Christmas
It definitely wasn’t easy, being away from friends and
family this time of year as Christmas and New Years came around, and it
definitely reminded me of exactly why the
holidays are important. I didn’t really miss getting gifts, and of course I
missed the food, but I am always missing the food, so that is nothing new.
Mostly, I just missed the people. When I heard Christmas music playing in
Robinson (my “mall”) as I sat eating a salad two days before Christmas, I felt extra
lonely. And when my students gave me gifts, as grateful as I was to receive
them, the whole thing just felt silly—like we were only pretending it was
Christmas.
Christmas itself didn’t feel like Christmas at all, but
that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I spent Christmas on top of Phu Kradueng
mountain with my co-teacher Ying and her very funny, very Disney-movie-loving
friend Moo. Moo doesn’t know much English, and the English he does know, he’s
timid to use; a lot of our conversations consisted of me speaking to Ying for a
little while, then Ying speaking to Moo for a little while, and once in a
while, her translating Moo’s funny quips for me to understand so I could laugh
with them. Sometimes Moo would try a little with me; like at the top of the
mountain, when he said, “Everything the light touches is your kingdom, Simba.” I
didn’t mind the language barrier at all—we were always doing activities, so
whenever they were speaking in Thai, I could just enjoy myself being in nature.
The weekend itself was physically exhausting: to begin,
they picked me up at 3 a.m. so that we could reach the mountain by 8. At the
mountain, there were workers who, for a price depending on the weight of your
stuff, would carry your stuff up the mountain and drop it off at the top. It
wasn’t just our stuff—they would put 5-8 suitcases on each side of a long
bamboo stick and carry at least the weight of one person up this mountain; this
mountain, I should add, that I barely survived climbing up with nothing.
Despite my load being light, it was still the most
difficult 6-hour hike I’ve ever experienced. It was so steep that I was on my
hands and knees for certain parts, or holding onto hand-made railings to
maintain balance. I was already dripping in sweat and my heart was racing about
15 minutes into the hike. Before we’d gone half an hour, Ying said, “should we
just go home now?” And then, towards the top, it became so narrow that we
needed to walk single-file past one another as some people climbed down and
others climbed up, and we needed to hop from rock to rock, literally just
hoping the rock we landed on would not be a loose one.
We reached the top (6 miles later) around 1 p.m., took
some pictures of the beautiful view, and then walked another mile to our
campsite. We waited for our stuff to arrive, pitched our tent, ate dinner, saw
the sunset, and fell asleep by 8 p.m. Sleeping in the tent wasn’t unbearable,
apart from the fact that it was my co-teacher’s tent (which she was kindly
sharing with me) and it didn’t have a cover—meaning, halfway through the night,
I woke up drenched in cold dew.
Our alarms woke us up at 4:30 a.m. the next morning so we
could see the sunrise. That day, we walked a total of 17 miles just at the top
of the mountain, so we could see waterfalls, peaks, lakes, beautiful landscape
views of the rice fields and pine trees and mountains, and long stretches of
dirt/sand paths flanked with trees on either side (some of these images
reminded me of Jurassic park—the jungle just looked so different from anything
I’ve seen before, and so primitive). It was entirely worth it, but by
dinnertime, my feet were numb and my ankles so sore I thought I might’ve
sprained them.
Then, the next morning, we woke up at 6 a.m. to climb the
6 miles down the mountain.
This is just to say, it was so physically exhausting that
it didn’t dawn on me often what my friends and family were experiencing back
home. As Ying and I brushed our teeth in the dirty bathroom in pitch-black on
Sunday morning at 4:30 a.m., preparing for our walk to see the sunrise, it only
vaguely occurred to me: “Oh, Ying… Merry Christmas, by the way.”
There were plenty of moments I fell in love with the top
of the mountain. There were leaves I’ve never seen before, areas that looked
like the mountains in Maine, areas that looked like the landscape of
Switzerland; and areas, of course, unique to Thailand, like a dark-brown rock
waterfall with vividly bright red leaves piled around the sides and in the
water at the bottom, or a lake with orange-ish rocks around it. For lunch, we
carried sticks of barbeque chicken and sticky rice with us in our
backpacks—also uniquely Thailand.
There were a few restaurants set up at the top of the
mountain, too. It was like a little village, and although Phu Kradueng is a
popular place to visit if you are from Thailand, it isn’t crawling with
tourists from other countries.
As much as I enjoyed it, I think it reminded me exactly
why I am not much of a camping person. Waking up soaking wet is disgusting; the
bathrooms are gross and not showering for 3-days is terrible; and at the end of
a day that you’ve walked 17 miles, you just kind of want to be in a real bed.
We started driving home Monday around 1 p.m. It’s a four-hour
drive. In America, a road-trip is usually ridiculously over-planned: if we
leave at 1 p.m. and it’s a four hour drive, the latest we will get home is
5:15, if we allow for one Dunkin Donut/Subway stop.
