Most people do it with a long bamboo pole, but if you’re cool

then you have a monkey to fetch you coconuts out of the tall trees. I was leaving to run some errands and looked over at the neighbors –who are usually doing little more than drinking whiskey- and I saw this monkey sitting on the back of a motorbike. The guys who, of course, were drinking, told me it was their friend’s monkey and that it was trained just for climbing up trees and throwing down coconuts. They sell the coconuts for a Baht a piece. As for the monkey, it looks like he gets meals and free rides on the motorbike but no whiskey.

Safety inspections are unheard of, and if you think there's worker's comp...

...then think again, my friend. Those are the tops of some tall trees below them. One slip and it's over. And if you think their pay is worth it, these guys probably get paid less than $150 a month.

No more teachers, no more books

Today is the last time I will be teaching at Buakhao High School. The last time I will sign in, the last time I will forget to sign out. The last time I'm daydream during the national anthem, the last time I'll chit chat during the morning prayer.

Here are some pictures from my last days at school. Random shots of different students in different classes.

WalMart's got nothing on the variety and super-low prices of our Sunday Market

If you need it, they have it at the Sunday market. Mats, bags, sticky rice holders, baskets. Soaps, detergents, blankets, pillows, sheets. Brooms, mops, twigs (i still don't know how the sellers find people to buy twigs.)


Shirts -used and new- , uniforms, fashionable hats, bracelets, amulets and muumuus.Footballs, whicker takra balls, shuttlecocks. Fermented fish sauce, meat on a stick, fresh rambutans, pineapples, coconuts and mangosteens. Karaoke CDS, pirated movies, the hottest new Mor Lam or Big Ass.

Plastic junk, metal junk, junk food, knock-offs, rip-offs. And the traffic is chaos: bikes, motorbikes, tuk-tuks, songthaews, tractors, trucks, semis, taxis.

A example of the large range of foods I consider "meat on a stick", these delicious "meatballs" skewered three at a time are some of my favorite. More specifically, the green and yellow ones that don't appear to be exciting at all. For 10 Baht (a quarter) you can get a stick and if you buy two, that's good enough to fill you. In Thai we call it "luuk jin" but that roughly translates to "Chinese pieces" or "Chinese balls" so Dimsum works just as well.


I'm not a big buyer at the market but I love to walk around and see what the stalls have to offer. Just a small glimpse of the strange items available every Sunday morning, here are some from this last weekend:

This T-shirts is a great example of the endemic English problems in Thailand. The mistake with the "R" is only the addition of a single line but with it, it just doesn't translate. Though we can figure it out "COMRANY" just isn't a word. There are hundreds of mistakes like this, and most are even worse showing sentences without verbs (happy cloud sky rainbow wonderful!) or incorrect grammar that confuses the entire meaning (I miss you not forget when I smile.)

This shirt is a plain example of another type of entertaining shirts, the ones that despite their understandable English, are still confusing. "I saw Mrs. Body-X kissing Mrs. Body-X." Who Mrs. Body-X is I don't know and I'm pretty sure I'll never have the pleasure of finding out. Further, this T-shirt appears to be a knock on "I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus." What that has to do with the mysterious Mrs. Body-X I don't know...

A DVD in the "CENTURY" series, the Donald Rumsfeld episode looks good, promising excitement with a random building exploding as background to Rummy's furrowed brow and pointing finger. I didn't shuck out the 99 Baht to become the lucky owner of this documentary but I'd say its cover is a fair image of foreign opinion on our leaders.

Thai Girl Scouts aren't called Scouts and they don't sell cookies

They're called Girl Guides although I'm not sure who or what they're guiding. Still, they had a great overnight camp I was lucky enough to tag along on, and here's some pictures from the two day camp:


It was a five minute drive to the forest wat where the camp was being held, but all the girls had to walk the scenic path, through the woods and over the river into the back entrance. It was more fun this way but the heat was overwhelming.


Half way down the trail a large Buddha image rested under a tin roof. The Girl Guides each helped to clean the white image. While sitting around quietly, a heavy wind knocked a huge branch from a tree and it landed directly behind a large group of girls. It was one of those moments everyone is so shocked by what nearly happened that they just look around to make sure everyone else saw what just happened. Then we just moved the log-sized branch and the girls continued to clean the Buddha.


