Evil Chan

Pictures are here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/iBNJHixYPJSJUKSQ8

Greetings from Thailand, where men are men and women are also men. My name is Dave, and it's been four weeks since my last ping pong show.

A couple of weeks ago as part of our volunteer group project I was able to go to a local elementary school to donate some art supplies and spend some time drawing with some of the kids. The school was constructed out of what look like temporary barracks by the Thai army. At first, the kids were a bit apprehensive about having some large foreigners waving pencils and crayons at them, but after a while they began to warm up to us. I'm not sure of the quality of psychiatric care in Thailand so I didn't want any of the kids to grow up with self-esteem issues stemming from my visit, therefore I made sure that I let every kid know in my broken Thai that their drawing was very good, even though some of them really, really sucked. Hey, not everyone can be Picasso. The kids were free to draw whatever they wanted and there were many pictures of landscapes, sunsets, Pokemon, and various Japanese anime. The kids seemed to really like it when I drew them a couple of Spider Man pictures, which on the now puts "Drawing in the margins of my notebook" a few notches higher than "Calculus" as far as high school activities that have been useful to me. Lots of the kids were very eager to draw tsunami pictures, which I found kind of odd. I think it's great if they find it cathartic, but I hope they weren't doing it because they thought that's what we wanted to see.

On the work front, it's been a frustrating couple of weeks because of the rain. We're at the tail end of the rainy season and storms will rise up out of nowhere, soak the town for half a day, then leave. This can be especially annoying when you've spent an entire day digging 3x3x4 ditches for foundations and find that they are completely filled in with water and dirt the next day. I had the idea that we should dedicate a group to finishing cesspool work before the end of the month, which of course now means that I'm in charge of finishing cesspool work by the end of the month. So there's a lesson I should've learned from corporate America... keep your ideas to yourself.

Some airline group showed up with 18 volunteers for a couple of days to help with some of the work on the island as well. When I heard that 18 flight attendants were going to be precipitating on my location, naturally hopes were high. I was having visions about some "Women of the sky" issue of Playboy that I've... heard about. Well, it's possible that these ladies could've been in Playboy, maybe in the June 1952 issue. They were really loud and very American, and after two days at the worksite thought they had figured everything out. Well, this crew of cacophonic harpies soon found out what they were in for when we went to dig holes at the island! Still, they showed up for a few days and put in some work on the housebuilding, and their organization donated a hundred grand toward the building of a playground, so my hat's off to them.

Work-wise, we're making a big run to try to get a lot of the houses on the mainland done before the inauguration ceremony at the end of the month. I've spent a lot of quality time dropping off cesspool (they're not really septic tanks I've been told) lids with the local construction supervisor, a guy named Chan. He doesn't speak any English but when he needs you to do something he'll unleash a flurry of gestures and then look at you and giggle. Hee hee hee... how about moving a 150 lb concrete ring? Hee hee hee...I need you to repaint the side of that house. Hee hee hee... dig, bitch! Now, I don't know if he's actually said that, but I'm watching him. Anyway, one day last week this giggling harbinger of doom asked me and another volunteer named Mark to help him move a cement mixer. Mark is a very cool guy who's a cross between Dr. Evil, a vampire, and a hyperactive monkey. So we get to the place where the mixer is located and help him raise up a hoist and attach a winch. Through a series of gestures he explains that we want to lift up the mixer and lower it into his pickup truck. Since the mixer is on a slight incline we're going to need to raise and lower it a couple of times before we get into position. Well, during one of the raisings while I'm adjusting the position of the mixer so we can lower it, one of the feet on the hoist tips over the cement mixer and hoist tilt over and fall on top of me. Now, I'm not good with numbers, but I'd guess the mixer weighs about 500 pounds and the hoist maybe a couple hundred. Everything occurs in slow motion, or maybe due to my finely-honed catlike reflexes it just seems that way. Maybe I've got some kind of spider-sense. Bresci-sense. Anyway, I duck around the falling hoist and the mixer falls just in front and to the right of me, but being on an incline, proceeds to roll over on top of my leg. Well, ever since those Samoans did a number on me that Thanksgiving day playing football, my leg has been more flexible and I'm able to worm my way out from under the mixer. Chan and Mark are a little bit freaked out, but hey, no harm done. We finally get the mixer on the truck at which point Chan looks at us and indicates that he'd like us to climb into the cab and hold on to the mixer to make sure it doesn't fall over on the ride to the new location. Since I am an idiot, I don't really see the downside of this plan, but Mark seems to have the instinct of self-preservation and says "No way!" So Chan takes a breath, looks at both of us, then starts giggling. He goes into the cab of his truck and pulls out 30 feet of rope which he uses to fasten the mixer to the truck, then he giggles again, climbs in the truck, and drives off.

