We’re moving out in the next couple days. Some will stay, some will go, but one thing that we all agree on is that Thai Mom and Dad have been amazing. On day one at this house, before we even paid or said we would move in, Dad gave me the keys and said, “You’re family now. You are like our children.” Mom raised her eyebrows and nodded with that smile that seems to never fade.

I knew that leaving this house would be tough. It’s not even the house, it’s them. It’s our neighbor, it’s the mechanics down the street that we smile at every morning we head out on our motorbikes – also the same guys that wrangled me in with Bogdan, one of our cameramen, for some whiskey tonight on our way to the market. It’s the endless smiles and Mom serving us homemade food on our patio and staying around to speak to us, even though we still speak hardly any Thai. Mom and Dad knew it would be tough, too. So Mom – speaking to me almost entirely in Thai – let me know that she planned a picnic for us. She said she would plan everything and knock on our doors to wake us up for a 9am departure. So Michael, Bogdan, and I went for it.

I didnt have the heart to tell Mom or Dad that I had already been to a floating lakehouse, but this one didnt include a private motorboat tug of the entire lakehouse out into the water from the shore, nor did it include Mom’s amazing food, or all the love. Walking across the wooden planks from the shore to the lakehouse, we were a family, all carrying food in bags and tupperware, with a Thai Mom making sure we were protected from the sun, a Thai Dad humbly making his way behind her, in front of a German, tailed by two Americans, one raise in Mexico and the other born in Ukraine. (Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt aint got shit on us.)

Before leaving Dad told us that he and his family hadn’t been there for about 20 years. This wasn’t something they did for just anyone. (Fun side note: Mom took all the cushions from their sofa and some blankets and totally turned the bed of their truck into a crash pad for us for the 2 hours drive there under the Thai blue sky, through rice fields, markets, huge temples and reclining Buddha’s, and breath-taking mountains. Something tells me she doesn’t dismantle her furniture for just anyone, either.) But as she and Dad have made clear, we are her Sons.

You can choose whichever language you desire to say it, but that’s love.

There’s something that’s been going on in this house that no one wants talk about. Even though it’s become painfully obvious to everyone including myself, no one seems to be able to verbalize this very real issue that ultimately has affected us all. Let me preface this first by saying that my intent is not to be a rude or vulgar person. But, in the midst of all that has recently gone on in our group there is something that I now know we are all guilty of.

So here’s the situation. I’m going to lay it all out there for you so no one has to wonder what’s really going on in this house. We ran out of toilet paper a few days back and even though the bathroom has been receiving a steady stream of repeat customers, no one seems to be that concerned about it. Which can only really mean one thing. We’ve all been doing it. We’ve all been using the Ass Hose. We’ve all been using the ass hose no one wants to talk about it! But you probably don’t know what an ass hose is do you? Well let me fill you in…

The ass hose, casually referred to as “The Bum Gun,” is a simple device that southeast Asia invented in an attempt replace toilet paper. While the jury’s still out as to the devices standard level of hygiene and effectiveness, it’s quite popular in Thailand none-the-less. We had joked about the ass hose in the beginning. “Ahahaha…The Thais are out of their minds. They must be crazy if they think I’m ever touching that thing.” Ok, yeah, laugh it up buddy. Little did we know that the ass hose always gets the final laugh.

Like I said, we ran out of toilet paper a few days ago.

About a week ago I had an unsettling experience that haunts me even to this day. I was riding around when a massive and sudden thunderstorm broke through the sky. Initially, I tried to ride through it but the rain was just too oppressive and I could barely see the road more than a few feet ahead. To my left there were a bunch of Thai men standing under a gazebo like structure. Refuge.

I parked my bike and stood at the very end of the long structure waiting for the rain to stop, hoping that these guys didn’t mind the presence of a foreigner. Some of the men were huddled in a semi-circle around a pile of cash and playing cards. A lot of them had tattoos and hard looks on their faces. “These are probably not the kind of people you want to cross,” I thought. A couple of the guys were in uniform, soldiers of some sort. One of the guys comes up to me and starts talking to me in Thai, motioning that the weather is shit. I agreed. Then he grabs my arm and pulls me over to where the rest of the men are standing. He insists that I take a seat, then sits down right next to me. After a couple of minutes there are four guys sitting around me all trying to speak to me in a language I don’t understand. It was making me nervous with all of those people around me, asking me questions that I couldn’t answer. This was the countryside and if anything were to happen to me, I doubt anybody would ever know. A guy drunkenly walked up, looked at my cigarette, and motioned that he wanted a drag. Hmmmm… I handed him my cigarette and he proceeded to smoke the whole thing. This was starting to feel like a bad scene from a prison movie. The winds and rain got worse and one of the nearby trees had just come crashing down. When am I going to be able get out of here?