The final test to enter the forest wat was to walk across these semi-stable bamboo poles. It wasn't so hard (only one older teacher fell in) but I was scared because I had my camera along with me. I didn't mind getting wet but my camera wouldn't have made it out of the water alive.


After lunch it was arts and crafts which in Thai translates to making baskets out of magazines. They told me the baskets were normally made from strips of thin bamboo, but for some reason they were weaving magazines cut in to strips instead. Eiter way, I thought basket-weaving was just a joke but here it's taken pretty seriously.


Some down time at the camp, the girls just being themselves.


One of the games we played was a chopsticks and ping pong ball race. They do these differently in Bangkok, but here in Isaan they are G-rated and still entertaining to watch.


Another game played that I didn't quite understand. I know they had to all fit on the mat together without touching the ground, but there were no winners and losers. I suppose it wasn't really a game then, it was just an activity done for fun. Either way, it's amazing how little Thai kids often care about winning or losing, and instead are happy to just be having fun.


These lovely girls are from my best matayom 4 class. Like the rest of the campers, they were cooking their own dinner over the fire, entirely unsupervised. It wasn't a big deal, but I imagine at home that when Scouts go camping there's more than enough supervision making sure no one does anything remotely dangerous. Here, the teachers all left the camp to shower at home (it was only a couple minutes drive away) while the kids cooked their own dinners alone.

Driving down the road I passed a farmer

who was holding up his cow's tail in the air and peering into its ass like he was looking for an important letter in the back of his mailbox. Turning my head as I passed by I then saw the farmer picking something out of the cow's ass with his bare hands.

I don't even know what else to say.

Foreign Camp with Donut and the B-Boys of Isaan

It started out as Foreign Camp 2006. I argued logically for it to be called English Camp 2007, but in the end I was only able to get the year changed to 2007. English was the only language being taught so “foreign” wasn’t an appropriate title, but by the end of the weekend I realized that aside from language, there was plenty foreign or alien or strange about our camp.

My advice with the title was all I could do to help with and the rest of the camp was left out of my (or the other falang teacher’s) reach. As such the booklets handed out at the beginning of the camp lead with this introduction:

Do you always speak English with you teacher in class? Smne say yes someone say no. Actually you want to speak English in class but you learn English in Thai . It is quite hero for you to b able to speak god English. The Foreign Camp 2006 is organized for students to brush up listening speaking skill and to be confident in using English when in class with your teacher fluently. All the activities provide opportunities to speak English as mush as possible. English is not a monster, Don’t be afraid.

I will say that I post this with some apprehensiveness. These mistakes in themselves are the reason why we were never asked to help edit the writing. No Thai teachers want to ‘lose face’ by finding out that their English is incorrect. So this incorrect English was then printed, passed out to every other teacher, student, and guest and thus the ‘losing face’ was somehow averted even though the readership of this paragraph jumped from 1 to 500. It would be very embarrassing and uncomfortable for me to confront anyone about these mistakes. It would be handled with a fake smile and quick white lie to exit from the conversation. So, now, in my bringing these errors to light, I have caused the writer of these words to lose face, and for that I am sorry. However, it is we the English teachers who also ‘lose face’ by having allowed this English to be printed. It would have taken no more than a couple minutes for us to fix the simple grammatical mistakes in the above passage. Instead this paragraph and a heap of other bits of English, small and large, were left with less-than-perfect grammar.

So in that sense, Foreign Camp was just that: Foreign. I rarely knew exactly what was going on, where I was expected to be and when. Several times students would bring English to me asking what it meant, and I would look at the jumbled mess of a bad translation and have to say, “I don’t know.” A girl ran up to me asking what the direction that read, “put high the arm left shirt” meant. You can imagine my confusion.

But the lack of correct English aside, we did learn that English is not a monster and we did have a great time. On Saturday our groups of campers rotated between 10 different stations playing English games. I was designated the “melodies and gestures” station (Brenda taught “wonderful poem” and Hale and Taraneh taught “enjoying quiz.”)

I understood “melodies and gestures” to mean: do whatever you want. (In these English camps all the teachers and students want to do is have fun. Often times they will stick the falang with something no one else wants to do and keep all fun games for themselves. If you stick with the lame game you’re given, all the kids will have fun at the other station and roll their eyes yours. If, however, you do whatever activity you want and try to have as much fun as possible, you will later be congratulated for you fun station.)

