Phuket: Expats and Australians

The second day we had to wake up way early. We had scheduled a boat tour stopping at three places the day before. I’m still not completely sure where we ended up going, but it was definitely worth the money and the devotion of one full day.

At something like 7:40 a.m. we pushed ourselves out of the hotel’s front door. There, after a five-minute wait, came a minibus to pick us up and transport us to the boat dock on the other side of the island. Along the way, the bus gradually filled up to the brim with passengers from other hotels as well.

We got to the dock to find crowds of people there. It kind of reminded me of my hometown—it was 80% white, which, while not necessarily a bad thing, was definitely unexpected.

Snooping around and listening to the noise, it became clear that a great deal of them were Australian. There were some French and English people, but the Australians were so prevalent that one of my friends who is Australian herself told me that their stereotypical accent was annoying. I have often had the same sentiment as of late, I’ve noticed. Copious amounts of the word “like,” in conjunction with rising intonation at the end of every sentence—“They talk in questions!”—has really begun to irk me.

The boat that we loaded onto had three decks—the lowest and cheapest, the middle V.I.P. section, and the upper deck not reserved. As expected, the crowds flocked up to the upper deck, for the views, for the air, for whatever. We claimed the cheap seats that we were meant to claim, which was fine, because there was plenty of open space on the middle deck for fresh air and water viewing—or so I thought.

We arrived at the first stop about half an hour after disembarking. With white-sand beaches, there were plenty of lawn chairs (that turned out to cost money, so we moved), and colorful fish to go around. To get off the boat, we had to get onto smaller (motorized) boats to get to shore.

One of my friends bought bread for the fish (that they were selling onboard), and she shared it with us. Like little kids, we threw the bread into the water and watched the fish converge. I started with small niblets that were consumed quickly, but I ended up submerging the rest of my piece in the water, allowing the fish to take hits at it while I still held the other side.

My friends proceeded to have drinks out of pineapples while I consumed a can of Coke. They then posed with the tops on their heads like hats. The weather wasn’t overly sunny. In fact, it was more overcast in nature, and it seemed like it was going to rain.

I know that I have trouble with weather. I complain in rain, I know, and whine when the temperature is less than 60 degrees. The thing is that I have trouble predicting weather as well. The first time it rained while I was in Hong Kong, I stepped out of the front door of the hall with a short-sleeved shirt, short pants, and flip-flops. That day, I slipped twice, and bought an umbrella. The next day I slipped again and waterlogged my right foot in a wet shoe. At least the second day I had a sweater. In planning for Taipei, I figured that since the temperature said 29 degrees Celsius, I wouldn’t have to worry about rain. Wow, was I wrong. The first two days it poured like I’d not seen in a long time. There, I bought another umbrella (this time plaid). I guess in California, it has to be under a certain temperature to start raining, and if it’s about to rain, the temperature will first drop.

And it started to rain when we were back on the big boat, going from the first destination to the second. (The first I can’t remember the name; the second Maya Bay). All the people lounged on the upmost deck started coming down, and I had the pleasure of informing them that the seats around me were taken. When it stopped raining between the second destination and the third (Maya Bay and Phi Phi Island), they selfishly went right back up to their undeserved seats.

Also, sitting down on the boat took longer than necessary, specifically and definitely because people filing on wanted to get their hands on the buffet onboard before sitting down. They just couldn’t sit down and allow everyone else to sit down so that the boat could start going before they crowded the buffet trays. Oh well.

Maya Bay was amazing. With sheer cliffs surrounding the bay, except for one private beach area, the water was deep. The tour came with snorkeling equipment, so we went snorkeling around the bay, diving and encountering fish. The water was cold (though not as bad as my parents’ pool) and the fish remained systematically unfriendly, but the experience was amazing. I had snorkeled before, the latest that I can remember being in La Jolla Cove (near UCSD).

I also learned about some sea critters that I had no knowledge of. In the water, it felt like I was getting pinched all over, but not by fingers. My Australian friend enlightened me to the fact that those were sea lice, and that she has them back home. Apparently, I could feel only around a quarter of the bites plaguing me.

