight. Here are some interesting excerpts from the previous weeks:

Enormous English teacher party sponsored by ILA at the zoo. No one is eaten.

Impromptu pool party on the roof of Tyson's friends' apartment. I slip on wet stairs and tenderize my derriere. Bruise twice the size of a baseball rises out of my hip making it impossible to sit for long periods, which I have to do anyway.

Whilst waiting for a bahn mi, an older man asks me if I am American. I nod, wondering what on earth could be coming next. He asks if I am CIA. No. FBI? No. He says, "Ah! America good! Me, 1970, American Army we shooting VC! I South Vietnam Army!" I look around as if to appear to not be talking to him.

Across the street and on a different day from the wildly pro-American gent, I was walking somewhere when I see a tourist filming something. I look to see what it is and several stories above ground is a guy holding a ladder over the facade of a building. His colleague appears to be hanging on the ladder and repainting the front. Meanwhile, the wind is causing the ladder to twitch and shudder constantly, sometimes even bending it sideways. As I reach for my camera, a man comes running down the street and yells at the two of us, saying "No picture! No Picture!"

I'll admit, it was probably pretty crass to be taking a shot of that, but I couldn't resist.

To the Countries Formerly Known as Indochina! Part Two: Viet Nam

So, after having the bus cleared of zombies and vampires, we continued on until after nightfall. It wasn't terribly long before I started to be able to recognize a few of the buildings, which was a bit refreshing. Eventually, we entered the Pham Ngu Lao area, recognizable from any distance because of the park and the Allez Boo sign about halfway down the block.

I introduced Kia to crossing the street in Vietnam, and she was less than thrilled by it. Having paid virtually nothing for my room the last time I was in Ho Chi Minh City, I managed to find my way through the network of alleys back to where I had stayed before, but the place was shut up for the night. The guesthouse across the street was open and the owner offered rooms for seven dollars rather than six, but she had two fluffy dogs and gave me a big bottle of water for free, so I said yes. Having been short on money, I figured I could do a bit of a half-hearted search the next day and if anything stupendously better came up, I could take it.

We checked in and sacked out.

That weekend we had some genuinely weird experiences at the Ho Chi Minh City zoo that I will include below. Later, we enjoyed 20,000 dong (17,500 dong = 1 USD) Vietnamese vanilla rum, which was surprisingly delicious. I met up with a good friend of mine from Korea, who now works for ILA in Vietnam. Tyson and I had worked for the same company in Seoul for a year and swapped a few stories about that. It was good to see him and, again, I had no idea how helpful he was going to become.

The Monday following our arrival in Vietnam was a flurry of activity. Kia submitted forms to get her 90-day Thai visa at the local consulate, which was more of a closet annex than an actual building. I visited the UNESCO office and met with the head of the Dong Nai school district to whom I talked about placing volunteers at needy schools. We discussed the possibility of having volunteers work part time for private English academies while in Dong Nai in order to make the project less expensive. I said I'd give it some thought but was more concerned with six month volunteer contracts than anything else. The problem is that if a person volunteers for less than that, it interupts the school's class schedule, and the school is left either with an empty class either at the beginning or the end of the term. In that case, rearranging the schedule to fit a volunteer does more harm than good. We chatted about it, and he asked me for a letter of intent - typical slow-moving business practices here can be full of asking for stamped documents, etc.

And if I thought that was bureacratic, I had no idea what I was in for later...

Kia and I packed up our stuff and got ready to roll back to Thailand, having completed what we had set out to do. The only problem was that Air Asia decided that it couldn't sell me a ticket. Here's what went down:

Air Asia Man: Sorry sir, but you cannot purchase a ticket to Thailand with a passport that is going to expire in less than six months. They will not issue you a visa.

Sean: I have a valid visa/work permit with multiple entry good for two more months. That's more than the visa on arrival would have given me anyway.

Air Asia Man: I do not know if they will let you into the country.

Sean: I just came back from Laos with less than five months on my passport, no one said anything.

Air Asia Man: Yes, five months okay. Maybe three months. Not two.

Sean: What? So wait, there's no hard and fast rule about this?

Air Asia Man: Maybe three months sometimes.

Sean: Like when? Like when a person has a valid visa and Thai immigration won't have to issue them another visa? Like then?

Air Asia Man: I cannot read Thai, so I don't know what that says.

Sean: Trust me, it's a valid work permit.

Air Asia Man: If it's not, we will have to fly you somewhere else.

Sean: I'll pay for it.

Air Asia Man: I need to see the money.

Sean: I am not carrying around a hundred dollars in cash.

Air Asia Man: Then maybe if you can get a letter from the Thai embassy saying that they'll let you into the country.

Sean: As in the Thai embassy that is closed right now?

Air Asia Man: ...

