It is evening on boxing day and I am curled up in the famous Israeli internet cafe near the infamous Kao San road in Bangkok where you get some free internet time and you get to hang out with a bunch of people from Israel. I love the sound of voices speaking languages I don't understand and the feel of the airconditioner on my skin.
I spent the day hung over and mostly asleep on the 8 hour bus from Mae Sot to Bangkok, which is probably the best way to spend the bus ride. From the bus station I took the slow regular transit bus into the city which took over an hour but makes me remember why I am here. I get so bogged down in work sometimes I forget the adventure it is just to be living in a foreign country, how special even the feel of the humid air is pressing on my skin and the silouettes of palm trees against the sky. I catch glimspes down tangled side streets and covered night bazaars and I have left my work behind and I am on VACATION!!
From here I am going to catch a bus down south and a boat sometime in the wee hours of the morning, so that tomorrow I will be waking up on the beach. My itinerary (in case there are any natural disasters this year and you need to know where I am) is to spend the next four days scuba diving on the island of Ko Tao, then head over to Ko Phagn Nan for the New Years party and then back up through Bangkok on the 1st, arriving in Mae Sot sometime on the 2nd.
Christmas was a blast because it was spent with some really amazing people I have the pleasure to be thrown together with who have become wonderful friends, and that is the best gift you can get in a year.
To all of you: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and enjoy yourselves, your families and your friends.
Monday, December 26, 2005
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Holiday Season
It is the week before holidays hit and there is a lull in the office. There are four of us in the large rambling building that is usually full of laughter and conversation. My office is entirely empty. Yesterday, returning from a few days up in the refugee camp, I put on some music and kicked back and caught up on some reading I have been wanted to do for a while (“Writing Great Speeches” by Alan Perlman; “Teaching the Spoken Language” by Gillian Browne and George Yule; oh the exciting life I lead).
Today the sun is coming through the windows and there is a ragged moth with tattered wings climbing up the wall.
Most of the mad rush is over and in the past few days I have been methodically moving things off my plate with a great sense of relief. The busy sense of hectic hassle and anxious tension has been melting away into weekends of Christmas shopping at the border market and the sounds of carolers walking through the night.
Tuesday night was the annual EIP Christmas party. There is nothing like it to kick off the Christmas season. For starters, no one enjoys copious amounts of food, especially meat, more than EIP students. The smells wafting out of the kitchen all day were enough to make anyone excited. After classes were finished, the students went into party mode, decorating the classroom with balloons and candies, then disappearing to shower and “beautify themselves.”
We gather at the preordained time and wait half an hour for the stragglers but we don’t have too many guests. The party begins with the reading of the Agenda. First item: Welcoming speech by Teacher Jonesy. Agenda number 8: dinner.
Agenda number 6 was a traditional Tavoyian dance by one of the female students involving a large clay water pot balanced perfectly on her head as she swayed and positioned her fingers into classical poses. When it finished, she took the heavy pot from her head, scooped up some water in her hands and transferred it into the hands of the respected members of the circle.
I heard the best Karen speech I have ever heard given by a teacher at the school next door, the Teacher Preparation Course. “I have only one objective tonight,” he said. “To eat! Thank you for inviting me to celebrate with the highest level of education in camp. It is an honor to give a speech to these students. Now we should get on with the agenda so I can achieve my objective… and eat!”
Eat we did! It was a chicken and potato curry scooped up and eaten with greasy pancakes, the salty excess licked from fingertips amidst the moans of delight and the excited clamor of talk.
After dinner, the chairs and tables cleared away and the presents were distributed. Perhaps the one thing that the students love more than the food are the gifts. For me, the essence of Christmas is found here: in the anticipation you see on someone’s face as they unwrap a gift and in the joy and delight they show when it is open. We sit in a circle and there is so much laughter to share and so much delight. The students have bought secret presents for each other, there is a round of pass-the-parcel and a game of musical chairs. I was in stitches for half the night with the wildness and the craziness of the hilarity. The lights went out at 9pm, so we hooked up a light to a car battery and continued our games.