Between the second and third destinations, there was about an hour of travel time. Getting seasick inside, we headed out to the deck. The spacious room seemingly apparent earlier in the trip seemed to disappear under the crowds—and by crowds, there couldn’t’ve been more than fifteen people on the bow of the vessel. The three-to-four person benches were being occupied by but a few (large and) inconsiderate people. To onlookers, they gave haughty looks, like they deserved those seats. And maybe they did deserve those seats, because the four of us got a deal on that daytrip. The price advertised for the day was ฿2200 THB per person ($66 USD), but when the four of us asked for a discount (because the travel agents give them out left and right), they quoted for the four of us just ฿3600 total, or ฿900 per person ($27 USD). In short, anyone who didn’t ask for a discount got gypped. We resorted to standing along the edge of the boat with plenty of fresh air but not seats.

The last stop on that trip was a town on Phi Phi Island. It was most definitely a tourist town, but walking through it, hawkers weren’t nearly as aggressive back on Phuket Island. They only started if you walked into their shop, having of course shown interest.

Wondering what I bought in Thailand, then? Well I bought a few postcards to send back home, but also I got a few novelty-type t-shirts. One said Red Bull (as in the energy drink brand) in Thai along with the iconic logo. Originally, Red Bull is from Thailand and its English name is a direct translation from the Thai name กระทิงแดง, and not the other way around. The other was a Coca-Cola t-shirt in Thai. My friend going to India said that if she found an iconic logo in a foreign language on a t-shirt, she would post me one.

The town was more peaceful and quiet than Patong Beach, and when we went exploring, we ended up on a different beachfront and had to retrace our steps to get back to the proper beach (and eventually the boat). Along the way were multiple companies offering diving and scuba certification. If I had free time and unrestricted money, I would do that.

The journey back to the dock on Phuket Island was an hour and forty-five minutes. This was followed by a cramped minibus ride back to Patong Beach, with me keeping my knees firmly touching so that I was not nudging the guy on my left and so that I didn’t hit the gearshift on the right. (The driver sat on my right, as the country drives on the left for the most part).

That was a tiring day and a tiring night. We went through many more markets and I found myself buying like 24 fl. oz. of Thai tea from the neighborhood 7-Eleven. Going through the markets was much more fun than going through markets in Hong Kong and Mainland China because the semblance of those places (such as Stanley Market on the south side of Hong Kong Island) to Chinatowns back home (I’ve been to those of Los Angeles—Chinatown and Monterey Park, San Francisco, and Chicago), is quite high. However, in Thailand, the merchandise and the approach to salesmanship were so different.

That night, I did little studying. The next day, we flew back to Hong Kong. After the same minibus ride, we arrived at the small airport to find lines flying like rat-tails out of the entrances. After waiting and entering the building, we realized that it was because they do security checks upon entrance into the building, rather than after check-in, as I’ve seen in all other airports.

I ended up studying less than imagined on the plane because I was super tired. Though the test went alright, I wondered a mere day earlier what was with the plane that I was on. The airplane (an Airbus I believe) was billowing steam from the joints between the overhead compartments and the walls and ceiling. It became more disconcerting as it became so noticeable that people began taking pictures of it as it obscured the ceiling. Eventually it subsided and I was never so glad to land as I was during that flight.

It’s a shame that I didn’t get to travel more outside of Greater China, this trip has made me realize. No matter how much Taiwan tries to act independent and no matter how much Hong Kongers look down at Mainland Chinese habits, the fact of the matter is that the places are so much more similar to each other than to other east Asian countries, and for that I feel I’m missing out.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.

Finals (Three) Week(s)

I can’t believe this term is starting to come to an end. It’s now been just over three months since I arrived here (confused) in late August. That means that I have just under a month left here, so I figured I’d sum up my plans for the remainder of my stay.

Believe it or not, classes have begun to end. One of my classes is completely finished—I took my final for it yesterday. One more will be all over after a group presentation next Monday. The third will end with a final examination on Thursday of revision week.

This week is actually the last week of instruction. My lectures have started ending one by one and I’ve harbored mixed feelings about my classes ending, but that’s for a later post. I still have two classes next Monday though, because the instructors wanted to make up for the fact that classes began on a Tuesday. I don’t mind; I’ll be here then.

This weekend will the first in a while that I’m not planning on going somewhere outside of Hong Kong. I’ve got work to do, with four more finals to study for a research paper due the end of revision week. It’ll be nice and quiet here.

After revision week though comes the official period for final examinations. Granted, I’ll only have three (as one’s already taken and the other two are likewise scheduled prematurely). Back at UCSD, finals take up one week. That week is appropriately named finals week, and occurs immediately after instruction stops. We have no revision week and little time to revise in between finals.

