Noise

Hey all,

So, I know its been a while since our last post...again... soooo..... uhh.... Sorry? Ok get over it. So At the end of the last post we talked about the floating markets and my racist school. The weekend after the floating markets Marisa and I were chaperons for my racist school on two 15 hour field trips. On Saturday we went down to Pattaya and went to a Tiger "Zoo," yet another floating market, an aquarium, and to the beach. If you have been reading my blog (Jon) for a little while you will no doubt remember that Pattaya is most likely my least favorite place in the world and this is my third time going there voluntarily in the past few months. Luckily, this trips was spent mostly away from the sleaze... unfortunately, we ran into a fair amount of scummy at the Sriracha Tiger Zoo. This place is well known for drugging and torturing its animals. If you are at all interested search "Sriracha Tiger Zoo Animal Rights" on google and see some of the complaints. The zoo is very adamant about the fact that they don't torture or drug their animals. And maybe they don't.... maybe the elephants brand themselves, and in a fit of happiness give themselves scars with the bullhooks. And maybe the zoo doesn't drug the its tigers... maybe it just takes them all to a Phish show and lets 'em eat whatever brownies they get their paws on. BUUUUT, seeing the handlers interact with the animals and knowing Pattaya (and quite frankly the general lack of concern for animal rights in Thailand) I'd be willin' to bet that those crocs had more roofies on board than a frat party! BOOYA! And yes, I'm looking at you Sigma Chi... When we first arrived at the zoo we first saw the giant pig nursing a bunch of baby tigers, and in the pen next to it a giant tiger surrounded by baby pigs. Which proved from the start that the zoo was committed to both increasing the number of (very confused) tigers in the world AND fighting the dreadful problem of swine-flu. From there Marisa and I fed a baby tiger. I feel now is a fair enough time to acknowledge that I can't just continue to support these evil institutions and then complain about them (yes again, this was my 3rd trip to Pattaya..). Well first, the school was going anyway and Marisa and I went for free. Second, I feel that on some level it is important to know what bad things are out there and what they look like so I can share it with others.... 3rd and most importantly WE FED A GOD DAMNED BABY TIGER!! It was awesome! It was pretty tiny for a tiger but waaay bigger and waay heavier than any housecat I have ever seen. Its paws were massive and its claws were really really sharp. It was young enough to be still eating out of a bottle but it was soo strong! We were only allowed to hold the little one for a minute or so but, it was rad.It was quite sad how roughly they handled him...or her, so we definitely felt bad afterwards. It also was a pretty upfront reminder of how amazing the life on this planet is and what a shame it is that we (people) are destroying literally everything that is cool and replacing it with plastic bags and smog. After the tiger I paid to have an elephant pick me up with its trunk. Again, same as above, I felt really bad about it but it was amazing. Elephants are really really strong. There are no bones in the trunk, its all muscle and a little tube to breath out of. It was really incredible, one second I was standing there, the next I was many feet in the air giggling like a school girl. And then it put me down and I just kinda stood there with the crazy realization that it could kill me without even blinking. Luckily for me, it didn't; it just stared at me with huge glazed eyes. I know elephants are smart, and im pretty sure that thing knew it was getting the shitty end of the stick. So yeah, more mixed emotions on the matter. I guess it's pretty selfish do participate in something you know is wrong.

Then we saw the scorpion enclosure. It is a dark little maze where black lights illuminate tons and tons of massive scorpions. Then there is the Scorpion Lady who spends her days covered in scorpions (and her nights guzzling anti-venom) just so people like me can take a picture. kind of a weird job.