So, melodies and gestures aside, we played “I love you but I cannot smile.” It’s relatively simple and really has very little to do with English despite saying that one sentence. All the students stood in a circle. I explained to them that laughing and smiling was then forbidden. One student stood in the middle of the circle and went around to the now straight-faced students, one at a time, trying to get them to crack a smile or laugh. When a straight-faced student is being taunted, he or she can demand to be left alone by saying, “I love you but I cannot smile.” The taunter must then move on to another student. Students that did crack a smile sat down and were out of the game. It is extremely fun and the challenge of not smiling is especially hard for Thai students.

Katooeys had a particularly unfair advantage in this game. They needed to do very little to get anyone to laugh. Often when the katooeys were in the middle all they did was stand in front of each student individually and before the others could even mutter the words, “I love you...” they would burst into laughter. Pictured here is my favorite katooey, Donut, trying to get a smile from a fellow student. What to look for here are his fake eyelashes, springing out from his profile.

The evenings at camp were always full of songs and dance. These are a few choice pics from the “dance free” in the middle of the evening’s program. As if there really were something valuable being given away for free, the students exploded into the middle of the gym and started a dance party I thought was only possible through large amounts of alcohol.


The girl in these pictures with the red lipstick, blue eye shadow, dangly earrings and necklace isn’t actually a girl, but Donut. That’s right, that’s a boy. Or a ladyboy, which ever you prefer. And he/she loves the spotlight. Donut was dressed up for a skit later in the night that I (un)fortunately missed but I’m glad I at least got to see the katoeeys all decked out.



Donut wasn’t the only ladyboy shaking it during the dance free, there were a handful other cross-dressing students that would have been expelled from any American high school. The dance party was great, but the aftermath was the most entertaining, when the katooeys were stumbling off the dance floor. Ended up that they can dress up well, but after 3 songs of dancing they look like the morning after drinking two bottles of Thai whiskey. Wigs were horribly out of place, clothing was un-tucked, bra pads were hanging out and make-up was running off their faces. They hobbled in their high heels like a drunk hooker after a rough night. That’s bad, but it’s true.
Donut wasn’t the only one dressed up for skits. Every group of students had to do a skit of some sort and they were encouraged to dress up in some way. Though I never understood any of the skits, I knew the katooeys always acted the roles of sexy girls and that these boys were playing ghosts.

Then, just when we were bored with all of the skits, out came some of my best male students. They had told me before that they were into “B-boy”but I never really understood. When they told me this they usually did something “ghetto” like shifting their hat to the side and flashing some unknown gang symbol before folding their arms across their chest and leaning back with a tough grin on their face. Their acting did very little to help me understand what the hell they were talking about. Then, at Foreign Camp 2007, it all became crystal clear.


All the “B-boy”guys are into break dancing. And they’re good. Really good. They were doing back flips and spinning on their heads and swinging their feet around the floor like they were part of MC Hammer’s posse.

Watching these guys perform their skit a wave of questions hit me. Are these guys really that good or do I just think they’re good because I’ve never actually seen break dancing live before? I think they really are that good. Where did they learn this? They must have a couple videos, like Napoleon Dynamite or something. Where do they practice? Who knows, maybe outside of 7-11? Is this popular in Thailand? Not that I know of but it is in Buakhao because the girls were screaming their heads off. Can they teach me to break dance? I think I’m getting too old for this kind of shit. And finally and perhaps most puzzling, where did this guy get his American Flag hat?

The Magic Shirt of Happiness

I’ve recently found myself giving free English lessons to local doctors every Tuesday and Thursday. I say I found myself giving them because one day they just showed up at my house expecting English lessons. I wasn’t too happy about it at first, but after spending some time with them, we ended up having a lot of fun. After that we set days for English lessons and, for the most part, have been meeting twice a week ever since. As a teacher, I like teaching the doctors because they are committed students with a strong base of English. They come over because they want to learn and they very enthusiastic about anything I try to teach. More than making it easy for me to teach, it makes it enjoyable and our time goes by quickly.

I’ve taught them songs in the past, not necessarily so they can sing them but because songs are an excellent topic of conversation to explain common words and parts of speech. To change it up, one day they taught me a song in Thai. Though I was the one racking my brain to read the song in Thai script, they explained it to me mostly in English so it was good for all of us.

The sheet of lyrics written in Thai was daunting at first but as I began translating the song, I got really into it. At first I had no idea what the song was about so when they told me the song was about a “shirt of happiness” I thought it was a pop song singing about their favorite shirt our outfit. I had no idea really. Instead, it was something like a fable.