I thought about taking a bus back, through Cambodia, but realized that it would be as expensive with visas, etc. as flying and heck of a lot more time consuming. Or at least, that's what I thought then. On top of that was the nagging possibility in the back of my head that maybe the guy was right and that for whatever reason, Thai immigration wouldn't let me back in despite my valid work permit. Then, I'd be stranded in Cambodia where I didn't know anyone.

The first thing the following day, I went to Thai immigration, and they told me that they didn't have any such letter to give me. Disheartened and worried about the ticking clock on my Vietnamese visa, I researched what would happen if I overstayed. Apparently, Vietnam finances something pretty big with its overstay fines. First, you HAVE TO have a valid visa when you leave Vietnam. If you don't, you have to get a new one, and you're charged for overstay the entire time that you're waiting. Oh yeah, and overstay in Vietnam is NOT cheap: I've heard from anywhere from 100,000 to 800,000 PER DAY. Also, it can take almost a week to get a new visa, so you can imagine how bad that is.

I decided that the first thing I needed to do was get a new visa. My quest to find that, I will relate to you as if it were a 1990s point and click interface video game a la King's Quest:

Air Asia Elder: Nay sir! I cannot sell you a ticket! I hereby charge you with the quest of retrieving a letter of from the Thai embassy. If not, ye shall have to complete the quest of Golden Passport Renewal! It is long, perilous, expensive, and irritating. Ye shall be plagued with crazed motorbike drivers and drunken ex-pats. Ye shall be depressed by begging elderly and children! Ye shall have people butt in line in front of you, and tell you erroneous things. Go forth first and try to get the letter. If not, then seek the Sage at the temple of American Embassadordom.

Sage of the Thai Embassy: I'm sorry Mario, but your ticket out of here is in another castle.

My vietnamese visa was about to expire, so in order avoid the overstay charges of doom, my next stop was immigration. I got the address from a website. After waiting in "line" (line in this context is a huge crowd of Vietnamese people shoving each other and handing passport applications over each others' heads) for about a half an hour, I finally got to the desk.

Pirate Captain of the Ship Immigration: Nay! This be not the correct Immigration office! Yeargh! Findeth the correct one at this address.

The CORRECT address was actually right down the street from where I've been staying.

Her Lady of Immigration Authority: Take you these forms and go to the dread castle of the Police Station. You must bring me the (stamp from the) Head of the Chief of Police!

So I went to the office for Pham Ngu Lao (the Itaewon, Khao San road, South Street) area of Ho Chi Minh City. What I found was a rubble filled abandoned lot, cordoned off with corrugated metal.

NICE.

Upon walking around and swearing to myself in every language I could think of, I eventually found a sign saying that the police station had been moved to another address. I asked some motorbike taxi drivers where it was and they all told me, "Oh far! Very far! I take you! Cheap price!" Er... keeping in story dialogue: "Growl! Snarl! Grrrr! Give me your gold!"

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid Sean.

I check a map, and it was about a kilometer away, so I walked there.

Police Chief: In order to get the (stamp of the) head of the chief of police, you must first get the guesthouse where you are staying to fill out this form! Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!!!

Sean: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Guesthouse Attendent: We're sorry Mario, but our Manager is (in another castle) out at lunch.

Sean: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Finally, the guesthouse manager returned from lunch and signed the form. I returned to the police station and was then informed that the signature was in the wrong place and that the whole form was null and void.

HOW

AWESOME

IS

THAT?

Now, try to keep in mind that this whole process was carried out in parses of English and Tieng Viet. It was a very long day. I finally ended up coughing up the extra bucks to just have someone else do it for me. I am pretty sure the guesthouse manager signed it in the wrong place on purpose because he wanted me to pay him to do the visa stuff for me. I was so ticked off at the guy that I told his staff that our passport stuff had gone just swimmingly. Then I changed guesthouses.

Moral of the story: Renew your passport when it hits the seven month to being invalid mark... or you will die.

To the Countries Formerly Known as Indochina! Part One: Cambodia

So, it came time again for me to go check out volunteer sites from Cambodia to Vietnam. I was excited, but it wasn't necessarily any new territory. I think I'd have been a bit more apprehensive had I known exactly how long I was about to be gone.

Kia and I boarded a bus for Trat, the closest transportation hub to the border crossing at Had Yai. Now, I have never liked international borders for a ton of reasons. Imaginary lines that keep some people in a place where they don't necessarily want to be and keep others out for no good reason other than the fact that they were born on the other side, are stupid. There, I said it. I think national borders are stupid. People should be allowed to go wherever they want.

To which, a lot of my American friends might respond, "But the terrorists! The Mexicans! Oh no!"

Oh yes...

Oh.

Yes.

