Cyberjaya Space Age-Type Millenium Condominium... Mmmmmm, Nice

So I've joined hannah in kuala lumpar - and foiled her cunning plan to get away from me ha ha ha ha ha (maniacal laugh) ha ha...she'll never get away!!!
I'm having withdrawal symptoms from khao san road tho, however my liver seems to have perked up a bit since we left.
I met james and emma from england for a few the other night, bless 'em, they arrived from london at 3pm and came out at 7pm! only problem was it was budda's birthday so they weren't serving alcohol anywhere! i was like, noooooooo'!! but it seems this isn't the law, just out of respect for budda, so you don't actually not drink, you just pretend you're not drinking by pouring your beer into a paper cup with 'coffee' written on it and get trollied anyway.
talking of things religious i just saw 2 barefoot monks walking down the street in their orange robes, and walking the opposite way were 3 ladyboys!! (BLATANT ones, not the pretty 'cover your man-hands and adams apple and you're nearly fine-type' even if you squint with half closed eyes at these ones you're like, 'eugh!!') they're probably looking for unsuspecting foreign drunken blokes - of which there are countless dozens at this time in the morning (it's 6am, i have an early flight). i'm absolutely sure that if you stood on this street long enough you'd see every kind of human being imaginable.

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That was a week ago, not much to report, i'm in malasia now, living in Cyberjaya staying in the vista millenium condominium ... how space age does that sound??? it's a wicked appartment with minimal ant presence and a beautiful view and a frickin' swimming pool! after that rank hostel in bangkok i am in heaven. apart from my bed is completely broken and sags to the floor in the middle so they've stuffed 2 mattresses on it which means that, whilst being extremely comfortable, i can actually feel my spine bending as i sleep.

i start teaching on wednesday and can't wait, i've observed 2 teachers already cos i got here early, and the students are mainly from like, iran, yemen, india, and that, all between 18 and 25 and mostly male with very, very long eyelashes.

now i DID mean to treat this teaching time as a detox, there are no bars in the vicinity, and no drink allowed in the appartments, we're like 40 minutes away from kuala lumpar, the city, so i thought i was safe... however, i'm sharing my appartment with 2 other teachers, one hasn't arrived yet, the other is an ex pub landlord from glasgow... who likes a "few' beers!!! fate it seems has other plans for my liver than a bit of r and r from the old amber nectar! well, what can you do???

cheers

'Chocolate' River Taxi

Well, i finally made it out of khao san road and did something cultured. It's hard work getting off of khao san road tho... it's like a lovely, timeless, alcohol-induced cocoon which provides for your every need (cheap food and drink, cheap wares, just released films every night, strange people to look at - i love watching freaks! pool tables, irish bar, live music, clubs, swimming pool, etc etc). And my accomodation is forcing me to meet people at the moment cos my room is so depressing i am literally only there to sleep, wash and change. This is because it's under 2 quid a night, but still. The fan above the bed (can't afford air con) is humongous, and whilst it does move the hot air around the room effectively, it also sounds a lot like a helicopter coming in to land. The 'bed' is the hardest thing i've ever laid on (apart from that time i laid on a plank of wood) it's like a proper bed and everything but they've stinged on the mattress, and it's like really thin, but that's nowt compared to the "pillow", i hesitate to use this word as it conjures images of soft, fluffy head rests, and this it ain't. Oh my god, and the other day, there was a COCKROACH in the shower with me!! E - A - U!! that's like, one of my worst nightmares, along with being chased by a bear (obviously) or swimming with a tiger. So i aimed the shower head and flushed it down the sink but couldn't remember if they could swim either so freaked out about it climbing back up the sink and chasing me round, so the shower ended early and i went back to my room and sat there shaking. I must learn by heart which creatures are able to swim and which are not.

Anywhoo, i broke the khao san hold and caught the river taxi to jim thompson's house (an old bloke that collected thai art that went missing in the cameron islands) and the river taxi there was WAY cooler than some old blokes house! the house was ok, lots of very old asian pottery and thai art work, and the house itself was beautiful, but the river taxi rocks! it's like a big long boat that holds loads of people, and it's 6 baht to get on (70 baht to the pound), you just jump on as it skids (or whatever the aquatic equivalent of skidding is) to the pier before it buggers off again cos they don't hang around the drivers. At first, the river looks all calm and serene, like that one off charlie and the chocolate factory, but when you see the crap floating on it you realise it's probably not that colour cos it's made of chocolate, but more likely a typhoid riddled, rat infested, death pool. The driver of the taxi isn't too cautious or delicate with his boat handling either, but the water's flat at first so it doesn't matter, but as soon as another taxi speeds past, that's it, choppier than a very rough storm out on the Race off of portland bill. And this manky disease ridden water goes everywhere! i don't think any got on my face cos i think it would have melted the skin and i would have noticed, but i won't be sure till i see a mirror tonight.

