Weekend in Surat

Sometime last week Wayne and I got a message from our friend Emma (who had also encouraged us to join her at Koh Phangan however long ago) saying that she and the girls with whom she’d been hanging out at KP were going camping on a deserted island that weekend and we should join. The adventurous side of me was screaming, “Count me in!” but that annoying-yet-ever-present practical side had some, well, practical questions. Does anyone have camping gear? How are we getting there? How “deserted” is “deserted”? There didn’t seem to be any answers for the questions, and Wayne’s lungs/mucous membranes seemed intent on suffocating him so initially it looked like we might gracefully bow out.

And, understandably, Wayne did (especially considering that the gender count was considerably tilted in favor of females, in that initially there seemed to be no other males on the guest list. I say “seemed” because it was, in fact, orchestrated by a guy, and he had some mates in tow, but we didn’t know this at first). Bow out, that is. But after a bit of arm twisting and ‘hush-hush’ing the practical side, I thought maybe making myself scarce for the weekend and allowing Wayne some bed rest might not be the worst idea. Plus I felt overdue for an adventure.

After school on Friday Emma and I took the two-hour minibus to Surat Thani (where the other girls live; conveniently a port city with easy access to a number of islands) where we met up with the girls and indulged in all a bigger city has to offer in the form of excellent Italian fare. As it turned out we had pretty much nothing that camping required, and were starting to worry we might have to hunt and kill our own food for survival if the island was indeed deserted. Still, we felt that if the weather held up we’d figure something out.

a little rain can't stop us from having a beach party!

But the weather didn’t hold up. I was awoken at 6 am by rain, and it was relentless. It was decided that camping would have to wait, and instead spent the day entertaining ourselves indoors. By night there was a party at the house of one of the many other farang in town, and it was the largest gathering of fellow foreigners I’ve seen in a long time. It was cool though, definitely felt the ‘small world’ phenomenon upon meeting a girl who’d worked at my school here in Thung Song and a guy who knew many people who’d gone to Dear Ol’ UVA. In a way it was almost like being back home. (Same same but different.)

 

back of a songtail

in the minibus station coming home... a monk engrossed in a muay thai match

and smoking a cigarette.

In spite of the rain I did get a chance to do some walking around/photo snapping in Surat, as evidenced by the steady stream trickling throughout this post. This weekend a fully recovered Wayne and I (and Jack and Grace, I believe) will be heading to the other big town around here (and capital of the province) Nakhon Si Thammarat, since we figured it’s a shame we’ve only seen the inside of immigration offices there.

Oh, and this got left out of my last post. A sample of Wayne’s medication:

Those Who Can’t…

Well, you know the rest. Perhaps some of you saw this little morsel on your ‘feeds (ooh… unintended food imagery. I’m hungry?) earlier today:

wow, is that really tacky? am i breaking all kinds of blogging etiquette? i’m not just quoting myself, i’ve actually taken a screen shot of my own wall? well, you see… i almost never miss an opportunity to take a screen shot. i really like doing it for some reason. and i probably would have worded the story exactly the same way, so i thought i might as well do it this way. and then provide an unnecessarily long (probably just straight-up unnecessary, actually) explanation about it.

Anyway, but that’s a pretty good summary of how my [professional] life has been lately. Teaching starts wearing on me, and wearing, and I do the whole weighing out the “It’s allowing me to be in Thailand and have this cool adventure…” against “But I’m really not sure I can do this for much longer…”, and then something kind of funny or rewarding happens and I decide to stay on the horse. I guess this post is just a collection of a handful of other images/instances that represent those revitalizing moments. Or just random funny things I’ve seen around the school.

First, a list I compiled of funny quips from tests I gave a few months ago. Most were from the “Write Your Biography” section.

• And my future plans is vet because I love animal. And when the animal die, I will very pity.
• I like banana but I’m not monkey.
• Nurse is my idol but not superman but nurses help people when people have accident.
• How to play football: The first; find the good ground. The second; wear the soccer shoes. The third; your heart must not scared. Last to do; play football happly.
• You shouldn’t forsake your homework.
• Finally I read a book about fat. So I became fat. And perfect girl.
• My interests are tennis and seafood.
• I am king and fun man.

