Cabbage and Condoms

It took a while to find this place but its really lavish and the prices reflect that. Even though I was looking for a cheap vacation I decided to splurge on my last non-airline meal in Bangkok. And Cabbage and Condoms supports local PDA programs so I feel like I'm contributing to a good cause in a country where AIDS is a big problem.

They have outdoor and indoor seating, jungle and high-class oriental themed respectively. I ordered the pork cutlet with papaya salad, steamed greens and a ginger ale. The little app they give you before your meal are these puffed chips; they're seasoned just enough so it's not to bland but not too salty either.

 Like I said earlier, there are lots of articles and "condom art" around the restaurant so before I left I took several pictures. After I had left I realized the camera setting was still on food so the glass covers blurred a couple of the photos.

~Don't be a fool wrap yo tool!

The Living Place

Before I left Chiang Mai on Saturday evening, I went to see 2 Guns with my friend. This isn't a review but you should check it out if you like Buddy Cop movies.

Instead I'll be reviewing the guesthouse I crashed at ages ago: The Living Place.

I really loved this guest house.The atmosphere was amazing; both owners are abstract artists and their work is all over the place. I spaced out looking at at some for about half an hour. One of the owners also does sketches of certain guests too. Apparently he'll go out some nights and grab some extra cash doing this to fill the beer fridge and it takes him a 10-15 minutes to complete one.

Sleeping

The living place has dorms as well as tents set up inside. The dorms fit 4-6 and the tents are all one-person, if you're under 5"10', comfortably. You also get your own fan that shoots cool air right at you. I slept in a tent each night. It's like having your own room and privacy is something I always appreciate especially after a 17-hour train ride. 

Lounge

On the main floor there're are plenty of floor seats with pillows you can nap on or patiently wait for a cabbie to pick you up for any kind of adventure. The lounge also has a fridge that runs on the honour system. They've got a house guitar (which was nice to handle once and a while), decks of cards, guide books, and lots of drums. Plenty of stuff for those days and nights where you're stuck inside because of the weather. 

Trip Selection

There's lots of stuff to do in the Chiang Mai area. TLP has tons of brochures, as you can see. One of the owners selects them based off of Trip Adviser and throws out ones that dip in quality. They've got all the bases covered from Trekking to Tigers!

The People

Ari and Vi are both super cool people in there own special way.

Vi always tries to organize bonding activities at night like dinners and Thai Boxing matches in the area. He knows the city really well and can show you where the best of the best is or the cheapest of the cheap. Sometimes it works out that it's both! He's a chill guy who has a three-hour Neil Young playlist for when he paints. 

Ari is the book keeper of the two. She's significantly louder than her counterpart. She runs a very organized ship cleaning, tidying the hostel, and organizing everybody's trips like nobody's business. She seemed very hot-headed when I arrived but she's just naturally loud and excited from 10am to 8pm. 

They also have a miniature puppy named Winnie (I think) who's adorable. She's got a doberman's colouring, and big brown eyes. Bless her protective heart but she couldn't win a fight with a mouse. There was a stray kitten, or under-nourished tom it's a tough call in this part of the world, who frequented the main floor of the hostel and it was twice the size of Winnie.

Location

The place is in a prime location just outside of the old city and going the other way is the Night Bazaar. There's a little restaurant up the Soi (laneway) that serves really good curries and fruit juices. The guest house is also right by two really nice temples one of which has the super-cheap and soothing massages.

Trash and Treasure

Like most guesthouses and hostels TLP has many people coming and going, at times people will leave things they don't need because of poor impulse buys, or a lack of space in their packs. Regardless, The Living Place has a good collection of books, clothes, hats, and umbrellas and many more things. They also loan out towels free of charge.

All in all it's a great place and I'll stay there when I presumably return to the lovely city of Chiang Mai. Just a tip of advice though: watch your head on the first flight of stairs.

Full Circle

I'm back to what I would call the beginning: that surprise dinner I had one year ago Friday welcoming me and two other new teachers to the school's staff. It was awesome and novel, much like I was to them and their country to me. Now coming back full circle (see what I did there) it seems like a lot has changed, but looking back at the draft I wrote out Saturday morning it's mostly the fact that I feel much more comfortable in this environment, but I still don't know half the teacher's by name, just their homeroom.

One thing that hasn't changed is my co-teachers' willingness to not have fun at staff outings. One lives very far away and its far too much of a hassle for her to go further away from her home which is understandable. One has five-year old and a husband who was recently in an accident of some kind so she has other priorities but still makes an appearance for the dinners. The last one is a vegan so at this buffet she has two plates of salad and heads out with the other co-teacher.

