Adventures in MGDing

Since we just saw our supervisor looking at bikini/topless pics on his work computer, I refuse to feel guilty for blogging at work. Gross. 

Firstly:

Shout out to the 1/3 of my family that had birthdays this weekend: Mama and Anna! They got to have a great time in LA celebrity watching and cheering Caleb on as he finished the LA Marathon in torrential rain. (Great job Cay!) Wish I could have been there too! Love you guys.

Last week: two days at work:) Well, not even. On Tuesday, (after eating a lunch that I still am sick from) Spider and Go took Sarah and I to the National Library so we could find English resources. I was expecting this huge building with gold detailing and cool sculptures and room after room of resources (hopefully some in English). Instead I found a picture book about the plague. Gruesome.

Needless to say we didn’t find much besides unfinished walls and Thai-comic books. Instead, Sarah and I went back to AIT. We were feeling so lazy that by the time the van dropped us off at the neighboring university we had motorbikes take us the last 20 minutes. We raced home, (side-saddle, of course!!) and vegged out. 

We took Wednesday and Thursday off at AIT. We did some labor in the real library with some real resources and found a few helpful things. That’s about it. 

Meanwhile, Mini-olympics are going strong at AIT. Meaning, there is mass chaos outside of our dorm every night for the volleyball event. Honestly, these people are louder than Spartans in Cedar Village after the Final Four (RIP, 2011 MSU BBALL, BTW). 

They're really into... family planning.

Thursday night is St. Patty’s of course, so we had a really nice dinner with Chelsea’s family at Cabbages and Condoms- the restaurant is associated with Chelsea’s NGO, PDA, and is also where I had my first meal with Dad and Laur and Kate in Bangkok. Totally brought me back:)

Afterwards we hit an O'Reilly's and hung out there for the night. Pi Nai met up with us, which totally made my night. 

Haha. Farangutans in the bathroom.

Friday we had a completely exhausting “reflection” with Dr. Soparth (let’s just say she likes the sounds of her own voice) and we laid low for the day. Friday night was another one of our favorite “SU parties” and it was costumed themed. We wore togas. Apparently bed-sheet togas are not internationally recognized as clothing, and we got asked several times why we were wearing sheets. 

People took pictures of us… but at least this time they were taking pictures of us because of our weird clothes instead of our white skin!! Progress!

Saturday we got a wayyy late start, but we still had our hearts set on going to Pattaya for the international music concert. We caught a van to Victory Monument in the city, and then took a two hour van (for under $2 USD) to the beach. Grabbed some lunch, packed 5 into one hotel room and hit the beach.

Pattaya is… strange. Reason #1. Huge international music festival and the town didn’t even clean up their beach. I have never seen so much pollution in such a beautiful place.  You could tell where the tide came in not because it was wet, but because there where streams of plastic and grime. We decided that we do not understand environmental policy in Thailand, especially tourism is one of the biggest generators of GDP if not the biggest. It was really sad. It felt very confusing to watch one of the most beautiful sunsets over floating garbage.

Reason # 2 Pattaya is strange. Or I guess you would say, Sad—the area is notorious for the sex trade. In Bangkok we are used to seeing Thai prostitutes, which is sad enough, but in Pattaya there are tons of European girls too- so you know they have been sold to the area. Ugh it's gross. There is a whole street called "Walking Street" (aptly named, right?) where you could probably get anything that you could afford. One bar we saw was Alcatraz themed. Talk about gross disgusting sicko yuck sad.

Gross.

Walking Street is more tolerable in the daytime

Reason #3. Interestingly clad people on the beach. I guess that isn’t specific to Pattaya, but it was certainly more concentrated than other beaches we've been to. I won’t elaborate, but nobody should have to see some of the swimsuits (or sunburns in bad places) that we saw this weekend.

Two of the very few cute things on the beach!

Ok, now I’ve successfully portrayed Pattaya as completely terrible- it isn’t. Yeah, there are some really awful things that go down there, but there are tons of cool places and thing to see (even a Ripley’s Believe it or Not) and we got to enjoy a massive music festival that was so fun. As Torey put so well, “It’s the Panama City Beach of Thailand.” Favorite part was seeing a reggae band cover “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz- not only do I love Mr. AZ, but it reminded me of going to his concert at EMU last semester and it made me miss my homies.

Our concert's on TV- gotta go!

Jason would be proud

Sunday was a beach-attempt day. After walking way too far, Torey and I gave up on following the boys (who were trying to find a good beach) and laid out on the gross beach (not in the trash, but close) for a couple hours. Got a nice tan… or something like that. We are in denial of how hard it is to get tan in Bangkok...
T and I got foot/leg (+back +neck) massages. The massage parlor played Celine Dion and LeAnn Rhymes and Land Before Time and we were totally diggin it. Torey also inspired me to get some awesome rasta pants- can’t wait to wear those at home.

I guess you could say that while we were in Pattaya I tried to follow Dad’s advice:

OK, be sweet and MGD at the BRF.

(Good luck decoding that one!)

Now it is Monday, we’re back at work and are really feeling the crunch to get our work done in the next two weeks. It’s looking like Pops is going to be able to spend some time with me in BKK and then him and I will meet Kate in Italy (potentially) for a nice vacay. I’m pumped.

And now my supervisor is sleeping, so I REALLY don't feel guilty...

Love to America,

Rosie