Welcome freshmen!

This past Friday I met up with my friends Ian and Ryan, two teachers from Phuket, and we hit Bangkok hard. It was their first night in town.

I ended up drinking too much and almost missed my first of three three-hour classes, but I made it on time with one minute to spare.

The rest of the day was an uphill struggle against time and my dehydrated brain.

That was until my last class when a group of my oldest students (30s) invited me to a ceremony after class, honoring the incoming freshmen into the law program here.

Of all the things I’ve done in Thailand, this was one of the most spectacular, almost solely because of the company and the interaction with their culture. Afterwards, we were all treated to an insanely fun and delicious banquet.

In this picture, we’re all holding part of a white string that’s passed around and held as a gesture of connection and solidarity.  

The Buddhist culture here places much importance on group unity and group happiness, which really contributes to the overall well-being of Thais in general, I suspect. Ceremonies and gatherings always place focus on the group and making sure the group is satisfied and happy, and if a member isn’t, the rest of the group intervenes to take care of it. It’s warming and is missed in America.

Here, a monk presided next to an ornate religious bouquet, and was the focus of the proceedings. Behind him, an emcee led a long Buddhist chant. At this point I felt rather exposed and vulnerable in my otherness, but still happy and overwhelmingly honored to be a part of this experience.

Back in Bangkok, Ryan and Ian were getting their plans ready for the night, but I was happy to be there, experiencing the amazing ceremony.

After the ceremony, lockes of white string that are barely seen drapped over different branches of the bouquet were given to the teachers and administrators, including myself. At this point, students walked around and chose teachers and administrators to have bracelets tied, as a show of appreciation.

During this part of the ceremony the student kneels before the teacher and holds out his or her wrist. The teacher then takes one of the strings, which has a small knot tied in the middle, and gently rolls the knot along the arm of the student three times, one each for health, success and good luck, and then ties the bracelet. They’re worn until they fall off and I still have my one bracelet a teacher tied to my right wrist. Again, it’s an honor for me and I wear it proudly.

After the bracelet is tied, the student deeply weis the teacher, who responds with a wei.

From there we walked over to the banquet section and took our seats.

I was invited to sit with my English 3 students and before long, the food came out. I was baffled by the quality and size of the fresh fish and noodles brought out. This had to be a two or three pound fish, fried whole and swaddled in a stir-fried aromatic mixture of garlic, chilies, cilantro, lime juice, lime pulp, mint and bean sprouts.

We also had a whole steamed fish that recieved a similar treatment.

After dinner, one of my students gestured over and showed me a full bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label he’d been hiding in his back pack, and I could tell by his probing expression that he was more looking for recognition that I knew my whiskey and understood how luxurious this display was. It was rather amusing and when he asked me if I wanted some, it was all I could do to contain my excitement by casually accepting the small amount he poured over the ice in my glass.

Not to be out done, another student across the table produced a bottle of Hennessey V.S.O.P. and before long, everyone was enjoying some fine brown liquor with their Pepsi.

During the meal, I was struck with one of those now familiar and awe-inspiring moments where I grasped everything around me in the context of where I am and what I’m doing, but I just can’t believe it. It’s a moment where nothing makes sense and everything makes sense.

Am I really here? Is this really happening? Of course it is! Look around, that which you’ve been fantasizing about for almost two years is happening right in front of your eyes!

It’s always dramatic and profound, and I love it. When the feeling strikes, It lets me know I haven’t taken any of this for granted.

The karaoke machine cranked up and nearly everyone there had a crack at it. I’ve developed a confidence for public speaking and crowds don’t bother me, but the thought of singing in public produces mind-boggling anxiety and I just couldn’t accept the offer to get up on stage, and to this day I regret it and feel somehow like I let down my hosts and students, but I won’t disappoint again.

Before long, when the crowd had dissapated substantially, I said goodbye, gave a deep wei around the table and left in a taxi back home.

The next day we left for Kanchanaburi.

Day to Day.

I’ve more or less settled into a nice routine here in Bangkok and I thought I’d share with you guys who were curious about the rote day-to-day experiences I have.

