See You Again

"The Crew"

Somehow, my time in Ayutthaya has come to an end. It's hard for me to express all that I've learned and how I have grown in my 8 months living in this wonderful city. It is such a unique part of my life: when will I ever again live in a guesthouse where I can call down the hall to get someone's attention, rally up my friends for a BBQ mere hours in advance, or dodge elephants while running through temple ruins? My 8 months here have been incredible due to the beautiful environment, supportive friends, friendly coworkers, and the ubiquitous warm smile that Thailand is known for.

who needs a trash can?

My past year, incredible growth, and countless memories are too hard to put into words, and in my last few weeks here I have even come to appreciate the things that I could hardly stand a couple of months ago. I embrace the free trash-throwing and unknowingness of when I will come across a wonderful or horrid smell,  happily wave at anyone who states the obvious that I am farang, and even find the cuteness in the mangiest and scariest looking dogs. The lack of information allows me to use my imagination, and wait in anticipation until I find the answer at the last second.

wearing the Northern Thai scarves Mon gave us after
he drove 6 hours to bid us farewell

But it's the people here who have really done it. My 8 friends, or as we call ourselves, "the crew," have been the lifeblood of my time here. From long weekends on paradise islands, to all getting sick together, to barbecuing in the rain with weird hats, to cramming as many of us into a tuk tuk as possible, the experiences we have shared are more than I could have ever imagined. Apart from my friends, the people of Ayutthaya have been incredible as well. My favorite food vendors, namely the Salad Ladies, who know my family and apologize profusely if they don't have my salads, and the roti couple, Nat and Nung, who have made us lunch and accompanied us to moo kata. Of course my coworkers, who have disciplined children, understood our frustration at the lack of communication, always have known when to  offer smile when we're ready to ring a student's neck, and the most touching, when our friend from last term took the day off work to drive 6 hours to say goodbye to us. And even though I give them grief: the students. Especially this past week, for telling me how I actually did make a little bit of a difference in their education, the never-ending hilarity, keeping me on my toes, understanding when I couldn't take any more of their shenanigans, and always offering me a smile.

Ayutthaya will always have a special place in my heart and I will never forget that anything can be fixed with a deep breath, a mai pen lie attitude, and, of course, a smile.

my incredible students

long weekend paradise trip

elephants heading home

being the only farangs in a club isn't a bad thing...especially
when the Thai whisky is plentiful

one night in Bangkok

food adventures are often the best adventures

my first Thai festival

smiles from everyone--especially lady boys making coffee--will be missed

Thai Cooking Class, Sky Bar, and Khao San Road

Erin and Jai ready to hit the market

I can't believe the weekend has already come and gone that my friends and I have been planning for months. We decided that one of our last weekends in Thailand we should take a Thai cooking course, so we can actually go home with some knowledge of the food, and go to the world-famous Sky Bar.
We began our touristy day at 9 AM at the Silom Thai Cooking School. The class began by taking us to the market and educating us on Thai ingredients. The essential Thai ingredients are extremely fragrant, with lemongrass and mint basil being my two favorites. There are a lot of ingredients that fall under the "essential" ingredients category, which means that if you don't have that ingredient, you can't make the dish. For some dishes there are only two or three essential ingredients, for some there can be 8 (curry pastes). The other ingredients are protein (tofu, shrimp, chicken), fillers (vegetables like tomatoes, mushrooms, beans), and seasoning. It was nice to learn about what actually goes into my food, as I eat out almost every meal and have next to no idea what is actually going into it.

essential Thai condiments: fish sauce, coconut
milk, chili sauce, and condensed milk

After the market we were whisked away to the cooking school, which is adorably decorated by the incredibly flamboyant and sassy owner. Though most of our cooking consisted of throwing in already measured and cut ingredients into a wok, it was great for me to see how much sugar actually goes into every Thai dish (literally all 5 dishes we cooked contained sugar), and the joy of stirring hot oil around for a few minutes until magically all the delicious ingredients become one into a tasty Thai dish. We made tom yam goong (spicy shrimp soup, a Thai favorite), green curry paste, green curry, northern chicken salad, pad thai, and a very odd dessert that I will most likely never make again (it consisted of cutting up Thai turnips, soaking them in dyed syrup, coating them in tapioca, and then eating them in coconut milk). The prep work for all of the dishes was the longest part, and actually cooking the dishes only took about 2-5 minutes. It's no wonder street food is ubiquitous and so intrinsic to the culture: just have the ingredients prepped for what you know you're going to make and then whip it up when someone orders it. At the end of the course we got a cookbook of about 30 recipes, which I cannot wait to take with me to my local Asian market and make dinner for my friends and family.

