Picture this: you are talking to this girl you met out at some pub, and it's looking good. She obviously likes you, and you're ok with that because you like being liked. Halfway through one conversation about something irrelevant, you begin to feel this sickness in your stomache. You've only had a few beers, it doesn't make sense - but then why the feeling? Ten minutes later you rush out of the venue under the guise of some insincere apology only to rush back to the room you are staying in and spend the rest of the entire night beside the toilet. As you can't imagine a worst fate, suddenly pictures of sushi you ate eight hours earlier flash into your head. You know what's wrong now: you have food poisoning.
And so it was for me too this past Thursday night.
This isn't the first time this had ever happened. I can recall being younger at my cottage in the Gatineau hills and having my mother take care of me because the McDonald's I had eaten earlier obviously was not up to snuff. When I was seventeen, I got beaver fever on a fifty day canoe trip in the Yukon and North-West territories, which was really bad because we had to keep moving and that left no time to coalesce. Last summer, I had the Norwalk virus in Lake Louise along with about sixty percent of the staff. I then had to take care of my girlfriend who got it after visiting me a week later. No real point in emphasising the unpleasantries, we've all been there. My mother says that nausea and vomiting are what she despises "more than anything else in physical life." I think that based on this past Thursday, I would probably agree.
But honestly, is it that hard to wash your hands before you handle food? Is it that difficult to ensure that the food you serve in your restaurant is fresh? I had friends of mine this past year in Hamilton who missed my birthday because they got Norwalk after eating at a sushi restaurant.
I am going to get my money back.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
Motorcycle Mayhem
For about a month now, I have been riding a motorcycle which I purchased from a colleage at school: a 2005 Honda Dream 125cc. As the school is roughly twenty-five minutes from town, it was almost a necessity to have if I am to get away from time to time. While there have been a few hiccups (I need a new front tire and there are some oil leaks from the engine), it has been a vehicle of intrepid bliss.
I admit that I probably drive too fast on the thing. Generally I drive faster than most Thais do on their own motorbikes (which is probably about 50 km/h), and often faster than many in cars (probably about 70 km/h). I think the quickest I have clocked is about 108 km/h, which seemingly is not very quick for a car but is exceptionally fast and dangerous on a motorcycle. One wrong turn, one abnormal bump, one collision with one of the multitude of animals which inhabit the maze of streets in Chiang Mai could drastically shorten my motorcycling campaign. Really it's just a bit of luck with a bit of defensive driving, but in retrospect, likely more luck.
In my first week at the school, I met an American ex-pat working in a guesthouse who was confined to a wheelchair because he had been hit from the side by a truck while crossing an intersection at night on his motorcycle eight years prior.
This brings me to the peculiar fashion in which traffic is maintained in Thailand. It is illegal, for instance, to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, and yet the majority of people don't seem to adhere to this law, nor are they reprimanded by the authorities. Moreover, the Thai youth seem to think that one is not "cool" if one dons a helmet. Personally, I find it liberating to not always wear one (a blithe habit I have acquired here but could never attempt in Canada), although I realize the greater risk associated with doing so. On occasion, the police will set up checks where they will ticket motorcyclists who have been remiss, but it doesn't happen very often, not enough to change the mentality anyway. It is not abnormal to see three people on a motorcycle either, sometimes with one of the riders dangling both of her legs off to one side. The females maintain that it is because they wear skirts, which seems to connote that appearance supersedes safety. I suppose that even in our caskets, we still try to look good.
But this isn't even the worst of infractions. One of the main reasons driving at night is so dangerous is because there is a preponderance of drunk driving in Thailand. There doesn't appear to be any laws regulating driving while under the influence, and if there are, they certainly aren't enforced. I actually once was driving in Chiang Mai at about 4pm and saw someone sprawled out on the shoulder of the highway, with half their body dangling from their car. The girl I was with didn't want me to stop (helping strangers is not a high priority in Thailand - cars barely move for flashing ambulances to pass for instance), but I did anyway because I thought he might be hurt. It turned out that he was completely drunk with his keys in the ignition, lying on the ground with the upper half of his body out on the side of oncoming traffic. When I tried to tell him to sleep in the back of his truck and took his keys out of his ignition, he kindly offered me some chips and put the keys right back where they had been. No one seemed to care. Just another day in Thailand.
