Headed South.

After two days in Bangkok, I headed south to the beach. The city of Jomtien/Pattaya is where I'll be living for the rest of my time here. It was a two hour taxi ride, but our driver was the NICEST man ever...finally found a nice Thai person. Score! The owner of the school, May, was waiting for us at the school, along with Tom, another teacher at the school who we later discovered has a Thai boyfriend. Now you're probably wondering if Tom's boyfriend is a lady boy....and I still have yet to figure that out but I'm working on it. Anyway, Tom took us to search for apartments nearby. We ended up finding an apartment complex on a nice street, about a 20 minute walk from the school. They are brand new and won't be ready until Friday, so I have to stay in a hotel until then. They are studio style apartments, so its basically just a huge room, with a balcony (yesss) and a king size bed (yesss) and a thai style bathroom (ughhhhh). Thai style bathrooms have the shower in the same room as the toilet, with no door or curtain, just a drain. So the whole bathroom gets soaked when you shower, leaving the floor to be wet, and there is nothing I hate more than a wet bathroom floor. I think I had a mild anxiety attack when seeing that....but there is no way around it, and it could be much worse. I will just have to get a shower curtain, wear shower shoes, and squeegee the floor after every shower. Bahhhhh. Becca is going to live in the same complex, just on a different floor. She decided to work at the school as well, and I'm so grateful to have her here!

After we decided on the apartment, Tom took us to Tesco on his motorbike. Tesco is the Thai equivalent to Costco. The three of us managed to fit on his bike, and it was quite an adventure. I had heard that motorbikes were popular in Asia, but I didn't realize they were more common than cars! Once we got to the Tesco, we bought stuff like shampoo, shower shoes (thank goodness), water bottles, etc. Tom's boyfriend met us at Tesco and after we finished shopping, we decided to join Tom and his boyfriend (Cob - pronounced like corn on the cob) at his mother's shop on the back-roads of North Pattaya. For this journey, I got to ride in the side card of Cob's motorbike, while Becca got to hold on tight to Cob's bod. Cob also brought his brother and brother's friends along...the cutest Thai boys and one lady boy!

Tom, Age 51, from Boston.

Becca, Cob, and Cob's brother.

Me in the side-cart with a young lady boy (seriously), and his friend.

Once we got to the shop, we relaxed at a table with some waters and just chatted with Tom for awhile. Tom knows absolutely everything there is to know about where we'll be working and he gave us the total scoop, including the gossip about the other teachers. Cob went and got us dinner...which consisted of Papaya salad, pork, and rice. The papaya salad was the spiciest thing I've ever tasted, and I don't eat pork...sooo....needless to say I was hungry later on. After dinner, we all piled back onto the motorbikes and went back into the heart of Pattaya to something called a weekend market. It basically looked like the booths at the del mar fair. Stalls and stalls of the same shirts, shoes, hats, cds, hair accessories, phone covers, etc., and it was wall to wall people. 

After spending about 2 hours at the weekend market, Tom and Cob finally took us back to the school where we were sleeping for just one night. All we had to sleep on was a hard mattress and one sheet to share between the both of us. We didn't complain though, because the room had air conditioning and it was only for one night! Tomorrow we are moving to a hotel for the rest of the week....I'm hoping for a shower with a door.