Funny Moments

These are some funny things that we've seen/experience that we've written down so we didn't forget: [Believe them or not]

1) It all started with the Bangkok airport, we weren't sure where customs was and when we found it we weren't sure which doorway to go through. We asked a man where we are supposed to go and he asked "do you have anything to declare?" and we were like "umm i don't think so?" and he waved us through the "nothing to declare" door with a big smile on his face.

2)Paying 20 Baht for a tuktuk to drive us all over Bangkok for an entire day, and all we had to do was walk into jewlery and tailor shops and act interested in their products every once in a while so he would get a gas voucher from the shops.

3) Going to see the food market, and seeing all different displays of meats covered in flies with a woman sitting behind it with a stick and a plastic bag tied to the end- shooing them away but actually only shooing away 1/20 of them.

4)Walking into a tailor shop, and having people running up to you with measuring tape, measuring you and holding up fabric colors against your skin, cutting the fabric already, and telling you what you want to buy.

5) Random guys in the street saying "I love you, do you love me?"

6) Walking on the beach and a woman coming up to you, brushing the sand off your feet and poking at your toenails trying to give you a pedicure.

7) Tuktuk from Patong to Puket Town (20 min drive).............400฿
Private Mini-Bus from Suratthani to Phuket Town (4.5 hr drive)...........150฿
Private Mini-Bus from Malaysia to SuratThani (over a day)..............400฿

8) Jessica crashing a motorbike within 5 minutes of having it in her posession [but she TRIED to ask for lessons and he told her its easy and she doesn't need to learn]

9)"Special Finish" Ladyboy Massages. [leave that one to the imagination]

10)Walking down the road and having monkeys, iguanas and hawks put on your shoulder/arm while youa re not paying attention and then trying to charge you money.

11) Buying amoxicillin over the counter, no prescription needed - 2$

12) Someone trying to sell their husband to you for 20,000฿ (about 800$ CAD)

13) Meeting a drunk Australian guy who got a tattoo that took up his entire chest, completely shaded and completed in one night (including the breaks he took to walk back and fourth to the bar to have drinks with the tattoo artist) [i thought you weren't allowed to have ANY alcohol in your system?]

14) A whole family on a motorbike (3 kids)
....new record....2 kids, 2 infants, mother and father.

15) Man with no shoes, shirt or helmet on a motorbike with 3 live chickens.

16) Man with basket of laundry and 2 bird cages (with birds inside) on a motorbike.

17) Coming home to our neighbour weeding our garden and a man cutting down our tree [because it's a bad luck tree?] Then being slapped by our neighbour and told to thank him.

18) Meeting random Thai people and them knowing your name, the street you live on, and the fact that you are a vegetarian.

19) Funny night noises: Geckos, Dogs, Cows, Autistic Boy howling, carpenter singing and working.

20) 9 Year old boy driving his motorbike to go get a slushie and driving back one handed with the slushie in hand, when the shop is houses away from where he is.

21) Random people 9that you've never given your phone number to) calling you to practise speaking English.

22) Offering your phone number to co-workers or new friends and them pointing to their phone and saying "Oh.... have already"

23) Getting a text at 12:30a.m. [see SMS blog] for instructions on your new job that you start at 9:00am the next morning and then showing up to the job and being stood up.

24) Tuktuk with 14 people in the back and 4 sharing the front seat.

25) walking in the park and having teenagers come up to you askin o have their picture taken with you.

26) A sweater that has Bob Marley/Rasta colors, a weed leaf, and the playboy bunny on it and kids wearing it overtop of their school uniform on rainy days to private school. [And every student has the sweater which lead Jessica to believe for the longest time that it was a school uniform sweater]

27) Being tricked into going or interviews.

28) Mail showing up on a motorbike and having him stick it in your fence (even if its raining)

29) A Thai guy saying "Take your hat off, because you will lose your hair and a ghost will stay with you"

30) Airplane stopping on runway because they forgot someone and 2 men wheeled a ladder up to the airplane and they climbed in and the plane kept going.

31) Being told the day before (and sometimes if you're unlucky...the day of) that you have the day off because its a national holiday.

32) Getting an SMS saying that you have people expecting you to be somewhere in 30 minutes.[see SMS blog]

33)Sun bathing in the corner of the driveway because its the only place you can find any sun out of view of staring neighbours.

34) Needing our official documents to go to Malaysia and spending 2 full days searching for the lady with them only to find out at 9:30p.m. the night before we leave that in fact "the paperwork is in the tree"
( she left them in the tree outside of her language school on a busy road for us just to miracuously KNOW they were there? )

35) Having to leave the house early because there is chinese swirling dragons blocking the roads downtown.