If there were no borders, there really wouldn't be any nations, now would there? If there weren't really any nations, we wouldn't worry too terribly much about terrorists attack OUR nation, because it would be THEIR nation as well. I know that somewhere out there someone is singing "Imagine" by the Beatles and laughing at me, and that's all well and good because they're right, it's NOT going to happen. And why not? Because people like having more. They like being able to say, "I live on this side of the line, and you live on that side of the line, and therefore I should be entitled to a better life than you."

And, unfortunately, those are the people who have really, really big guns, satellite tracking systems, laser guided bombs, and countless other billions of dollars of technology dedicated to killing people most of whom don't have shoes.

Okay, end tirade.

Anyway, I hate borders, and I hate border towns. Bureaucratic officials, who get on a power trip because someone gave them a stamp and said, look at people's documents to make sure that they have the correct arbitrary whathaveyou to be able to cross this line, can kiss my posterior. Unfortunately, because they tend to be the ones with all of the power, the reverse is usually what actually takes place.

Kia and I arrived at the border and had some children try to rifle through our bags. Kia grabbed hers away from one of them and the kid looked at her and said in fairly good English, "I don't like you."

She just looked at him and said, "Fine."

We walked went through the Thai immigration exit and headed across the liminal state between the two countries. At the Khmer side, there were about a half a dozen middle-aged men who were creepily skulking about and on good terms with the border bureacrats. They were looking over our shoulders as we nervously filled out our documents and one kept asking me the time, I think, to get a better look at my watch. The border bureacrats hustled to get Kia's documents signed after they saw a golden opportunity with mine: my passport was set to expire in less than six months. I had heard of people having problems with this, but I had just come back from Laos and there was no problem there.

Stupid, stupid Sean.

Cambodia is frequently grouped in among the countries suffering from the most government corruption in the entire world. I've known this. I've seen this. And yet, somehow, I didn't think about it before crossign the border. Realistically, if you're going to Cambodia, the best way to get a visa is to register for it online at this site: http://evisa.mfaic.gov.kh/e-visa/vindex.aspx

I didn't do that and ended up paying for it. Literally.

First, the visa fee that I got charged was substantially more than it should have been. Then, "because they liked me" the border bureacrats "allowed" me to pay an extra fee to get into the country. Right. Awesome guys. Thanks.

By the time we finally got all of our papers signed and stamped, it was dark. I wanted to get away from the place and the shady characters that were around there, but there isn't a lot between the border and the next largest town, Koh Kong. So, weighing the options, I decided it better to take a taxi than to take my chances with walking twenty kilometers through the night on a deserted road.

We stayed at a guesthouse for the night and checked out the sites of Koh Kong the next day. It was a sleepy little town and reminded me quite a bit of Ban Phe actually. I tried a bit of Khmer food, but most of it wasn't vegetarian, so my options were a bit limited. As far as actual site-vetting for volunteer projects, I couldn't find much information readily available, but figured that I would as I got closer to Phnom Penh or Sihanoukville.

Kia and I sampled some of the local brews to see what they were like. Though I cannot find them, we definitely have some photos modeling "Black Panther Stout" and "Special Beer" It'll have to be up to your imagination.

As we wandered around town, we met some helpful and very nice children. I rewarded them with a soccerball and have probably sparked fighting that had previously been unknown to these innocent young people. Whoops.

Many of Koh Kong's buildings look of the ramshackle variety, but guess what building had air-conditioning, purified water and chairs with cushions on them? See that? That's a bank. Shows where our priorities are as a civilization. We met a British gent in town who had a beer with us and let us in on some of the local gossip and whathaveyou. One story he regaled us with, I thought was particularly worth retelling:

"Mike," an American, literally bushwhacked an Englishman out in the jungle. After disposing of the body, he is caught, arrested and placed in Khmer prison. An NGO by the name of Care gets involved and continually investigates the prison for human rights abuses. The warden gets sick
of dealing with them and releases Mike under house arrest, where he must work in a bar for no money.

Mike eventually escapes from Cambodia. Is this a happy ending? I don't really know.

Kia and I eventually hopped a bus to Sihanoukville and stayed in the Ewok village near Serendipity beach. After a couple of days my teacher friends from Korea, Rachel and Zach, showed up and we were able to compare notes on a few things. They have been traveling around SE Asia for several months and had been, at this point, through Vietnam and a good bit of Cambodia as well.

Meanwhile, I found what I was looking for in the way of honest legit NGOs to partner with for teaching volunteer placements. One of the organizations helps beach children and their families to try to keep the children in school and away from the beaches at night where all sorts of nasty things happen to them. I got an interview with the young guy, Felix, who manages the project. He seemed very competent and very helpful.

Also, there was the Rainbow Foundation and Mr. On. I met up with him through two of the managers of the Seaview Villa, which has great food, comfordable (little portmanteau word) rooms, and friendly staff (little plug there.)