6:00 a.m. -the alarm on my phone goes off. At this point, when looking at the snooze ‘menu’ on my phone, should I select the up-and-at-’em 5 minute snooze? The semi-responsible 10 minute snooze? The slightly gluttenous 15 minute snooze or the I-might-get-fired-if-I-select-this 1 hour snooze?

Change of pace.

I’ve really enjoyed writing a sort of serial account of my first experiences in Bangkok and beyond, but I’d like to move into shorter and more frequent accounts of my day-to-day activities. From this post on, I’ll try and update as close to daily as I can. For this post though, I’ll give you a little pictorial narrative of my Nai Harn Beach experience and then just fast forward to ‘now’.

Since I arrived in Phuket and settled in at the All Season’s Resort…

Phuket, via Surat Thani.

Naturally I dozed off maybe half an hour before we arrived at the bus transfer.

Still, I didn’t know there was going to be a bus transfer…

Our urban leviathan pulled off the freeway and wound through what turned out to be the outskirts of Surat Thani, a coastal town on the western side of the “brain stem” peninsula. It’s here that many people take ferries to Ko Samui, Ko Phangan (home of the legendary full-moon parties) and Kao Tao.

On to Phuket.

I spent the rest of the day and night in my cocoon, going over and over in my head exactly what got me sick or if it was just the shock of being in a new country after such a long trip. I was still very much disoriented from the whole experience and there’s no telling how it affected me. I can’t imagine coming here for anything less than a week… you’d be recovering the entire time.

After a fistful of Imodium and some Pepto tablets, I fell asleep, hoping to wake up early to catch a bus from Bangkok to Phuket, where I trained for my teaching job. I slept better this time and was grateful for a continuous, uninterrupted rest.

Where am I again?

I woke to the soft sound of increasing movement in the hallways outside my room.

The guest house was waking up. People shuffled to the communal bathrooms. I heard soft conversations about the previous night’s adventures, the day’s plans and the like.

It was nearly pitch black in my room. There were no windows and no lights, not even the omnipresent glow from the diodes of my blinking cell phone or the ‘charged’ light from my computer. It was weird and foreign to me. I knew there was light coming in through the crack under my door but I couldn’t see it because my bed abutted the door jam.

It was 11 a.m. and I’d slept for about six hours. It was light sleeping again and I had several vivid dreams, although I can’t recall exactly what they were about.

My head hurt and my stomach and muscles felt raw and grated. I had made my first significant tactical error during my soft invasion of Thailand. I ended up drinking nearly the entire fifth of Sangsom, a local Thai whiskey, I purchased the night before as we walked around the neighborhood. In my jet lagged state and pulsating adrenaline rush, I sipped and sipped while my eyes consumed all the neon-lit debauchery and big-city adventure from the night before, until the only thing left in the bottle was a slim quarter-ounce whisper of the brown, sweet whiskey.

Waking in that state is awful an any environment, and here I was, still mentally distorted from the time difference and in a huge city I knew nothing about, feeling completely in over my head.

I rolled over and laid face down in my pillow, letting the air conditioning wash over me as I mentally prepared myself to get up, drink some water (bottled), put clothes on, open the door into the assuredly-blinding light of the hallway and stumble down to the communal bathroom, that peculiar blue-tiled sanatorium that I hadn’t yet investigated fully, e.g. toilet/shower situation. I felt dread and was almost paralyzed about venturing out in my state, and was disappointed in myself for making such a blunder the night before.

Turned out I drank all my water the night before. So I had nothing to drink and I was still apprehensive about the prospect of gulping down mouthfuls of shower water… Now I had to go to 7-11 again to re-up on water. Already there were two empty one-liter bottles of water in my room and I was painfully aware of the fact that I would probably amass a collection of more empty water bottles in this country than I had my entire life up to that point.

The light was just as blinding as I’d anticipated. What I didn’t anticipate was the fact that the hallways and stairwells were not air conditioned, and immediately I started to sweat. The bathroom was empty and well kept, which was nice, so I took a stall and was reminded, yet again, that I was in a foreign country and would be getting used to new norms.

This was the moment I was able to place the image with the guidebook description that “small showers are usually provided in restrooms around Thailand.”