We were on the move again. The guys walked me over to another group of men and presented me in front of the eldest one. He looked quite disturbed and emotionally unstable. I assumed that it was just a traditional thing that I need to pay my respects to the eldest of the group. So I put my hands together in front of my heart and bowed my head deeply. The man just looked at me, no reaction at all. Okaaaaaaaay.

We’re sitting back down again and the rain is starting to settle a bit. A younger guy comes up to us with a rather jovial look on his face and starts speaking English to me. We’re chatting about this and that. He offers me some beer and says something to the effect of “your happiness is our happiness” and asks if I’m having a good time. His personality was so different from the rest of the people there that initially I didn’t trust it, I thought he might have been being sarcastic, but he wasn’t.

Then a man walked up and pointed over to the smoldering fire that people were starting to congregate around. “Yeah, I see that there’s a fire there.” “Do you want to take a picture?” he asks. Then grabs my arm to try to walk me over to the fire. As I stand up, the young man with the jovial face grabs my other arm, shakes his head, and pulls me to sit back down. His expression had changed. Like there was something that he couldn’t talk about, but was troubling him deeply. WTF. What situation did I just walk into. A few minutes later the guy tries to pull me over the fire again, this time my friend makes no attempt to stop him. So we walk. The men are trying to get the fire going again, rearranging bamboo sticks and pouring gasoline on the smoking pile. I put my hands out to absorb the heat and rub my arms to show my appreciation for him bring over to the fire. He points to a long object in the fire, then runs his finger down the middle of his back. Yep, I see the vertebrae in the fire and honestly wonder what they had been cooking. In my mind I start analyzing the bones. Way too small for a cow, yet way too big for a pig. The man points again and says “hips.” I’m starting to get the worst kind of feeling from looking at those bones. “It couldn’t be.” I was freaking out, pulled a pen and a notebook from my bag, and drew an image of a cow. Point to the drawing. Point to the bones. Point back to the drawing. Look at the man’s face. He shakes his head no. “Pork,” I ask in Thai. Then the young man with the jovial face walks up on my other side and says “No. It’s a man.”

The rain had been clearing up and no more than 60 seconds after learning that there was a man in the fire, I was back on my bike heading back home. At the time none of it made sense, but the more I thought about it the more I realized what had been going on, I had been at a cremation. The men weren’t criminals or thugs. They were just doing what people do when you lose a loved one, try to numb the pain. Perhaps the man in the fire liked to gamble and they were playing his favorite game. The “mentally unstable” old man was certainly the deceased person’s grief stricken father. Still, they were able to be concerned about my well-being and help me my pick up my bike when it had been blown over by the winds. I dunno. That night, thinking about it, it made me want to cry. The idea of this foreigner just walking into something so personal and sacred and warming his arms on the fire that’s taking your son’s body away from this earth.

I had been eyeing it for awhile. Walking down the streets in Thailand, you see people with their legs knee deep in huge fish tanks. The sight looks like something out of a horror flick, but apparently this is their rendition of a spa. My curiosity for the weird never fails me. I knew I’d do this, I just never knew when.

After a glass of wine, on Pub Street, I gave my feet over to the fish in Siem Reap, Cambodia. They eat the dead skin off of your feet. It feels crazy and is so much more psychological than, I think, it is physical.

Insane!

Perhaps some people would criticize me for saying this and tell me that if I was bored that it’s my own damn fault, but those people are morons and it doesn’t change the fact that I’m still bored. This type of thing generally happens after you start getting settled into a place and start getting used to the day to day. In a lot of ways it’s a great thing. It means that we’re transitioning from tourists to bonafide locals. But still, I’m pretty fucking bored. Personally, I’m over all the night clubs and lonely bars, come-and-go tourists and dismissive nationals. So where do I go from here? Well, the good thing is that contrary to popular belief invention is actually the love child of both necessity and boredom.
We’ve done so many crazy and exciting things during our travels so far that I’m finding it hard to top what’s already been done. In a lot of ways I feel like we’re chasing the dragon. Each new day begs the question, “how do we top yesterday’s adventure?” It’s a vicious cycle.
The good thing is that boredom is a blank canvas. It often pushes people to create experiences far outside themselves, outside their comfort zones, often on the edge of the unknown. So instead of lamenting the feeling, today I am embracing it. Today, boredom is going to become the catalyst for change. I’m staring at the unpainted walls of the Sistine Chapel with a brush in my left hand, a palette in my right, and sea of inspiration swelling between my ears.

My new pet

I was fortunate enough to make my way into a tigers cage and snuggle up with him… and come out with all my limbs attached. I have been wanting to do this ever since I can remember! What better place than Thailand?

Leaving your life behind is such a liberating experience, but as my new friend Evita would say, “it is a double-edge sword”.  Being the youngest and most inexperienced of the group, it was definitely challenging to say goodbye to the ones I loved. I have never been away from home for longer than two weeks, so this has been a major growing experience. I am blessed to say though, this experience has a way of making you face your fears. I have come a long way in just a month and I look forward to seeing my transformation after everything is said and done.