Sihanoukville is a beautiful place, but you really do have to remember that you're in Cambodia and anything can happen. I got close to being torn apart by two enormous dogs that came after me out of absolutely nowhere one day. I run a lot in Thailand and have had problems with the dogs there - once resulting in a series of rabies shots, but I have NEVER been this scared of any animal. The dogs were enormous and snarling as they charged at me from behind a building as if they'd been waiting for me. I went into an all out sprint as fast as I could go and thought for sure they were going to catch me. About two minutes later they tired and gave up, but my heart was beating so fast and my breath was coming so hard that I felt like I was going to die anyway.

Another incident happened when I was very obviously followed by two guys. I doubled back on them twice in crowded areas, and they stopped walking and watched me to see where I was going. Fortunately for me, they weren't very subtle, and I made them after not very long at all. Eventually, I waited them out and stuck to the more populated roads as I walked back to the guesthouse.

The food in Sihanoukville was cheap and unbeatable - it was probably the best food I've had since I've been in SE Asia. Anything can be had there, from Korean food to "happy pizza" and of course a healthy amount of Thai and Khmer cuisine. One thing about the countries that were formerly occupied by the French - they all know how to make baguettes, which if you've been living off of bread made from rice flour for a while, becomes a big selling point.

Sihanoukville, despite being somewhat touristy and somewhat shady, was a really nice place and about as safe as you'll find in Cambodia. After talking to some of the local NGOs exchanging business information and doing some local fact-finding, Kia and I again packed up our bags and headed to Phnom Penh.

Rachel and Zach had told us that there were a few things worth seeing in Phnom Penh, and we saw them. Unfortunately, we also got sick (probably from the pollution) and were feeling pretty feverish the whole time that we were there. Kia came down with something nasty first, but it wasn't more than a few days before I was feeling it, too. Respiratory snot fests and coughing fits confined me to not leaving the guesthouse much and eventually, when we left Phnom Penh, I was grateful to go. A few funny, if somewhat unfortunate, things happened along the way:

I was getting pretty hairy, so I decided that I should probably shave. I think I had left my razor somewhere else, but I wasn't sure where. Sometimes it's can be relaxing and extremely cheap to get a shave at one of the various barber stalls in SE Asia. Unfortunately, I bit off a bit more than I could chew in Phnom Penh. Surely, someone reading this is going, "You did NOT get a straight razor shave in Phnom Penh, did you!?"

Eh. Yep.

The razor was new, but there wasn't any sort of shaving cream - I think the girl was using hand lotion or something. After applying that she began hacking away at my jaw, as I struggled to keep still. What was worse, was that this was not taking place in a chair with a regular back, much less a barber's chair. So, I had to keep my head up while worrying that one false move was going to have my jugular spraying skyward like a garden hose that's been hit by a lawn mower.

Then the power went out.

The girl giggled. Sat there for a moment and then went to get a lantern.

Awesome.

A few days later, we packed our gear again and started heading for Vietnam. While trying to make our way to the bus station, our tuk-tuk stalled out in the middle of a crowded intersection. As bad as this would be anywhere else, in Cambodia, there are NO road rules.

None.

They have streetlights, but no one even bats an eye when they change. Casual observation of the streetlight system would lead anyone to believe that they are there for aesthetic purposes and nothing else. No kidding, no exaggeration.

So what does the driver do? He gives Kia and I a concilliatory look and then puts his helmet on, as if to say, "Best of luck!"

Eventually he got the thing started again and got us out of the intersection, but it was a hair raising experience nonetheless.

We made it to the bus and after a few hours we arrived at the Moc Bai border checkpoint. H1N1 scares were at their height around this time, so we were all given a very rigorous health check: in other words, all the white people - not even all the foriegners - the white people were asked to remain on the bus while some doctors walked around the bus asking us all, "How are you feeling?" shining lights on us and checking our pulses.

I quipped to another examinee - Well, at least they know that none of us are zombies or vampires...

Songkran: A Day of Bathing Where You Hope You Don't Get Hookworm

Thai New Year is Songkran. Now, many ex-pats celebrate nearly every sundown as if it were December 31st, but Thai new year is something different all together. In the old days, Thai people would anoint you with refreshing mist of water to sort of wash you clean of your past year and get you ready for the next one. At least, that's how they did it before anyone I knew lived here.

Songkran of the present day is a martial law of wetness. I'm not kidding. You go outside of your house, you will get soaked. There are literally, literally, bands of people roaming the streets in pick-up trucks with mythic sized buckets of water in the back ENFORCING the wetness law. The nicer you are dressed, the better a target you make. Case and point: Songkran Day is different depending on where you are in Thailand, and (lucky me) I got to be in Phuket for Songkran and in Ban Phe.

