The Bucket List: Check!

Well, it’s about time I updated the blog.  This post, I will take care of the back log.  I’m calling this post the bucket list because of the huge number of things I’ve been able to check off my bucket list since arriving in Thailand.  Now, I try not to go through life like it’s a list of things to do before I die.  In fact, rarely, if ever, do I contemplate the end of it all.  But there are lots (and lots!) of things that I would like to do and try, and when I get to do something new, or something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time, I still feel like I get to put a big check in a big imaginary box somewhere.  During my time in Thailand, there have been lots of checks in big imaginary boxes, and I’m pretty happy about each and every one.  

The Bucket List Items:

Eat durian 
It’s delicious!  And it doesn’t smell bad at all!  Here they ask, "Arroya, mai?" Delicious, no?

Eat street food in Bangkok 
I went to Bangkok and I survived…that’s sort of a bucket list item in itself for me!  The street food here is amazing.  You can get anything and EVERYTHING from a cart here.  Forewarned though, they wash the carts out into the gutters late at night, which makes for a horrendously awful steamy street soup on a hellaciously hung-over, 95 degree morning.  The chicken wings, coconut or curry dumplings, and fried noodles on every street corner will ease the hangover though, if you can make it through the fishy, smelly, rum-soaked haze to get there!

Eat Shark!
Nowhere near the strangest thing I’ve eaten since I’ve been here.  Delicious drenched in curry.  Beginning to realize how much of my bucket list involves food.

Ride in a Longtail Boat
From Krabi to Railay, and again from Ton Sai back to Railay.  What's a trip to Thailand without a few longtails?

Live with monkeys
I have officially been as close as I want to be to the wily little bastards.  They woke us playing on the roof in the morning, tried to steal food from us, and generally made a nuisance of themselves at Ton Sai.  Of course, the mosquitoes rivaled the monkeys in size, and annoyance factor.

Swim in as many oceans/seas as possible.
I can now cross the Andaman off the list :)

Song Kran!
I went, I partied, I played, I got soaking wet.  I took two big super soakers and a whole party of people to Patong for the festivities, and had an amazing time.  Best party ever.

I completed my TESOL program on the 27th of April.  Then I spent 2 weeks hanging out on beaches, Island hopping, trying not to get attacked by monkeys, and fending of mosquitoes.  I ended up in Bangkok on the 9th of May, where I partied and played with the friends I’d made in the TESOL course.  We explored the city, ate plenty of street food, saw a giant reclining Buddha,

went to the Indian market and the Chatuckuk Market (huge!  Insane!), took in a ladyboy show, and said goodbye as we headed off to destinations around Thailand to begin teaching.  Bangkok:

In my next installment, I’ll tell you all about my teaching assignment and my new home in Isaan.