Download PDF of Phuket Post #79

Download PDF of Property Plus #79

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Download PDF of Phuket Post #78

Download PDF of Property Plus #78

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Most mornings, Duk and I head out of the apartment shortly after sunrise to get some exercise. During the month that we've lived along Yaowarat Road, we've explored most of the paths that return us home after an hour-long walk. Our favorite walk is up to Khao Rang Park, which sits atop a hill that divides the northwestern section of Phuket City from the northeastern where we live. I've posted a number of photos here that I took during our walk this morning to show off one of the loveliest parts of our neighborhood. Duk also took a bunch of photos, and they also appear here.

I don't have any trouble walking in any which direction, and I'm not particularly worried about traffic as long as I can see it coming. One thing I like to get out of a walk is a feeling that I've exercised, so I like walking up and down hills. Duk isn't comfortable along busy roads, and he doesn't like to walk into the sun. (I have to admit that walking east into the rising sun is a bit uncomfortable.) So we have winnowed down our walking routes to just a couple that meet most of these criteria.

At the top of the hill, I figured that we'd have to watch and wait to find the monkeys, but I quickly saw how we could spot them. Some of the trees down the hill were waving back and forth as if the limbs were being shook. Yes, the monkeys were playing in them, running from limb to limb.

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Once I had left the airport terminal after landing on Phuket for the first time, the first ground-level view I had of the countryside was during the commuter bus ride from the airport to Phuket City. I distinctly remember a gorgeous stretch quite near the airport lined with palms and rubber tree plantations. The road wound through low hills and seemed so rural and green and jungly.

I rediscovered this stretch of road about two weeks ago when I rode my motorcycle nearly the entire distance from our apartment in Phuket City to the airport. The event was at a resort on Nai Yang Beach, and to get there I turned onto Highway 4031 and found myself amid the rubber tree forests and lush countryside I remembered from my first visit. As usual, I got lost trying to find the resort, but I happened upon Nai Yang Beach, perhaps the most beautiful beach I've ever seen.

Despite the heat, I persuaded Duk to ride with me out to Nai Yang Beach on Sunday. I had a hunch that I would find a good surf break, so I brought along my swim fins and goggles. The beach turned out to be a magnificent stretch of sand with some coral shoals at the north end of the bay where a good little wave broke. I swam out and found myself among brightly colored tropical fish and gentle waves breaking on the shoals. I could body surf the foot-high waves, but I didn't really go for it since the water was so shallow. The bottom wasn't sand but jagged coral, and I didn't want to find out what even a minor wipeout felt like.

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The funnest motorcycle ride I ever took was our ride from Phuket City to Patong yesterday on Songkran day. It wasn't really a warm day by Phuket standards. The rather cool afternoon was only slightly cooler than the average summer day in my hometown of Santa Cruz, Calif. Knowing a little of what to expect on Songkran day from what Duk and others had told me, I dressed in my swimming trunks, a T-shirt and loads of waterproof sunscreen.

Thai people love Songkran, and as far as I know, the holiday is unique to Thailand. The tradition comes from a legend, as I read somewhere. Some fiery god long ago was tricked and beheaded. He was so pissed off about the trick that his decapitated head flamed with anger--literally. His faithful seven daughters honored their father every year by digging up his flaming dead skull and circling the mountain with it. That's why April is so hot in Thailand.

Songkran--also known as Thai New Year--is about splashing water to cool down during the hottest month. In the old days, families would pour water on the hands of the oldest members. Water has special significance in Buddhism, and splashing water on someone is a way to earn spiritual merit. The splashee, too, earns a blessing from the water. So even though the happy waterfight of modern tradition is a lot more rowdy than the old way, it's still a win-win situation for everyone.

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Surely a word of explanation is in order. Only family and a precious few close friends know the story of my life during the past two years. Many things have happened, and at times I think that everything about me has changed since the middle of my 39th year. I'm now five months into my 41st year, and I no longer live in Santa Cruz, Calif., U.S.A. Instead I live and work in Phuket City, Phuket, Thailand. I weigh 74kg instead of 220 pounds. I'm no longer married to Stuart Ponder, but I have a new boyfriend, partner and husband, a beautiful Thai man my age named Chaiyakorn "Duk" Pinprapaipong who lives with me in Phuket. I closed my web development business, did a stint as a professional orchestra musician aboard cruise ships, and now I have resumed my former career in publishing, working as sub-editor for the Phuket Post.

So, what happened?

To be honest, I'm still trying to figure that out. I know the events and the places and the people involved, and I know a lot about how I felt as all the changes were going on. But I don't think I know yet what caused all the changes--whether it was something inside of me that compelled me or whether I merely adapted to external experiences.

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Download PDF of Phuket Post #76

Download PDF of Property Plus #76

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Download PDF of Phuket Post #75

Download PDF of Property Plus #75

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First of all, apologies to everyone for not writing more than terse emails during February. As most of you know, I was in Ban Phe, Rayong Province studying for a TESOL certificate. TESOL stands for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. The certification is pretty much a standard among people involved in teaching English as a foreign language all over the world.

Here's a quick fact that most of you probably don't know. Judging by the number of people who take it annually, the single most important examination in the world is not the SAT. Worldwide, the SAT's not even close to the TOEFIC, the Test of English for International Communication, which is administered to something in the neighborhood of five million people per year. For those of you inside of the United States, it might be difficult to understand how important English is globally. Maybe that statistic gives you an inkling. Most of the speakers of English in the world hardly give a whit about culture in the U.S. or the U.K. They're using it to fill out bills of lading to ship things or to write legal briefs to use in international contracts, not to understand the lyrics of the latest Arctic Monkeys tune. From here in Southeast Asia, I can really see how the English language belongs to the world, not just to the few nations where it's the native tongue.

In addition to giving me that nifty factoid, the TESOL certification course provided me with some great background on how people learn languages. As it turns out, “input,” or language that a learner hears from a speaker of the target language, is all-important. It must be contextualized input, however, and that you must be able to understand the gist of it even without understanding the language. For instance, in a bus station context, a typical conversation would have language related to buying a ticket to some destination for a certain amount of money. Even if you don't understand the words, you can understand what's happening in the conversation. The language instinct in your brain processes the input. After it has enough input, it starts to register meaning and to intuit the target language's rules for grammar and word usage.

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Greetings from Ban Phe, Rayong Province, Thailand!

I know it's been a while since I've written, and I've been thinking about all of you and making mental notes during my adventures of things to share. Alas, with running around Bangkok then settling in here in Ban Phe for my month-long teacher-certification class, I've been too busy to do much more than check my email. Little time to sit down and really write.

Today, though, Duk and I have planned for a lazy Sunday. He needs to catch up on his email, too, so we're just hanging around the bungalow. At the moment, he's spooning Tom Yum Moo into bowls for our lunch. Thai food aficionados among you may recognize the name of the soup, but it's traditionally called Tom Yung Kung. Well, kung is a little too rich for our taste at the moment, so we've substituted moo for kung--pork balls instead of shrimp. (Not that shrimp is expensive. We just ate a bunch of shrimp for dinner last night.) Back in a few minutes after lunch.

A-loi maak! Yes, very delicious. Tom Yung Moo with some little fried meat patty thingys and a bowl of steamed rice with seaweed. To drink: lemon grass tea over ice. All prepared using nothing more than a rice cooker. Duk swore to me that he could cook all of our meals in the bungalow just using a rice cooker. We bought one a week ago, and since then I've hardly eaten so well.

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