Phuket, clearly the crazier of the two, involved the foreigner street (a la Itaewon's main drag in Korea, Khao San in Bangkok, "on the lake" in Phnom Penh, or Pham Ngu Lao in Vietnam) that would have had an agoraphobic rocking back and forth biting his or her knees. If people hadn't been tossing buckets of icy cold water on each other, it might have been unbearably hot simply from the body heat.

Kevin's girlfriend, Alisara, works for a radio show in Phuket and was supposed to do some live stage announcing for a mini-festival on the beach adjacent to the enormous water fight. Unfortunately, traffic was impassable due to a parade that was going on so we had to stop and walk part of the way. Getting Alisara to the stage as dry as possible was tantamount to trying to provide security to George W. Bush in the middle of Tora Bora, Afghanistan. EVERYbody wanted to be the one to drench the girl in the nice clothes.

So, Kevin and I orbited her trying to block as much water as possible, which only increased everyone's desire to see her get soaked. Ahhh, a challenge! One foreign kid, who looked to be straight out of a casting call for "irritating fat kid", nodded when we said, "Please don't shoot her with water. She's going to work."

Immediately after we passed him, he opened up on all three of us with his Supersoaker. I was tempted to take off my flip-flop and begin smacking him across the face with it, but manage to summon enough self-control to continue walking. We finally arrived at the stage soaking wet, but Alisara was reasonably dry.

As night descended, Kevin and I watched people lighting Kerosene balloons as is the custom on some holidays in Thailand. They're very pretty to watch as they go up, especially when you see dozens of them dotting the sky at the same time. I'll never forget the first time that I saw them (especially because it is being immortalized in the Blog now.) I was on one of the least comfortable bus rides I've ever been on - from Buriram to Rayong, and I looked out the window to see, what I first thought was a succession of planes taking off way to close together. It was dark and I couldn't see about anything except these lights that formed almost a square root curve up into the night sky. It was pretty and very strange at the same time. Kevin and I watched them go up for a while until we started seeing them coming back down, and Thai children running and swimming to retrieve them like a southeast Asian version of the kite runner.

I eventually needed to check my e-mail and use the commode. Unfortunately, the closest places to do either of them was back down the waterfight alley and I had just started to dry off. I was fairly concerned that by merely walking into a Thai-wired net cafe, I might burst into some sort of electrical fire. I didn't, though, and I lived to see another Songkran two days later.

Songkran in Ban Phe was... perhaps "toned down" is the wrong word, but it was certainly not even close to as crazy as the one in Phuket. Still, I must say that it was crazy, and it was fun. I got to splash a lot more Thai people as Phuket was crowded with farangs. Soju, my dog, got his fair share of being splashed, and at first was into it. Then, I think he just got annoyed and sleepy so he sat down on the street and tried to sleep. I don't think he was successful.

There were, of course, transvestites (I mean, hey, this is Thailand - what party would be complete without kathuays?) hanging out on the backs of pick-up trucks dancing provocatively and shrieking when hit with water.

Eventually, Soju and Kia grew weary of being doused with cold water, so I took them back through the crowds and dropped them off. On my way back to the party, I was stuck in traffic and felt my bike shift and buck as if someone had nailed it from behind. I looked back and a young Thai gentleman was sitting on the back of it trying to get me to drink some whiskey. I refused, but he wasn't having it and proceeded to pour it all over my face and down my shirt. What little of it I did imbibe made me realize just how comparitively good Sorngsom (brand of choice for most Thai people - tastes a bit like you might imagine liquid burning to taste like and gives me horrible sweats the next day if I make the mistake of drinking it, smelling it, or looking in its general direction) can be.

Songkran was a big success and I got to wear my Hawaiian shirt for the first time in the company of other Hawaiian shirt wearers.

This Will Not Include a Lame Joke About the Name of the Town; It's "Phuket," if You're Wondering...

So we have a bunch of course centers all over the place. Up to this point however, I'd only been to two. Now after the staggering success of my Phuket trip, I have been to three. It's mind-blowing, I assure you.

Well, maybe not the math, but Phuket is really, really nice. It's a tad touristy, but most places that you're going to go in Thailand that aren't pretty rural are going to be touristy. If you've been to Thailand, and you follow my blog, then you're probably one of two people - if you're not me, then I am curious as to who you are and why you have so much time on your hands.

I kid.

Anyway, it might seem odd that I would go to Phuket in because there aren't really any volunteer gigs down that way unless you go way deeeeeeeep south, waaaay past Phuket (cue ominous music) and down into the part of the country where I can't place volunteers because every couple of months or so some militant group decides to blow up a bus or something. We try to make sure our volunteers are safe, and much of the rural area down that way isn't somewhere where I'd be comfortable sending any sons or daughters of my own (which for those of you keeping score at home, I don't have anyway).

So why then, did I go to Phuket?

My aunt was taking the TEFL course there, and since I never get to see family, I thought I'd give it a go.

