Week One Bangkok

Bangkok Week One

Bangkok is a city of contrasts. Walking near Siam square with its shining new ultra modern office towers on the one hand and street stalls, the likes of which could have been around for centuries, on the other hand is a constant source of amazement for me. Yesterday I witnessed a ponderous elephant lumbering along the main Sukhumvit road amidst the roar ( well hardly a roar) since it is so clogged, but an elephant walking amidst all the traffic of downtown.

Last night I went to buy a pair of pants and a few shirts custom tailored in the Nana district, which coincidentally is the red light district. Here you see scantily clad women selling their bodies and Arab women wearing a burkha with only their eyes showing selling their fake watches and T shirts in the ubiquitous stalls.

It’s Sunday morning of the first week and I am getting a little chance to reflect before I go to the Chatachuk market which is apparently the biggest of its kind. I guess I should go now while it is still a cool 33 degree at 7 am but I would rather wait until my eyes open so I can read the map. I can type and think in my sleep but reading maps is a challenge even when I am awake. I’ve been told to just follow the crowds to Chatachuk.

I am also getting into the food culture. Apparently Thais only eat once a day, from the time they get up to the time they go to sleep so I am doing the same thing. I walk past the stall, point and eat. I am even putting chilies and oil sauce on everything like the rest of the Thais. I just hope that the Thais who see me with the smoke coming out of my ears just chalk it up to me being a farang or foreigner, otherwise it would be rather unbecoming to pollute the atmosphere with all that smoke.

After looking for a week, which seems amazing that we could get apartments so quickly, I am living at” si sip gow” Sukhumvit…or sorry 49 Sukhumvit. I am living in the high rent Japanese area but I think it is worth it because it is right across the road from one of the campuses I will be working at and since you can’t get anywhere in Bangkok in under an hour this is an amazing advantage. It is also across the road from a supermarket which sells American food. I thought my days of eating bread were over, but the store is full of North American foods…sort of disappointing actually.

Talking about school, I am very impressed with the teachers that were hired. There are about 25 of us “newbies” and we are all quite unique. It sort of takes a special kind of person to leave jobs and family behind for an adventure and I think this particular group is dynamite. The two campuses have distinct flavours. One is downtown but like an oasis of calm in a tumultuous environment and the other is near the new airport with acres of land and huge open playing fields, pools, etc. Both campuses only have 600 students in total from K-12 so it should be quite lovely. I hope to get to know all of the students relatively quickly. I also hope to spend most of my time in the classrooms working with teachers on instruction.The emphasis is on character education so I look forward to seeing if that has any merit. In theory it should be transformational. Let’s see if it is.

Oh, and let’s close by talking about golf and massages. I went to play, naturally, at the course beside the airport school. There were 4 of us ‘players’ and 4 caddies. The young girls probably weighed less than our bags. You can imagine the 4 conquering heroes (us) walking down the fairway talking about our shots with these 4 women shlepping our bags and looking for our balls. I wonder how long it is going to take me to get used to this?

Afterwards I had a 2 hour massage for about $8.00. I thought I would hate it but actually it was great. It is probably more like yoga or physiotherapy than what I imagine massage to be but I think it will probably be very good for me and would give Josh a run for his money in terms of knowing pressure points in the body and how to manipulate their bodies to stretch yours. For example, at one point, the masseuse was lying opposite me and pulling her body opposite to mine while forcefully pushing mine, something like being on a rack, I would suppose. I don’t know who gets more of a workout, her or me?

Talking about workouts, I think I will go downstairs, take a swim in the infinity pool ( I think Daniel calls them) eat breakfast, ok… corn flakes if you must know which I bought in the market across the street and then off to the market. Let the adventure begin!