36) Having 18L bottles of water delivered to your house because your neighbour ordered it for you.

37) Not even needing to go to the store because if you wait long enough a dickie-dee like bike will drive by selling : ladders, brooms, ice cream, various salads, soft drinks, coffee/tea, blankets, mats, hats, vegetables, fried noodle dishes, a built on barbecue with variious assorments of BBQ'd meats and shishcabobs, clothes, lawn ornaments, fruit.....etc

38) Monks at a temple asking for your phone number while smoking cigarettes and joking around/horsing around and hitting each other with a broom stick.
[they are supposed to be sacred people that you show respect to and cannoct make eye contact wit, cannot smile at, cannot touch....etc...]

39) Coming hoem to a man fixing the ceiling light in our bedroom, standing on two of our chairs...STACKED....because we dont have a ladder. And then him charging 200฿

40) Being fed "vegetarian food" by the director of the school, served with cows milk. Take a bite of the "tofu" only to bite into tofu stuffed with pork, cooked in fish suace with pieces of shrimp throughout it.

41) Being asked to come to a parent teacher meeting but ONLY to show you face so the parents can see the foreigners. Then during the assembly where the director is giving a speech representin the school and its goals and morals....he calls us up to give a speech with NO warning or time for preparation.

42) Bus driver falling asleep at the wheel.

43) getting a 10% pay reduction with no warning, explination or reason and then being told that if we do a realy good job this semester, that we will get a 10% pay increase at the end of the semester.

44)NO CONFIDENTIALITY
a) sitting waiting in the waiting room to discuss getting cosmetic surgery with a doctor and a nurse comes out and puts a gel on my nose in front of everyone in the waiting room to freeze my nose so he can go ahead with the surgery a.s.a.p.
b) receptionists asking you whats the matter when they have their friends sitting with them, or when there are other people at the counter they ask over their shoulder so you have to say it through a crowd of people/
c) having a doctor tell us to sit down in the chair which was at his computer which had an x-ray of a mans chest and all his personal information beside it. Then he looks at it and hovers his pen over the affected area and diagnoses it in front of us to himself.
d)Pharmacy havign people walking around looking at things and the pharmacist askign you whats wrong and speaking loudly explaining what you have to do and saying it extra loud and slow because we don't speak Thai well so they say it over and over and EVERYONE hears.

45) Driving the motorbike home from a friends house witha flower pot full of soil, a fish tank, a dust pan and a garbage can.

46)Doctor not showing up for a hospital appointment with you.

47) Dentist overhearing through friends about Jessica's lawsuit with laser clinic and giving her the money back for ehr retainers that he made inocrrectly.

48) Employer telling our friend at 11 p.m. the night before that he has to do a 30 minute speech in Thai in front of an entire school of students and parents.

49) Given a french cirriculum to teach to high school students that says "des animaux et des hommes" (the animals and the men?) because it was written by a Thai person.

50) Your employer calling your friends telling them to drive you to work tomorrow an hour away and to wait for 2 hours while you teach and bring you back so she doesn't have to worry about arranging a drive for you.

51) Fake braces being in trend because it makes you look rich if you have money to buy braces. [Fake braces $30]

TGIF?

It's Friday? God. What my Friday nights have become?

Anyways,
my appendix (or lack there of) is doing good! I can walk around a bit now! =)

Happy Bridal shower to Donica and Kev!!! LOVE YOU GUYS

I think I am going to quit from the school, because our employer never pays us. (did we mention she's a disorganized freaka zoid? see below text messages......)

My armpits are also coming along nicely. they don't hurt anymore, but still have scars-- had my second meeting already and nothing came of it yet. the next meeting is August 27th, and I am asking for 550,000 baht (about 15,000$) -- I doubt they will give it, but UGH i just want it to be over already.

okay gotta run- reffa will be posting a series of hilariuos stories that we've been keeping track of for your entertainment shortly.
xoxoxoxox!!!!!!!!!!!

appendix A

had a SUUUPER bad belly ache all night Last Thursday night, and on Friday morning when I tried to eat I was unsucessfull... I just kept throwing up! I went to the hospital and got my blood taken, passed out a few times, got wheeled around on a bed and threw up some more and then a doctor said I had acute apendicitis! Mom called me back (like every 5 minutes) because everytime I talked to her I said I had to go or else I was gonig to get sick, and I asked her to look up all the symptoms (afterall I am still in thailand..... I wanted to make sure they didn't just want to steal my organ or something) and sure enough!

