Oh weekends... I remember when I had nothing to do.

So with Pattaya under my belt, I feel the last few weekends have been completely booked by all sorts of nonsense. It's not that I don't like hanging out with my friends - I love it, but I really appreciate the scant free time that I have. The latest project has been grading midterm exams, which is a bit of a tiresome ordeal. And I assumed that Thailand did more or less the standard thing the rest of the world does, where 90-100 is an A, 80-89 is a B, or something along those lines. Nope. In Thailand, a F is below 50, and an A is 80-100. I mean, with most tests being multiple choice, simply by dumb odds you could get halfway to a passing grade. Not that it matters, because students aren't allowed to fail. Because it would make them sad? Coming from the "do 5 hours a night of homework to pass with a D" kind of attitude of the rest of Asia, it's kind of nice, but way too far in the opposite direction. I think Thailand needs to rethink its education system.

So, future Weg, what have we been up to? Well, the school cancelled some classes for some random reason of the week to have a festival. I have no idea what it's about except I got to light wax, flower shaped candles and put them in water. I know it's some religious thing, which is weird how integrated religion is in public things. The country is 95% Buddhist, but for the State to officially sanction it just feels a little theocratic-y to me. Oh well. Pretty stuff.

I set out to find the tallest building in the city, the Baiyoke. The Baiyoke appears to be the center of two things - an expensive, though slummish, clothing market, and a lot of tall buildings. So first to the clothing market, it was like a series of small warehouses rather than proper stores. Set in what I would consider, a pretty run down part of town. Yet prices were high, perhaps driven up by the "luxury" Baiyoke. But even the building itself hosted these shabby clothing flea markets. And then if you want to go to the top, its 300 baht ($10). I'd consider it, but tbh it's only marginally taller than the other buildings around it. Plus there's nothing to do up there except to eat at a 1000-baht-a-plate restaurant. Yikes. I instead popped over to my old home in Silom to say hello and get a haircut before heading out in the evening to a night market.



YES, night markets are back baby! Well, sort of. It was out by Ella's place, and they called it the train night market. I don't know why. There were no trains, just a statue of fire flower Mario. We got some food, and then stopped in a bar for some beers. Except it was a Buddhist holiday, which meant no alcohol. SERIOUSLY Buddhism - I like you and all, but you're really starting to push it.

The next outing was with Ella to Chatuchak Market. It's been a while since I popped over to Chatuchak, and it's maze of stuff. I bought a silly T-shirt with sushi fighting on it. I'm sure it will show up in a photo at some point. Like in idiot, I took the wrong bus back to my place and it was a while before the next stop. When we finally got off, we were at MOCA, or the Museum of Contemporary Art. I don't like art. I vowed to never go to another artsy thing again. But it was kind of staring me in the face. So in we went. It was actually kind of interesting, and Ella pointed out some things I never would have noticed. Also there were motion activated escalators, which are tons of fun. Anyway. Later that weekend I met a friend I had been chatting with online for months, but she was never in town to hang out. We got along quite well, and chatted up a storm. We passed by the American Embassy, and they were a bit cross with us when we tried to take a picture. But then they relented anyway. America, you've got a swanky embassy. UK, your embassy looks like a maximum security prison. Seriously, fix that. The reason we were there though, and I swear I am not making this up, was to see a penis shrine. It was actually on the grounds of some 5-Star Swiss hotel, so we just kind of walked in. It was quite small, but yup... lotta penises. Thailand is weird.

Speaking of the UK, penises, and backing up a little bit to the World Cup (yay Germany), I met a new guy in my building who seemed to not be Thai. Turns out he is from England, and I was meeting some folks out in Sukhimvit to watch the game. I invited him along and he agreed after knowing me for 10 seconds, because he is a cool guy. So Dan and I got to know each other that night, him having lived in Thailand for 48 hours. Dan is here to do a TEFL course, and through him I met his classmate Heather, who also lives here. The 3 of us have become fast friends in this island of people who can't really speak English. Dan's apartment also has a swanky balcony, which has been used for a series of night time drinkings. In fact, the 3 of us, Ella, Sandra, and Sandra's friends on vacation from Malaysia went out to Asiatique, a weird pedestrian shopping area thingy on the river. We got pizza (it's been soooo long!) and rode a big Ferris Wheel. I didn't even know this place existed until a few hours prior, but it was quite cool! We also did a fish spa, which I am a huge fan of. While there I met some Chinese guy, who I need to hang out with at some point.

And finally almost up to date - Ella found a website that is "101 Things to do in Bangkok" Some of them are pretty generic like "Ride in a tuk tuk", but some are much more specific. We're going to set out on weekends to accomplish as many as we can. One we both wanted to do was the Jim Thompson House and the zoo. The Jim Thompson House (Or the JTH, for all the cool kids) is this house about some American dude who ran the Thai silk industry, and built a fancy house on the river. He was a bit of an art collector, so it was a swanky place. Check. The zoo was not too far, a bit small but nice place. They had a lot of snakes, camels, goats that escaped from their cages... ya know, zoo stuff. Like all places in Thailand, they had a different, higher price for foreigners. I tried my usual "One Thai ticket please" as a joke, but this time the guy laughed and went along with it. So, right on! I'm going to continue my stupid joke, as it has saved me 50 baht so far. Start the counter! After the zoo, it was off to Khao San to meet Boom's friends. Boom is a socialite Thai guy, who knows everybody, is super friendly, and just a great person to know. Josh from the party a few weeks ago also showed up, and we got into a really heated, long discussion about opinions. Like, we gave our opinions on opinions. And now I'm writing my opinion on opinions on opinions. I think it would be best to end the blog here, before the universe collapses in on itself.