In Thailand, as I should’ve known, this trip took us 9
hours. First, Ying said, “let’s stop for lunch,” at a mall we were passing
around 2 p.m. Around 7 p.m., after a lot of wandering and shopping (not
complaining—I got Dairy Queen and clothes), we left the mall; then we stopped
at an outdoor market. We walked around for 20 minutes and then made our way to
a McDonalds. After about an hour there, we headed home again. Thirty minutes
from home, we take a sharp turn down a dirt alley and pulled up in front of a
gated shack-house because Moo “likes the dumplings here.” We waited for the
owner to give him some. Since the shop was closed, this took a while. We got
home around 10 p.m. that night.
So that was how I spent my Christmas—along with, a few
days later, opening some gifts on my bed with my phone set up so my mom could
watch via Facetime; eating some Christmas cookies that my grandma sent me;
hanging some decorations around my apartment; and feeling incredibly thankful
that I can completely understand, this Christmas, everything I already have to
feel grateful for.
 |
| One of the restaurants at the top... |
 |
| So steep! |
 |
| We hiked around the entire thing |
New Years
The next weekend, my friends and I headed to Koh Phangan for New Years. Keep in mind, the weekend before, I’d been reflecting and exercising and going to sleep at 8 p.m. at the top of a mountain—this was a complete 180 from that.
 |
| Playing cards on the ferry ride over |
In America, we really don’t have places that are cultivated purely for the tourist. Of course, we have places that are “tourist-y”: The Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon, etc. But these places do not exist solely because of the foreign visitor. From my experience this past weekend, visiting Koh Phangan in the south of Thailand, I can say this: it is a very eerie thing, to be a foreigner and visit such a place.
My friends and I decided to travel to Koh Phangan for the infamous Full Moon Party. Over 30,000 visit each month for Thailand’s Full Moon Party, which started back in the 1980s. We knew the New Year’s one would be a great one to choose because it was especially extravagant, in honor of the beginning of 2017.
From Friday night until Monday morning, I barely saw a Thai person. Even the people who worked at the restaurants and bars and on the beaches were foreign, from places nearby like Myanmar—when we attempted to speak our bare-minimum Thai, they would shake their heads in confusion; the only people impressed by our attempts were the other random Australian/British/Canadian/Mexican/South American people surrounding us, who might look at us in amazement and say, “Woah, what did you just say?”
The food was pretty much entirely Western (no complaints here). And not just “Western,” but really Western, with ingredients I didn’t really think you could get here (like real hamburger buns, and real American cheese, and real Italian dressing). Everything was ridiculously priced, of course, since everyone else who is visiting is willing to pay.
The party itself was ridiculous and incredibly dangerous/illegal. First of all, they lit jump ropes on fire and had (usually very drunk) foreigners try to see how many times they could jump over—needless to say, we saw a lot of people with patched-up arms and legs over the weekend, from the burns (tried to post video below but it didn't work... check my Facebook or simply Youtube Koh Phangan fire jump rope). I kept waiting for some adult or authority figure to show up and say, “Okay, kids, that’s enough, let’s put the gasoline away now.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t really ever going to happen.
There was also a long line at the “pharmacy,” because you could “order” any sort of prescription you like (Adderall, Xanax, etc.) without any other requirements other than your money. Then, up on the hill at the end of the beach, there was another long line at the bar… where you could order joints, or drinks with LSD.
The entire weekend, I didn’t see a single police officer.
The weekend was fun for me, as I played it relatively safe with a big group of girls, whom I trusted, at one hostel that we pretty much had to ourselves. Our location was right on the beach, and the beach itself was beautiful, although it was littered with trash from the party, so I preferred visiting another beach 40-minutes away. (Sidenote: the beach we visited was right at the point where two currents connect, creating a V and splashing up from either side as waves from one direction collide with waves from the other; Marly and I walked through these colliding waves to the other side, to walk around on a nearby island—so cool, I’ll put pictures below).
 |
| See the "V" where the two currents meet? |
It was nice to feel like a young American, and nice to speak with so many people from around the world. Some of the people we met were backpacking for a few weeks or months; some didn’t even have an “end-game,” and were just “going wherever we want for the next month, no real plans.” I was impressed with that. Many of them were wide-eyed with amazement when we said we were teachers here; they would motion to the beach with the alcohol and drugs and other crazy partiers and say, “You teach here?” and we would say, “well… not really.”
There is a difference between Koh Phangan and the Thailand I have come to know—thank god. Koh Phangan felt like a very spooky version of Disney World, and for as much fun as I had, I would never go back. There was a sense of anonymity that I didn’t like. As quiet as my town, Sakon Nakhon, might be, I know that the Thai people truly look out for me here and want me to feel comfortable; they also want to get to know me. In Koh Phangan, it felt entirely the opposite: the Thai people, if there were any, saw no difference between me and the crazy jump ropers or the New Zealand girls “ordering” Adderall over-the-counter. And because of that, because of the people in Koh Phangan, it didn’t really feel like Thailand at all; the rest of the country, as I’ve seen, is so much friendlier and safer and more interested in showing us their culture, rather than cultivating a false representation of one based on what they think foreigners want.
