Mona Lisa Smile

So!  Clearly, I am all about telling things out of order lately, so let me whisk you back two weeks and let you know about the last few days of in-country training.

As I mentioned, learning with Sucha was a lot of fun, once she warmed up to us.  At first, I thought she was a bit distant because of the stupid joke I’d made the night we met, but it turned out that she actually felt a little awkward around us because she hasn’t taught a lot of Westerners in the past (she tends to work with Japanese student groups).  At the beginning of the first class, she asked me and the other Western VSOs a few times whether we were all right, since we looked so serious (or, more likely, dopey, considering that it was early on a Monday morning).  After we reassured her that we were fine, she confessed, “I am not used to farang face; I thought you don’t like me.”

By the end of the week, though, the five of us ended up having a blast together – especially after we went out for mookata and a few drinks one evening, and ended up riffing on the Thai soaps being broadcast on a giant screen in the restaurant garden.  The one VSO from Sri Lanka provided a running commentary:  “Okay, there’s one girl in the hospital, and she’s talking to another girl on the phone.  They must be fighting over a man.  Oh, there’s the man, the one with his shirt open!  And now the girl in the hospital looks happy.  He must have chosen her.  But oh no!  Who’s this guy?  He’s brought the hospital girl flowers, and now he’s upset.  Maybe he’s in love with her, too?  What is the man with the open shirt going to do?”

We all ended up with Thai nicknames as well.  I already mentioned that Sucha dubbed our Philippino colleague Bpogey (it turns out that, contrary to my initial post, Bpoky isn’t the right way to say it, after all – “Bpogey”, pronounced kind of like “bogey on your six”, means “handsome”, but “Bpoky” is Tagalog for “vagina” – whoops!).  Well, the Sri Lankan volunteer became “Jan”, or “moonlight” (a pun on her actual name); the older Englishwoman was nicknamed “chombu”, or “rose apple”, after her first exposure to the Thai sun left her cheeks a little singed; and the other English volunteer, who’s the youngest of us, ended up being “dek dek” (“baby”).  I wound up with two nicknames, weirdly enough:  Ms. M150 (or “M roi haa sip” in Thai), because the early mornings and lack of black tea left me chugging the enamel-melting energy drink M150 every day, and “Monalisa”.  Yeah, I can’t really explain the second one.  Sucha just looked over at me at one point, and cackled, “You look like Mona Lisa!”  Chalk it up to the mysteries of the farang face…

... or maybe the headband.  Pictured, L to R:  Monalisa, Dek Dek, Chombu, Jan, and Bpogey.

The other VSOs and I also got the chance to explore some of Bang Saen.  There’s a pretty beach lined with palm trees; the water’s not really clean enough for swimming, but it’s gorgeous to walk along.  (At sunset, with the pink sky throwing the palm trees into shadow, it looks ludicrously like a postcard of Miami Beach – the kind of place you don’t expect to exist in real life.)  It’s also lined with stalls selling every kind of seafood imaginable.  Twenty baht (about 40p) can get you a skewer of freshly caught squid, doused in scalding green chilli sauce.  Man, that’s one thing I’m going to miss about Bang Saen.

(There are seafood restaurants, as well, although it’s not really worth the extra money to dine in a more formal atmosphere when you can eat on the beach, or in one of the markets.  I remember passing one of the restaurants that had an enormous statue of a fish – wearing a raincoat and flashing a jaunty thumbs-up, like Charlie Tuna – outside.  A tiny tortoiseshell cat was looking up at the fish and just yowling his little heart out, presumably because it was huge and, for some reason, he couldn’t bite into it.)

And speaking of seafood, Bang Saen’s university (which seems to provide a large part of the town’s population, as well as its social and cultural life) has a neat little aquarium that’s definitely worth an hour’s look.  (Especially if you have a Thai driver’s license, like yours truly, so you can avoid paying three times as much for the tourist admission rate.  *blows raspberry*)  It’s small but packed, and dimly lit to show off the astonishing, electric blues and greens of the tropical fish.  I think my favourite display might have been the octopus tank.  They’re so much faster than you would imagine, and they can basically go tearing along at top speed, whichever way they’re facing.  (When they’re swimming with their tentacles behind them, their faces look bizarrely like dogs’.)  There’s also a huge tank at the end that extends up and over the hallway, so you can look up and see a school of fish swooping like birds overhead – or, in my case, see the ominous shadow of a shark hovering like a bird of prey.  Gah!