2 hours later I'm in the OR! My appendix was 10 cm, and it should've only been about 2-3 cm. YIKESM I spent Friday and Saturday very high in the clouds on morphine and am now on bedrest at home for the week recovering.
feeling much better now than friday!!!!!!!!!!!

Fumes

Today around 5pm they were fuming out the school, to kill bacteria because of the H1N1 2009 virus that has now reached our town.
I had to go and get Jessica's camera [for evidence]because she left it in her desk and we have a meeting at the court tomorrow regarding her lawsuit. We show up at the school and there are 3 kids waiting for their parents still. They are complaining about someting stinking and I said "yeah smells bad" and kept going. then I come across three teachers and tell them i forgot something and need to go get it. They ramble off in Thai to go quick..... And I go upstairs and it was like walking into a burning building. I actually thought there was a man putting out a fire, but he was just spraying this smoke stuff out of a machine that came out in a dark greyish blue cloud. The man with a gas mask turns and looks at me then looks back at the hall hes spraying. I hold my breath and run through it and grab the camera and run back out.
Nobody warned me, I just thought i had to go quick because they wanted to lock up and go home.

haha

lol

Funny SMS messages from our employer over the last few weeks:

"Please provide resume and certificate for me tonight. The school prefers all documents to government tomorrow. But I should be approve first"
[Meaning the government wants all my documents tomorrow morning and my employer needs to "approve"....meaning edit]

Our employer opened a massage parlour and I get a text message...
"Today you can come to use Thai massage service at soi 16/1. Only 10 percent will complete"
[so they will only do 10% of a massage? The places is 10 percent completely being renovated? like what does that mean??]

My employer asked me to teach french at a school, in between classes at my school i teach at now. she was saying that its beginner and that they don't know any french and that it will be easy and even she could do it.
I prepare all kinds of things that i considered beginner french...fun things, games, made flashcards etc... I get a text message at 8:21 the morning of the day I start....
"The cloth is the lesson that you teach in high school France subject today. It is meaning the students already finish lesson and you will be review lesson. If you have class in that time you should be inform Richard or Scott to replace your class"

"TuongWit (name of my school) will start at 10:00am today."
Class normall starts at 8:20 and i get the text at 8:43.....meaning I was already at school for 25 mins when i get the text.

"You will teach today from 1-3p.m. today at Mompasa School. Pratom Class" [How old? how many students?What do their parents want them to study?Do i need to prepare something or do you have someting prepared for me?etc...]

"I informed Director of school about your education. Now you are learning at open university and will graduate soon"
[which isn't true????]

wish I had more.

just a few pics =)

I have a few random pictures to post if you'd like to see! :)

one is a random beautiful rainbow that was in the sky clear as day, but it hardly showed on the camera! gorgeous.

another is our kitties, snuggling up for a nap.

one is me in krabi !

one is the huge scorpian in our garden YIKES! neige (the white kitten) was playing with it.... so we killed it ... poison!!!!

and the final one is our crazy neighbor, par. I came out of our house and looked around the corner and there she was, sitting on our wall (god knows how she got up there?) and her autistic son leaning over her side of the wall. sooo strange.

haha

love yas

Buhddist holiday!

We have three days off- effectively a 5 day holiday including the weekend!! I WAS going to go to Koh Pangan but then our employer PL decided to ONE pay me for a fourth of the correct amount of hours, TWO only pay us for one of our two positions with her and THREE give us a pay reduction of 25% on the small bit of money that she actualyl did give us. UGHHHH THAILAND IS SO FRUSTRATING! she didn't even TELL us about the pay reduction she jut left our money with a letter saying we are paying you this much now instead of this much, and then she spent the past week avoiding calls, texts and confrontations. UGHHHHGGHHH in conclusion, i got paid ONE HUNDRED dollars (approx) for an ENTIRE month !!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lol kinda funny i guess, I was supposed to get about 500 (low this month because i had a lot of time off work for daily hospital visits) ahahaha oh it's so frustrating. I think I'm done with this school soon--- reffa is putting up with it, she has more patience for things like this- I would rather make changes. I might move to an island to take up exercise on the beach and volunteer work with animals full time... crazy?

No what's crazy would be if I stayed in Surat Thani. I don't like it here, I want a BEACH.

I'll keep you posted.
My second law meeting is next friday (the 16th), I think I will accept the offer just to get it overwith. Life is cheap in Thailand (no really.. it's only 60,000 to have someone killed.) I'd rather have a small bit of money than a bullet in my head!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

get low

might be a low on one of the many highs and lows of being away from home, but i'm so homesick!!!! i want canadaaaaaa

happy canada day. =(