Generally speaking Phuket town is very pretty. It seemed that there was a pretty solid amount of little houses and businesses with old stone and whitewash facades. I forgot how much I missed variety in architecture. Old Phuket town was one of the only places I've been where I could see some older buildings that weren't 1) dilapidated 2) wats. If you're going to see a Wat. See Angkor Wat. After that, it's sort of "seen one, seen them all." Perhaps that sounds a tad harsh, but I have seen more than enough of them for my lifetime and feel that the last hundred or so were probably a waste of my time. They tend to sort of stick together in my mind like dried gold paint... Then again, I'm not Buddhist, so perhaps I don't appreciate them in the way that others do.

There were some really nice places to eat in Phuket town, and I met some interesting people. It was very good seeing my aunt and she was almost finished her certificate course so she was generally in a good mood and rightfully proud of herself. We ate dinner one night at an Indian place where the food was good, and there was something of a large ex-pat group there. They apparently all knew each other and two of them had returned after an absence of two years. While eating, they recanted a story of woe in dealing with a corrupt former landlord who had tracked them down for an apartment fire they'd been cleared of two years ago. As the young gentleman described it, "The landlord probably had to take a bath on the apartment so he tried to put it on us. Since we were out of the country, it would have been just insurance fraud, but now we're back..."

I am paraphrasing, but you get the gist. Word of advice to all travelers - whenever dealing with the police, it's best to get as much put in writing as humanly possible.

I am not sure what happened with them, but I hope that it worked out in their favor, they seemed nice.

My friend Kevin, who used to be a human resources manager for the school I worked for in Korea, met up with my aunt and I later on that same week. It was Kevin that taught me how to ride motorcycles (so mom, if you're looking for someone to blame, he's your man) in Korea and was good enough to merely cheer when I took a minor spill on his bike.

"Alright! You've dropped your first motorcycle!"

Kevin showed us around the island a bit, including a military observation post at the top of a hill so steep that my rented moped wouldn't make it to the top. There were a group of Thai tourists buzzing around and checking out the view from the highest point on the island. At one point I yelled at my aunt because she was attracting some less than wanted attention from the guards at the observation post - not a good idea to take pictures anywhere but DOWN the mountain.

We also got to see (and climb up in!) a big statue of Buddha. The climb reminded me of a scene from Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, and I sort of expected to fall out of the Balfour mansion at the top. Didn't happen but it was a dark precipitous climb up and even worse on the way down. Still, the Buddha itself was very nice and the ride up was pretty as well.

The night my aunt left, after perhaps too many beers, I got into an argument with a stockbroker about the Obama administration that made me wonder if the guy wasn't on the lam from some subpoena or another.

Hmmmm... that's an interesting word, "subpoena." I wonder if there is such a thing as a "superpoena."

Go Thou... to Laos!

It seriously took me at least five minutes to come up with that title. I must say, that I am very disappointed with it, but I am not going to spend five more minutes trying to come up with something even cheesier. So, yeah, Laos rhymes with how, not house... Just so you know.

Right, so, repairs to the house on hold, I needed to head to Laos to do some vetting at the Sunshine school - if you've read any of my older posts, you'll know that I wanted to do that some time ago, but had to head back to Ban Phe before I was able. This time, as that was my expressed purpose in going, not so much.

Kia and my friend Joe's girlfriend Kelly needed visas, so they tagged along and we three merrily made our way to Rayong's 407 bus. (I think it's called the 407 bus.) Anyway, it was the same bus I took up to Nong Khai last time, the one with famously comfortable seats. This time, on the tuk-tuk ride to the border, our driver tried to stop at one of the various "pay for the form you get for free at the checkpoint" stalls, and I told him not to stop. The throng of other foreigners was not as lucky - I saw them later at the border as the realization dawned on them that they'd been ripped off. I had been tempted to jump out of the tuk-tuk and reveal the scam, but I also had had a feeling that if I were to take away a bunch of Thais' means of living, I might not make it to Laos with all my teeth.

Sadly, I did not meet up with Bibi again, but I did stay in the same guesthouse as before. It is still popular with French ex-pats who wear shorts that are incredibly short.

On remembering how much of a pain it was to try to get around Laos without a motorbike, and not even knowing where exactly the Sunshine school was other than the fact that it was in Vientiane, (Pronounced anywhere from Vee ehn tee ehn to Wang szchjen - I believe that the correct pronunciation rhymes with vision.) I decided to rent a motorbike. This was my first long term experience with a much hated "semi-auto" transmission, which I will hopefully never have the displeasure of riding on again. Seriously, no clutch makes for some... shifty riding...

God, I am sorry. That was awful.