So that was all good and fun, but then I saw these pieces displayed in the halls.

who knew chicago was such a mystical land? and home to tropical species?

‘the good lie’… i’ll put a transcript in a comment you can see if you click to see the enlarged photo.

pardon the reflection… i’m not really sure why this gets me so good but it does.

this transcription i can provide right here, right now:

mr. doobidoo,

request the pleasure of the company of

king and queen of the heatbeat island.

at the fancy party.

at 9:00 p.m. on sunday, october 31

at the mysterious voodoo of the magic island.

r.s.v.p. tel. 00-1001-999 dress: fancy

what can i say? it says ‘fancy’ twice (which calls to mind a very nostalgic reba mcentire song), and is also addressed to mr. doobidoo, which reminds me of one of my subtle but favorite parts of the jungle book (scroll to 10:00 in that video, kudos if you already knew what i meant.)

Then, of course, there are the countless things that adorn the halls and walls for inspiration, instruction, and decoration purpose only.

words to live by.

‘life is too short for you to cry. let do best thing today. tomorrow… never comes.’ a bit fatalistic but i see your point. spot the santa.

how about an entire christmas display that’s been up for the entirety of this may-september term? or the fact that david’s currently been handed the script of a thanksgiving play to get underway in the next few weeks?

and we mean it!

this, left over on the board in a classroom i stumbled into. the same classroom, actually, into which, after hearing a strange song to the tune of ‘when the saints go marching in’ overandoverandover, i peeked and saw on the overhead a lesson on ‘making a bowel/number two/pooh [sic]’. still have no idea.

or how about the latest addition to the foreign language staff room? the nap corner: for when resting one’s head on one’s desk just won’t cut it.

And, since I know you were waiting for them, gratuitous shots of the pets.

on the table cian gave us upon his departure. happy trails mr greaney! trix and ollie will definitely miss you (though as you can see, trix likes the gift).

sometimes i sleep out of my bed.

sometimes i sleep in my bed.

and sometimes i’m awake with my one floppy ear, just endearing to you to take me out so i can use your kitchen floor as my toilet and your ankles as my chewtoys.

Mother’s Day Weekend

Disclaimer: This is almost definitely going to be a very… eclectic post touching on many topics because I’ve come to accept that I can’t bring myself to post more than once a week these days and otherwise things will just get left out or forgotten. Like that video of Satree’s Sports Day I started ages ago and am at the risk of never finishing. We’ll see.

Anyway, Friday was Queen Sirikrit’s 79th birthday, which also serves as Mother’s Day in this country. This meant that the first two periods of class on Thursday gave way to a Mother’s Day ceremony (which involved some singing and a lot of talking, which I’m sure was very heartwarming and all, but since my Thai’s still in its development phase I left after the traditional dancing). And it meant that there was no school at all on Friday. Hoorayyyy mothers!

king and queen, in their youth

dancers at school

The extended weekend couldn’t have come at a better time, since my friend Carolyn announced she’d be able to stop in on her way from Koh Phi Phi to Koh Phangan on Thursday night (after I last-minute flaked on our previous arrangement to meet in Phi Phi last weekend). She was our first real visitor (that we could plan for anyway) and it was fun/a bit strange (not in a bad way) to have that contact with ‘home’.

noticed this thai ice cream man while waiting for carolyn to show up

same same… but different

being that the weekend was starting early, it wasn’t hard to rally the troops for a meal at pom’s

an awesome picture of everyone. (grace, lisa, emma, carolyn, max, cian, jack, david, michelle)

[imagine emilie’s face photoshopped in]

will never get old

carolyn was eager to capture some motorbike moments. don’t worry, we’re parked here.

turns out self-photography is tough on a bike

on a really steep hill

On Friday evening we thought it would be a good idea to try to take the pets to the park. And yes, I said petS, because I did an off-beat and potentially inhumane thing and bought a collar/leash for Trix. I really thought that including her in the outings would maybe improve her mental health, but in actuality the trip might have had an adverse effect.

doesn’t seem to be enjoying the ride too much (her first since day one)

ollie’s cool though (and very handsome in his new collar)

‘i don’t like this thing on my neck. i shall chew it.’

bet you didn’t know there was a rabbit hidden in this photo.