Here’s different. It’s partly to blame I suppose on it being on semesters rather than quarters here, but finals week is actually three weeks here. (Okay, in actuality it’s two, but it feels like three to me.)

If you remember from when I registered that we wouldn’t receive our timeslots and venues for finals until mid-November, that time has come. While I would have hoped for them to be grouped together, preferably at the start, they all turned out to be spread out. I have one on December 8, one on December 14, and one on December 18. I leave back for the States on the 21st.

In no way do I plan to use all those gaps for studying. I want to keep travelling! To this effect, I’m going to go to Nanjing from December 4th to the 8th. And in the other gaps, I’m still negotiating where to go and what to do. No worries though—it’ll be good.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.   

The Storm that Passed without a Fight

Yeah, I’ve been traveling a lot, I know. This latter half of the semester, I’ve been jetting off to different cities, with my last conquest being Phuket, Thailand, four hours away. There is less than a month left, and though deadlines are looming and finals are approaching, I remain calm and look forward to a few more excursions before my departure back to the States.

It’s funny how people think that something has to give for something else to happen—and it’s true. It’s like you can’t be in two places at once (not yet, though I believe not ever), or how matter can’t just disappear. The funny thing then is that people don’t realize that there’s no need to give because there already is so much give—and by give I mean time, of course.

Back at UCSD, the normal course load is about four classes. The minimum is three to be a full-time student. I took five—and there’s a couple reasons for that. The first quarter, I took the standard four. I was bored out of my mind. I caught up with many different television shows (including the nine-season Scrubs and the now-ten-season CSI) and at the end of the year I took to reading a lot.

Because of my boredom, I decided why not take an extra class? I can handle it well and I’ll graduate earlier and spend less of my parents’ money on my education. After all, the UCSD levies tuition against all full-time students equally, regardless of actual credit hours. And after that happened, I was still bored. I started a blog for my upcoming study abroad trip and started brainstorming ideas for extended prose.

Here is not all that different. Each class that I attend here is about three hours per week in duration, except Cantonese, which is about two. Add it all up and I go to class 17 hours per week. With studying, it probably works out to 48 academically-focused hours. A seven-day week is 168 hours long. I sleep off around 56 of those. So 168 minus 56 minus 48 leaves me with 64 spare hours per week.

Last weekend, the Thailand trip lasted about three full days—that’s 72 hours, and two of the three nights I spent studying for my Fine Arts final that I got over with yesterday.

So the time is there—it’s just how you use it, I suppose. I found that working on deadlines early, getting projects done a few days before they’re due (at a minimum) keeps me at rest. That way if I find something (fun) to do, I can easily be spontaneous. Last week, I turned in an essay due Friday at 7:00 p.m. on Monday at 9:00 a.m. The professor hadn’t even given the department office instructions to collect it yet.

I found out that I hate procrastination, and it’s been keeping me afloat ever since I discovered this little preference of mine. At UCSD it was the same way. My first quarter, I had a paper due week eight of the term. The week before, we were to do a peer review in tutorial/section, so I finished it in the middle of week six. I found that my paper was the only one in the class that was really able to be peer-reviewed, so nearly everybody read it. Cool.

So that’s how I do what I do—good ol’ hard work—and it really works. But that’s just one side of the coin. The other is the realization of many of us here—where does the time go at home?

I know the answer for my own situation. It drains into the tube (though my computer functions as my television). I don’t mind reading—in fact, I really like reading, but the television usage can go down. That would renew my spare time.

The funny thing is that while I’ve seen more of the United States than the average American (by means of a thirty-state road trip when I just got my driver’s license in 2006), there is still so much that I’ve never seen. I would struggle to say that I’ve been to New England. I’ve still not been to New York City. I’ve been to many, many national capitals now, yet my own isn’t on that list. Most sad (though common) is that I’ve not been thirty miles south of UCSD. Admittedly, there’s a current travel warning from the Department of State advising travel to Mexican border areas because of recent increases in drug-related violence, but the fact that I can’t say that I’m not well traveled makes it pathetic that I’ve never been to Mexico.

I’ve been to Canada quite a few times, actually, which can be construed as ironic seeing as Mexico is but thirty miles south and Canada is more than a thousand miles north. So I’ve made a personal pact to see more around North America (and South America), time, money, and parent permitting. (Though that’s not to say I wouldn’t love to travel some more with my family).

We’ll see where life takes me when I get back to California.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.