In the same vein as drunk driving, there are a inordinate amount of hit-and-runs throughout the country. Because the average Thai does not have the monetary allowance to pay for hospital bills or vehicular damage in the case of an accident, they usually flee the scene instead (The Thai minimum wage is about CAN $6 a day). The books I have read only buttress this point further, almost tacitly justifying it. Even worse, a farang (foreigner) will usually be the one considered culpable because they do not know the local laws, but more so because in most cases they lack the ability to communicate and defend themselves to the Thai police officer who arrives at the scene.
Could it get any worse really? Well, yes.
In Chiang Mai (and likely many other areas in Thailand), there have been motorcycle gangs that terrorize innocent people driving their motorcycles during the day and especially at night. Some people have been verbally abused, some have been robbed (a twenty-one year old Canadian woman in 2004, for instance), some have been thrown off their bikes while driving (they ride up to a victim and push them off), and some have even been killed. I have even heard stories of biker gangs decapitating people with samurai swords in Chiang Mai, although the law enforcement supposedly dealt with it a few years ago. For whatever reason, likely tourism, it is not very well documented. At least not in English.
In Chiang Mai just a few weeks ago, however, a twenty-one year old was brutally stabbed with a samurai sword in front of an Esso station by a motorcycle gang. He is lucky to be alive. While the police has made some arrests, many are still at large.
Must I now live in fear that I, too, could fall victim to such insanities? Getting attacked by a group of people on motorbikes wielding a sword is not a quintessential Thai cultural experience in my opinion.
Thailand might be marching towards the season of fall, but to me it seems as though the weather isn't the only factor making Chiang Mai a bit colder...
I admit that I probably drive too fast on the thing. Generally I drive faster than most Thais do on their own motorbikes (which is probably about 50 km/h), and often faster than many in cars (probably about 70 km/h). I think the quickest I have clocked is about 108 km/h, which seemingly is not very quick for a car but is exceptionally fast and dangerous on a motorcycle. One wrong turn, one abnormal bump, one collision with one of the multitude of animals which inhabit the maze of streets in Chiang Mai could drastically shorten my motorcycling campaign. Really it's just a bit of luck with a bit of defensive driving, but in retrospect, likely more luck.
In my first week at the school, I met an American ex-pat working in a guesthouse who was confined to a wheelchair because he had been hit from the side by a truck while crossing an intersection at night on his motorcycle eight years prior.
This brings me to the peculiar fashion in which traffic is maintained in Thailand. It is illegal, for instance, to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, and yet the majority of people don't seem to adhere to this law, nor are they reprimanded by the authorities. Moreover, the Thai youth seem to think that one is not "cool" if one dons a helmet. Personally, I find it liberating to not always wear one (a blithe habit I have acquired here but could never attempt in Canada), although I realize the greater risk associated with doing so. On occasion, the police will set up checks where they will ticket motorcyclists who have been remiss, but it doesn't happen very often, not enough to change the mentality anyway. It is not abnormal to see three people on a motorcycle either, sometimes with one of the riders dangling both of her legs off to one side. The females maintain that it is because they wear skirts, which seems to connote that appearance supersedes safety. I suppose that even in our caskets, we still try to look good.
But this isn't even the worst of infractions. One of the main reasons driving at night is so dangerous is because there is a preponderance of drunk driving in Thailand. There doesn't appear to be any laws regulating driving while under the influence, and if there are, they certainly aren't enforced. I actually once was driving in Chiang Mai at about 4pm and saw someone sprawled out on the shoulder of the highway, with half their body dangling from their car. The girl I was with didn't want me to stop (helping strangers is not a high priority in Thailand - cars barely move for flashing ambulances to pass for instance), but I did anyway because I thought he might be hurt. It turned out that he was completely drunk with his keys in the ignition, lying on the ground with the upper half of his body out on the side of oncoming traffic. When I tried to tell him to sleep in the back of his truck and took his keys out of his ignition, he kindly offered me some chips and put the keys right back where they had been. No one seemed to care. Just another day in Thailand.