Well, “small showers” prompts a rather vague image, at least to me, and what I found was more like a small hose connected to the fresh-water line that feeds into the toilet. No toilet paper. After using the restroom, one uses the hose to hose one’s self off where one would have used toilet paper. Incidentally, I got myself and half the bathroom soaking wet when I went in for my first attempt. Since then it’s second nature and if I ever build my own house some day, I’m having one installed. Seriously.

Fresh with a shower and a new change of clothes, I hit the street, relieved I didn’t have to hump my pack with me the whole time either. I could have eaten at the hostel’s nice restaurant, but I wanted to sample some street food, so I headed off down Rambuttri.

Looking behind me, a view of the front of my hostel:

The semi-quaint, brick-paved road ends when you cross the main road about a hundred meters away, and beyond is the more traditional, madly-dense and nonsensical arrangement of all the apartments, shanties and other structures that make up the greater Bangkok skyline. Street vendors glutted the sidewalks and it’s along these sidewalks where nearly every Thai enjoys their meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The vendors differ wildly in their offerings, but there are themes and patterns that begin to emerge after a little exposure. One common style of vendor food is from the portable cart, either propelled by motorbike or bicycle, that offers a few select items, whether various meat satays (chicken, pork, beef or seafood bits or whole fried fishes) or meat-and-dough balls skewered and waiting for the small deep fryer or wok of heated oil.

Another common street food vendor is the one outside a small commercial kitchen that occupies a storefront. Out front, on the sidewalk, the kitchen has churned out food for a “buffet-style” spread, where anywhere from three or four to as many as twenty different items are available, all pre-cooked and waiting to get scooped on a plate. This is usually where the most variety is available, but I’ve also heard they’re also the easiest ways to contract food poisoning, because it’s in these quasi food troughs that bacteria flourish, where food is often left out for potential customers for hours at a time, without refrigeration.

This photo doesn’t do any justice to the actual flavor of the dish, but this was an extremely delicious meal of minced pork (basically ground pork), garlic, chiles, basil and lime, all stir-fried together and heaped on steamed rice, with a half-fried egg to go along:

I sat at a small stainless steal table and tucked in, adding heaping spoonfuls of fresh, raw green and red chiles and a little fish sauce for salt.

An older Thai gentlemen sat at a table across from me and basically stared at me the whole time I ate. I must have been either infringing on some nuanced Thai etiquette, or I looked funny, or something.

I finished eating, asked how much the meal cost and she told me 40 Baht, even though the sign said 30, but I wasn’t about to haggle after I’d already eaten her food. I walked into the street and as I continued on a severe cramp wrenched through my stomach. I looked around for a bathroom, of course not seeing any blinking restroom signs or anything and booked it for the hostel.

I spent the rest of the day writhing in my bed in between dashes to the restroom…

My first full day in Bangkok and I was sick as hell.

Into Khao San Road.

Already I’m sweating under the straps of my pack, my jeans are rolled up and beads of sweat are forming on my forehead and upper lip.

It’s 1:15 a.m.

The legendary Khao San Road is looming before me, in its neon dirge and Western/Thai trappings.

Nearly everyone I see looks drunk – with alcohol or travel adrenaline – stumbling back and forth across the street, to Pad Thai vendors, bars and trinket stalls. The Thais are sober, however, and their eyes flash with opportunity.

Tuk Tuk? Taxi? Where you go? You want discotheque? Spicy discotheque? Lemme show you!

It’s a line they repeat hundreds of times a night. Trolling thousands of tourists every hour for an over-priced taxi ride for a visit to one of the seedier cultural experiences pervading the Bangkok night scene.

I had no other choice available in my entire existence at that point but to wade into the madness.

I reached up and shoved my thumbs under my pack straps, creating a wedge of space that momentarily cooled me off as hot air passed over the drenched patches of cotton. I simply started walking.

Blankets were laid out on the street with trinkets and bootleg merchandise like braided bracelets, little Thai-inspired carvings and knickknacks, to leather goods and ‘replica’ sunglasses and handbags. Vendors negotiated with the foreigners over these goods, and since then, that’s probably the most common scene I’ve seen since arriving, which is growing quite unfortunate.

Neon lights, fluorescent-tube street lights, torches and various candles lit the way. Indiscriminate hollering, laughing, thumping bass and the ubiquitous din of hundreds of animated conversations in as many languages provided the soundtrack to this experience, while a characteristically urban mix of street food, beer, damp garbage and piss contributed to the olfactory experience. Rounding out this sensory overture was the sweating, and unceasing perspiration tagged along the rest of the night, like so many feral dogs following a dish of noodles.