Then we joined the students in watching a crocodile show. Where two people dragged a bunch of very stoned crocodiles around by their tails and did little tricks with them. They would open the crocodiles mouth and tap around inside it with a little stick (I imagine to lessen the "snap reflex") then they would do stupid things like lay on top of the croc, kiss the snout, put thier arm inside, put their head inside, run and slide up to the animal and stop with their head inside its mouth. Again, I was feeling mixed emotions... but slightly different. I knew that I did not want anyone to get hurt. Furthermore I knew I did not want myself, Marisa or any of my students to SEE anyone get hurt. And furthermore still, I knew that playing russian roullette with druggy crocodiles was most likely not these people's dream job..... buuuut by this point I kinda wanted to have the animal at least score a point for once. Not anything bad or anything... but yeah. I hope I don't sound like one of those PETA/Greenpeace/etc. people that are all about killing people to save animals.... especially because after the crocodile show we went to see the tiger show and I had the same feeling but stronger. Those tigers did not appear to be on drugs.... and one in particular appeared to not really like the slender man holding the whip. Luckily, (i guess) nothing bad happened during the show. I will concede that it was really amazing to watch the tigers do tricks. With ease they could leap over a huge gap through a fire-ring and land on a 4 square foot platform 8 feet up in the air. Again, we (people) need to stop ruining the world. Animals are way to freakin cool to let go extinct.
From the zoo we went to a floating market. This one was swanky. It was very clearly just for tourists, but it was still really cool. Instead of surrounding a river like more traditional floating markets, this one was just kinda built up on a big pond.... They could have just placed the market 100 yards in any direction and it would have been just a regular market, ha! Regardless of that, it was still sweet. There were lots of walk-ways and cool vendors. Marisa got some hand-made candy (it was cool, you could just sit there and watch this guy make amazingly detailed candy animals) and I got fried ice-cream. I don't know when they developed the technology to fry ice cream, but I really wish someone would have told me about this sooner. It's amazing.... and healthy (dairy has tons of protein and calcium, duh). At the floating market we saw this type of Thai boxing that is amazing. There was this big wooden pole suspended 5 or so feet above the water. Two young fighters sat on the pole and worked their way towards the middle. When they met the ref started the match and they started swingin. The object is to knock the other person into the water. Before long, they were fighting upside down suspended by their legs. It looked really fun (and yes they were wearing helmets, mom!). After the floating market we went to an aquarium which ofcourse was fantastic. From there we went to a beach for a while and headed home. The beach was fun because I was organizing races among the students and incentivizing the win with promises of ice cream. After the beach we started home. At this point Marisa and I were more than sick of the bus. Regular tour busses are very popular in Thailand. Unfortunately for Marisa, myself, and anyone who has any interest in retaining the ability to hear, party busses are more popular. The party bus, is a regular bus, with party lights (strobe, disco-ball, etc..) and a shitty but really loud sound system. Starting at 7 am (when we got on the bus) straight through to 10 pm (when we got home) the bus played one or two CDs on repeat. The CDs are these mixes that the bus companies buy where they take regular songs and add a never ending cow-bell and techno beat. Then, about every 15 seconds (really! no joke) the DJ's voice says something or other that invariably makes the students scream. Writing about this makes me feel like an old man complaining about "those damn kids and their loud music"... but i don't care. The music was actually way too loud and it never stopped... and the students never stopped dancing (which was actually really funny to watch. You can't be too mad at loud music when you see a whole bunch of kids geekin out to it). Needless to say, on sunday Marisa and I brought earplugs.
Sunday was a much more relaxed day. Our first stop on the trip was at this big temple-area on a hill. It was really beautifully landscaped. There were trees everywhere and tons of flowers! They have these flowers here called plumarias and they are awesome. This temple had a bunch of brick pathways that were really lush and shaded. This, combined with the fact that all of the students were too lazy to explore them, made these paths really cool and peaceful. Also, the bottom part of the hill is covered with really territorial little monkeys. It was sooooo funny to watch these monkeys chase around my students; you wouldn't believe the amount of shrieking and mortal fear a 15 pound monkey can throw into a group of Thai students, hilarious. From the temple we headed to the beach in Cha Am. This beach, while less tropical than other beaches I have seen here was still really fun. For one, there were actually little tiny swells here. Nothing compared to most of California, but barreling compared to anything else I have seen here. Marisa and I rented some inner-tubes, played with some students and went on a little bumper tube ride with some other teachers. That was definitely pretty fun. These guys with out-board motor jet-skis pull these inflatables that look like giant hot dogs. There were 5 of us on one and it was pretty fun. We fell off twice and one of the teachers lost a tooth.... but I am pretty sure it was a fake tooth (don't worry, he was back to normal by tuesday). For the rest of our day at the beach Marisa and I kinda snuck away and sat down at a little restaurant in peace. Then we loaded back on the bus and started our 3 hour trip home, pretty pleased that our ear-plugs were actually moderately effective against the same two CDs that were on repeat the day before. That is to say, we were pleased for about 6 blocks until the bus made a disconcerting pop-shutter-hiss noise and began micturating fluid all over the road. Apparently some thing big hit the radiator and the bus was broken. We were told that we would have to wait on the side of the road for 3 hours while another bus came from BKK. Fortunately another bus was there within an hour. UNfortunately, that bus had a more powerful sound system and a driver who saw nothing wrong with smoking cigarettes while driving a bus full of students. Other than a bit of traffic, we got home without incident and I was very tired on monday.

The next two weeks went by without much incident. My classes are starting to go better because I learned that if I am just a total cartoon in class, and try to get the students in as many learning-games as possible, I can trick them into learning and kinda avoid bad behavior! While this takes a lot more energy, it does make the classes go by faster for both me and the students. At night, Marisa and I generally work out in the park near our apartment, play some guitar, plan trips and veg out with some online TV. I also have been practicing poi a little bit and am hitting myself in the crotch less.... which is nice. The weekend after our field trips we stayed in BKK. Other than a little bar hopping with our friends we took it really easy. It was a much needed break. The next week was pretty silly. Many of my classes were cancelled to prepare for the "Academic Day" on Friday. Now, if you are one of those egg-heads who hears "Academic Day" and thinks of a day centered around learning, knowledge-centered-competitions, and other forms of nerd-ery then you are obviously not one of the directors at SBAC. Academic Day was a day where all classes were cancelled and all departments and clubs had to showcase themselves to prospective students that came from other schools. The day was one big commercial. It was silly.

By 7:30 the next morning Marisa and I were on a plane to Cambodia. Which we will write about in the next blog.

for now, you are almost all caught up on the comings and goings of Ashley Watson's Brother and Nadia and Sonja Liu's sister

peace out, girl scouts.

--Marisa and jon