Back to the dinner itself. Obviously, like the year before, there are new teachers coming into the school and all the main-stay teachers are talking to them and also saying goodbyes to three retiring teachers. Since there's a changing of the tides in the specialist room there are two tables, ten seats each, for the specialist teachers. I hitched a ride with the science teacher to the beautiful buffet spot in the richy-rich part of town and sat down with the new and familiar faces of the office. When my two CTs arrived they sat down at the other table and waved me over. It was just the three of us the whole dinner. It was really quiet because I don't like talking about work on a Friday night and apart from our job we don't have much to talk about.

Somehow it got worse. They sat next to each other and put their purses on either side creating a buffer. So I sat one spot over. Once the hellos and goodbyes were all said and done everyone went up to the buffet or to mingle. Since lunch wasn't very good I headed for the buffet. When I got back my co-teachers put both their purses on my chair! This was the biggest WTF moment of my life. I swear, I almost flipped the table. So I sat another spot over. Thankfully the food was delicious and I discovered there's a second side to the buffet. No more two plates of raw fish for this guy! They also had cream of mushroom soup that tasted just like Campbell's which put me back into a care-free state of mind.

Once dinner wrapped up the staff headed out to the closest Noraebong, the typical right of passage for new Korean teachers, and copious amounts of So-Mak. Then we went out for some more food and water. I had a really good time with everyone and I'm excited about the year to come with all the young new faces (there will be people my age in the office!). However, this was the evening where I had a lot of fun but in order to have a better time I should learn to speak Korean. Not just for staff parties but to enjoy more of Korea and, in typical single guy fashion, cast a bigger net.  

See-you-laters

Well it's been a full year and a couple days since I first came to Korea. Now some people I've gotten to know are packing and moving on from Korea.

I refuse to say goodbye at this point in my life; I have plenty of life to live as do the other people I've had the honour and privilege of meeting here in Busan. A goodbye to me is like concluding something and ending it. So I do my best not to say goodbye. For those of you who are leaving you're great people, I'm going to miss you but I refuse to believe that our paths will not cross one more time before the clock runs out. Best of luck and keep being awesome!

Here's to the nights we never remember with the friends we'll never forget    

Korean Encounters

In total there were 4, I think. The 3 major ones were ex-pats.

The first occurred when my friend and I hopped into an elevator in his apartment.
"Hey, here are some Koreans you can relate to, I'm sure." he says smiling at two 8 year old girls standing in silence.
I said hello and that I was a teacher in Korea and they looked at me like I was from another planet. Probably because I suck at speaking Korean.
He laughed, "They might be Chinese, I don't know."

Interaction number two was very brief outside a bar. Here are the Cliff notes.
"Oh I taught in Seoul for a year and then I came here."
"Cool," there was too long of a pause for me to keep talking to her so I simply said. "Well, I'm going to go get another drink, pleasure meeting you."

The third guy stayed in my hostel. He was really cool and really into teaching and pedagogy as a whole. He's been teaching in Seoul for 5 years and currently doing a Master's in education on the side. It was awesome having teacher-talk with him and discussing the Korean English Curriculum as a whole. He put it quite simply: it'd be good if it had an identity. The guy was really smart and absolutely loved Korea and the culture surrounding it.

I met the fourth person at a bar too. She had been working in Chiang Mai for about a year. She asked me where I was from and told here I was teaching in Korea. She had also taught there. In fact, she taught in Busan. Because I know I'll probably be leaving after this year I asked if she found it tough to leave. She shook her head and then went on a tangent about how she hated Korea and surprisingly Busan!
"Everyone is so into fashion and so superficial, everyone judges you on how you dress and what you look like."
Being half in the bag I couldn't give an accurate depiction of what she actually looked like. She kept yammering on and on about the shallowness of Koreans which is evident but you just accept that part of their culture, just like eating kimchi with every meal. Obviously this girl had been in a really rough spot in Busan and I asked here where she lived.
"5 minutes away from Gwangalli Beach" she said as if it could have been any dot on the map.
This is blasphemy to me. The Gwangan area is arguably the most ex-pat friendly and scenic spot in Busan. After leaving orientation my apartment wasn't ready so my co-teacher put me up in a hotel that looked out on the Diamond Bridge which is where, and when, I took the cover photo of this blog.
I realized there is obviously something wrong with this girl and have realized now that Busan isn't for everyone. Regardless, she's totally spinster bound if she couldn't meet any exciting or cool people in one of the most exciting and cool places I've ever been. In the end, I went for a burger with a bunch of people, leaving her and another guy stranded together. It only took two minutes before this guy was sitting next to us demoing a double bacon cheese.
I guess she's content in Chiang Mai, and if not, she must be from heaven originally which just doesn't make sense.

