But I'll go ahead and post a few Thailand pics and keep trying to make people jealous of my vacation. Yeah, it's kinda weird that it's taken me so long to do this. The main reason is that blogspot.com + China = a headache.
This is Macao, not Thailand. We spent about 4 days here. I am a big fan of the architecture, food, and banyan trees there. It's a really crowded, Portuguese-Cantonese city with a Starbucks and some Las Vegas casinos.
A Thai fisherman who looked like a pirate took us on his fishing boat to this island where lots of monkeys live. The only English word he knew was "monkey" and when he yelled it they came jumping down to the beach from the trees.
I stayed a few days at a resort with the friends I traveled with, then took a bus down to Khao Lak to visit my friend Bri. The bus experience was somewhat sketchy but relatively cheap. A driver from the hotel took me into town about an hour away and dropped me off at a seemingly random bus stop outside of a bank around 9:30pm. I waited there for over an hour and the only reason I got on the right bus was because another foreign family was going to the same place and their driver had told someone sitting near the stop to tell them when to get on. I rode overnight to where Bri lives, but the bus attendant didn't understand when I told him the street I wanted to get off at so he just told me to get off near the town's bus station. Thankfully an American guy who had been to the town before got off there too, and pointed the way to the right road.
The time is Khao Lak was super refreshing...I just got to hang out, eat good food, go to the beach a lot, and do other fun stuff outside.
One day Bri and I took a trip to the Similan Islands, which are amazing. We did some snorkeling and I saw some crazy looking fish. It even caused me to reconsider my decision to never go scuba diving...although we saw a stingray washed up on the beach the day before and I am still scared of the ocean.
This picture is one I stole from Bri, it's our dinner the night we had a picnic on the beach. Apparently the best way to cook fish is to wrap them in foil and just throw them in the fire. For squid, a spit works better. This is the night I ate a Thai green chili and thought my eardrum had exploded.
On my last day in Khao Lak I went on a boat with some of Bri's friends who are squid catchers. First they threw out traps made out of bamboo and wires, and then they went around and pulled up traps they'd set before. They mark them with a long stick of bamboo with cloth tied around it. Anyone who has trouble finding their parked car could never be a squid catcher.
I finally got up the nerve to hold a squid. It didn't ink all over me but by the time we got back there was ink all over the boat and the guys' shirts. And these fish got caught in the trap, they were kinda cool. Another fish that got caught in the trap before that wasn't cool...one of the guys dropped it on my foot accidentally and it stung my toe with its spines. At first I was like, "mai pin rai" (no problem). Then it started to feel like my toe was on fire. For the rest of the afternoon. It actually still itches sometimes so it had to have been a poisonous spiny fish...so my word of wisdom is don't play with fish that have spines.
Anyway...I have been back in Xining for over 3 weeks now and am once again getting used to the dry, colder weather. I actually missed being here quite a bit...not the weather, but the people, and I'm really thankful to be back. This term I'm teaching the advanced English class, which is mainly a combination of really smart and friendly girls from YS and some Amd. villages, and loud, long-haired, super smart but somewhat wild nomad guys from the next province. They ask me thousands of grammar questions a day but in the end, so far, I hardly feel like it is a job at all.
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