Mother Nature's Children

There is always some creature annoying you in Nakhon Phanom. Whether it is my cat Bak Mo who wakes me up at 2 in the morning by hanging outside my window by the screen, stray dogs that chase you down the street on your bicycle or frogs that hop over your toes during the rainy season, there is always something moving and always something there with you. You are never truly alone.

Aside from the creatures, there are the critters; hoards of ants carrying dead cockroaches across the kitchen floor in the middle of the night and even larger cockroaches scurrying across the sidewalks when the town quiets down and the sun stops shining. Then there are the flying insects named "maeng mao" that infest around lights at dusk and within hours had died along the street sides causing passing motorbikes to slide along the hundreds of dead bugs.

My house is right in front of a forest, outside the bright lights of the city and very close to a pond. We own a convenient store with our garage door open 14 hours a day, from dawn until dusk. Mosquitoes flood in, following you through the house so they can suck your blood and leave you itching for hours, days and weeks on end. As I sit by my computer I am forced to not only wear insect repellent cream, but long sleeves and pants; as I have come to realise, insects in Thailand are invincible and impossible to repel. I sit with my electric fly swatter "Zap Zap Zap Zap" and the dead bodies fall to the ground until I need to sweep them up with the broom and dustpan. Suzanne now officially hates my house. On days when the insect repellant has run out, I take safe haven in my bedroom, where I have a bedroom door that shuts MOST of the buggers out. But though I have a door to keep out the mosquitoes, I cannot keep out the beetles, ants or geckos that somehow find their way into my room, into my suitcase and then into my pile of clothes. I am no longer surprised to find ants crawling up my arm or on my bed and pillow.

I find it hard to be frusterated with all the creepy crawlers in my bed because as Suzanne once reminded me, "The ants were here before we were."

"Even should we find another Eden, we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly nor stay in it forever." - Henry Van Dyke

Island Wilderness

The green snake slithered down the branch of the palm tree as I stared at him from my balcony overlooking the Andaman Sea. Snakes interest me, and I've never had the chance to see a snake move so gracefully across the surface of a tree trunk; the only snake meetings I've had are with garden snakes that dance across your toes in long grass, drugged pythons that reptile shows like to place around your neck and snakes of all sizes in zoos, where they barely move an inch and stay wrapped in a coil the entire time.
The movements of the snake were fascinating - every once in a while he would lift his head from the trunk and swing it in the air, deciding on which way to go and whether or not there was food nearby. As he crept the length of the tree it appeared that he wasn't moving apart from the stripes on his skin flowing gently and his body stretching into loops and curves. I've never seen an animal move so calmly in such a graceful manner. Jeanne and Lynne thought it was gross and a woman walking beneath it shuddered away but I thought it was amusing. You don't see snakes on trees everyday in Canada.

"Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get" - Forrest Gump.

Phang Nga Bay

It broke through the surface of the sea, skidded across the clear ripples - dancing, dipping and skating. It was a ballerina alongside our boat as we headed towards Phang Nga Bay. I had never seen a flying fish before.

Phang Nga Bay is the home of 42 of the 300 islands in all of the Andaman Sea - home to the famous island where Roger Moore filmed "James Bond: The Man With the Golden Gun", to countless eerie lagoons where monkeys screech in the trees and bats hang motionless in the dark caves.
We took canoes through a hundred metre stretch of dark cave where bats flew over our heads enticing screeches from many of the travellers; the cave opened up into a lagoon where fish swam by our canoe and birds whistled in the jungle around us. We had to lean back to keep from hitting our heads on the hanging stalactites that grazed our noses while we shrank to the bottom of our boat.
On our way back to the mainland we played games with the tourguides - trying to put glass Sprite bottles into formations and listening to techno music as a large rain cloud formed to the south. The cloud masked most of the island, loomed overtop of it and yet the other side of the island was a clear, crystal blue sky.

A streak of sunlight lit a line through the sea as we powered through the waves, back to reality.

"Be a fruitloop in a world of cheerios"

Homesickness

For the first time in my exchange I am really homesick. However, I am not homesick for Canada; instead I yearn for and miss my family and friends in Nakhon Phanom. It seems rediculous but being away from all my friends, my family and my city for two weeks has really put a damper on me. Not only am I missing them but I have been immersed in Bangkok and Phuket where you can barely tell you are in Thailand aside from the sweltering heat and cheap prices. The streets are crawling with falangs, food is overpriced and not the way Thai food is supposed to taste and fast food restaurants and shopping malls loom over top of you as you walk down the street. I miss chickens running around my feet, dogs lying on the sidewalks and broken sidewalks that almost break your ankles. I have left the country I have come to love behind and instead have entered a country named Thailand where nothing is the Thailand that I love so much. I miss going to P'Oom's shop for Thai tea and toast with condensed milk; riding my bike through the streets and along the riverside; watching the groups of people working out at aerobics; sitting with Suzanne at Meurang watching and making fun of falangs that enter our habitat. I miss learning the dance moves to Korean pop songs with my host sisters; letting my crazy cat in from outside when she climbs up my window screen and showering with a bucket (who knew I would come to love the bucket so much?). Bangkok is nice, Phuket is nicer, but they aren't Thailand. They aren't filled with culture, amazing sounds and delicious food that screams anything but "falang". I miss my home.

Broken Heart

Kareoke has recently found its niche in my heart. Not only is the karaoke building airconditioned (a wonderful plus on a hot day) but my love for Thai music is overflowing and spilling out as I learn new songs and begin to sing along.

I love going to sing karaoke; if I have nothing to do and everyone else is busy I'll go and pay $1.50 to sit in the brightly coloured box for an hour and listen to my favourite Silly Fools, Potato and Tattoo Colour songs.

On Friday my friends and I went out for lunch and shopping before renting the biggest karaoke room (filled with two black leather couches, disco balls and strobe lights) and putting on a personal concert for the next two hours. It was so much fun to spend time with my friends, to joke around, to not have to speak perfectly formal and to learn more "teenage Thai". We sang lots of songs that I know the words to and others that I don't. I wrote down all the songs that I didn't know and I've made myself another CD to add to my growing collection.

Though I noticed before, it has become much more clear to me that almost 99% of all Thai songs involve some sort of romance, in which someone walks away broken hearted. You cannot hear a song without hearing "sia jai" (broken heart) or "kid teung ter" (i miss you). It is even less common to hear a song without "i love you" weaseled in there in some form of conversation. Thailand is a country of sappy love songs - period. Another thing I noticed is that Thai people (or at least my friends) don't feel compelled to sing in key at all; if they can't sing in the key of the artist, they sing in their own key.. WHILE the artist is singing as well. They have wonderful voices, Kate and Klao having the nicest voices of any Thai person I know - but that doesn't mean so much when it sounds completely off. Sometimes I have to hold back from covering my ears.. not that my singing is anything to be proud of.

"I wanna eat you up" - BoA