Translating the story I became interested in the outcome so as it went on I was curious how it would end. I realize that this might not be all that interesting when quickly translated into English, but for me reading it in another language I found it fascinating. When I later showed the lyrics to another teacher at the school she was impressed. This is exactly what our Lord Buddha teaches she said.

Here is my rough translation:

Born a King, he was given every thing and any thing he ever wanted. Though he had all material things he wanted, his real wish was only to be happy, to live without sorrow.

The King went to a fortuneteller and asked him for some help. The fortuneteller told the King to search for the shirt of a magical man whose heart feels no sorrow. When he finds the shirt, he will find true happiness.

The King sent out his soldiers out across his lands to find this shirt, worn by the man whose heart knew only happiness, without sorrow. The soldiers turned the kingdom upside down looking for this magical man, but still could not find him. They did not meet the man nor did they meet someone who had ever heard of such a man. They searched for over a year asking everyone where this man lived.

Not even the Prince or the Princess had known absolute happiness. Everybody the soldiers met had some sorrow in their heart.

Then one day, as the sun was setting over a vast landscape of rice fields, a soldier heard a voice in the distance. It was a man talking to himself and this is what he said:

“Thank you for my life, that has been incredibly happy. When I’m hungry I have food to eat, when I’m tired I rest and have sweet dreams. Today I am happy, to day I can live without any bit of sorrow.”

The soldier had searched over the entire Kingdom, but only then had he heard, only then did he find, the man without sadness. So the soldier ran to the house, and broke down the door. He walked into the house and there he met only a poor man sitting alone. The man was so poor he didn’t even own a single shirt to give.

No matter where the soldiers searched in the Kingdom, they were not able to find a magical shirt to give to the King. This secret of happiness cannot be found in any possession, but only in the heart.

Jurassic Park Revisited

If we never dinosaurs bones were ever dug up, no one would ever believe they existed. For that reason my love of dinosaurs has extended past my childhood fantasy of monstrous reptiles roaming the earth, only to fight each other and eat the loser in one huge Jurassic battle royale. And today, living only kilometers away from a real “Jurassic Park” I had to satiate my curiosity and go what all the fuss was about.

The park was only an hour drive away and is half museum, and half wat. The parking lot was empty despite small groups of people walking up a path towards the site, casually looking at the cheap dinosaur key chains out for sale. We could hear monks chanting for those who came to make merit at the wat but we skipped straight to the museum. Outside the entrance there were the classic cutouts that each of us stood behind, poking our heads out of the holes pose for a picture as a stegosaurus or T-Rex.

I still can’t put my finger on what it was about the “museum” but looking down at the main exhibit from above, the brontosaurus bones still imbedded in rock looked so unimpressive that instead of marveling at their age beyond hundreds of millions of years, I couldn’t help but think that the mountain they were stuck in was at least the same age, maybe older. Well, that and the fact that it was a vegetarian dinosaur and not something cool with sharp claws, huge teeth, or large plates jutting out of its back.

The site’s lack of carnivorous jaws aside, it was all a lack of context, I suppose. Though there were English translations on all the exhibits it was dry and uninformative like an elementary textbook. Even the bones themselves weren’t big enough to be impressive. If I hadn’t known any better, I could have mistaken them for the remains of a large buffalo or an elephant. This depiction of how the dinosaur must have laid dead some 130 million years ago helped me to have some connection to what I was looking it, but still what I wanted to see was a movie showing it being hunted down and killed by the jaws of a T-Rex. Or a pack of saber-tooth tigers.

Quickly bored the exhibit I resorted to what the Thais were doing, having fun trying to flip one Baht coins into the spittoon on the ground below the deck for good luck. (This time I finally got one in and I’m patiently awaiting some good luck coming my way.)

All is not lost for Isaan’s Jurassic Park though. A new museum is currently being built aside the mountain (hill) the where initial bones were found. In “HOLLYWOOD” style, large Thai letters spell out the museum’s name and underneath the sign sits the most modern building all of Isaan.

Still unfinished, the park isn’t fully open to the public yet but we got to peek in and see a preview. I couldn’t get a great look at all of it, but from what I did see it looks like they did a good job the second time around, this time displaying to-scale replica skeletons of all the cool, carnivorous dinosaurs that we love and even have a pterodactyl hanging from the ceiling (how the hell did something that big fly, anyways?).