ollie looks hungry…

on the way to jack and grace’s for dinner that night caught some mother’s day fireworks

Saturday morning I attempted to make these. I’d been talking about it for ages and the day finally came. I… wasn’t thrilled with them, but I don’t think it’s any fault of the recipe’s. I a) realized I’d never downloaded the recipe and was going by memory, and now see that my proportions were a bit off and b) suspect that my papaya was a little funny. However, the preparation phase did involve a moment where, as expected, I was able to marvel at a likeness of colors:

wall-licious

More noteworthy about Saturday was that we finally succeeded in making it to the elusive view point. But it was worth it.

reward for all you who don’t just skim through: awesome butterfly!

Wayne and I (read: mostly I) look pretty terrible in the picture I have of us up top so… use your imaginations. The rest of the weekend was pretty chill. I need to make a worksheet before running to yoga so I’ll leave you on this note:

turns out she didn’t like the collar, and managed to do this to herself.

Oh oh oh! And Ms. Mouse Cleans House so kindly passed the “Liebster Award” onto me. I’m totally breaking the rules (hopefully temporarily) and haven’t passed it on myself yet, because that worksheet still needs making and I’ll have to give some thought to whom to pass it onto anyway. But I did want to make sure I acknowledged her kind gesture. Thanks Ms. Mouse!

The goal of the award is to spotlight up and coming bloggers who currently have less than 200 followers. The rules of the award are:
1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.
5. And most of all – have bloggity-blog fun!

Outings With the Pup

When I first gave notice of Ollie’s arrival, I said something to the effect that it wasn’t “practical for people in our situation” to have dogs. “Our situation” primarily refers to the fact that generally speaking we’re not home for most of the daylight hours, which makes playing by the rules  of “puppies should be taken out every two hours to eliminate” (that got a big ol’ guffaw when we read it on The Humane Society’s Housetraining Page) rather difficult.

And it means that dear little Ollie is kept trapped in a miserable little corner of the bathroom for said hours to prevent him from using every nook and cranny of the house for purposes better served by bushes, which breaks my heart. It really does. So we try to find opportunities to remind him what fresh air is when we are home. Last week that meant moseying on over to the park adjacent our complex on one glorious Thursday afternoon to enjoy a bit of nature ourselves, bust out the old six-string, and let the smallest member of our family-like unit show them nefarious blades of grass who’s boss.

flying bb pup

along the way made friends with the harper-like pup at “the restaurant” (the only one walking-distance from our house, and so has earned its definitive article status)

little tiger pup!

had a big day!

not during an outing, but cute shot of his ‘i can’t believe you just woke me up with your photography tomfoolery again.’ face

Saturday he got a bit of a bigger adventure. We’ve heard rumors about a “View Point” that’s on the outskirts of Thung Song, and have talked about seeking it out for weeks (months?) now, and the day finally arrived this weekend. Our friend Jack joined us, and Ollie was in tow in my Peaches tote. He did surprisingly well. I’d even go so far as to say he enjoyed it.

these were harder shots to procure than you might imagine… i really wish this one was in focus.

the littlest biking beeb

The thing is, we didn’t find much success with Thailand’s whole “signage” system, nor were we able to very well “ask” the average passerby for assistance with our “impeccable” Thai. We drove for… an hour? and a half?, lost the trail about a dozen times, randomly came across another sign or two to get our hopes up, and finally, when we found that we were far closer to Nakhon Si Thammarat than we cared to be, decided to “settle” (quotation marks actually well deserved there) on a waterfall we’d passed. (One of the many, in fact).

We’d gotten rained on just a bit before arriving, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise as is shooed some of the hordes away. We got the ticket people to change their rate from 200 Baht each to 100 Baht for the three of us (teachers should get discounts anyway but we didn’t have our work permits. Looks like our Thai can be useful after all!), and made our way to an isolated spot where we had a chance to soak in the calm ambience and watch the puppy play.

there were really fishes.

still too small to climb rocks, so the tote was employed for the entirety of the ascent

i’ll excuse the intensity of my double chin for the hilarity of ollie’s little face

a habit we should really focus on breaking… those little teeth are getting sharp.