Still, it was a pleasurable experience, because I’d made it. After more than a year I was finally walking through that part of Bangkok that I’d dreamed about. Each step forward was one step deeper into this new foreign chapter of my adventures and what better place and time to start than in Bangkok at 1:30 in the morning amid all this chaos?

I had finally made it.

I wanted to find a place to stay for the night so I just walked on, making mental notes of the signs advertising rooms for rent. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to start asking some of the tourists where they stayed, if they liked it and how much their rooms were. The first two had a northern English accent and were too drunk to understand, so I thanked them and wandered on. I saw two other guys haggling with a Thai and they sounded American and more coherent than the last two so I asked them, but wherever they were staying they didn’t like, so they suggested somewhere else and essentially dismissed me.

Well, I’ll just stumble into something, I thought, and just kept walking. I got to the end of Khao San Road and took a left, without really any reason. I walked past what may have been 50 shuttered market stalls, with their steel curtains drawn to the street and the craziness therein. I passed an alley lit down its length from the light of several open doors, with a few Thais closing up shops and cleaning a few odds and ends. On the other side of the alley looked like a pleasant side street (soi) with people walking back and forth, so that’s where I went.

People from the United States would inherently be skeptical of walking down such a narrow alley in a foreign country in such a huge metropolis, but I can not stress enough how pacifist almost all Thais are because of their Buddhist religion. If anything, Thais I’ve met are a little intimidated by foreigners and are especially non-confrontational when unprovoked. (That being said, beware the provoked Thai).

Walking through the alley was actually a pleasant experience, and many of the Thais were surprised to see me walking through, and what could have been a sketchy experience was instead one filled with smiles and many pleasant sawaddee ka! (hello!)

I stumbled around the outskirts of Khao San Road for about thirty minutes, passing through an agreeable street named Rambuttri Road, a brick-paved soi with many hip and alluring bars, restaurants and hostels. It looked like it might be overpriced, so I continued on.

After finding non-vacant hostel after non-vacant hostel, I went back to Rambuttri Road and resigned myself to the fact that I should splurge on nice digs the first two nights in a foreign country, to settle down, reacquire a normal sleep schedule and establish a home base for exploring.

So I chose my hostel like I chose Thailand as my destination. It seemed like the most fun out of the bunch.

The Sawasdee House (Sawasdee is another spelling of the Thai word for hello, which phonetically sounds like sa-wa-dee-ka/kap) seemed the best bet, with a really hip lounge/restaurant as its lobby. I past a guy and girl sipping beers at a table and they recognized me from walking back and forth and smiled and I smiled back and mumbled something about giving up and finding somewhere to put my bag down.

The lady at the front desk told me she only had a double bed with A/C available for 550 baht, which is about $16 USD, so still not bad, but I was kind of hoping for something in the 250-baht range, but I think that was not going to happen without reeeaally searching around, which I was tired of doing at that point.

I paid for two nights, that night (morning) being one even though it was almost 2:30 in the morning at that point and the next, with the plan being that I was going to make my way down to Phuket on check out day. I went up stairs, put my pack down and surveyed my room…  Basically a whitewashed cell big enough for two single beds with about three feet of room at the foot of each bed. The opposite wall had a counter that ran the length of the room and had a TV that didn’t work. But the room seemed like it had a relatively new coat of paint and the bed furniture looked new and the A/C was pretty powerful, so I threw my pack on the other bed, put my key in my pocket and headed back down to the lobby, passing the communal bathroom just off the stairs on the way down – a blue-tiled affair that looked more like a sanatorium than a bathroom, but it was clean.

I knew there was a 7-11 about a half block down Rambuttri so I decided to get a liter of Chang Beer, my first beer since coming to Thailand. I saw the couple sitting at one of the tables and asked them if there was any time that the Thais couldn’t sell alcohol and they just sort of chuckled and said nope. I purchased my liter of Chang for the equivalent of a little more than a dollar and the nice cashier offered to open the bottle for me, a gesture sorely missed back in the States.