Already too bored to have the glance at the un-open museum to perk up my imagination again, I was ready to go home. I did however think back to my favorite dinosaur museum back at home, The U of M Natural History Museum, a modest place in itself, and marveled at all the great times it had brought me when I was young. At least their saber-tooth tiger and T-Rex that is. Still, when this new museum opens I imagine the Thai kids will walk through it with as much amazement as I did back in Ann Arbor, and will most likely be begging their parents to buy them some of those cheesy dinosaur souvenirs that weren’t selling so well the day we went.

Venus Fly Trap

The beauty of Thai women is truly extraordinary, but to “jeep sao” or to “flirt" does not come without some serious dangers. STDs aside, the great fear out here is that the woman you’re taking home isn’t, in fact, a woman. Around here the accepted third gender of ladyboys or katooeys are a complete enigma of gender and sexuality. If you were just wondering, Damn, who are those hot Thai chicks? in the picture here, then you just were checking out dudes. Welcome to Thailand.

I’ve unofficially decided there are two kinds of katooeys. First, there are katooeys who place themselves comfortably into the third gender of girly boys who wear make-up, carry a purse, and swing their arms around like little propellers when they run, even though they still wear men’s clothing (lady boy students wear the boy’s uniform and katooey teachers wear slacks and shirts, not dresses and skirts.)

The second type, I've decided, are the katooeys who dress and (over)act like girls. For them, it seems, the greatest compliment is to be mistaken for a beautiful woman. These pictures are case in point. At a glance they might look like women, but no my friend, these are men. (Well, actually, after doing a little reseach I have found out that all these katooeys are actually post-op. That is, they've had their angry inches cut off and now have "real" vaginas. I'm not about to say I know exactly what's going on in their pants, but what I do know is that each of their birth certificates said "Male" on them. Further, they do not claim to be women; all their websites proudly proclaim that they are ladyboys.) These are the katooeys that make playing the field in Thailand hazardous. They aim to deceive men and thus necessitate the otherwise ridiculous question, “so you really are a girl, right?”

There was a guy in my TEFL course that suddenly thought he was a hotshot when he could pick up any whore he liked at local go-go bars. (This seems to be common among sex tourist degenerates. Despite the fact they bought they girlfriend they act cocky about the "hot chick" they have their arm around.) This guy was the gossip of the whole course until one day he took home a girl that ended up having a dick and he freaked out. He dropped out of the course the next day and a couple days later, when I ran into him at the 7/11 he tried to play it cool and explained to me, “I’m just a little overwhelmed by the culture shock out here and need to take some time for myself.” Overwhelmed by shock was right. Nobody has heard of this guy since.

The first type of katooeys are great. They are my best students. They are never embarrassed to talk in front of the class and, for whatever reason, are highly motivated to learn English. I’d guess that the same girls in America who always wanted a gay friend just to have one, would also come to Thailand and want a katooey friend just to have one.

The second type of katooeys I don’t have a fair opinion of because I’ve never –knowingly- had a conversation with one, but now that I’ve been here for a while, can (usually) spot out the small differences between them and a “real” women. If you’re looking at the boobs or looking for a tuck, you’re falling into the trap. These sorts of things, and even Adam’s apples, can be fixed with surgery. The more subtle differences give the katooeys away. Big hands, predominate shoulders and big jaws always leave them looking slightly man-ish. You might be thinking: these katooeys in the pictures look like women to me. And well, I suppose you're right. But just remember these are the most beautiful katooeys out there. There's all different degrees of katooey and trust me when I say that there are more than a handful that walk around looking like a gender trainwreck.

I can’t say that I know the story of katooeys, but recently there has been a major event katooey history: the first katooey pop band. Think of the Spice Girls but with all lady boys. They are called Venus Fly Trap (pictured throughout this article) and they have some sort of not-so-witty reason for their name (I guess us men are stupid bugs who fall into their deadly trap?) . Each of them, like the Spice Girls, have donned special names: Amy Venus, Nok Sasha Venus, Bobo Venus, Taya Venus, and Gina Venus. They've just recently taken off around here and are starting to get some hype, even touring around with Tata Young.