tallest man in thung song indeed

it’s my tree in a tree

i want to submit this to the virginia board of tourism? also he stayed pretty much like that the entire way home… little snuggle bug.

elephant-ear bonanza

Both occasions ended up being a nice time for all parties involved (I think?), most notably Ollie himself. Of course, no good deed goes unpunished, and ol’ Trix (to whom, I might mention, we’d given free reign of nearly the entire house) has decided to show her displeasure and disapproval of our owning/loving another pet by leaving little bunny piles in places she knows she shouldn’t. Free reign has been withdrawn. If I wasn’t a million percent sure she’d dart off, never to be seen again, on an excursion to the park, she’d be more than welcome. Does anyone know if they make rabbit leashes?

In life news we went out to get a sofa yesterday and came back instead with a lovely outdoors table set… pretty much exactly what I’ve been secretly pining for since we moved in and where I’ve eaten every meal since we got it.

speaking of meals, wayne keeps encouraging me to blog about some of the food concoctions we come up with. i’m in support of this mostly, but i’m afraid a lot of it will just end up as, ‘we just pretty much did exactly what appeared on [one of the blogs listed in the ‘food’ section of my blogroll] except we couldn’t find this ingredient.’

OR, as happened above, ‘we were hungry and noticed we still had half a loaf of the cinnamon raisin oat bread wayne made [less the cinnamon, which we couldn’t find], a tin of tuna, and we’d just purchased cheese from tesco [not on discount as we were hoping, and we’d chosen the 18-months-aged australian cheddar solely on its merits of not bearing the obvious mold the others did]. wayne suggested i dress the tuna with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and olive oil [which, coincidentally, were the only practical ingredients we had for the task], and i made open faced melts. the raisins somehow worked with the whole thing and the sambos were quite tasty. we were thirsty and had no drinkable water so we cut up a watermelon and threw it in the blender.’ not really the most engaging or compelling food blogging but… maybe i could work out something.

Koh Phangan v 2.0

Finally! Only two weeks after our return. Because of this, I’m going to try to mince words here and just get around to posting the pictures from my disposable camera, which I photographed stuck up to my fridge with the fun magnets I bought at Target when I was home. So artsy, I know.

Two minibus rides and a ferry found us in Koh Phangan (via Nakhon Si Thammarat and Don Sak) after about… five or six hours of traveling (Also, on that map, I just noticed a Thung Tako, which I have a strange urge to check out now)? When I was here in September Laura and I stayed on a beach about 10 minutes from the main party beach, Haadrin, and we decided this would be a good idea again. Haadrin’s fun but really crazy and it’s nice to have a bit of an escape. So we stayed at Phangan Lodge on Baan Khai instead and had no regrets about it.

I didn’t pick up my disposable camera until Day Two, so our initial evening of incredible pizza and bruschetta followed by taking it easy with a few beers on the beach by our lonesomes went uncaptured, as did our morning of snorkeling on Day Two, since I only purchased the camera afterwards. We’d rented a motorbike and taken it to the north and northwest of the island, which is where the reefs are located. Unfortunately the surf was a bit choppy and we were warned that it probably wasn’t the best idea to enter. But a mix of hubris and carpe diem mentality got the best of us and we went for it. The water was too murky to see much, my cheap mask kept flooding, so I blindly started swimming in. I was to find out this is a really good way to graze the entire top of one’s foot on coral, making the following two weeks less than comfortable.

hard to see in this picture but wayne’s also injured: he stubbed his index toe fairly severely as i was in the process of buying the camera. i think we fell into the very small minority of damaged people on the island (of which there was an astounding amount) whose wounds occurred in a state of complete sobriety.

view from our lodge. the samui side of the island gets some rather low tides. very peaceful though.

it’s hard to justify flora pictures when you have a limited 27 shots, but i really liked this flower and overestimated the camera’s focus capacity

on the way to haadrin… a trek that is quite terrifying on a motorbike on account of the long, steep hills.

given the treacherous nature of the ride between haadrin and baan khai, we knew driving back after a night on the town was out of the question. but we also knew hooligans might prove hazardous to a bike unattended overnight. finding a safe place to park took some creativity, but paid off in the end.