Nights like that remind me why I am here and how much I love it.
Back in Mae Sot, snuggled under a few blankets drifting off to sleep, I hear carolers singing “Merry Christmas to you all…” and think, “Ah, it’s Christmas.”
A few more days of work to get through and then the holidays will truly begin. I will be spending Christmas morning with a few close friends and a pancake breakfast. In the afternoon we will be having a large bbq with lots of people over. Then, the next morning, I am heading off to Bangkok and the islands in the South. I will be scuba diving on Ko Tao for a few days, hanging in my hammock, floating on the waves, dancing in the sands. I’ll be thinking of you all, who are marching through the snow, and wishing you all a happy new year.
See you in 2006.
Today the sun is coming through the windows and there is a ragged moth with tattered wings climbing up the wall.
Most of the mad rush is over and in the past few days I have been methodically moving things off my plate with a great sense of relief. The busy sense of hectic hassle and anxious tension has been melting away into weekends of Christmas shopping at the border market and the sounds of carolers walking through the night.
Tuesday night was the annual EIP Christmas party. There is nothing like it to kick off the Christmas season. For starters, no one enjoys copious amounts of food, especially meat, more than EIP students. The smells wafting out of the kitchen all day were enough to make anyone excited. After classes were finished, the students went into party mode, decorating the classroom with balloons and candies, then disappearing to shower and “beautify themselves.” We gather at the preordained time and wait half an hour for the stragglers but we don’t have too many guests. The party begins with the reading of the Agenda. First item: Welcoming speech by Teacher Jonesy. Agenda number 8: dinner.
Agenda number 6 was a traditional Tavoyian dance by one of the female students involving a large clay water pot balanced perfectly on her head as she swayed and positioned her fingers into classical poses. When it finished, she took the heavy pot from her head, scooped up some water in her hands and transferred it into the hands of the respected members of the circle.
I heard the best Karen speech I have ever heard given by a teacher at the school next door, the Teacher Preparation Course. “I have only one objective tonight,” he said. “To eat! Thank you for inviting me to celebrate with the highest level of education in camp. It is an honor to give a speech to these students. Now we should get on with the agenda so I can achieve my objective… and eat!”
Eat we did! It was a chicken and potato curry scooped up and eaten with greasy pancakes, the salty excess licked from fingertips amidst the moans of delight and the excited clamor of talk.
After dinner, the chairs and tables cleared away and the presents were distributed. Perhaps the one thing that the students love more than the food are the gifts. For me, the essence of Christmas is found here: in the anticipation you see on someone’s face as they unwrap a gift and in the joy and delight they show when it is open. We sit in a circle and there is so much laughter to share and so much delight. The students have bought secret presents for each other, there is a round of pass-the-parcel and a game of musical chairs. I was in stitches for half the night with the wildness and the craziness of the hilarity. The lights went out at 9pm, so we hooked up a light to a car battery and continued our games.Nights like that remind me why I am here and how much I love it.
Back in Mae Sot, snuggled under a few blankets drifting off to sleep, I hear carolers singing “Merry Christmas to you all…” and think, “Ah, it’s Christmas.”
A few more days of work to get through and then the holidays will truly begin. I will be spending Christmas morning with a few close friends and a pancake breakfast. In the afternoon we will be having a large bbq with lots of people over. Then, the next morning, I am heading off to Bangkok and the islands in the South. I will be scuba diving on Ko Tao for a few days, hanging in my hammock, floating on the waves, dancing in the sands. I’ll be thinking of you all, who are marching through the snow, and wishing you all a happy new year.
See you in 2006.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Thai Massage
It is Brooke’s habit to visit the masseuse every Saturday afternoon. They know her there as Malee, a Thai word for flower, because they can’t pronounce her name. The massage parlor is along the Asia 1 highway, across the street from a Buddhist temple, near my old house. It doesn’t look much like the massage parlors you would be familiar with if you had ever indulged in the West. There are no dim lights or private chambers, no aromatherapy, no soothing music.