In the same vein as drunk driving, there are a inordinate amount of hit-and-runs throughout the country. Because the average Thai does not have the monetary allowance to pay for hospital bills or vehicular damage in the case of an accident, they usually flee the scene instead (The Thai minimum wage is about CAN $6 a day). The books I have read only buttress this point further, almost tacitly justifying it. Even worse, a farang (foreigner) will usually be the one considered culpable because they do not know the local laws, but more so because in most cases they lack the ability to communicate and defend themselves to the Thai police officer who arrives at the scene.
Could it get any worse really? Well, yes.
In Chiang Mai (and likely many other areas in Thailand), there have been motorcycle gangs that terrorize innocent people driving their motorcycles during the day and especially at night. Some people have been verbally abused, some have been robbed (a twenty-one year old Canadian woman in 2004, for instance), some have been thrown off their bikes while driving (they ride up to a victim and push them off), and some have even been killed. I have even heard stories of biker gangs decapitating people with samurai swords in Chiang Mai, although the law enforcement supposedly dealt with it a few years ago. For whatever reason, likely tourism, it is not very well documented. At least not in English.
In Chiang Mai just a few weeks ago, however, a twenty-one year old was brutally stabbed with a samurai sword in front of an Esso station by a motorcycle gang. He is lucky to be alive. While the police has made some arrests, many are still at large.
Must I now live in fear that I, too, could fall victim to such insanities? Getting attacked by a group of people on motorbikes wielding a sword is not a quintessential Thai cultural experience in my opinion.
Thailand might be marching towards the season of fall, but to me it seems as though the weather isn't the only factor making Chiang Mai a bit colder...
Sunday, September 16, 2007
88 Confirmed Dead
For the past few days, I have been attempting to figure out what I am going to do for my October break, which begins late October and lasts a week.
Originally, I had planned on visiting Cambodia, or perhaps Myanmar (Burma) or Laos, either with someone else or even alone. That said, there are also good friends of mine in South Korea, and so I have also been inquiring into getting cheap flights in that direction (I would pass on the North this time around, sorry Kim Jong-Il). Most flights seem ridiculously over-priced, at about CAN $1000 for a round-trip flight from Bangkok to Seoul, not including the trip from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. A little expensive for seven days, but I still have been looking.
Tonight I happened to peruse the daily news, as I often do from time to time (although I admit, I have strayed away from it lately just because I can afford the luxury of being uninformed out here), and saw something that I never expected to see: I know you're thinking something in the lineage of, "Bush wins the Nobel Peace Prize," but it was worse... eighty-eight people had died in a Thai airplane crash on a flight from Bangkok to Phuket. The paper said forty-two survived, although they were injured - one of them was a twenty-three year old Canadian, go figure. Half the plane was Thai, the other half was foreign - all of them should have lived.
It was a discount flight run by One-Two-Go, a subsidiary of Orient Thai Airlines. Incidentally, One-Two-Go is also the company that runs my phone plan which, surprise surprise, doesn't work all of the time. It just so happens that a discount flight is what I have been looking for to take to Korea.
A little about me, airliners and airplanes:
For as long as I can remember, I have always been worried about flying. It doesn't matter that millions of flights happen annually; it doesn't matter that my father seems to be on half of them for business trips. They scare me, and besides the practicality of getting from point a to point b, I partially loathe them.
I mean, at least in North America, it appears as though airline companies are one of the few businesses that treat their customers like garbarge. Obviously, this does not include every single person who works for an airline, I concede that I have met some very kind individuals at rare moments. But on the whole, the image which is generally projected is a negative one: I have dealt with employees who couldn't be bothered to help me, were rude, and acted as if they held the key to my travel experience in the palms of their quixotically petulant hands. The sad part is that they did, and when one wants to get on with their vacation or business trip, you can't really argue or tell the person what you truly feel about the way they are behaving, unless of course driving to your destination instead is part of some hidden agenda.