The band has high expectations and I guess it’s hard to predict what will happen to this potential katooey sensation. Perhaps you can decide for yourself. Click above to see their release hit single “Visa for Love.” If that song title is some strange commentary on foreigners penchant for lady boys I’m not sure, but since Thailand is sadly notorious for sexual tourism, there’s more than a handful of falang who have gotten a visa for what they might define as "love." If you were wondering what I’m talking about with this “second kind” of katooey, this video will clear that up. The group seduces some guy who is just overwhelmed by their ladyboy sexuality. These katooeys play up their feminine sexuality and beg you to be in disbelief that they aren’t women.

At the end of the video the end up running down some hallways stripping off their clothes as the run away from this confused suitor. What is unclear to me is that if they actually took their entire top off and had their fake breasts out, would they have to be blurred out?

(If you need more I took all these pictures from their blog at http://ladeez-b.blogspot.com/)

How to Earn Street Cred in Thailand:

When some people come out to visit Thailand, they do it with some apprehension, letting culture shock isolate them as an outsider, only watching everything happen in front of them. When Spencer came out he wasn’t keen to just stand and watch, he did everything himself. When some locals were building at fence in front Sturza's house, he picked up a spade and helped the cause. When there were bugs, blaa-la, or fish eyes on the menu he dug his spoon in to a taste of the real local flavor. When it came time to cook chickens for dinner, Spence wasn’t ready to sit back and watch, he picked up the knife and killed our dinner himself.

We met up at our friend Dave’s place who, out of complete random chance, ends up living on 45 minutes away from me in a small village. It's safe to say that 4 years ago at U of M, the three of us would have never guessed we would be meeting up in Isaan in 2007. But there we sat and watched the village go by, everyone staring at the large number of falangs on Dave's porch, visiting the tiny village all at once. “Falang yurt yat” they said, “tons of falangs.” There were five of us.

Dave works in the Peace Corps and has been living in his village for two years. His best friend there, Pee Tom, is a couple years older than us, and we went to his shrimp farm to have a campfire and make dinner. We bought a case of beer, and he picked up some fresh veggies and two live chickens.

At a palm tree beside a prawn pond we built a fire and set out mats. On an empty bag of rice, Spence learned how to step on the chicken’s wings, leaving he hands free: one to hold its neck and the other to slit it with a knife. There were no chicken’s running around with their heads cut off; once cut they caught the blood in a bowl to be used later in the soup.


Killing it wasn’t enough though, and Dave and Pee Jiap (another Thai friend) showed him how to pluck the bird then how to chop it up. It was a relatively quiet process until the headless chicken, though dead for over 20 minutes, spoke one last time. To cut it up, Spence grabbed its body and out from the neck came an audible “baawk”, the same sound it made when it was still alive. The squawk gave us all a jump but there was nothing to worry about, Pee Tom explained, there’s no such thing as chicken ghosts.


When the chickens were cut up to look like we'd bought them at supermarket, we falang retired to the mats to have beer on ice, sit around the campfire, and try to muster up a song we all knew the words to. For the Thais this was no problem, they could have sang song after song without missing a word. It was rather embarrasing really, us not knowing more than a couple songs we could sing. The Thais wondered if we even liked music. With Pee Ole on the guitar and Pee Tom singing, the rest of us joined in if possible, and otherwise chatted in English and Thai with Dave (whose Thai and particularly his Laos is extraordinary compared to mine) and I translating.

It was great sitting around the fire but eventually everyone started getting real hungry. The fresh chicken wouldn’t cook fast enough and Pee Juap explained that he had gotten a deal on an older bird and so it would take longer to cook. Holding us over, the ladies Pee Wan and Pee Nok cooked sticky rice over the fire on a stick, then passed us Thailand’s salty equivalent to roasting marshmallows on the campfire.


The soup was eventually done and was well worth the wait. The bird was chopped more than I had thought, leaving it in hunks with strange bits of bone. We could never tell which part of the chicken we were eating. We shared large bowls of soup, sticky rice, a hot sauce, finally warming us up on what was a surprisingly chilly night in Isaan. With two chickens there was more than enough for all 10 of us, leaving leftovers for the next day.

That wasn't Spence's final Thai experience in Isaan though. He and his girlfriend Kristin also accompanied me along to school where they helped me teach class for a day. Later we took to one of the only bars in my town for karaoke, and eventually later dipped into the worst of the locals alcohols: Lao Kao. The trip ended there, with a binge on the worst spirits Thailand has to offer and Spencer and Kristin's short visit here didn't miss a single beat.