on haadrin beach

i was inspired by some graffiti in a beachside bar, it would seem

on our way to meet a friend from thung song (well… from england, working in thung song) at the secluded haad yuan– only reachable by boat!

approaching

eden: the most secluded bar on the most secluded beach. definitely worth a visit.

well look who i found! and wearing the same wrap (different color) i might add…

impromptu twister is always a good idea, especially when the dots are painted on the floor

representing the ol’ TS

our adopted crew for the weekend

day three presented much better snorkeling conditions! saw loads of fish and three giant clams.

love driving past temples and spotting awesome monkeys hitching rides on pickups…

always fun to find a bucket vendor brandished with your name. ‘same same but better’ haha!

so as it turns out night is not the ideal time for disposable camera use, but in case you were wondering, yes, that’s a child playing with fire.

when in rome…

wayne’s little face and the namesake of the fine party we were attending

if you’re asking yourself the question, ‘why is there a cow?’ i’m here to suggest that the more appropriate question is, ‘why wouldn’t there be a cow?’

And… that’s actually the last I have of the whole affair. I guess I was too busy having my arm painted/shakin my groove thing to some crazy drum&bass/making sure to keep track of my belongings to remember to whip out my camera as often as I could have. And while many (all?) of our crew raged until sunrise, Wayne and I were the lame-o’s who called it a night at the ripe hour of 4 am. Guess I’m getting old.

Monday made for long and frustrating travels back to Thung Song but we arrived in one piece, no worse for the wear. And I still had a handful of pictures to use up so I took this gratuitous animal shot:

Oliver S. de Villionder’s Small Screen Premiere

Not wanting to have him feeling left out, I’ve bestowed upon little Ollie a mystery middle initial and solidified his sibling-ship with Trix with a last name as well. (I was going to try out Calondilliers but I thought that sounded silly?) And made him a video. Again, not without a few difficulties because of Warner Music Group’s ridiculous copyright policies (I discovered just too late there are ways around it and have committed to my replacement of the Eagles with Interpol). Anyway. Here it is:

Overdue Updates

Long story short: we painted our kitchen orange, finally got a decent bedroom set, AND (and this is a bit exciting) I’m in the process of purchasing my first vehicle!

Oooooh:

(it actually turned into a bit of an ordeal… first we ran out of paint, then the second batch we bought didn’t seem to match, but we were able to use different coats to make it look at least presentable.)

can see the contrast with the colors in the other rooms (including a little orange and blue action)

Aaaaaaah:

(before)

(after)

(14,000 baht [$470] for it all including the mattress, which was on special, and our bed was actually an upgrade as well since they only realized as they were getting ready to deliver that they didn’t have the one we’d asked for in black. shweeet! and now we get to actually sleep in the room with the balcony.)

blew up a photo i took at ayutthaya last fall for the wall. more to come!

And finally… we’re buying a motorbike! Up until last week we were lucky enough to have either Yax’s cousin or David lend us transportation. But the well finally ran dry and, as we’ve become quite dependent on motorbike transport, it was time to start looking to buy or rent one. We kind of had to make a quick decision, so when we found this for 16000 baht ($530) we decided to go for it. It seems to be in good condition (it has a guarantee and we wanted something that would be able to take us long distances; allegedly this one can) and it had an irresistible seat cover:

if tom&jerry give it the thumbs up, it’s good enough for me! (it was the icing on wayne’s cake for sure.)

black beauty, in all her glory

or, when i’m feeling a bit less PC, she’s ‘little blacky.’ (as an homage to either “true grit“, of course… racist)

Speaking of little black things, I know you’re just itching for more pics of the pup. I’m working on his video as we speak. And, coincidentally in my iGoogle “WikiHow” widget this morning was this article: How to Understand and Help Prevent Black Dog Syndrome. Apparently black dogs are discriminated against at pounds! Such foolishness.

i apologize for all of these pictures being of him sleeping, but it’s pretty much all he does when he’s not eating or making dinosaur noises.

oh there’s his sweet face. like a little bear!

But wait!— you’re thinking– What about that other… grey-er… naughty thing you have hop-hop-hopping around your house?

Yeah, she’s still around.

loves the dustpan/broom for some reason

wearing her food

this is normal behavior for rabbits, right?