Having somewhat broken the ice with the couple from before, I asked if I could join them and they were happy to oblige. It turned out there wasn’t any sort of romantic interest between the two and they had only met each other the day or so before. I can’t for the life of me remember her name, but she was a wild German girl on vacation for a few weeks and the guy was from Jackson, Wyoming, on the other side of the state from the snowmobile lodge I worked at this winter. His name escapes me as well.

We decided to get up and explore a bit, so we strolled around the neighborhood for awhile, drinking beers and talking about our travels (I had little to offer as far as travel stories go, so I was content on just listening to them…).

At about 5 a.m. we decided to make our way back to the hostel, and that night (about an hour before the sun rose) before I bunked down in my cozy, frosty bed, I felt an ominous stirring in my stomach, but before I could diagnose anything, I drifted off into a fitful sleep…

Finally… the time has come.

The night before I left I finally felt a new sense of anxiety. I still felt the usual pangs of doubt and fear of poor preparation, but the anxiety had transformed instead into a strong urge of finally wanting to go and that impatience of waiting that precedes the trip.

After more than a year and a half, I was packed and ready to leave for my trip to Thailand.

I slept light that night. One of those sleeps where you’re in and out of consciousness, where dreams blend with thoughts and you’re not really sure which is which. Eyes flutter and you lose sense of time. Excitement and adrenaline flourished where sleep should have.

That lasted three hours before my alarm went off. At 4:15 a.m. I got up and noticed my father had already been awake, presumably to make sure my alarm clock did indeed go off.

After some last minute double checking, I got my pack together, hugged and kissed my mom and left with my dad for the airport. Saying goodbye to my father was really difficult. Over the month that I’d been home we’ve shared some truly awesome experiences and adventures together and saying goodbye then was like saying goodbye to a best friend.

I couldn’t begin to tell you how lucky I was to end up with an exit row seat from Orlando to Atlanta (a two-hour flight) and from Atlanta to Seoul, South Korea (a 15-hour flight).

I’ve never flown better than I did on Korean Air. The seats were roomier, we all got whole Korean meals, any drinks we wanted and a great little entertainment system for watching movies and all that, like the good ‘ole days of American air travel.

It really became glaringly obvious how much standard American airlines blow compared to their foreign counterparts.

The meals were fantastic too: a traditional Korean bibimbop with crumbled pork, shitake mushrooms, bok choi, some other goodies and rice, which is served separate. Our second meal was a pretty standard chicken and rice dish with some crazy vegetable that was really hard and looked kind of like a thick bone… Third was a small but tasty fish and rice dish with a mix of lightly pickled veggies, all tossed in a sort-of fish/oyster sauce. Simple and characteristic of “airplane” food, but still tasty.

I wasn’t as lucky with an exit row from SK to Bangkok, but I had my row all to myself and was able to lift up the other arm rests so I could stretch out and nap.

As we approached, the view out of the airplane window of this most foreign of countries looked not unlike the view of any American city I’ve seen at night, but I knew similarities would end the moment we touched down.

The airport in Bangkok is beautiful and ultra modern, and extremely convenient for foreign travelers and was, by far, the nicest airport I’ve been in so far.

I exchanged about $290 USD for just under 10,000 Baht (pronounced BOT), and to give you some reference, a pretty delicious standard meal runs about 40 baht, or just more than a US dollar.

Going through immigration was a little tense for me, but only because I was worried there’d be some bureaucratic SNAFU with paperwork or something that I didn’t bring or whatever, but it went relatively smoothly and I passed the time in line talking to some girls from Canada and England, who were about to begin a backpacker trip around Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

After a brief wait in line for a taxi I was on my way to Kao San Road, supposedly the city’s most notorious and infamous packpacker destination and a popular jumping-off point for many foreigners.

The ride in was somewhat pleasant. We had the vast eight-lane-wide highway mostly to ourselves as it was after midnight. The taxi driver was a nice enough guy – pretty young and energetic for his shift, and he tried his best to make conversation but we couldn’t understand a word either was saying, which I just chalked up as the first of countless such experiences I was bound to have on this trip.