The best part of the aquarium, though, was the names of the different species.  Bluestreak Damselfish was my favourite, hands down. :)

We also found a great coffeeshop called Sweet Corner Bangsean, where the owner – a gregarious young guy in chunky black glasses – would help us practice our Thai, and also chat to us in English about our studies.  The cake there is amazing.  (Bang Saen turned out to be surprisingly good for cake:  the main night market had at least three different cake stalls, offering gooey chocolate and black forest slices next to flavours like taro and green tea.)

Three of us even made it over to Chonburi, the nearest big town, one evening to do some of that I-never-realised-I-needed-this shopping that all new arrivals end up doing in their first week.  (I was along for moral support, although I did score some shoes. :))  We visited two of Chonburi’s hulking chrome-and-glass malls, which were kind of a trip.  The interiors felt homey and comforting to me, which is kind of disturbing when you think about it:  coming from New Jersey, I’m such a mall brat that I find escalators and an Auntie Anne’s pretzel stall soothing.  But the exteriors (especially of Chonburi’s huge Central Plaza) were all rectangular ponds and space-age metal arches.  Thailand’s cities can feel very futuristic in a lot of ways – a feeling that I think is enhanced by the general sense that the country is part of a region whose star is rising.  Not only do many Asian cities look like a living space-age fantasy, but it’s likely that the actual look of the world’s future will be strongly influenced by these cities, too.

I also got to try a new Thai food in Chonburi:  khanom jiin, which is basically glass noodles with a selection of soupy curries and toppings (like garlic, lime, coriander, and chilli).  It wasn’t completely new – it’s very like the popular Burmese dish mohinga, which my colleagues made for Christmas – but I’d never had the Thai version before.  The khanom jiin buffet in Central Plaza has a range of curries, from sweet peanut sauce to green curries that will take the roof of your mouth off (but in a good way). :)

There was one more major attraction in Bang Saen, but it deserves its own post.  And pictures.  I promise, you will not believe this shit otherwise.

On my and Sucha’s last night in Bang Saen, we had a party up in Sucha’s room, with what I’m pretty sure was – at a rough estimate – all the food in existence.  So, sorry if there were riots in the empty supermarkets of the world that night.  We had all the food.  There was a mound of fresh fish cakes easily the size of my head.  There was fried chicken, and roasted pork, and skewers of fresh squid, and there was candied squid and maple-roasted candied beef.  (The candied beef is actually nice, like hickory-smoked bacon, but I’m still not convinced about the candied squid – way too sweet for me.)  There were pineapples, and rose apples, and bunches of holy basil (which turns out to be surprisingly good as a garnish in a lemon Bacardi Breezer, trufax), and SO MUCH RICE.  And that’s without even getting into the range of Thai desserts – one that was a lot like flan, and another that disturbingly resembled frog’s eggs (but tasted like tapioca), and one that was essentially tiny orange gulab jamun.

And seven giant hunks of khao lam.

Khao lam is something Pam told me about when she heard I was going to Bang Saen.  “They do this dessert down there – it’s sticky rice and coconut milk, but it’s boiled together in a section of bamboo.  It’s so good.”  And it is – it’s like rice pudding, but sweeter, and with a richer texture.  Some places add chunks of taro or red beans for extra flavour.  The fun part, though, is that it comes in a hefty, two-foot long bamboo section that’s probably heavy enough to be used as a blunt instrument.  The merchant cracks it in a vise for you, and you then have to pry it open to get at the rice.  (I took one on the train back to Chiang Mai the next day.  I hesitate to think what the other passengers thought was going on behind the curtain of my sleeper compartment, with all the sickening cracking and glooping sounds.)

We basically spent the entire night eating, while Sucha spent the night, rather hilariously, adding us all on Facebook and then messaging us while she was sitting across the table.  Good times. ;)

(By the way, one more memory from in-country training.  We were describing the plot of “The Melody” – see my earlier review here – to the young Thai dude from the programme office.  Just as we were explaining how this ambitious young man from Bangkok was transformed by the love of a good-hearted country girl, he held up a hand.  “Let me guess,” he said.  “The girl has cancer?”  Heehee.)