I don’t blame them at all; I understand. If a flock of foreigners came to New York City with a ton of money, we might say, “Okay, so what… you’re still following our rules.” But if a flock of foreigners suddenly set up camp in a little town in Iowa and then pulled wads of cash out of their pockets, we might say, “Okay… you tell us what to do.”
It’s like, in Sakon Nakhon, if I said, “What can I do for fun around here?” the locals would sweetly and considerately show me what they think is fun—“well, you can go to the lake, or go see a temple, or eat some delicious Thai food.” They would never assume I, the foreigner, knows best. But in Koh Phangan, if I said, “What can I do for fun around here?” the locals would look at me in confusion and say—“Well, what do you mean? You can do any crazy, ridiculous, ‘foreign’ activities you want… as long as you give us some money, this place is yours to control, or yours to lose control of… the choice is yours.”
So that is how I spent my
Christmas and New Years. Perhaps my favorite holiday memory, this year though,
is this: Thursday morning teacher Owen came in with a lot of ingredients and
began quietly, meticulously, setting up: pouring little spoonfuls of something
into white glass bowls, chopping apples into small cubes and adding to this
giant salad he’d created, pouring warm milk on top of this white-glass
concoction, sprinkling slices of chicken on top of the salad. At 11, Owen said,
“Okay, New Years feast is served!” Of course, this was at 11, when Myles and
another teacher were still teaching. Owen went to get them and came back,
shaking his head. In complete confusion he said, “Myles says he has to finish
teaching, first. I said we were about to eat, but still… he said he has to
teach.” So we started eating without him.
The salad was delicious (SO American-tasting I could have
cried, like the fanciest cranberry/walnut/chicken salad from the most expensive
restaurant), and along with that, other teachers contributed their own favorite
foods (my Muslim co-teacher cooked, for lack of an appropriate title, a
delicious potato/vegetable omelet-type thing, the Philippino women contributed
chicken and rice, and our director contributed ice cream) which were also
incredible. Then teacher Owen gave us his mystery white-bowl dessert—warm,
cooked apple, with coconut oil straight from
a coconut tree (at least, Owen swears there is no language barrier here: I kept
saying, “So, what you’re saying is, you cut the tree or poked a hole in it and
took the coconut oil right out from inside the tree? You did that yourself?”
“Yes.” “Are you sure you don’t mean you bought the coconut oil from someone
else who did that?” “No—straight from the tree.”), and milk. Then, after eating
with my co-teachers, I ventured over to M5, the 17-year old students I teach
who were setting up a Christmas party. I’m M5’s advisor, along with two other
teachers, so I was planning on doing a gift swap with them and “having some ice
cream” that I’d provided, along with the other teachers.
This “gift swap” became a 4-hour ordeal. First, from 12-1, the students needed an hour to
prepare. As I’d originally been told, “We’ll supply the ice cream… maybe the
students will bring a little snack to contribute, as well.” This “little
snack,” became grills and hot plates to cook hot dogs and meat on a stick;
blenders to create mocktails with soda water and grenadine and ice and soda;
and cups with different layers of desserts, stacked on top of one another, as
well as two cakes and rice and a huge pot filled with curry. At 1 o’clock, I
asked one student if they had class, and they said, “Oh, teachers gave us the
afternoon off, so we could party.” Of course they did. And rather than
lamenting the fact that these students couldn’t go home during this unexpected
free time, they were thrilled to be
at school; playing music and hanging out with 29 of their closest friends—what
would they do at home? The students kept delaying everything because they
wanted to stay at school and party forever, until finally close to 3 I said,
“Can we do the gift swap? Even if they want to stay and party… I want to go
home.”
 |
| My M5 Students preparing... |
Then, of course, we had to take pictures: pictures of me
handing one gift off to the person who pulled my number, and then a picture of
the two of us together, and then a picture of that other person handing my gift
to me, when my name was called; we needed group pictures and solo shots and
candids and video footage of us all, both before we opened the gifts, and then
after we opened the gifts, and also while we were opening the gifts. Finally,
around 3:30, I slipped out the door and went home before anyone could notice.
This
was probably the sweetest “Christmas” party I’d been to, here in Thailand.
Despite how drawn-out it was, it was so sweet, watching all of these
17-year-old students enjoy creating this atmosphere that they probably would
not find at home later that afternoon simply because these families do not
celebrate Christmas (or any of their holidays) quite the same way we celebrate
ours. It made me thankful that next year, I will be surrounded by my family on
December 27, but that this year, my students, with the mocktails and cakes and
gift-wrapped toys, had created an incredibly appropriate substitute.
No comments:
Post a Comment