I began to notice that Bangkok isn’t necessarily a full-on metropolitan city with booming skyscrapers, but more a densely packed sprawling place, where city planning and consistent building codes haven’t made their way in. However, that invariably lends a place a hard and strewn-together charm, character and an informal historical record of buildings built upon buildings, powerlines strung across obsolete lines that haven’t been taken down in decades, streets winding through shanty towns and business districts alike as creeks wind through a marsh – seemingly with little forethought and reactive to spontaneous need.

The Thais are the craziest drivers I’ve ever seen. They put more focus and concentration into their route than I’ve ever seen from an American counterpart, including myself, but they seemingly obey no traffic laws. It’s every man for himself and lane lines mean nothing, traffic lights mean nothing but they’re more careful in their wild pursuits. By far, the most popular vehicle in Thailand is the motorbike, or scooter, and they swarm just about any street in the country, sometimes with as many as four passengers on one bike. There are no child safety seats on motorbikes, so parents just hold them in their laps as they speed around cars and buses and through bustling markets. I got a sense that it’s sink or swim when learning to operate any vehicle here, and while one might think there’s a steep learning curve, I don’t think there is, because it seems driving, or operating a motorbike, is a skill taught since day one, as children aren’t relegated to the comfort and isolation of an air conditioned car seat. They’re front and center day one, experiencing the madness and learning the nuances of Thai driving before they know their own alphabet… It’s admirable in a way.

Now off the interstate, we began to pick our way through the various districts of Bangkok, most notably through Chinatown and a sprawling flower market which was still in a frenzy of activity despite the hour.

We wound our way through several blocks, around countless roundabouts, crossing into oncoming traffic more times than I care to remember on our way to this Kao San Road, supposedly the seedy Mecca for the western backpacker.

And there it was… bustling with so much activity the entire road had been closed off to motor vehicle traffic, and nearly a hundred taxis were lined up along the perpendicular side streets. My taxi driver couldn’t take me any further, so we got out, I hoisted my backpack on my shoulders, paid him 450 baht and struck out onto Kao San Road…

Thailand trip postponed until May 11, 2009 :(

It seems my plans of going to Thailand crumbled about a week before my initial Sept. 4 departure date. A ticketing debacle with Delta delivered the crushing blow that caused me to postpone my trip. After I made the decision to pull back my departure date, I published a ‘note’ on Facebook so everyone in my network could see what happened and why a majority of them would be surprised to see me when I should’ve been overseas.

Hello everyone,

Many of you know I was scheduled to leave the country on September 4 to move to Thailand, where I was to teach English. However, in light of certain, sudden, almost-insurmountable events, I’ve decided to postpone my trip at least one more year.

I’m more focused and dedicated to traveling and teaching abroad for a long-term duration than ever, but all the obstacles that have recently presented themselves made me realize that more time is needed to find a better opportunity.

The few people I’ve already told this to are definitely surprised and some are even a little angry, but while their support is really appreciated, I’m definitely not whimping out or canceling my plans altogether. This is purely a postponement of my plans.

As far as where I’ll spend the interim, I’m not really sure. There’s a chance I may come back to Jacksonville for a few reasons, but there’s also a chance I’ll stay here in Orlando, or I may move somewhere else for the meantime. When I figure that out, I’ll let you all know.

Take Care!

I realized after receiving confused/angry/questioning feedback that I wasn’t specific enough in my explanation…

I guess I should have been more specific when I published the last note about why I was postponing my trip.

Basically, I’ve been experiencing a ton of problems and some severe misscommunication between myself and the company I was going to teach for. They failed to provide some critical documents I needed to process my work permit through the embassy here. I found out a few days ago that I would have had to make a few border runs to get the situation resolved, which would have been okay, but I would have been training and working while doing that… in a foreign country… that I’ve never been to… where I don’t understand the language… It would have been doable, but a HUGE headache. That was one factor.

The second, and most critical, was due to a problem with my plane ticket. My ticket was purchased using my sister’s frequent flier miles. When we got the ticket (back in May), I never established a return date because they couldn’t schedule out to April of 2009, which was when I was coming back for brother’s wedding. Since there was no actual monetary value associated with the ticket (because of the FF miles), and because there was no return date established, the Delta computer program that arranges the ticket formatting “assumed” my ticket was for one way and formatted it that way. I found out two days ago that not only could I not change it back (they’re booked through July 09), but that I would have had to have bought a one-way ticket back to the United States from Thailand just to get inside the country. Basically, I would have had to have blown my entire savings for the trip just so I could get past the airport. That’s why I didn’t just go there and travel around a bit like some people have suggested.