I started this post a few days ago and in the elapsed time we’ve taught Ollie to drink from a saucer and an hour ago I heard I was only teaching two days this week (Satree Sports Day[s] later in the week… should be interesting). Life is good?

Shots from Around Thung Song (with an Unsurprising Emphasis on Food)

I suspect this will be a post of few words (though you can never be certain). I know a few of you (read: Mom) are awaiting a Koh Phangan post, but I went the safe route and captured the weekend on this ancient apparatus known as a “disposable camera,” and it’s the strangest thing, but one actually must wait before sharing all the photos one takes on such a device. So I’ve had these uploaded for awhile, just waiting for opportunity to strike and allow me to post them, and I think that opportunity has arrived.

Just a collection of random shots around town I’ve been compiling for the past month or so. Enjoy!

i like most everything about thailand, but i love the fruit. front left: mangosteen. front right: rambutan. back right: durian. back left: not sure!

close up of the mangosteen. a bit of a discouraging exterior, but once you get inside and reach the soft, juicy, delicately tangy flesh it’s worth it. the thai word is mankut

they may look like koosh balls but they’re a sweet lychee-like fruit known as rambutan. in thai, they’re ngoh. and notice these and the mangosteen go for under a dollar a kilo! unbeatable.

dragonfruit. these ones are a bit like kiwi (possibly from the texture provided by the tiny seeds throughout) and though they all have the same spiny pink and green skin, the insides come in two varieties i’ve seen: a more subtle white, and a shocking fuchsia that’s a bit sweeter.

everyone’s favorite: the mango. these were a gorgeous yellow, but you can also find green ones that i was surprised to find were perfectly ripe.

because children are so impressionable and do so well with sugar, i suppose it’s unsurprising that outside most schools around quitting time are all these vendors selling quirky confections. these particular ones camp out outside wayne’s school.

artsy pancakes: not just for the dutch anymore

feel like it’s fine

every night the city center becomes a night market

wayne, me, emma, and eva on our way to dinner. when in thailand…

in thung song’s singular club… the grand southern

no one ever plans to seek the shade of a broken down back-hoe trailer, sometimes it’s just the most comfortable place

pickup beds: not just for people anymore

normal

the place with free wifi near my house, you know, the one they had to name something exotic to make up for the drab surroundings

daybreak on the ranch

not a whole hell of a lot younger than some of the kids i’ve really seen driving

magazine at amazon with the tagline ‘one weekend is better than two of something else.’ preach!

Well there you have it. A post of few words and too many pictures.

Morality Camp (and… Introducing Ollie!)

Ha, I realize this title sounds like something right out of the Hitlerjugend, or maybe just something Jerry Falwell would have headed up when he was still kicking. “Morality Camp” (as it was roughly translated to me) in Thailand means kids getting to ditch school on Friday (interestingly, the Friday of their midterms) and spend the weekend at a wat (Buddhist temple) under the guidance of monks in order to learn, it seems, about morality. In this case, as I was told many times, there were actually camps at nine hundred ninety-nine wat across Thailand, with over 40,000 participants, to honor the king.

the big script top right reads, ‘gaoroi gaosip gao wat,’ or ‘999 temples’. it was a big deal. if only they could have found one more participant they would have had 1000. shame.

Because all the proceedings were, as predicted, in Thai I kind of missed out on any of the moral lessons, but I got to brush shoulders with some of the top guys in school (though, in retrospect, it seems like in my two months of employment I should have already met the director at some point?), who were all well impressed that my name translated to “angel”. Talk about morals!

I was also afforded the opportunity to snap some shots around Thung Song’s largest temple (and the only one I’ve been to in town, though apparently there are many).

king and queen, paragons of morality

healthy dog

after i took this picture it seemed like he might be undressing and i got really embarrassed… but i don’t think it was the case.

looking more moral already

this one got distracted. not setting a good example.

and this one’s on facebook: monky mcmonkerson (he’s irish-thai)

i got to snack on very moral sweet green sticky rice. and oolong tea, which i haven’t had since china!