(NB ... this is maybe an over-reaction cos i did see little kids swimming in it, but i'm SURE they shouldn't have been, it's dis-gus-ting, maybe over time they've become inmmune to cholera, typhoid, rabies, malaria, anaemia, and japanese encephalitis, and maybe they ike swimming in poo and old coke cans, who can say?)

Ok, one more...

Well, I've had a few beers, as yuo can probaly tell from the spelling. I was s'posed to meet the new zealanders i met t'other nite for a few, but they stood me up! can you believe it?? blimmin kiwi's! so anyway i ended up having a few beers with a french guy i met, we had an interesting coversatuion (sorry, that';s the beer typing). Our subjects touched on the monarchy, he didn't even know that they were a bit of a joke in england, and didn';t understand why we don't have a king... he was a bit mysoginistic (check that out for a long word when i've had a few!!) so i explained that victoria had no sons, that's why we have elizabeth, is this correct?? if not i'm afraid there's a french bloke walking ruond now with very wrong idea's about the monarchy. Then we talked about drugs, apparently he had the best ketamin ever on a journey from alaska to somewhere else in america, and really got in touch with nature... and stuff! but then he said the best drug ever was heroin, and that trainspotting was a cinematic travesty that didn't so the drug justice and cast it in a bad light....hmmmmmm, here my breadth of experience kinda runs out and i have nothin to contribute to the conversation, so i'm like, "yeah, that heroine, 's a bugger aye?... so anyway, do you like this thai beer? 's great innit? s'like, really dead shtrong and everyfing!! um, i feel a bit sick now... do you know where i live?"

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So i've sobered up now, that was 2 nights ago and i bumped into one of the kiwi's and he was like 'you stood us up' and i was like, 'no, you guys stood me up'. Turns out i was sat drinking beer outside the wrong 7/11 for 3 hours. Did you know that there are three 7/11's to every one person over here? or something like that. So anyway we sorted that out and went and got drunk again and now i'm hungover... well the liver IS evil and must be punished.

Think i'll do something cultural tomorrow.

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Well it's a day after that and i still haven't done owt cultural, am quite hungover tho after a few beers last nite.... hmmmmmmm, i see a pattern forming here...

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ps: "Hi Auntie Sheila!" (That is if you're still reading this after all the swearing???) Sorry, i've only just seen your post from aaaaages ago! I didn't realise you'd posted! So yeah, there was no tsunami after the earthquake thank god, and as you have probably guessed, we were fine, didn't feel the rumblings or anything.

No more blogger

Oh shit, look what i just read on the guardian web site...

"What kind of sad individual posts their own diary on the internet, as if thousands of total strangers would ever be interested in their lives? An arrogant, self-obsessed exhibitionist perhaps? That would surely be a harsh critique of the McBride family from Berwick-upon-Tweed, who innocently update the world on their garage extension and Chloe's mumps."

"Sad individual"??

Ummmmmm... i'm afraid i have to go now, and won't be updating this thing any more...

...Taxi!

Haggle Fiend

Well, I'm just hanging round at the moment, I start in kuala lumpar on the 1st june so am trying to think how best to fill the time. Obviously, if i want to keep the blogger as amusing as before i should head up to chiang mai on my own with only a few kip and a pair of flip flops and see what unfolds, but after my last forray into solo travelling i am, understandably, i think you'll agree, reluctant.

