Friends, compatriots, comrades, well-wishers, buddies, chums, pals. associates, acquaintances, and brethren;

I had an awesome time at home over Christmas and New Year's.  I had hoped to see everyone I could, and I know I missed some people.  There's always next year.  I'm likely going to be staying in Thailand for about another year.  To those of you who have thought about visiting: DO IT!  It would be so awesome to have you here.  And you would have a guaranteed guide and translator(as long as I don't have to work).  But more importantly, I just wanted to let you all know that I had a blast and enjoyed seeing you.  And I hope to come next Christmas again. 

            I had quite a dilemma trying to decide whether to stay here or not.  I miss all my friends terribly and I haven't had a lot of luck finding the same caliber of humanity over here in the land of smiles.  I've got some friends but the good ones seem to be few and far between.  And then people always are coming and going too.  Thailand is a transitional place for many people.  The good ones often don't stay for very long.  But I have decided to stay here and go to school because I can do it so cheaply.  And I am not where I'd like to be with the language.  I would be disappointed with myself if I left before I was very fluent.  I'm moderately conversational now, but have far to go.  Also, I wanted to stay because it's fucking cold in the winter over there.  Jesus!  I really thought that I liked winter before or liked the brisk cold sometimes.  But nothing beats always being able to comfortably walk around outside.  It is far superior.  Also, for the time being I've got a good job and a high standard of living. 

            And for anyone who finds themselves thinking seriously about a big change in their life, or even just a year or two of transition:  you should consider coming to work.  It's so easy to get a teaching job and you would be in the top 10% of incomes in the country immediately.  The food is great and cheap.  Housing is plentiful and cheap as well.  The people are friendly, if a little naïve.  And it's so easy to get along here without putting in much effort really. 

            Well, I've done this sales pitch for Thailand so much.  There's nothing I could say more that would convince people I guess.  But it's working for me.  And I hope to see you all again as soon as possible.  Keep in touch with emails and the like cause I check mine every day. 

    -Devblog

Well, since I got some comments that my myspace is boring I figured I should at least post a new blog.  AND I haven't really been posting much of anything about what's going on with me because I'm just lazy about it.  So now that I'm really busy with work, but tired of doing it, I will take the time to inform you, my friends, about me, the dork.

     Aey and I split and then got back together.  It's hard to think now how I felt at that time, but I know that now I'm happy.  When I left I thought I could be happy with another girl, that I would find something better.  But only because I had never had another relationship.  If I had some experience on the issue I think I would have realized what Aey and I really had together.  And I believe it is something not everybody experiences.  Everyone tells me that love is hard to come by and that you need to hold on to it.  And being the stubborn jackass that I am I thought that I knew better.  Well, so there's that.

     I still work at the private school in Lad Prao, but I moved to a new apartment.  The apartment is bigger and much closer to the school.  I walk to work in the morning.  A lot of the foreign teachers from my school live close by also and I see them walking around now and then.  Gives me a sense of community that I didn't have before.  My two snakes are doing fine, but I'm still a bit nervous about transporting them back to the US, which I'm not sure when I'll be travelling anyway.

     I'm coming home for christmas most definitely.  I'll be flying in just before christmas and I'm goign to request some extra days off so that I can stay until maybe January 6 or 7 so that I can see some people.  Are you one of the people?  If you're reading this blog, you probably are.  So when you know where you're giong to be, let me know so I can make some plans.  NYC kids, I was thinking that since I"ll likely be flying out of new york that I would just come up a day or two before my flight to hang out. 

      This school is a disaster.  There is so little communication about administrative matters with the English staff.  Our boss is an incompetent fool.  They alert us of special activities and cancelled lessons a day in advance if we're lucky.  THey pay more attention to the dress code than to what actually goes on inside the classrooms.  And if I don't stop bitching now I'll go on forever. 