106.5 MONK FM– all chanting, all the time

who you calling a stupa?

pirate cave

ah, the notorious symbol of morality: the ice cream vendor

All jokes aside, I was happy to attend for the brief portion that I did, and I’m sure it was a good experience for the kids. And it seems like some of that Buddhist morality must have rubbed off on me after all (or maybe I’m just a sucker for baby animals… toss up), for when a soaking wet mother dog dropped her soaking wet, eyes-not-even-open puppy at my feet (practically) yesterday, I had no choice but to take him home. Meet Oliver (named for whichever orphan you prefer [thanks David!]):

We know puppies are a bit impractical for folks in our situation, so I’m trying to not commit to the idea that we’ll keep him forever, but it’s hard to have something tiny suck milk off your fingers in the wee hours of the morning after making adorable noises without him crawling right into your little heart. Let’s just see if Trix comes around… she seems a bit suspicious.bah, still shot from a video (of course there will be a video)… apologies for the terrible quality!

The “No” Vote

When I was back home for the wedding I heard lots of muttering about meeting in DC for the Fourth of July weekend. Try as I might, I wasn’t able to convince anyone to hop on over to Bangkok for the occasion, though I assured everyone the day also existed in Thailand as well.

What I wasn’t aware of at the time was that it was actually a very important weekend for Thais as well– yesterday was a big election in which the Pheu Thai party took power from the Democrats, who had been leading the country since the former prime minister, Thaskin, was ousted in a coup in 2006. Only two months ago his younger sister Yingluck took the position of the leading Pheu Thai candidate, and as a result of yesterday’s election is now the first female prime minister in Thailand.

This post wasn’t intended so much to discuss Thai politics (if I have sparked your interest concerning them, however, check the links I’ll provide at the bottom… I’m sure those authors can do a much better job of explaining anyway) as to display some of the very striking posters I’d noticed around town. Thanks to buying a copy of the Bangkok Post for Trix’s litter box a few weeks ago, I finally received an explanation for the bright yellow posters with business-suit clad animals. They’re part of a campaign led by the pro-monarchy group the “Yellow Shirts”, who had once been aligned with the Democrats, to vote “No” in the election. This is different than not voting at all– it seems on Thai ballots there is an actual option of “No” that voters check to indicate that he or she finds none of the candidates suitable for office.

The explanations for the animals themselves are as follows:
Buffalo: Slow and stupid.
Tiger: Lazy, gets something for nothing.
Dog: Makes noise and fights.
Monitor lizard: Very bad person.
Crocodile: Troublemaker.
Monkey: Deceives and cheats.

i like this shot because you can posters for actual candidates as well. candidate number 5 is, for whatever reason, always shown behind a steering wheel. in one ad, however, he has a really loopy expression on his face and i thought it was an anti-drunk driving ad before i was brought up to speed on the whole election thing.

catching some attention in bangkok

the original bangkok post article i read, which unfortunately i can’t find online, was an editorial and made some funny points– first, that there are some animal rights groups that apparently aren’t too happy about innocent animals being compared to crooked politicians. second, that the buffalo ‘looks pretty good in that suit,’ and that if he had a number next to his picture rather than the word ‘no’ the author wouldn’t have been surprised if he got some votes.

Pictures came from the following sites:

Global Voices Online: Thailand: ‘Vote No’ Campaign
Women Learning Thai: Vote NO! Animal Campaign: Political Posters Translated (I liked this page a lot, it has some Thai political cartoons not only in translation but with a culturally relevant explanation as well.)
FACT– Freedom Against Censorship Thailand: FACTorial: If voting could change anything it would be illegal. No choice in Thailand.
New Mandala: “Vote No” Logic Flawed

Also if you’re just looking for general election information:

BBC: Thaksin’s sister vows to do her best as Thailand’s PM
NYT: Thais Back Ousted Prime Minister’s Party in Landslide
Bloomberg: Thailand Baht Rises as Pro-Thaksin Party Wins (Could be good for me! Not solely a financial article either, in spite of its title. Includes sections on “Military Crackdown” and the “2006 Coup”.)
Bangkok Post: The making of a prime minister (Not a very flattering image of Yingluck, but Yax has warned me most of the media in Thailand is controlled by the Democrats.)

So that’s the goings-on over here… hope you all have enjoyed your fireworks, BBQs, and have listened to at least a few country songs.(Haha… just found out that photo was taken in Croatia… whatever.)