The main room is tiled and half open to the parking lot with plenty of windows, light and breeze. There are perhaps ten mattresses on the floor, each with a fan nearby. There are two smaller air conditioned rooms. An air conditioned massage is slightly more expensive than the usual package. Most of the masseuses are women as it is generally inappropriate for men to massage women. There is, however, one male masseuse in the house. Although he is blind, he gives one of the best massages in the house, although, as a woman, it is somewhat a delicate process to request him. Normally when you arrive, whoever happens to be free waves you over to a mat on the floor.
Although I certainly do not indulge every weekend, I have been going to this particular place for about a year now and I know the characters there quite well. There is a small, quiet Burmese woman and a short chubby Thai lady with malicious eyes and a wicked grin. There are a few quiet professional ladies who will do their job with a blank expression on their face and a few gossips who will giggle and laugh the entire time. Generally, I can expect to hear comments about my size at least once, usually in good fun. Once, lying on my stomach on the mattress next to Brooke, I looked up and saw our two masseuses comparing the size of our asses.
The first thing you do when you enter the massage house is take off your shoes, as is the custom when entering almost all Thai houses. Then you change into the light cotton clothes provided. If your feet are dirty, it is expected that you would wash them. Then, you lie down on your back on one of the mattresses and let the ladies do their magic.
Generally, Thai massage is quite relaxing, although it is far more active than traditional Sweedish style for both the masseuse and the massaged. It involves a lot of stretches and strange positions. One of my favorite parts is when I am lying on my stomach and the woman is kneeling on my butt with her hands on my back alternatively putting her weight on either side of my spine. It feels like there is a big cat sitting on me kneading my back.
Of course, sometimes the stretches can be quite uncomfortable, especially for someone like me who is quite inflexible. There have been times when I have wondered whether a trip to a dominatrix might be more pleasurable than a Thai massage. On one occasion, I went for a one hour massage to help my back, which was quite sore. After massaging my back for some time, the woman turned me over and asked me if I needed to use the washroom. Since I didn’t, she immediately began the deep massage of my stomach. At times, this involved her entire weight bearing down on the soft unprotected squishy bits of my belly. Not content to merely apply pressure, she began moving things around.
As it turns out, one of the first phrases I learned in Thai was “that hurts” and I decided the situation warranted its use. The woman smiled and nodded sympathetically. I was relieved ... until she pressed harder. Unable to bear the pain anymore, I could not help but moan out loud. The woman seemed to be expressing a rather serious intention to rearrange my intestines. She only smiled again and said soothingly, “Yes, yes it hurts doesn’t it? Hmmmm….” While the other women in the room laughed. Finally, unable to bear the pain any longer, I begged her, “Stop! Please stop!” But at this she had no reply and the other ladies shouted over, “Baby! What a baby!” (Willing to believe the best about everyone and slightly out of my mind from pain, I at first thought they were suggesting that I was pregnant and had a baby, but if that had been the case, the massage I was receiving would clearly have relieved me of that particular situation. No, these women were calling me names, plain and simple.)
While it continued I imagined how much happier I might have been if I had spent my money on a leather clad vixen. Instead of getting intimately acquainted with the geography of my intestines, I might be getting whipped, for example. I didn’t think a whipping would compare at all to the kind of pain I was feeling in my belly, and besides, I thought, a dominatrix would be likely to stop if she passed her client’s pain threshold. This woman seemed to have no such concept. Indeed, when it was over, and I was left panting painfully on the mat, she proceeded to give me a stern lecture. “Only eat one meal a day,” she said, frowning at me, “this will help your back feel better.” I left the massage house with a sore back and a stomach so sore I had no desire to eat for several days.
It’s easy to see why I would get scared away and go for long stretches of time without visiting the massage house but the truth is, I always find my way back again for another round of fun, pain, laughter and (only sometimes) relaxation. Let’s blame it on life in Mae Sot, shall we? What better way is there to kill two hours on a weekend?