So i went out on khao san last nite and had a 'few' singhs, it's lethal stuff that beer, and gives the main monster hangover - see? i could be a travel writer, i even do culinary reviews of foreign beverages. Talking of things culinary i had chicken on a stick THREE times last night after the beer, qualifying me for the 'worst vegetarian in the world' title again. I wasn't even co-erced, i was the instigator of the flesh eating feast! We walked past a street vendor lady selling parts of chicken on a stick on our way to find somewhere that sold beer after 1am, and i was like 'mmmmm, chicken', so we found somewhere that sold beer and had mats on the floor to sit on outside, and i was like
'um, anyone hungry at all? i could just eat something, oh look, a chicken stand'... so three trips to the chicken lady later, between the three of us, i think we ate a whole chicken in total, and it was all my doing...i feel so bad. But on the upside i think i have perfected the art of haggling now... i haggle for EVERYTHING, and i mean everything. I have figured that there are 5 simple steps to this art form:

1) offer them half of what they're asking, they'll look mortified and as insulted as if you'd said their grandma smells of elderberries, but they do bring the price down a fraction
2) you look incredulous and pretend to walk off
3) they chase you and come down a bit more
4) you go up a bit, depends how much you want what you're haggling for (von dutch caps, diesel watches, bits of chicken on a stick, ant buns, tuk tuks, crap postcards and birkenstock flip flops being the main consumer goods over here).
5) transaction complete, you should have paid a LOT less than the asking price.

It's completely addictive and all-consuming this process tho, you get caught up in it like a trance, and i find myself getting wound up by this poor thai peasant, and arguing over 10 frickin bahts (17p?) for a taxi ride that would cost me 17 quid in england! It usually helps if they mention that they have a family to feed, this jolts me out of the hypnotic trance that is haggling, and i realise that i'm a millionaire compared to them and that this is their livelihood, but until they do this i am the tight western haggling fiend who shall not surrender the negotiations and they are the evil money grabbing foreigner paddling their fake tacky wares at extortionate prices, bless 'em.

I also think i left the 2 new zealanders i was out with last night, with the distinct impression that pommies aren't too bright. They asked me if my natural hair colour was brown, twice. First we were talking about the waterfalls in luoam pabang, and i was trying to figure out if i'd got the top cos there were loads of waterfalls and you could climb really high, and the guy's like 'well did you see the river'? and i was like 'no! i didn't even know there was a river, i obviously didn't get to the top' and he's like 'you didn't know there was a river?... at the top of the water fall?'...'oooooh yeah! i s'pose there would be wouldn't there?'. Then we were talking about vegetarianism, and i thought i read somewhere that cows were reliant upon human beings to milk them regularly otherwise their udders would fill up with milk and explode and they'd die, apparently this is not the case, they'd just dry up and stop producing milk. It's amazing what you can learn in a day innit?

Again with the children! Why are they out to get me?

Well, I'm moving on again. The trial teaching session... it not go so well.
I had some really cool games planned for this class of 8 year olds, and they were sweet, apart from this one little fat kid who kept bloody yawning and wouldn't join in, until we got to the games and THEN he wants to join in doesn't he?
We played 'grandma says' for the last 20 minutes (they ran through my material really, really quickly cos they were so good at english so i had to stretch this game out a LOT!) and the fat one only goes and gets over-excited and runs into the wall really fast and cracks a hole in it whilst trying not to get caught by 'grandma'! i was like, 'oh my god, i'm on trial and i just damaged the building structurally, i'm screwed.'

So i'm leaving the country and going to kuala lumpar where no one knows me.
I've got a job there (it's with the same company that i just did the trial with!
i hope they don't talk to eachother about work...
'yeah, we just had one english girl, she didn't even know what adverbs of frequency were! THEN she gets the kids over-excited in the trial, and one of them knocks the artex out of the new classroom we've just had built, it's gonna cost a bit to get that repaired, can you believe it?'
'blimey, you don't half get some muppets applying to be teachers don't ya? what was her name?'
'katy white'
'oh dear'

Catastrophe Interview

So staying on khao san road is turning out to be quite scarey. There are a serious amount of freaks here. Han went to brush her teeth last night (shared bathroom down the corridor) and came back out of breath and white faced. Apparently she was in the middle of brushing when a disembodied american voice came from above quoting what sounded like a film, she thought maybe there were some lads in the mens talking, but the voice kept going on it's own, then started talking biblical and about blood, at this hannah remembers the scene from the beach and backs slowly out the bathroom, brush in hand, and legs it down the corridor to our room. So we're listening at the window and now i can hear the mad man, he's like "your father was a scum bag, your mother was a scum bag, and you're a scum bag" or something like that (there's no one with him, he's talking to himself i think) and his voice is getting louder and coming down the corridor! so we come away from the window and stop talking and taking the piss cos it's actually quite scarey knowing there's someone off their head outside your bedroom! however the voice receded, and it was fine. And then this morning i was woken to the dulcet tones of a drunken english bloke threatening to kill someone just below my window, i look out and he's being held back by his mates and shouting horrible stuff... nice way to start the day aye?