Mike and I crushing chilis for the green curry paste

first Thai dish cooked: tom yum goong

Khaosan in the deserted morning hours

Once we had sufficiently stuffed our faces, we headed down to Khaosan Road, Asia's premier seedy backpacker street. I had never been before (which is fairly odd, as it is generally where budget travelers stay), and was glad to finally see it. It's a fairly short street filled with restaurants, bars, tattoo parlors, suit tailors, hostels, and lots and lots of shops. I stayed on the street parallel to Khao San in a single room that looked like it was straight out of a horror film. I knew I was only going to spend about 2 waking hours in it and it didn't have bed bugs, so I rationalized that you're only young once and that staying in a bare-bones room is all part of the Bangkok backpacking experience!

hostel? or insane asylum? 

Our day after cooking consisted of shopping, getting hair wraps, and then realizing that we actually only had about 45 minutes to shower and reconvene before heading to the Sky Bar. Obviously, we were not able to get there on that time frame, but we were able to get to the 64th floor of the 5-star Labua Hotel just before the sun went down. The bar is famous because it is the highest open-air bar in the world, and a couple of scenes of the Hangover II were filmed up there. The views were truly breathtaking. Bangkok is such a large sprawl with skyscrapers and high rises all throughout the city, as there is no downtown area. The bar itself is quite funny as it is just one small circular area beyond the dining area. The roof of the building is huge, but the bar-goers are confined to a small area. You have to walk across the dining area, but you are not allowed to stop on the steps or just outside of the indoor dining area to take pictures even though there was no one there. Though I felt a big claustrophobic at times squeezed between people around the bar, when I was able to get to the glass edge and look out over the city and the river, it really was magical and worth my $20 cocktail. It felt nice to get dressed up for the first time in months, though I did feel out of place knowing that I did not want to spend much money and that I would be returning to Khaosan Road promptly after for a cheap night out.

people crowding around the small bar at Sky Bar

When we got back to Khaosan around 9, the street had completely transformed. The racks of clothing that had only peeked out of stores now only left a small passage in the middle for pedestrians, the number of food vendors had tripled, and there were more than enough people to keep every vendor in business. Thinking back on the road earlier that day, it seemed like a ghost town. There were numerous seedy bars blasting terrible pop music. My friends and I found ourselves at a live music bar that played all the hits, including Zombie by the Cranberries (I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but Thai people LOVE that song. They all know the words. Just another example of how Thailand is a couple decades behind), before some of the taller gentlemen in the group got a bit rowdy and we decided (okay maybe they were almost escorted out) to leave for an establishment that would be more welcoming to our dancing and jumping. Thankfully, next door there was a club that served just this purpose. We danced the night away both on the incredibly crowded dance floor and the stage, that later in the night featured people dressed up as robots. But Matthias was the real show-stopper: towering at least 6 inches above anyone in his dandelion button down shirt and doing classic movies such as the sprinkler admist the rowdy, twerking backpackers.

Matthias (in his yellow shirt), me, Ben, Mike, and Jai at the Sky Bar

The next morning we all reconvened at 11 on the abandoned Khaosan Road. We could not believe that just 6 hours earlier the street was packed, and now the vendors were only beginning to set up shop. I am glad that my first experience on Khaosan was with my Ayutthaya friends (or "the crew" as we call ourselves). I am also extremely excited to be returning to the grunginess in a short month when my friends from university arrive...mainly so that I can get another hair wrap.

Bangkok and the Chao Praya River from the Sky Bar