We are packing things up and boarding a train southbound tomorrow. I will spend a few days in Songkla Province helping Em get settled in before heading up the Andaman Coast to Khuraburi.

Em has had three weeks helping the TEFL school by observing and providing feedback to trainees and teaching a couple kids’ camps. The observing appears to be less work (less hours, less demand). The camps have activities going into the evenings (limbo & karaoke!) and require her full attention all day, but do provide more rewards such as the periodic smiling student. She has also been looking over many lesson plans from some colleagues to help put together a good library of resources.

Dan and I had a very mellow visit on Ko Samet, which was exactly what he was looking for, and it was easy for me to bask in some tourist luxury knowing I will be working hard soon. Most every night we would visit the nearby Naga Bar where the employees had the best energy (DJ and bartender constantly dancing) and a friendly scene where the travelers mixed best with local resort workers. While we are quite social, we still never quite got into the hard-core partiers’ schedule – some of whom started their day at dusk, went to Naga in the evenings for a liquid breakfast, then danced at Silver Sands until three before ending their day at some after-hours bungalow or the beach just before dawn.

Em had a three day weekend while Dan & I were on the island and came down to relax with us on some white sand. She brought with her the most sunshine we saw during our 10-day visit on the island. While it is the rainy season, Em and I feel very lucky as we have had mostly good weather prior to the last few weeks. The seasons are changing as we are now in a smaller northeast monsoon season that ends in November and then we supposedly see nothing but sunshine until May!

During Dan’s visit it was great to hear stories about the hill, most of which were very positive, some of which were quite juicy! I’m stoked for everybody as the momentum continues to thrive. And of course I am more than excited to see the Alpental plaza progress into something very special. Nice work all!

We did a quick stop in Bangkok just before Dan flew out. We stayed in the Sukhumvit area, aka “New Bangkok.” Hmm...”new” to me that’s for sure. I was a little bewildered walking around the streets seeing so many westerners. We visited the biggest/nicest sports bar I’ve been in since leaving the US and while the venue was fantastic, the crowd was not exactly for us. We concluded that there was not one Thai man in the place. But the crowd was 50% Thai. Yes, all the women were Thai and the one hundred or so men were westerners with a couple Africans and Indians thrown in.

We walked around a bit, visited a canal where we saw Thais (no “new-Bangkok” crowd here) using long wooden boats to speed from one part of town to the next. The boats are a great option relative to Bangkok’s congested streets where motorcycle taxis play frogger around stop-and-go buses. While the boats seem efficient, Bangkok does offer a sophisticated transportation system that links their Skytrain (elevated light rail) with their Metro (underground light rail). I used both to get to the train station to buy our tickets south and was impressed with the level of sophistication and ease in this system. With all the “developing” infrastructure I’ve witnessed the last 9 months, it was refreshing to use a modern transportation system... yet disappointing to accept that it is, and will be, superior to ours in Seattle.

Labels: Bangkok, Koh Samet, Thailand