Apart from that life's pretty noneventful at the moment, and after all that travelling malarkey i thought i'd best get some more stress in my life as it was running pretty much too smoothly. To this end i've applied to International House, a very good teaching company. I had the interview which went...ok apparently (see below) and now i have to teach an hours lesson, with my interviewer watching me, on SUNDAY MORING at 8.30 in the A frickin M. That's my big one on saturday night out the window!
The interview itself was going well till he asked me how i would teach adverbs of frequency to elementary students... i sat there with a vacant and probably quite scared look on my face and all i could think was 'shit, shit, shit, shit, wot's he on about??? oh god what's an adverb? what does frequent mean again? oh bugger, what shall i say? um, oooh look, i can see lumpini park from this classroom, god it would be cooel to work here, heeeey, is that a squirrel over there? my god i think it is! i wonder if thai squirrels are as aggressive as english ones...' abd so on, we sat for maybe a minute like this and then he took pity:
'do you know what adverbs of frequency are?'
'um...no'
so he explained what they are (words like 'always' 'sometimes' and 'never')
'so how would you teach them?'
i was just sat there like a gormless idiot, my mind went completely BLANK, it was horrible, so i mumbled something about working in pairs and something else that was the biggest load of shyte ever, it was sooo embarressing. But it didn't seem to bother him and he told me the interview went well!! Now I don't know what kind of window-lickers he's interviewed in the past, but it certainly did NOT go well at all in my head! Thankfully what i think doesn't matter!
So now i have a meeting with another of the teachers in 2 hours and she's gonna explain what the kids are like, and i have to trial teach them tomorrow for an hour. God help me.

Photographs

Well, I did it, i figured how to get photo's on the net...

That bath was in the mankiest scummiest club i've ever been in in me life, it was rank! but very cheap so we stayed there til the sun rose!... who needs cleanliness when you're having an all-nations drinking competition?

a) what the hell's a bath doing in a nightclub?
b) who uses it?
c) why are there pink stains?

And here are me and the fellow CELTA survivors post-course and quite hungover i think, our smiles hide the horror... the horror! of the course.

Well, me and han are just bumming around in bangkok at the moment. She's got a job in kuala lumpar at a very good school, and i've just been offered an interview here in bangkok with the same company, so fingers crosssed!! i really, really need some sort of incoming into my bank!

We're staying slap bang in the middle of koh san road at the moment - a mecca for backpackers and fuckin' FREAKS! (or are these one and the same??) there was one guy entertaining us for dinner last night, we were eating outside and he was dancing on the street... i say dancing, more like... moving, very slowly, to no music (well, i am SURE there was music in his own little head), and smiling a lot and completely oblivious to the world around him, i am thinking that maybe acid may have come into the equation somewhere, whatever, it was very interesting to watch!

He was nothing to what i saw on arrival here, i got here at 6am, and i've never seen so many lady-boys! (not that they're a common occurence in westcliffe on portland). There was one drunken english lad who obviously had the worst case of beer goggles i've ever seen in my life, his arm was proudly round the tiny waist of what was clearly a she-man (although she did have massive breast implants... this english lad looked chuffed as nuts to be with 'her', i would have paid to see his face when he found out! i'm sure he wouldn't have been chuffed at the nuts he found later, (boom boom). I also had to step over lots of people lying out for the count on the pavement, and when i had my breakfast at 7am, tea and toast, in the same cafe sat next to me was a very drunk german bloke and an english bloke sharing their last beers of the 'night' and talking very loud complete and utter bollox. Made my breakfast interesting, and also made me think 'oh my god, that's what i must look like at 6 in the morning after a 'big one', scarey.

Me and han are off to 'The Great British Pub' on silom road to meet david from lancashire for pie 'n' mash tonight... nothing like immersing yourself in the asian culture whilst you're over here is there??

Me and my fellow CELTA survivors. Shame Hannah couldn't stay awake for the photo... 

Class - they actually check your bag as you go into this pub! 

The Worst Toilet in Bangkok