If you think that's bad, try this: the morning I left for Thailand, the flight I was scheduled to take from Toronto to Chicago was cancelled because every available pilot had exceeded their weekly quota of air travel. That is beyond incompetancy, it is theft: they don't have pilots to fly their planes, yet they are selling tickets for imaginary flights. They are stealing my time, my money, my ability to arrive at my employment on time and be competant myself. Here is the kicker: the ticket agent was even unwilling to help me transfer to another airline to make my connecting flights. Quality customer service, indeed.
And then there is security. Don't get me started about how incongruous and hypocritical it is to have the insane level of security we have at an airport and not any other form of public transportation. I feel like a criminal every time I go through security. Once I had to open up my carry-on bag because it had chocolate in it. I mean come on, let's be serious, chocolate?? Are you kidding me? I had no idea people made bombs out of cocoa.
In reality this is simply an extension of terrorism: we have been scared into inhibiting our own personal freedoms just so we can be "safe."
And then after all the hassles, the stress, the security, the rushing - after all of this - eighty-eight souls die in Phuket.
Originally, I had planned on visiting Cambodia, or perhaps Myanmar (Burma) or Laos, either with someone else or even alone. That said, there are also good friends of mine in South Korea, and so I have also been inquiring into getting cheap flights in that direction (I would pass on the North this time around, sorry Kim Jong-Il). Most flights seem ridiculously over-priced, at about CAN $1000 for a round-trip flight from Bangkok to Seoul, not including the trip from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. A little expensive for seven days, but I still have been looking.
Tonight I happened to peruse the daily news, as I often do from time to time (although I admit, I have strayed away from it lately just because I can afford the luxury of being uninformed out here), and saw something that I never expected to see: I know you're thinking something in the lineage of, "Bush wins the Nobel Peace Prize," but it was worse... eighty-eight people had died in a Thai airplane crash on a flight from Bangkok to Phuket. The paper said forty-two survived, although they were injured - one of them was a twenty-three year old Canadian, go figure. Half the plane was Thai, the other half was foreign - all of them should have lived.
It was a discount flight run by One-Two-Go, a subsidiary of Orient Thai Airlines. Incidentally, One-Two-Go is also the company that runs my phone plan which, surprise surprise, doesn't work all of the time. It just so happens that a discount flight is what I have been looking for to take to Korea.
A little about me, airliners and airplanes:
For as long as I can remember, I have always been worried about flying. It doesn't matter that millions of flights happen annually; it doesn't matter that my father seems to be on half of them for business trips. They scare me, and besides the practicality of getting from point a to point b, I partially loathe them.
I mean, at least in North America, it appears as though airline companies are one of the few businesses that treat their customers like garbarge. Obviously, this does not include every single person who works for an airline, I concede that I have met some very kind individuals at rare moments. But on the whole, the image which is generally projected is a negative one: I have dealt with employees who couldn't be bothered to help me, were rude, and acted as if they held the key to my travel experience in the palms of their quixotically petulant hands. The sad part is that they did, and when one wants to get on with their vacation or business trip, you can't really argue or tell the person what you truly feel about the way they are behaving, unless of course driving to your destination instead is part of some hidden agenda.
If you think that's bad, try this: the morning I left for Thailand, the flight I was scheduled to take from Toronto to Chicago was cancelled because every available pilot had exceeded their weekly quota of air travel. That is beyond incompetancy, it is theft: they don't have pilots to fly their planes, yet they are selling tickets for imaginary flights. They are stealing my time, my money, my ability to arrive at my employment on time and be competant myself. Here is the kicker: the ticket agent was even unwilling to help me transfer to another airline to make my connecting flights. Quality customer service, indeed.