The main room is tiled and half open to the parking lot with plenty of windows, light and breeze. There are perhaps ten mattresses on the floor, each with a fan nearby. There are two smaller air conditioned rooms. An air conditioned massage is slightly more expensive than the usual package. Most of the masseuses are women as it is generally inappropriate for men to massage women. There is, however, one male masseuse in the house. Although he is blind, he gives one of the best massages in the house, although, as a woman, it is somewhat a delicate process to request him. Normally when you arrive, whoever happens to be free waves you over to a mat on the floor.
Although I certainly do not indulge every weekend, I have been going to this particular place for about a year now and I know the characters there quite well. There is a small, quiet Burmese woman and a short chubby Thai lady with malicious eyes and a wicked grin. There are a few quiet professional ladies who will do their job with a blank expression on their face and a few gossips who will giggle and laugh the entire time. Generally, I can expect to hear comments about my size at least once, usually in good fun. Once, lying on my stomach on the mattress next to Brooke, I looked up and saw our two masseuses comparing the size of our asses.
The first thing you do when you enter the massage house is take off your shoes, as is the custom when entering almost all Thai houses. Then you change into the light cotton clothes provided. If your feet are dirty, it is expected that you would wash them. Then, you lie down on your back on one of the mattresses and let the ladies do their magic.
Generally, Thai massage is quite relaxing, although it is far more active than traditional Sweedish style for both the masseuse and the massaged. It involves a lot of stretches and strange positions. One of my favorite parts is when I am lying on my stomach and the woman is kneeling on my butt with her hands on my back alternatively putting her weight on either side of my spine. It feels like there is a big cat sitting on me kneading my back.
Of course, sometimes the stretches can be quite uncomfortable, especially for someone like me who is quite inflexible. There have been times when I have wondered whether a trip to a dominatrix might be more pleasurable than a Thai massage. On one occasion, I went for a one hour massage to help my back, which was quite sore. After massaging my back for some time, the woman turned me over and asked me if I needed to use the washroom. Since I didn’t, she immediately began the deep massage of my stomach. At times, this involved her entire weight bearing down on the soft unprotected squishy bits of my belly. Not content to merely apply pressure, she began moving things around.
As it turns out, one of the first phrases I learned in Thai was “that hurts” and I decided the situation warranted its use. The woman smiled and nodded sympathetically. I was relieved ... until she pressed harder. Unable to bear the pain anymore, I could not help but moan out loud. The woman seemed to be expressing a rather serious intention to rearrange my intestines. She only smiled again and said soothingly, “Yes, yes it hurts doesn’t it? Hmmmm….” While the other women in the room laughed. Finally, unable to bear the pain any longer, I begged her, “Stop! Please stop!” But at this she had no reply and the other ladies shouted over, “Baby! What a baby!” (Willing to believe the best about everyone and slightly out of my mind from pain, I at first thought they were suggesting that I was pregnant and had a baby, but if that had been the case, the massage I was receiving would clearly have relieved me of that particular situation. No, these women were calling me names, plain and simple.)
While it continued I imagined how much happier I might have been if I had spent my money on a leather clad vixen. Instead of getting intimately acquainted with the geography of my intestines, I might be getting whipped, for example. I didn’t think a whipping would compare at all to the kind of pain I was feeling in my belly, and besides, I thought, a dominatrix would be likely to stop if she passed her client’s pain threshold. This woman seemed to have no such concept. Indeed, when it was over, and I was left panting painfully on the mat, she proceeded to give me a stern lecture. “Only eat one meal a day,” she said, frowning at me, “this will help your back feel better.” I left the massage house with a sore back and a stomach so sore I had no desire to eat for several days.
It’s easy to see why I would get scared away and go for long stretches of time without visiting the massage house but the truth is, I always find my way back again for another round of fun, pain, laughter and (only sometimes) relaxation. Let’s blame it on life in Mae Sot, shall we? What better way is there to kill two hours on a weekend?
My brother, the politician
If you want to check out one sassy up and coming politician on the sexy Saskatoon scene, click here and learn a little bit more about the man who, under all that facial hair, is my brother.
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