    ALso, I'm going on what I hope to be my final Laos visa run this weekend.  I look forward to 3 days of sitting on busses, waiting in line, and visiting the true 3rd worldness of this country.  ALong with the ridiculous beaurocratic nonesense involved in getting a tourist visa.

To Mom:  I'm just going to send the package without the CD.  I've had all the other stuff forever and the CD is daunting me causing me to delay for more than a month.  SO I'm just sending it now and I 'll bring one for christmas. 

To Chris:  I'll be sending your stuff at the same time that I send mom's package.  Hope you enjoy.

To you smartasses after my own heart.  There are probably spelling mistakes and typos in here that I normally would take care of , but the keyboards at school are shit and I'm too tired to proofread.  OK i think that's all.  No wait one more thing

I started picking up some British language stuff.  I've referred to my friends as "mates" a few times.  Even said "cheers' once or twice(although I like that one it sounds pretty weird with american pronunciation).  And a few odds and ends.  I'm interested to see if people think I have an accent when I get back.  But I still haven't managed to pick up that much more Thai.  I can get along and hold simple conversations but a lot of simple stuff is still also too hard for me.  I feel some inspiration to learn more coming on soon though. 

OK, now i'm too tired to even mess around at work.

-Devblog

Ok, I've been thinking for awhile about what kind of new blog I could write.  I am no longer amazed by the same things that I was when I first got here.  And I don't do that much touristy stuff anymore either.  I do expect to visit Ayutthaya soon although I've been expecting that for a long time and it hasn't happened.  Well, I went there recently but it was brief and not worthy of a full blog entry.  OK anyway back on subject.   So what I want to talk about is a slightly deeper observation.  The issue in Thailand of enforcement of the law.

    Thailands laws are not so dissimilar from those of any western country.  With the exception of freedom of speech which is heinously behind the times over here.  But that aside, I think it is safe to say that the laws themselves are adequate.  However in this country it is not the law that is the problem, but rather the enforcement of it. 

    There are plenty of police officers.  They are sadly underpaid though which cause them to seize every available opportunity to take bribes.  And not even big bribes.  If you get pulled over for a traffic violation(speeding or something minor, but also including drunk driving so I'm told) you can get away with giving the officer 100 or 200 baht($3.30 to $6.60)and driving away.  Prostitution is illegal in Thailand yet there are huge obvious brothels all over the place.  And they are advertised and even places like Nana and Soi Cowboy that are famous for having lots of prostitutes, yet nobody does anything.  Because all of these places pay some police for protection.  I don't know how much it would be, but once again probably not an exhorbitant amount.  Copyright laws here are the same(i assume) as western places yet (and I am addicted to these places) there are tons of little shops that sell pirated DVDs, and they are once again well known.  Bangkok is a huge bustling city, tons of people, everything is crowded.  The sidewalks are crowded enough, but then there are people there selling crap on the side of the road choking the sidewalks until there is only roon for two single-file lines of people to walk through.  And guess what, it's illegal.  But they pay the police and I'm sure that these people do not have the kind of money to pay much. 

    I'm just frustrated by the fact that it seems like a lot of problems here could be taken care of by paying people a decent wage.  The police are not payed enough to care about what they do.  And this is consistent in many occupations here.  People are paid very little and they therefore do a half-assed job.  It drives me crazy.  But I guess I don't have much of a solution to it myself, because corruption here goes the whole way up the ladder and the distribution of wealth is appalling.  So the wealthy will remain wealthy and the poor will remain poor.  This country really needs a labor movement.  Among other things.  Ok I'm done now.  Thanks for reading.  Hope I didn't bore you too much.

There's a little glass ball in the window in the kitchen and my gram spins it when I come home from school so the "sun bunnies" are dancing on the wall when I walk in.  I can hear the sound my shoes make on the driveway, and the creak of the old garage steps with the wobbly old handrail that's really just some pipes fitted together.  There's a muddy handprint on the wall that reminds me every time I go inside that I was once a little boy in this same place.  The kitchen floor tiles are so worn in places that the mock-cobblestone pattern is gone.  The floor is cold even in the summertime somehow, and in the winter sometimes I linger in front of the refrigerator just to feel the warm air coming from the motor touch my toes.

