"Hello? หน้าของ ประเทศไทย... "

One of the funny things about Thailand: everyone answers their cellphone with "Hello?" then they proceed to carry on the conversation in Thai. It can be very misleading because I think everyone speaks English all of the sudden, but they certainly don't.

This weekend has been a huge celebration of the Tenth Anniversary for the Joint Graduate School of Energy and Environment at KMUTT. For the festivities on Thursday, ten monks came and sang while we sat on the floor and bowed to them. It was a beautiful but long ceremony, and afterwards I asked Pai what they were saying, but it turns out that Thai Buddhist Monks sing in Sanskrit, so he had no idea what they were saying. Just a blessing for more success for our graduate school.

Thursday evening we had a JGSEE dinner party at a restaurant near Central Plaza Rama II called "The Park". Our professors talked about the history of the grad school, there was a video, and to our surprise, Kareoke is a part of a semi-formal event in Thailand. Par for the course, we got up there too and sang "A Whole New World". The lyrics on the screen were in Thai, but luckily we've seen Aladdin enough to get through it. The highlight of the evening for us as well as the program, was a traditional Thai dance performance by myself and the six other girls from UNC. A team of Thai women and 1 fabulous Thai man took almost 2 hours to get all of us in the proper hair, makeup, outfits, and ready to go. We'd been practicing the dance for 3 weeks and it was a lot of fun! Our colleages were surprised how beautiful we looked in the traditional Thai garb (considering we're usually running around playing frisbee like good girls should not).

Saturday evening was another adventure with a four course dinner and speakers from around the world. One sip of your drink and they replace it! The menu of courses was as follows:

-Smoked salmon rose with green leaves, citrus vinaigrette peppered cold tuna carpaccio with balsamic syrup, tandoori chicken on salad raita dip

-Classic lobster bisque, crab ravioli and vegetable pearls

-Raspberry sherbet

-Baked snapper and salmon steak combination with a green asparagus salsa, served with a peppered sweet and sour sauce and glazed onions

-Chocolate iced souffle with apricot and spicy mango sauce

-Freshly brewed coffee or tea

News flash: I have a house in Bangkok. It's this little townhouse to the left here, 3 stories. There are six of us that just moved in and I will have more pictures later once we get more furniture and get everything ready for our housewarming party.

Regrettibly, I have learned that another one of my relatives has passed away back in America. My Uncle Peter was an amazing doctor who ate organic food, loved cars and photography, ran in marathons across the world, and has 3 beautiful daughters that I love more than anything. My sympathy goes out to my family and I am absolutely heartbroken that I cannot be there with you all.

Why Am I Rasta Man?: Full Moon Party

Perhaps you’ve heard of the legendary Full Moon Parties that occur in the Gulf of Thailand on the humble island Koh Phangan. I honestly cannot believe that these parties occur every single month, it was a blowout party of which the likes are unheard of worldwide (so I’m told by my travelling companions). About ten thousand farang show up from their backpacking adventures to this island, just north of the more recognized island Koh Samui. Due to a Buddhist holiday this past week, I had about six days to take the most amazing vacation ever! Ruby (<---check out her blog) and I took at a ten hour bus down the peninsula of Thailand to Chomporn where we then took a six hour ferry to Koh Phangan. While looking for a place to stay, a nice looking Thai boy drives by on a motorcycle: “Need bungalow?” Me: “sure, why not!”. I hop of his motorcycle and he takes me through the mountainous terrain to Hillside House on Baan Kai which is a set of beautiful wooden bungalows away from the crazy partiers up on the side of a mountain. The people who own the bungalows have a beautiful art studio on the mountain where they paint colorful Bob Marley and Jim Morrison all day. We spent a lot of time hanging out with them and drinking with them to their amazing selection of music. I spent the entire trip getting to know the island Thais who are so much more Rastafarian than Asian.
The first day, Ruby and I swam in the hot Gulf water and slept on the beach. By night we drank 40 baht Chang beer while challenging each other to a very creatively stimulating game of Scrabble (thanks to Linda for the going away travel game that has proved perfect). After a slow night, Ruby and I returned to our 400 baht-a-night bungalow with an incredible view and gigantic living space (that’s about six dollars a person per night).
Day two, Ruby and I seize the day and try to locate Kao Ra, the largest mountain on the island. We found our way to the center of the island via two taxis, then we hiked several kilometers to the largest waterfall on the island "Paeng Noi" which was not very intimidating. From there, it was all mountainous terrain to Kao Ra and we trekked for several hours uphill. Unfortunately we ended up losing the trail, but we ended up finding a lone Thai man with a shack on the top of a mountain with a little self-sustaining coconut grove. We also came across a very Twilight Zone-Outer Limits moment when suddenly in the jungle there was a cement factory-empty rooms with dogs chained up everywhere. Either way, we ended up walking several kilometers back into town with Chang in hand to make the heat bearable. We spent the rest of the day swimming, napping on a concrete slab near the water, and eating some delicious Thai food near the pier. I bought a really neat sarong and we ran into two friends from KMUTT, Joel and George who we thought were on Samui. That night we ended up running into our motorcycle friend from the day before, Karn. Karn was the sweetest guy, about 28 and he hooked us up with Muay Thai Boxing tickets which we spent the night watching while eating peanuts and watching a guy’s face bleed. Very raw.
Day three, we decided to check out a day-long boat adventure called the Reggae Magic Boat Cruise. The boat cruise was a traditional Thai longboat that went in tandem with the Snoop Dogg Boat Cruise which was just hilarious. I’m thinking about shooting an email to Snoop and telling him I loved his trip that I’m SURE he knows exists. The boat took us around an entire half of the island to beaches such as Bottle Beach and to an amazing waterfall where I climbed through this really cool creep cave. A spliff on a boat in Asia is not what I was planning. We watched the sun set over the island and spent the evening back at our artsy bungalow with music and our friends Joel and George. We played cards and our artists only charged us 30 baht per beer because they loved us (that’s less than a dollar). Joel and George stayed over with us which was quite silly and funny.
Day four, Ruby and I went to the beach Haad Rin for the day, laying out, reading, swimming, eating, sleeping, and I got a very amazing Thai massage. I can’t wait to get another one now! Full body hour-long massage for 6 dollars. Unreal. On the beach we met a cool Thai man named Bao that played Frisbee with us and just chatted with us for a while. That night, most of the UNC crew came to our island from neighboring Koh Tao and Krabi (where they filmed the movie “The Beach”), and the Full Moon Party was underway. Starting the night with a very western burrito, Ruby and I were pals all night in the giant crowd. Everyone drinks the very naughtily-named “Fuck Buckets” which was mixed drinks that you guy on the beach that are served in buckets. I may have partaken. Black lights and rave music and fire dancing and fluorescent body painting fought furiously against each other for attention among the crowds. Our friend Karn painted us for free (I got a KILLER scorpion on my back that will only live on in memory as a camera at this occasion would have ended up swimming with the fishes). After dancing and drinking, we ended up hanging out with Karn a lot and I spent several hours in very engaging conversation with a Danish boy that who was equally obsessed with Saturday Night Live! He was a doll, he’s working on his Master’s Thesis in Electrical Engineering in Denmark. He also loves John Belushi. Watching the sun rise is actually an experience I had never had before, and what a location for my first time. I went home to my bungalow to sleep from 9am to 10am, then the trek home of 16+ hours was so worth it.
Conclusion: Longest blog entry yet by far, but for the best adventure. I don’t know if I’ll be going back to that island, but our friend Karn will likely visit us in Bangkok before we leave. Most memorable night ever. You can’t see me, but I’m grinning ear to ear.