School is over, but not really

Because of the troubles in downtown Bangkok, my class misses its entire final week of CELTA training -- fully 25% of the course. The school's solution is to throw a week's worth of lesson plan notes and quizzes at us via email for completion by next Friday. This feels kind of like being in a movie theater when fire breaks out three-quarters of the way through the film, and the ushers shout out how it ends as we're rushing for the exit.

Students who absolutely, positively must leave town this weekend have emailed their final coursework and are bugging out. But I have more flexibility and will be around to teach two final elementary-class lessons next week.

---

Dinner out with (clockwise from lower left) British Mike who dropped out, Betsy, British Warren, Erwin from Belgium, and Anton, who is talking to his Thai girlfriend.

---

Thursday evening the Metro-Parkers are invited over for beers with Matt, one of our trainers who lives in the complex. Matt is a scrappy-looking Brit with a rugby-player build, living his "beer, babes and 'ball" life in the bachelor Heaven that is Thailand. We are joined by Graeme, the school marketing manager, who himself enjoys a very good time in the Land of Smiles. On the student side, it's just me, Aussie Brett who bails early, and Kiwi Mike.

Mike has a way of pushing people's buttons.

Early in training, Mike had an altercation with one of the front-desk girls at school. As the story goes, another trainer, Danny, made him sign a contract that he would be respectful to the help. Mike has been doing a slow burn ever since, and tonight he starts in on Danny-this and Danny-that. Graeme steps up to defend his fellow trainer and soon he and Kiwi Mike are shouting at each other.

I try to defuse the situation. "You know, if either you or Danny were a woman, I'd suggest that this sounds like sexual tension between you two." Graeme just about falls out of his chair laughing, but Kiwi Mike seethes on in silence. For the rest of the night, whenever the conversation is headed for bad places, I steer it back to everyone's favorite topic, hot Thai women. Men are so easy to redirect!

The culprit behind all this drama is beer. Matt's kitchen is a loaves-and-fishes repository of liter after liter of ice-cold Sing-ha, bag after bag of potato chips and Bugles. Kiwi Mike and I do not stumble out until near daybreak. At the front gate to my building he takes me by the shoulders, looks me in the eye and says: "Jeff, you're a good guy. But you've got to let go of your anger."

---

For twelve bucks in Portland, I can get a basic haircut at Great Clips, where the corporate goal is to get the next customer into the chair within 10 minutes. On Friday at a suburban mall in Bangkok, the same amount of money buys me a meticulous hair-by-hair styling, complete with shampoo and scalp massage from a nice pretty lady, and no one is expecting a tip (but I leave one).

A taxi ride to or from PDX might set you back, what, $30? Our ride to the mall, for haircuts and shopping, cost us under $5, split four ways -- again, no tip, we just round up to the nearest five-baht increment. Labor in Thailand costs next to nothing, which keeps prices very low ... but it also fuels the resentments of the serf class that bubble up in the form of this red shirt insurrection.

How soon, I wonder, before the folks on the bottom rung start taking out their frustrations on all these unfathomably rich westerners?

---

Tangerine juice: I practically live on this stuff.