      The doorway through to the dining room has been meticulously and lovingly marked with the date and names of youthful growth.  The lowest line on the wall is for Myna.  The highest for Jim Bob.  The china closet rattles when you walk through even if you go slowly and the floor creaks in front of the archway at the bottom of the steps.  There are 13 steps that take you to the top.  I remember counting them endlessly.  I know the sound of my gram coming up those steps by the unmistakable papery rasp of her dry hands on the bannister.  Theres a nail in the corner of the archway at the foot of the stairs that never comes down because we use it to fasten a garland during christmas.  I pass my fingers over it almost every time I go down the steps.  In the living room I glance up often at the one decorative beam thats not really attached to the ceiling and daydream about my escape plan if it were to fall while I was on the couch watching TV. 

      The lawn is uneven and muddy in many places.  I know where all the exposed roots are high enough to get hit by the blades of the lawn mower and when I pass I go slow and raise the blade level.  But I've run them over so much before that they're scarred and chipped anyway.  The big oak tree in the middle of the lilly patch is my favorite ever since the huge black willow in the front came down.  And for a brief wonderful time every summer, the lillies flower and spread theeir sweet perfume across the stone wall side of the house. 

   But there's one thing in that house that I can't really describe.  One feature I can't name every detail of.  One facet that is permanent but invisible and elusive.  Yet, it's the thing that will always draw my memory to that place.  The reason Red Hill will forever be my home.  My heart.  My heart lives in that house.  No matter where I go, my youth, my soul, my memory they cling to my heart on those few green acres in Pennsylvania.  I miss my heart now and all of you who are a part of it still. 

Thinking of you with much love.

-Devon

There have been 3 times in my life that I feel like I have really fucked up.  Once when I quit a good job, once when I got caught smoking pot, and now.  I have asked so many people for advice.  And I have gotten some good advice.  The problem is that no one can tellme what to do.  No one can tellme what I really want.  It doesn't help that I am now thousands of miles away from everyone I've ever known and trusted.  I need some time to breathe a little right now and to think clearly.  My thinking has been cloudy at best lately.  I have faith that the future will be good and that my life is not over, but Ijustwish thatI could stop making big mistakes.  Maybe someday....

The bug that lived on my balcony is dead.  I was too slow in picking it off the ground to preserve it's splendor and colors, and one of its antler-like antennae broke off when I picked it up as well. 

In the alley to my house there was a dead rat lying in the middle of the road.  I estimate that it's body was about 18 inches long(not including the tail).  It was about the size of a small cat. 

My visa is almost dead, and because of the constant shifting of laws here, I now have to go back on a tourist visa yet again.  Annoying. 

There are a few more metaphorical dead things I can think of, but when I write about it, it sounds too whiny to leave it as a blog.  I will think of something interesting soon.  I promise.

-Devblog

My snake peed on me yesterday.  If you don't already know(and I assume that you don't), snake pee smells very bad.  And it is chunky.  Little yellow chunks and a small black chunk.  No.  No it's not poop.  I've seen the poop, it's different.  This is pee. 

Also, I sexed my snake(I know Ha Ha Ha).  It's a girl.  And it's an amelanistic color morph.  As if you cared. 

Oh, and I just remebered something funny.  But I'm not going to tell you. 

OK, fine I'll tell you.  But it's not that funny so don't get excited.  There's a University here that's apparently kind of well known.  It's called Assumption University.  I thought it was funny.  It makes me want to start Maybe Middle School, and We Think So High.  And possibly Logical Impossibility Preperatory Academy.  But these schools are not for everyone.  No, first you have to pass the Magical Thinking Entrance Exam. 

OK I'm done.