After arriving and settling in, I met up with Didi, the manager of the Sunshine school. She was showed me around the grounds, and I saw a number of children having their PE class which at the time seemed to involve a lot of running for how hot it was. She also brought me to sit in and partially teach one of the English classes. The students commented that I looked like Peter Parker, which was a new one for me, but they were very cooperative, eager to learn, and looked very fresh in their Laotian standard school uniforms. (Complete, from what I recollect, with a red communist party scarf.) They also commented that they knew how to spell my name, despite the fact that it can be a tough one for Asians just learning English, and I soon found out why: Sean Kingston had just recently played in one of the local venues and the kids were rabid about him.

At lunch, I sat down to have some of the school's touted vegan fare. The Sunshine school, like Baan Unrak and Baan Dada in Thailand are associated with the Neo-Humanist foundation. At first, I was a little tense about this because I don't really want to be entangled with any religious organizations. NGOs and governments can be a little strange if your organization is directly linked with something religious, particularly in Communist countries such as Laos, Vietnam, and China. As it turns out, the Neo-humanist organization is not really religious, but perhaps spiritual - they didn't seem to mind my sort of Prussian terseness on the subject of the metaphysical. After all, a lot of our views are the same anyway. I don't eat meat (though I do love cheese and eggs) but accidentally imbibed some pork when one of the teachers brought some into the school from outside. I had thought that it was some sort of vegetarian meat substitute like tofu, quorn, or seitan. (I love seitan! Ha ha ha! Always get a kick out of that.) I took one bite of it and the texture revealed its true nature. I hadn't said anything to them about being a vegetarian because I figured that I wouldn't need to. After seeing the look on my face, I didn't need to. They took the pork, and I continued eating my rice porridge with veggies. Not exactly the best fare for a hot day, but it did the trick.

After showing me around the school and having lunch with me, Didi invited Kia and I to come with her to inspect some land that their outreach project was trying to develop. The places was a little ways down one of the Mekong's tributaries, and I thought it would be a great experience to see a bit more of Laos, so I said yes.

Everyone got started out very early in the morning at Didi's place, near the school. We piled a lot of groceries into her Landrover and started out of Vientiane. Practically a few feet out of the city, the roads cease to be paved and the red clay soil that so typifies Southeast Asia is the road of into the country. We got to visit an eco-lodge (where everyone seemed very keen on telling us "it has a bar!") and see the stadium where the ASEAN games will be. Apparently there are some ghosts on the loose near the stadium, and they prevented the bulldozing of a grove of trees. Local rumors said that every time the machines got near the grove they would start to malfunction and eventually stop working altogether. Whatever was planned to be built in that particular grove had been relocated elsewhere.

Eventually, we arrived at a river junction with a rickety bamboo bridge that crossed a deep gorge above a stream. Kia was not thrilled about the prospect of crossing it, but after seeing a guy go before us with a motorbike, she calmed down a bit about it. The view above the river was spectacular and the temperature probably dropped several degrees as we descended the banks to the pontoon boat below. Some kilometers downstream we stopped to see the land that they were developing, but due to a recent fire there was very little there except some cows grazing. It was exceedingly hot, so everyone hopped into the fast flowing river and immediately exchanged remarks on how incredibly cold it was.

While being exceptionally refreshing, I must say, the water was a tad fast for my taste. It took me nearly three minutes to swim the length of the pontoon boat against the current. I reached the other side completely exhausted. Eventually, Didi told us that she was planning on staying at the eco-lodge a few kilometers back, but that we could get back with her friends in the Landrover.

Over the next couple of days, I checked out areas around the Sunshine school for local amenities, lodging, and the general fact-finding I do wherever I vet a volunteer site. I found a few interesting gems, but most of them are pretty well-known if you spend more than a day or two in the area with a Lonely Planet. Disappointingly, I didn't have time to make it up to Luang Prabang, as there was a site or two that I would have liked to have seen up there. So, I eventually bid Didi adieu and Kia and I headed back to Nong Khai.

Our train ride back was one of the least comfortable experiences I have ever had, but during our border crossing we met an interesting young Brit who lives in Bangkok. He and his friends had produced their own kung fu movie and were promoting online in a number of places. We exchanged numbers and I agreed to come see him the next time I am "yoo krung thep." (in Bangkok)

He caught his train, and Kia and I caught ours. Third class train seating is rough no matter how you slice it, but a sixteen hour trip on it is downright brutal: the seats are made of wood so hard that after a half an hour you need to continually poke yourself in the derriere to make sure that you still have one. There are fans that oscillate with the regularity of Halley's Comet and even when they are on you, it's difficult to tell. Couple all that with the fact that the windows are kept open for air-circulation, thusly allowing every winged pest in creation could find its way into your facial cavities, along with dust, etc from outside of the train. Then toss in more people than there are seats, and you've got yourself a train ride you won't soon forget.