And then there is security. Don't get me started about how incongruous and hypocritical it is to have the insane level of security we have at an airport and not any other form of public transportation. I feel like a criminal every time I go through security. Once I had to open up my carry-on bag because it had chocolate in it. I mean come on, let's be serious, chocolate?? Are you kidding me? I had no idea people made bombs out of cocoa.
In reality this is simply an extension of terrorism: we have been scared into inhibiting our own personal freedoms just so we can be "safe."
And then after all the hassles, the stress, the security, the rushing - after all of this - eighty-eight souls die in Phuket.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Snakes... I hate snakes.
I know I should start off with some awkward introduction - but I'm going to skip the formalities and offer that either you know me already or you will learn about me through whatever I post. Don't worry, we can still be friends - it's me, not you.
So the other day something odd happened at the school I work at in Chiang Mai (I am a dorm parent). One of the kids was walking through the halls on the bottom floor of the boy's residence and saw a dark, two foot long snake slithering on the floor. This is not a typical dormitory moment, even for Thailand. It quickly wriggled itself to the end of the hall into one of my colleague's room. Thankfully, he immediately phoned to let us know that we had unexpected company. I was off campus, so my supervisor hurried over to deal with it. He opened the door and stuck his head in, only to see it quickly slither under the bed.... now what?
You might wonder why this even matters. It's just a snake right? Snakes are generally afraid of humans, and no doubt this particular one had simply gotten lost, or was engaging in some audacious exploration attempt; a slithering Shackleton if you will. The problem was really that it was a cobra, one of the many poisonous snakes in Thailand (I believe Thailand hosts seven). Now you understand.
As it was, my supervisor called some school engineers to come and help him deal with the creature. But by the time they had returned to the room, the snake was no longer under the bed: it was hiding behind the laundry hamper, coiled. It must have realised at this point that it was the centre of attention, because it quickly became aggressive. I don't even think the engineers thought twice about grabbing their machete and summarily decapitating the cobra. There are pictures of them holding the newly deceased snake by its tail, but there is no head.
What's scary is what could have happened: it might not have been noticed. So, for example, my colleague comes home after a night of carousing, doesn't turn on his light, and steps on the thing. Or what if he had been in bed and had felt a small bite whilst slumbering? Pretty terrifying actually. I hear they can climb stairs, in fact, it must have climbed stairs to get into the dorms.
Maybe later it would have visited me...
So the other day something odd happened at the school I work at in Chiang Mai (I am a dorm parent). One of the kids was walking through the halls on the bottom floor of the boy's residence and saw a dark, two foot long snake slithering on the floor. This is not a typical dormitory moment, even for Thailand. It quickly wriggled itself to the end of the hall into one of my colleague's room. Thankfully, he immediately phoned to let us know that we had unexpected company. I was off campus, so my supervisor hurried over to deal with it. He opened the door and stuck his head in, only to see it quickly slither under the bed.... now what?
You might wonder why this even matters. It's just a snake right? Snakes are generally afraid of humans, and no doubt this particular one had simply gotten lost, or was engaging in some audacious exploration attempt; a slithering Shackleton if you will. The problem was really that it was a cobra, one of the many poisonous snakes in Thailand (I believe Thailand hosts seven). Now you understand.
As it was, my supervisor called some school engineers to come and help him deal with the creature. But by the time they had returned to the room, the snake was no longer under the bed: it was hiding behind the laundry hamper, coiled. It must have realised at this point that it was the centre of attention, because it quickly became aggressive. I don't even think the engineers thought twice about grabbing their machete and summarily decapitating the cobra. There are pictures of them holding the newly deceased snake by its tail, but there is no head.
What's scary is what could have happened: it might not have been noticed. So, for example, my colleague comes home after a night of carousing, doesn't turn on his light, and steps on the thing. Or what if he had been in bed and had felt a small bite whilst slumbering? Pretty terrifying actually. I hear they can climb stairs, in fact, it must have climbed stairs to get into the dorms.
Maybe later it would have visited me...
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