This weekend I bought a snake at chattuchak market.  You few religous readers may remember that Chattuchak is the world's largest single outdoor market and that is is amazingly crowded and crazy.  We went on Saturday afternoon.  THe sky was clear which meant the sun was overpowering.  ANd I had come straight from my Saturday lessons so I was wearing long black slacks and a polo shirt.  Needless to say I was pretty gross by the time we got out of there, but that's all beside the point. 

I had been wanting to buy a snake for a while and I have been reading a lot about various snakes this week to find which one would be good for me.  I had been to the market the previous weekend to peruse the selection.  The dealers that I found were all obviously just kind of low class Thai dudes that go out in the forest and catch snakes and sell them.  They had a cobra, a couple of Burmese Pythons(which can grow to 30 feet), reticulated pythons(which is the largest recorded snake in the world), and some other various venemous snakes.  None of which they actualy knew the english name for(I looked up the Thai name and English) and all of which they were willing to sell to any poor idiot willing to buy it.  Anyway, I was disconcerted about this because I've heard that snakes caught in the wild are more likely to die in captivity and obviously more likely to bite.  So I went back excited but not entirely hopeful about getting a good snake.  I was looking at one of the stalls I had been to the previous weekend.  They had tarantulas, scorpions (which were just in an open plastic tub), a few huge snapping turtles (which were in the same types of tubs with no room to move but with a wire mesh on the top), and a bunch of snakes in aquariums.  Then I saw that there was another store a few stalls down that had a nicer looking store and animals in more suitable cages.  I went inside and they were more knowledgable friendly and helpful.  I ended up buying a corn snake which you can get in the US anyway.  Actually the one I bought was even bred in captivity in the US and shipped here.  But they are very docile and handle-able and hardy animals.  I have to feed it a baby mouse about once a week, and I've got it in my bathroom since the air-conditioning doesn't really reach in there.  And luckily since this is Thailand I don't really need a heating element because my bathroom is pretty constantly about 80-85 and humid.  Pretty sweet.  And the dude at the store said that corn snakes are not a controlled animal so it would be easy to take it across international borders. 

So, the only problem now is I need a good name for it.  Any suggestions?  There is a picture of the snake on my pictures and also a pic of it's first meal at my place.  Check em out.  Well I suppose I should get back to work now since I'm at work. 

-Devblog

I started writing a blog bitching about this school.  Then I erased it and started writing a blog about how I wanted to bitch about stuff but I wasn't going to(which eventually turned into bitching).  I now will make it easier for everyone involved by summing up everything in the most concise way possible.

OK here we go...

 

FUCK!

Thank you that is all.

Songkran is the Thai new year celebration. The Thai people celebrate or at least give acknowledgment to International New Year, Chinese New Year, and their own Songkran. The celebration lasts an entire weekend in mid-April. This time of year is what passes for summer in Thailand, the rains are yet to come and the days are intensely hot. This year however the rains have come a bit early it seems, so it isn't quite as hot, but not quite as hot in Thailand is still pretty damn hot. To celebrate this time of unbearable heat the people here have a country-wide water fight. Water guns, bottles, hoses, even big 50 gallon drums that people dip plastic bowls in and fling at people. Some of it lukewarm, some of it purposefully ice cold. In downtown Bangkok most of the action is at Khao San road.

We took a taxi to the democracy monument downtown and the driver told us that was the closest he was willing to go to Khao San. He pointed to an alley that he said would lead to the road so we hopped out and started walking. There was a group of people on the street and having been out of the taxi a full 30 seconds I got the first spray from a squirt gun(from another farang no less). I was of course armed to retaliate, but I was still clinging to some sense of etiquette for shooting a random stranger with a water pistol. I refrained and we went a few blocks down the alley. At the far end of the alley there were very few people, but as we got closer the crowd steadily grew until when we reached "ground zero" where it was shoulder to shoulder. I have been to the area many times, but I couldn't recognize it for the sea of people in the street. I was just about soaked instantly. Part of the custom is also that people have some kind of food starch(probably tapioca) in little dishes that they smear on your face as you pass them by. Our initial plan was to get something to eat when we got there, so we drifted with the crowd in the direction of Burger King because it was close. By the time we got inside, I was wet and starched. I was already having a lot of fun being sprayed and spraying back in turn, but I had no idea yet the extent of the situation.