Cooking with Pantawan's Pan and Tawan.

August 9th,

After a night of shots upon shots and Connect 4 victory drinks and losing at pool drinks I was not feeling good at all the following day.

I was still up early waiting to get going to my cooking class. The slip said that I'd be picked up by 8:30. This was not the case. Pick up was at 9 so I was pacing up and down the main floor of the guest house for half an hour will one of the owners called the office with no response.

When they got to the gate I was really impressed. The owners, Pan and Tawan, picked me up in a nice van with AC and their English was spot on, no Thai accent at all. Then *we drove off to the market to learn about the ingredients we are using.

* We means the two owners and myself. The day before Pan was in a car accident. Subsequently, they decided to cut the Thursday morning class short and cancelled the afternoon class as well as Friday. Too bad for them only one person booked in advance. It made for a very awkward morning being hungover.

At the market, I learned that most Thai food contains three main ingredients Kaftir lime juice/leaves, chili peppers, and a mild type of ginger. When we got to the cooking area my breath was stolen away from me.

All the cooking stuff is on the second floor so you can look out at all the lush-green plants and the white ducks waddling around.

We made four dishes total: Panaam Curry, Pork and Shrimp Wontons, Fried Ruby Fish with Chili Sauce, and Stir Fried Prawns in a Mushroom Oyster sauce. All of them were really good. And it came with a complementary beer. Thankfully it wasn't Tiger Beer. Cooking here was a really pampered experience having Pan, Tawan, and the chef watching me chop and fry as I cradled my head in my hands and guzzled down water. After the second dish they started to chop stuff too because I was not much for small talk. All the equipment is really good and they use glass bowls so it feels like you're on the food network. Nothing got burned either. 

One problem I had with the process was I got to prepare each plate, sample it, and then we would put it on the lunch table and go onto the next dish. By the time the last dish was done everything else was cold, also if I got to eat each one after making it I would have eaten everything and not had to share. The beer made that impossible though and I brought food back to the guesthouse. Also lime juice is the best topper for any Thai food and they didn't provide that. 

I fully recommend cooking with Pantawan, they did an excellent job. At the end of the class you get a certificate (because everyone brings a folder with them when they go back packing) and an apron which now covers my bare chest when I cook bacon on the weekends :).    

Here are my meals all in one shot:

Top going clockwise: Fried Fish with Chili sauce, Stir Fried Prawn, Panaam Curry, and pork shrimp wontons. 

Half a rite of passage in Thailand

Thursday Evening,

I just like to have fun on vacation I don't like migrating from place to place, that's not a vacation for me. I have a feeling I'm covering a lot of bases in January according to my travel buddies so I'm coasting this time and my friend respected these wishes mostly because he's working through the day.

Thursday night was a great old time that brought me back to my single days of university... with an actual venue this time. We got bottle service at dinner: Sangsam liquor was $30 for a bottle and came to $40 with 4 bottles of soda water. If that's not the cheapest thing you've heard of in a restaurant, please, tell me where you live.

After dinner we were all flying high and headed down to Loi Kroh Road for more good drunken times. Since I wasn't drinking soju I can remember a good portion of the night. We went to the Full Moon bar which is associated with the ill-famed, clandestine business Thailand is known for: hookers. These were not the best Thailand had to offer which is exactly why this is half a rite of passage, because I came, I saw and nothing else.

I say that these girls weren't the best because they weren't great looking but were still overly friendly and nice. Traditionally, before these girls are put into the sex-trade they are taught to play games as a way to make money for their soon to be pimps or managers. These games include pool, Jenga and Connect 4. Friends in Busan who have traveled to Thailand have hyped this thing up to the nth degree. Being the game-lover that I am I just wanted to keep drinking and beat some hookers in Connect 4.  I went a respectable 3-2, but I'm really good. And they definitely majored in pool during their younger years. I sunk five balls in 3 games and that was it.

I went to Mike's Burgers, which is dynamite drunk food spot, and walked home from there solo because everyone else tuk-tuked to the other side of the city to their respective homes and more importantly for one, his condom supply. I decided to leave because
a) Respectability.
b) I'm not made of money, even in Thailand.
c) I think I like someone in Busan.  
d) I sleep in a tent.