In the streets of Thailand, the motorbike is king. The pavement rumbles with the roar of a million of tiny engines. Two lane roads yield to the whim of hurried drivers and makes room for four to six lines of traffic. Stoplights are a weakly stated suggestion and lane dividers, although clearly visible, barely seem to exist at all.

When we first got to Bangkok I was enthralled by the massive groups of motorbikes that queued on the shores of every major intersection. “I’m totally joining a bike gang,” I mused.

After arriving in Chiang Mai the prospects of riding motorbikes greatly increased. The streets of Bangkok had been too chaotic and riding in them would have been an almost certain death wish. Plus, there really aren’t any places to rent bikes in Bangkok. In Chiang Mai there’s a bike rental place on every other block. Once outside the city center the roads unfold into long winding stretches and deep banking turns. And thus, in this place, a bike gang is born.
We call ourselves, The Chicken Legs. And in Chiang Mai, if anybody knows anything about anything, it’s that you DON’T mess with The Chicken Legs. Cause, ya know, we’re packin’ Macs an’ stuff. Well, Macbook Pro’s to be more accurate, and the 15” version instead of the 17” version because everybody knows that the 17” version is just TOO big to carry around in a backpack. Anyway, you get the gist, we’re obviously hella tough! Ride on brother! Ride on…

Let’s take a look back to where it all started. This is a little about my life before leaving for this adventure, and how I prepared for Thailand.

Evita and I raced through AM traffic on our 100cc imperial speeder determined to make it to the school an hour before our first class started. Evita’s a well-decorated Jedi Master of ESL education, but I was rushing head-long into my first teaching experience. “Maintain the appearance of confidence,” I thought, “If they detect even the slightest sign of weakness you’re done for.” We didn’t really have a full on game plan for how we were going to run the classes and I was worried. “What if we run out of material half way through and the kids are just sitting there staring at us while we try to figure out what to do?” Despite my apprehension, Evita didn’t seemed that worried about it at all. The night before we went over our battle plans. Evita explained to me that a large part of teaching kids is having the ability to think on your feet. “Well,” I thought, “It sounds kind of like bartending or managing a corporate work group and I have experience doing both so I should be good, right? Right?”

10:55am
Make first contact with the young Ewoks. Our first class had been estimated to have 4 students, so far only two have arrived. The first student we met was Noksup, a gregarious snack-loving youngster whose pockets seem to be continuously lined with gummy candy. He’s the oldest of the bunch and despite being quite the ham is rather brilliant and unexpectedly caring.
His counter part at the moment is the seemingly aloof Onsin. She rolled into the classroom quietly, little did we know that we had just been slipped a Trojan horse in the form of a little girl. She seemed shy at first and the only intel we could gather was her name so we left it at that.

11:03am
Nogsup and Onsin suddenly spring into action and we have no idea what’s going on. They’re flipping light switches, closing blinds, messing with the AC, and generally just bouncing off the freaking walls. Then all at once they both sit down, open their notebooks, fish out their pencils and await eagerly our instruction. We were totally floored. Instead of being mischievous they were actually setting up the classroom for us. “Ok. Alright. So that’s how they operate. I think we can work with this.”

11:24am
Midway through the first exercise our third student comes sauntering through the door. A skinny kid donning thick spectacles and face mask. His name is First. Much like Onsin he doesn’t seem that interested in the new teachers and takes his time getting everything set up at his desk. “He’s probably sick,” I thought, “I feel bad for the little guy.” But then he ripped the mask off his face and slightly changed my perspective. “The kid’s a walking time bomb, I wonder if Evita has hand sanitizer in her purse.”

12:07pm { Apocalypse Now!!! }
With twenty minutes left to go we ran of material! The whole time the kids had been growing more and more boisterous, but we were able to keep reeling them back in. That’s when they played their trump card and revealed that the Trojan horse actually contained a powerful warlord capable of wreaking havoc on the battlefield, *ahem*, classroom. There was just no stopping them now. Onsin started running aimlessly around the classroom like she was chasing a ghost that only she could see. Nogsup, hopped up on innumerable bags of fruit snacks began provoking First who then starts screaming as they play fight and chase each other around the classroom. We had just lost control of the battlefield, the children have taken the high ground. I was at a total loss and didn’t know what to do. Should I start yelling at them? Am I allowed to grab the kids and make them sit down? We needed to come up with something quick. I looked at Evita, who looked back up at me with the same “Holy crap, I can’t believe this is happening” look on her face. We were so screwed.
In the end, Evita conjured up some of that think-on your-feet-ness and reeled the kids in again for one last vocabulary and comprehension exercise. I don’t really know how she did it, but I do know this: “Being an effective teacher is not easy.” I have a lot to learn, but luckily Evita’s here to help show me the ropes and ensure that I’m not run asunder by the snack wielding midget army ever again.

*sidenote: we did take the time to reconfigure our lesson plan to better suit the kids in our classroom. just saying*