This week there was some kind of bug going around the group so a few of us had to take a day off or so to battle the flu. There was a party Wednesday night because one of the volunteers who's been working here for the last 10 weeks was leaving, a guy named Steve who ends each sentence like he's asking a question. I was very proud that as a group we were sharing some American cultural traditions with the local Thais by introducing them to a beer bong. I don't know what it says about me that I have more pictures of people drinking beer bongs than I do of my day in Firenze.
Other than that, probably the most exciting thing that happened recently was some guy asking me if I wanted to buy viagra on my trip to Ranong to cross the river into Myanmar and renew my 30-day visa. Maybe I could've used it when I was propositioned by a Russian bisexual. Good times!

As you can probably guess, I'm planning on staying in Khao Lak another thirty days. There's a lot of work left to be done in order to get people into their houses and I think most of it is going to have to get done in the next month. There are a few of us staying longer, the hardcore four-week group being me, our Thai liaison Mui, and Mica, a wee Scottish lass who likes gnocchi and cradle-robbing. Ha ha ha! I'm going to pay for that but it was worth it. In the four weeks I've been here, I've already seen a lot of changes in the area. Where there used to be just soft dirt and earth in front of the stores has now been freshly paved over with asphalt. There are probably a third more stores open now than there were a few weeks ago in anticipation of "high season" which begins in November. I really hope for the locals that there is a high season, but to me it doesn't look like this place is ready to handle a significant influx of tourists. Things are moving quickly though so we'll see how it looks in a month. I figure we'll have done our job if this eventually turns into a place that I won't want to visit.

As always, the Dude abides,
Dave

From Thailand with Love

Pictures are here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/chGJCvcxvPdQyBzWA

Greetings from the only man who could go to Thailand and get constipated,

The last time you probably heard from me I was either in Italy or on my way there. For brevity's sake, I'll relate to you that the most interesting/exciting thing that happened to me during my month in Italy is that I ripped a mole off my abdomen while surfing and I had to spend a couple of days getting surf wax out of my chest hair. So I'm not doing that again without a rash guard. I also flipped a kayak about 300 yards from shore and had to drag it back in behind me while I was swimming. That was a lot of fun.

After a couple of days in London visiting my brother, I landed in Bangkok where I was picked up by Pop, my buddy from Keynote. He's a Bangkok native and offered to me a place to stay at his parents' place above their hardware store in Chinatown. Pop was great... he drove me all around Bangkok to show me some of the sites. We went to see some muay thai fights at Lumphini stadium and we tried to get me in for the Thai price by having Pop buy the tickets but they stopped us at the door and we had to pay an extra $30 because I'm a foreigner. The next day we went to a floating market where we rented a longboat and a guide took us up and down this warren of canals browsing through floating food stands and shops. We visited a couple of large temples including the one with the 200-foot-long reclining Buddha. Pop insisted that I burn some incense and pray with him, although I explained that I'm pretty sure I'm already going to hell. Pop's family then treated me to dinner on a river barge that floats up and down the Chao Praya giving brief tours of Bangkok. I ate some fish stomach soup, which tastes a lot like a cross between tripe and shark's fin soup.
The highlight of my Bangkok sojourn, though, was my excursion to Patpong to witness the ping-pong show. How could I leave this city without seeing perhaps its most renowned tourist attraction? Without going into too much detail, the next time a woman tells me she has a headache I'm going to put things in perspective by reminding her that I'm not asking her to put anything sharp and/or flammable in there.

