What's up gang
Sorry for the extended absence.  I wish I had some epic adventure stories to share with you all, but as it is I've been pretty busy with English Camp.  So, I'll tell you how that's been going.

We left Thursday for Pattaya to spend two days teaching and playing with 6-9th graders.  (Not called 6-9th grade in Thailand.  P1-3 M1-3)  It was nice to drive though the Thailand countryside, and I got to see a lot of cool things on the way.  There were jungles and strange birds and raging unattended grass fires.  Nobody seemed to worried.

Pattaya, if you don't know, is a prime tourist destination for much of Europe.  You are just as likely to meet a Thai person on the street of Pattaya as you are a Russian, Ukrainian or German.  Fun fact, the Thai word for a Russian national is "a Mafia".  We arrive in Pattaya and settle into (what I think was) our luxury hotel.  I meet Ben, another teacher from South Africa and my roommate for our stay, and we decide to go for a jaunt in the town and get some culture.

As far as I can tell, Pattaya is known for three things, prostitutes, karaoke bars and mega-hotels.  The street women in Pattaya are veracious. (I can think of some less attractive words but I'm going to stick with this one.)  Unconsciously, I found myself following the same rules of courtesy I follow for the stray dogs.  Don't get too close, don't make eye contact and for god's sake don't feed them.  This sounds bad I know, and I do feel a twinge of something like remorse for this description, but Ben walked to close to a group of bar girls on our way to the beach an one of them jumped up, grabbed his arm and tried to pull him into the bar.

We make our way to the beach front.  I thought that our hotel was luxurious.  Little did i know that Pattaya is the stage for the world's most ostentatious hotels  On our way down the beach we walked past an outdoor cabana restaurant, a fire poi show and a water slide that went straight from your room to a floating pool restaurant. We got lost on the hotel grounds.  I felt like we had wandered onto the set of Jurassic Park.

After our excursion into Hotel Jurassic Park, we went looking for a drink, and ending up having it in a strip club.  Not that that should be any judge of our character, all the bars in Pattaya are strip clubs.  Inevitably, our drinks are served with girls on the side.  A pretty girl in red underpants named Au takes a seat next to me.  She asks me where I'm from and I tell her, "pom mah jak bratet America".  This was sort of the end of our conversation, but I was able to tell her that I only spoke a little Siamese.  The whole encounter wasn't as awkward as I was afraid it was going to be.  I asked her for a few Siamese words, and as soon as it was pretty clear that neither Ben and I were buying what they were selling, they moved on to more lucrative prospects.

Our English Camp was for students a little bit older than last time, but our routine stayed the same for the most part. Game/ Dance then quiz about ASEAN.  rinse repeat.
btw.   ASEAN is the Association of Southeast Asian Nation and is something like the EU for Thailand and its neighbors.  This is important to English teachers like myself because one of the requirements is that the population be somewhat proficient in English.
point is English Camp is where students go to practice speaking English and learn about ASEAN.

The last interesting thing of note is the Thai television show I saw the other day.  I have no idea if it was a game show or a soap opera or what, but they dressed up one of the actors/ contestants in a wig, glued a soul patch on his chin and put a big rubber nose on his face.  My first thought was, farang don't look like that.  However, I'm forced to change my mind.  In Pattaya the demographic representation of farang seems to be limited to fat old men, fat old women.  Thinking back, the TV farang wasn't that far off the mark.


Today I learned:

If you're already exotic, nothing you do or say will surprise anybody.