After we finished eating we decided to make our way up Khao San to the other end of the street(Khao San is actually only about 2 or 3 blocks long). Khao San road is usually pretty crowded. It is well known in Bangkok as the travelers place. Lots of foreigners, lots of crappy trinkets, lots of beer, lots of prostitutes, the usual fare. But the road was shoulder to shoulder for almost the entire length of it. You can't stop, you can't turn around, you can't stand still, you move where the crowd is moving. In some places there was a little more breathing room and you could, say, lift your arms or move around a bit. But at the entrances and around some of the music places it was like front stage at a concert. By now I was totally soaked, I might as well have just been swimming. Most of the initial starching had been washed away as well. The normal merchants on the road had been replaced by water peddlers. The sellers were advertising their product by spraying the crowd indiscriminately with their ice cold water. I was pretty much laughing constantly at the ceaseless water battle. There was a section where a stage had been set up with some people dancing and two machines were blowing some kind of soapy foam onto the crowd. It was so dense right there that the air was almost unbreatheable. After we cleared that part we walked the length of the road a few times back and forth just walking around spraying people. Then Aey said she wanted to go to this other road that was close by.

The instant we cleared the security point at the end of the road(there have been some terrorist threats recently) the starching began hardcore. As a farang I was a big target. You could tell the people who were going to smear you good because they themselves were completely white with starch, as was I after a few minutes. You have to stop and wash your face off every few minutes though because it gets in your eyes. Well, it also gets in your ears, and mouth, and nose, and hair, and pockets but the eyes is the worst. There were cars trying to drive through the crowd but to no avail. They would move a few inches every couple minutes but that was all you could do in the crowd. Aey bought some of the starch to do some starching. I got a turn at that as well. It was a great time. We walked for a few blocks to no place in particular and decided that everywhere was the same. So we just kind of walked around the general area for a few hours before deciding to leave. But you can't exactly just stop and hail a taxi here, so we had to find our way out of the mayhem. We got to a less crowded area(less crowded here still means people were spilling out into the first few lanes of traffic). On the outskirts here I saw some very clean looking guy walk past a girl who was reaching to starch him. Starching etiquette is pretty non-confrontal, or as much as you can be while wiping stuff on someone's face. I mean, you have to touch someone's cheek so you do it gently so that they don't retaliate violently or anything. But this guy ducked really quickly to avoid the gently wipe and smacked the girl on the back of the head pretty hard. Weird. But really, if you think about it, you put a lot of trust in people to have a festival where you touch random strangers on the face.

I don't really feel like I captured the essence of Songkran here in these words. Maybe it's because I am about to go to sleep, and it all happened a few days ago, and I took an antihistamine that is making me really sleepy. But seriously it was probably just about the most fun I've had since I've been here. It was a blast. When I got home I had little pockets under my eyelids full of starch. And the water splashing is so widespread that on Saturday I just wanted to walk 2 blocks to 7-11 and get a snack and I got totally soaked. People just park themselves by the side of the road with a hose or a barrel and splash water on passing vehicles. A lot of people pile into a friend's pick-up truck and drive around looking for the roadside splashers to have short battle with them. It's ridiculous. And almost everything is closed. Just about every non-chain place is closed, which is why I had to go to 7-11 for food(not that I don't indulge in 7-11 often anyway). But if you can really imagine a country-wide water fight, it's pretty incredible. Or even just city-wide, but in a city of 10 million. Amazing. I hope I've shed some light on it for you, but if you really want to know, you need to come to Thailand in April. I might be here next year at this time, you just might have the opportunity. Yeah, I know, well, just think about it ok? I put up some pics of me and Aey covered in Songkran starch. Check 'em out. Yo. Peace,

-Devblog