Full days

This past week has been just as full as the last (and, fair warning, this entry is full of photos). Monday was Marie's birthday so all of us gussied up and headed out to the sky bar (the State Tower, google it for some photos; I didn't have my camera with me). Perched sixty four floors above the normal dirty and busy Bangkok, we were able to just look out over the city and the river… holding the most expensive gin and tonic I have ever had. This marks the first time that I saw this city as stunningly beautiful. It was definitely a good way to begin the week. Classes. Evenings spent dining and talking. Then yesterday, Kelly, Andy (another Fulbright Researcher) and I went to Ayutthaya. The getting there was quite the process. Kelly and I left the dorm around 8:30 and walked to the skytrain (BTS) and rode till the end of the line. We thought that we would then be able to walk to the bus terminal. We were bit hot, and confused and slightly lost, using our Thai skills to ask random people where was this hidden bus station. Finally, after wading through a collection of vendors, we made it to a bus terminal. Bus stations are normally pretty crazy places—a lot of activity, information, and noise. Hold that thought in your mind and then put everything into a language you cannot understand. There were signs representing 100 different booths on each of three separate floors. Finally some kind man at the information desk pointed us to the ticket booth for the bus to Ayutthaya. Once Andy met us, we bought the tickets, jumped on a bus and for 50 Baht were headed out of the city.

Now, I don't like being incommunicado (incommunicada?). Probably the most frustrating thing about living here for me is the fact that I cannot communicate like I want to, if at all. The overabundance of signs that I could hardly attempt to decipher at the bus station was a disheartening way for me to start this day. This is why when I heard French across the aisle from us, I switched seats to strategically place myself in a better position to eavesdrop, or maybe join in. After an excited 5 minutes of listening to a conversation that I understand, I casually turned and asked the three ladies where they were from. The one who spoke up said that she was from Marseille and threw the question back at me. When I responded with "La Louisiane" I got the sounds that that one aunt makes when she sees you for the first time in 5 years. The woman explained that from my French (all one sentence of it) she had thought I was from France, but that she has heard so many good things about Louisiana. The other two ladies ended up being from Lille (!) so we all chatted on and off for the whole ride… it was such a nice change of pace to have control over the language I was speaking.

Our arrival into Ayutthaya was low key; the bus just pulled on the side of the road and let us off. We were then swarmed by tuktuk drivers in the style of what my mind feels is similar to the seagulls of Finding Nemo going after a crab. We ended up hiring one for the day to see the sights of Ayutthaya. It was a good call as things were pretty spread out.

Everything was beautiful. The weather was slightly overcast, drizzling every now and then, which is almost always preferable to the heat. You kids back in Louisiana and Arkansas might be having all this "gumbo weather" and "kite-flying weather," but here it's like August every day. It is disgustingly warm most of the day, then maybe cools off toward mid afternoon when a thunderstorm breaks through. So the need to pull out an umbrella on occasion is a welcome respite from the heat. Our tuktuk driver would pull out the map and his postcard pictures so we could decide where to go next.

To quote the guide book: "From 1350 to 1767, Ayuthaya was the cultural center of the emerging Thai nation. Throughout Ayuthaya's domination of central Thailand, Asian and Western foreign powers eyed up this strategic city and successive Thai kings had to foil coups and play foreign powers off against one another. But the river defenses were unable to repulse persistent attacks by the Burmese. After two years of war, the capital fell; the royal family fled to Thonburi, near present-day Bangkok, and the Burmese looted the city's architectural and religious treasures" (LP 716).

What we saw ended up being a good number of ruins, Buddha statues, and chedis. Unfortunately, many of the names of the different wats escaped me, but I'll do my best to label what I can.

This is what we saw upon entering… a large wat that has been restored. It was lined with Buddhas and trees.

We climbed to the top, as we did with most things.

We continued wandering around that area for a bit, then headed to Wat Phra Mahathat. There, we wound our way around the mud (which sometimes involved balancing on ruins) to see the Buddha head engulfed in roots.

The ruins themselves were beautiful in their own right and the overcast setting matched the feeling of a sacked city well.

Onward to Phu Khao Thong, a white temple that provided us with a view of the city and the most strenuous climb of the day.

The climbs are always worth the view.

Then we paid a visit to the monument for a King whose name I do not remember but will call the chicken king for the moment. The most common offering for this king is, in fact, roosters. His monument was surrounded by them! Here is Kelly showing off one of the more fabulous versions.

Our driver then suggested we head over to one of the larger reclining Buddhas in area.

I love the faces of the Buddhas. Most of them have this mysteriously knowing smile that is so serene. I love the calming feeling that comes with it. The last stop of the day was to see the largest bronze Buddha.

We then had dinner with our tuktuk driver, carrying on very basic conversations, but conversations in Thai all the same. It felt fantastic to speak with someone and understand their responses. I learned that when he was 10 he moved from Bangkok to Ayutthaya and that he has 3 sons. He taught us some vocabulary, we bought him supper, tipped him well and then caught the bus as it was leaving. Then on the way back to Bangkok.

Saturday was reserved for recuperation and lesson planning. Today is mostly the same. I would love to go out and look at everything that Bangkok has to offer, but I feel like I accomplished a lot travel-wise on Friday and am making it just fine. Plus I have a lot of mental digesting that I would like to do. I had a wonderful talk with a friend of Amanda's family who is here. His stories went from Micronesia, to Russia, to the Caribbean, to his community college; each story seemed to have some hidden insight to my current situation. He suggested neighborhoods to wander and people to contact. His stories are sprinkled around the world, and his contacts seems to come about in the most serendipitous of fashions. So, overall, it was a magnificent conversation over lunch, one that really made me feel like I have a better understanding of being here and being in a very ambiguous state.

So now I am watching Thai soap operas and eating sticky rice and mango. They are both addicting in their own right. The soap operas are surprisingly easy to understand; that being said, they are more entertaining when we have had some gross misunderstanding about the relationship between the characters. And sticky rice (with coconut milk over it) and fresh mango is now my favorite. I'm attempting to catch up on emails and the like and will spend the evening reviewing our lesson. We have no idea of the actual English level of our students or what we'll have available in the classroom. And we've never taught before. These poor guinea pig students.