The Deep Thailand!... and memories.

Hello again folks!

here I am, at Chanupatham school, in Khamkuenkaew, and I tell you they have some rituals here. Every morning first thing, they have a meeting they call: "Assembly", where every student and teacher come together in the playground and listen to some talk... first the national Anthem is played and sung, the flag raised, some praying of some sort, and then miscellaneous talk by different people about different things (what do I know, don't understand a word of it!) that takes the whole first hour of class!! and let me tell you something, it is very early that this people wake up! At 6 o'clock everybody is awake and kicking every day! school starts at 7: 30am! I found it very hard to start the day so early, not used to it anymore. But what I found the hardest was shower time in the morning!! not only is the water cold, (that was to be expected) but you have to shower with a bowl, from a water tank, bowl by bowl...!!! soo cold!!! and then breakfast! that is a story too: no coffee, no toast, nothing like that! only rice, "sticky rice" in the morning, and some strange spicy dishes that I never know what they are... fried fish, or pork... it doesn't (in my humble opinion) make a healthy start of the day! But I am getting used to it... what's the choice?!

The best thing in this experience, lets try and be positive, has been the discovery of Eli, the teacher!! I really enjoy going to class, talking to the students, even improvising!! (well, this teacher of mine surely doesn't even know the meaning of planning!). I have been talking a lot about Spain, they are interested, even teaching them some words in Spanish, "Hola", some of them call out when we pass in the corridors... they are lovely teenagers, nothing to do with scottish, or spanish! When we come into the class, they stand up and say all at one: "good morning teacher!" and stuff like that! their English is very poor, I must say, and the teaching is even poorer, I have to add... so it was easy for me to make them interested, and I think they enjoy my lessons! (when the teacher decides to leave me without notice and without a plan...). Last week a girl gave me a sweetie with the message:" I love you" on it! they are really childish, somehow...

Anyway, apart from my dear students, only my memories keep me busy at times... I will tell you more about my trip with dear Angel (and, by the by, if he has something to add or to correct, please let me know, I know you are reading me too!!). We were at Tioman Island, just after our friend Mokhtar drove us through the jungle, and when we finally got to the other side and stood in firm ground, I felt like celebrating! (I don't know, that we were alive, or something!!). And there must have been a mind reader around because just then we heard someone calling: "do you want cold beer?" and we were there in a tick! it was a bar, very friendly guys, many magic tricks (there was a real magician among them!) and we spent the evening... and the night! there, drinking and playing cards and so on... it was fun! but the next morning, hangover as we were, was time to leave...

We went to a very special town called Malacca! the experienced travelers, and the ones that like reading adventure novels about pirates, will know about it! I really enjoyed that little town. We saw no pirates, though, disappointing (maybe they were busy celebrating the Muslim New Year, after the Ramadan, on the 12th of October, if I remember right...). Luckily, we stayed in Chinatown, that was as lively as it can be (no Muslims there!, only Chinese, lots of them!!!), with night markets, food stalls, karaoke contests on the street!!!,... we had a great time, great food, walks, and the mix of cultures and religions was very interesting too: Buddhist temples beside mosques, and Chinese religions, and an old Christian church too! a place with a lot of history, that 's for sure, you could smell it in the air!

After Malacca we went to KL, busy Kuala Lumpur! The capital of Malaysia is a messy place indeed! It tries to imitate tidy Singapore but the result is a very chaotic contrast of skyscrapers and wooden huts together... it is not very special, but I like it because it was my very first stop in Asia, and I was surprised at how well I remembered every corner I passed, everything that we did in that first time. It is a very international city, where you can see clearly the ethnic mixture of Malaysia: Chinese, Hindus and Malays all together but separate (as we would say in Spain:"juntos, pero no revueltos!"). And you can find almost everything there, food wise and otherwise... but we quickly got tired of it, the pollution, the monorail, the chaos,... and decided we wanted some more beach time! at the end of the day, it was a holiday! (at least for Angel!).

We went to Pangkor Island as the summit of our adventure together! That island is a holiday place for the locals more than the westerners! and that gives it a special charm, in my opinion. It was very quiet too, but very relaxing. The downside was, maybe the water was not as clean as I would have wished... they did not seem to mind about the rubbish around them either! and it was sometimes a little bit embarrassing to be the only westerner swimming in the sea, because they all wore clothes, so I felt naked with my little bikini!!! So we opted for the more remote beaches,... and to that purpose we rented a motorbike!!!! how exciting! It was our purpose (in a joke) to do as many things as we could, that we had never done before! For me the most exciting was driving a motorbike!!!! I did it!! (only for a moment, of course, too scary!) for him, swimming in the sea at night... that was scary too, at first, because of the plankton!! (or whatever it is called) that was like loads of little lights in the water shining through!!! I got a fright! but then it was fun! we drove around the whole island and had a great time of it! The nest day did something we had never done before again: we swam to an island! it was an adventure too, took us about half an hour, I think it was about 1 km long, and we managed all right! had lots of fun swimming together didn't we?

I don't want to go on, because we are coming to the end of our trip, and it is too sad... you should have seen me at the airport in Singapore when we said goodbye... I was such a mess!! we were lucky that I found a flight to Bangkok at nearly the same time as his flight to Spain, so we were together till the last minute, (... his flight was on "last call" when he finally boarded!!), even went through customs together and stuff... well, too sad, too soon, ... but good memories....