Sixteen hoursish later, Kia and I were disgorged, somewhat frazzled into Hua Lamphong station in central Bangkok. After meeting up and handing off data to our company IT guy, we decided to see a movie at the fancy theater at the upscale Siam Paragon. Benjamin Button was playing, and I figured it would be cool to see in an actual movie theater since I don't usually do that (closest one to where I live is in Pattaya, and I've never actually seen a movie there.)

I was thinking about how much our tickets cost a little after we bought them and realized that they were the most expensive movie tickets I'd ever bought. It puzzled me, but I chalked it up to the obscene elitism that is Siam Paragon and thought nothing more of it other than how I could make up for a little over twenty dollars missing from my budget.

Then I saw the movie theater:

First off, we had the place to ourselves and all the chairs were bigger than those you'd find in first class airline seating. All of them had buttons to call attendents over for popcorn, etc. and electronic massage machines built into them. All totaled there were probably twenty seats in the whole movie theater. Still, it was an insane price to pay for a movie ticket and if I'd been thinking more quickly in baht (just having converted from kip) there's no way I'd have gone for it. Still, it was an interesting experience, as so many things are in Asia, to have just once.

Home is Where You Install Your Shower or Adventures in Thai Wiring

I've now been in Ban Phe for longer than ever before, which is nice. About a week ago I rented an apartment (uhhhhh... building). It's an absurdly large and echo-ey place, but it is literally a thirty second walk from my office and, while unfurnished, is insanely cheap.

Less than two hundred American dollars a month cheap.


Before explaining anything else about the place, I must first explain my landlord. Going by the name "Power Tiger," and constantly explaining that he was once a spy, the man is a story in and of himself. Power Tiger's favorite past times are as follows:

- holding various members of the chicken family that lives on his property aloft in his palm like Yorick's skull and speaking to them in the same manner.

- insisting that I get a ride back to my house with him after paying rent, a total of about about 300 meters. However, this gives him a chance to drive his 1970s Mercedes down the street.

- Meeting at 8 o'clock. After missing several meetings with him, I realized that it was better to communicate times in Thai (despite the complicated Thai time system) because "8 o'clock" just means "morning" I think.

- Having a good man. No, this does not mean that he is... well... it's just something that he laments a lot when I tell him about anything going wrong in the house. "No have good man! Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!"

However, as our dear former Secretary of State would say, "You don't work on the house with the man you want, you work on the house with the man you've got." This means that whenever there's a problem I can't fix, or worry about the structural integrity of the building if I were to try, Power Tiger brings over some goons who get the job... "done."

Thus, with makeshift solutions abounding, I will relate to you the joys of exoplumbing: All plumbing in Thailand appears to be comprised of various sizes of blue PVC pipe. This is because plastic doesn't rust, it's incredibly cheap, and, I believe, it's made in Thailand. The problem is, that it also breaks relatively easily and, to be honest, it doesn't seal very well. Or, if it does, my landlord never really figured out how to make seal very well because the walls began peeling and dripping not long after water started running through their defunct veins.

So, rather than tear out the walls to get at the old pipes, Power Tiger has decided to reroute all of the pipes in the house. Furthermore, the new plan will make it so that all pipes are accessible at all times... as they are in plain view.

I would say that this has made my hooking up of a hot water shower unit (the only hot water in the house... when it's working) and the installation of other water using utilities a lot easier, but it was actually pretty easy to begin with.

I got the bedroom air-conditioned because it honestly wasn't that expensive, and as David S. Landes said in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (and I am paraphrasing) "...work in much of what is now the developing world had been impeded by enervating heat for many years until the advent of air-conditioning."

Okay, that's my academic way of dismissing my pansiness. Yes, I finally have air-conditioning. No, I am obviously not totally comfortable with that, but perhaps it will pass. Either that or I may donate it to a Hmong child.

Next on the list:

On the Legality of DIY in Thai(land)

In the midst of installing a few items of my own at the house (a fan that carries air from the air-conditioned bedroom to where I work, sinks that formerly were for aesthetic value only, the hot water shower unit, and a few other items) I mentioned the work to my friend Dave Hopkins, who gave me a very stern look and said, "Don't let your neighbors or your landlord see that."

"Uh... why?"

"Because you could be deported."

I imagine my face probably looked a bit like the guy who finds out that his visa expiration date numbers go day first, month second only to find that he has overstayed his welcome in a country by a month - this is because I was remembering that someone was due to be at my house any minute... and there were tools out all over the place.

"Uh... why?"

"Because there are so many Thai handimen about that it takes jobs from Thai people if you work on your house yourself."

"Whoa. Uh... I gotta run!"

I rushed home and did the Raskolnikovian (yes, I made that word up - remember, English major?) task of hiding all of my tools. Then ran back to the school and made a list of things that I had done in the house, explaining to my Thai friend, Nat, that HE had actually done them, he just didn't remember it.

Problem solved.

This concludes another exciting episode of "CSI: DIY."

Right. Till next time...