The last couple of weeks I've been here in Khao Lak which was the area of Thailand that was hit hardest by the tsunami. The coastline here curves outward and forms a mini-peninsula, and the wave hit that area at about a 45 degree angle. If you want an idea of what happens, take a bucket of water and chuck it against a corner of your bathtub. You'll see that the water swirls around and forms a sort of whirlpool before heading toward the drain. Well, imagine that on a massive scale. There are a few fishing boats and a police boat that made it 3 kilometers inland and have been left there as a sort of monument to the disaster. The area is clearly not as bad as it was 8 months ago, but there's a lot of work left to be done. There are a lot of families that are still living in makeshift camps so we've been working our asses off to build them some housing. We're working with this group called the Mercy Foundation that's responsible for building 52 houses in the area. Most of the work that we've been doing has involved cutting down and tying rebar to make the steel supports that will frame the houses before pouring the concrete. We've also spent a couple of days working on a nearby island mixing and pouring concrete into the molds. My specialty so far has been digging holes behind some of the constructed houses and dropping in septic tanks.
There's been a lot of rain so in some areas I've had to drop into an existing tank just to clear it of dirt and water. Let me tell you, it was a long van ride home for the other passengers that day, which also earned me the nickname of Septic Boy. Probably the coolest thing I've done is learned how to drive a Bobcat, one of only ten in all of Thailand. I'm not sure how I lucked into that one, but heavy machinery is now one of the skills I can put on my resume. It's very hot and humid and I usually end up drinking about 5 liters of water a day. I should probably take more breaks than I do but I don't like it when other people are working and I'm not. This is probably the hardest I've ever worked in my life, but I'm loving it. Khao Lak is really laid back. I've met some extremely cool people not only in our group, among other volunteer groups, and among the Thai locals as well. There's this one Thai guy named Ken who's a digging machine. He's like half-man half-hoe. I've picked up some words here and there and now I think I can offend people in five different languages.

On the leisure side of things, we're staying at the Khao Lak Palm Beach resort, which looks like a 5-star kind of place until you walk about a hundred yards down toward the beach and realize that half the bungalows were completely destroyed and are just now being rebuilt. The place won't be officially open for business until the beginning of November, but they have an arrangement to let certain volunteer groups stay at reduced rates. They have a pool, which is nice. I'm loving the Thai food and trying to stay away from the Chang beer, but it's like an abusive relationship... I just keep coming back for more. Damn you Beer Chang!
Last weekend a bunch of us went and stayed a couple of days on Koh Phi Phi, which is a butterfly-shaped island 30 miles away from Phuket. The tsunami hit the island from both sides and almost completely wiped it clean. It looks like a lot of development has been done the last few months, though, and I think it'll be back to the way it was before in a few months. We rented a longtail boat and went over to Phi Phi Lei for some snorkeling and to check out where they filmed the movie "The Beach." We had to snorkel up to a cave and then walk through the center of the island to reach Maya Beach, which is THE beach. The sea was very angry that day my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli, so there were no boats that could approach the beach from the water and four of us were there all alone. It was gorgeous. There are cliffs rising up a couple hundred yards on both sides which look like outstretched arms encircling the beach out to the sea, and the inlet between the arms is shallow and mostly protected from the weather. It reminded me of a fjord the way the rocks projected straight up into the air. The sand is white and fine and the water is probably about 80 degrees. On the way back a storm came up out of nowhere and the longtail boat navigator (his name was Sulu, I'm not kidding) had to steer us through 2-3 meter waves. If you've ever been on a longtail boat then you know they're not exactly designed to take on that kind of sea, so there was a period of about 15 minutes where I was pretty sure we were going to capsize. It was like a rollercoaster ride as we would peak up on top of one wave, slide down its back and be immediately on top of another. I wasn't shitting bricks or anything because we all had lifejackets and I'm confident in the water, but you never know when someone could hit their head or something. Plus, there were a few in our group that aren't exactly comfortable in the water, so it wouldn't have been fun to deal with three or four panicky people. But, yadda yadda yadda, we survived, the boat didn't flip, and I'm sure the story will be embellished to include sharks and giant octopi as it gets retold. Other miscellaneous fun stuff: I got into a chili-eating contest with our Thai group leader, which we ended up tying. We didn't eat the chilies straight-up, we ate them as part of a papaya salad, and we both went through two of them. He told me that the second salad had thirty-plus small chilies in it. You guys know how I get when it comes to these kinds of competitions, so I wasn't going to let him beat me, but the rest of the group pretty much ordered us to stop, which I was thankful for the next morning. Believe me, it was much worse coming out than going in. Well, you haven't really been to Thailand unless you've had diarrhea and a venereal disease, so I'm 1 for 2. I ate some frog for lunch yesterday, which was pretty tasty but had too many bones.

Anyway, I'm sorry for rambling like this but I had a lot to say. I'm really looking forward to another couple of weeks of digging septic tanks and bending steel. I like bending the steel, it feels elemental. We're already senior staff here after only a couple of weeks so who knows, I might stay longer and take over the entire operation. Heh heh.

As always, The Dude abides,
Dave a.k.a. Septic Boy