So now I’m just going to take a little time off to better plan and prepare and to save some more money before trying again. So no, I didn’t “puss out” Kris. This trip called for a significant commitment and change in lifestyle and when those problems were discovered, it just makes more sense to back off and re-strategize. I have all the time in the world and like I said before, I’m more committed and focused than ever to go and make this dream happen.

Well, that still didn’t assuage some of the more persistent critics who thought I just cancelled because of nerves… so I wrote another note explaining that I’d rescheduled my trip:

May 11th, 2009 is when I cash in my rain check for the training program in Phuket, Thailand, which I recently had to postpone because of some critical mistakes I made in the planning process.

Surprisingly, quite a few people thought my predicaments and subsequent postponement of my trip was a thinly veiled ‘punk out.’

However, the moment I knew I wasn’t going this time around, I immediately began to make plans for the next go-around, which I confirmed this morning will be May 11th of next year.

I have to take responsibility for all the problems I encountered the first time though. My buddy Kris pointed out that I’d be on a plane in a few days with no worries if I’d have stayed on top of the situation, which I obviously didn’t do.

Now I have until May to make sure I have all the logistics figured out. I’ve already paid for the TESOL certification program so it’s game on once again. And this time, I can’t afford to make any mistakes.

Thanks to everyone who sent messages and posts about concerns or questions about this situation. It’s nice to know you guys are concerned, interested and supportive of my endeavors. It means a lot.

So now everything is right in the universe with my plans to travel and teach abroad. It got hairy there for a minute, but it’s actually much better in the grand scheme of things that I postponed my trip. The most important is that I’ll have more time and energy to focus on my brother’s wedding, which is scheduled April 25, 2009. Before I postponed my trip, I was to fly back from Thailand for the wedding, then fly back afterward, which would have been pretty aggressive travel and no doubt grueling. Now I get better plan some Bachelor adventures and I’ll be able to enjoy the wedding much more now that it won’t be fresh off a round-the-world flight.

So in the mean time, I’m thinking about catching a job at a national park or at a ski resort or ranch or something… to that end, I’m currently browsing the CoolWorks.com Web site. Check it out or let me know some suggestions for some cool jobs I could take before May of next year!

Homeless!

I just spent two grueling, sweat-soaked days packing up/throwing away all of my stuff in my apartment and as of 6 p.m., I’m officially homeless.

From there, I leave the cleaned-out apartment (HUGE weight off my shoulders) and head on to one of my favorite sanctuaries: Books-a-Million (as a substitute for Borders which I prefer). Apparently they charge $3/24-hour wifi connection, so I’m writing this offline before I get to Jesse’s place. Yeah, I’m kinda cheap…sometimes… this time at least.

::save your smack Andrea::

It’s kinda funny I come to Books-a-Million to read a book a friend gave me a few days ago. Maybe not, but I can’t get enough of this book: “Let’s Go: Thailand”

Apparently, the Let’s Go line is supposed to produced better travel guides than the Lonely Planet pantheon, and while I’m not at all versed in the travel genre or have any real experience, I’ll take my friend Ashleigh’s word, because after all, she bought me the book and vetted it with her own first-hand experiences.

There are several entries in the book she highlighted, that she recommends I pay special attention to, one of which being the place I’m probably looking forward to the most.

Ko Tao (Ko means Island in Thai) is a small island north of Ko Samui and Ko Phangan and is the smallest and less developed of the three, and I’ve seen amazing pictures that, combined with Ashleigh’s glowing recommendations really pique my interests even more.

I’m reading this section very intently, imagining the journey from Ko Samui to Ko Phangan probably via a decent sized ferry and from there to Ko Tao via something cool and slow like a sailboat or a small long-tail boat. I have a feeling a slow sunset passage from Ko Phangan to Ko Tao will be a highlight of the trip itself.

From when I dock I’m envisioning a Thai meal and a hike up a dirt road to some bungalows for the night, not before a few beers of course.

We’ll see. I’ll write a post with what actually happens when I get there.