Bangkok. That's what she said.

Get it? That's what she said? Alright, I know it's lame, but I've been waiting for an age to use it and never got the opportunity. Sue me. Right, so here's what happened and here's how I got/stole the opportunity to come to the weirdest place I've ever been in. I was originally going to go to America and visit my family for the winter holidays. But then two realities smacked me in my grill. (that's slang for face...or maybe mouth, I dont know I'm not that urban). Anyway the first thing was that I had already been home this year for spring break. It just seemed forever ago so I completely forgot. The second thing that hit me was the price of the tickets! So expensive.Not that seeing the only people in the world who I would die for wouldn't be worth the money but come on, twice a year? So because I had already told my family that I was coming I quickly called them and attempted some damage control. Needless to say they didn't love the news of me not coming home, but in retrospect they weren't as broken up about my impending absence as I would have liked them to be. Shady. Side eye to them.

So still Thailand wasn't on the radar at this point. And before I launch into the story about how Thailand actually came to be, let me just say one thing. But before I say that, again I have to say one more thing before that. Sorry, I know it's confusing just try to keep up. The thing that I have to say before the thing that I'm going to say is a disclaimer of sorts. Just please forgive me reader if anything I say in this entire blog is offensive or ignorant or closed minded. I do fancy myself an open minded individual and I try very hard to see the world from the eyes of others but it is a difficult thing to do and I am only human. Also even though I'm really smart and funny and intellectual and cute, sometimes I make mistakes. There. There is the disclaimer and the nasty taste in my mouth. I am going to try to tell my story about Thailand in a sort of objective light but I'm also going to be honest about how Thailand made me feel. The thing I had to say after the disclaimer bit is that I never had any desire to go to Thailand or any Asian country in life. I had a proverbial list with many places I wanted to go, but there were no Asian countries on it. Incidentally there were also no African countries on the list either. Alright so I've said it. I'm not that proud of the list but it's the list all the same. You'll be glad to know that the first nasty mouth taste is now being over taken by the second nasty mouth taste. I do have this to say for myself. Africa is definitely on the list now, for if I survived Asia, Africa should be a cakewalk.


So how did I get here then? Well. How did I come to smoke my first cigarette when I was 15? Peer pressure man. No-one says when they're 14, "Dude. I have a list of shit I want to do when I turn fifteen. I'm gonna smoke up some cancer sticks and look so very cool while doing it." No. Doesn't work that way at all. Here's what happens. You see all the allegedly cool kids getting their life and smoking ciggs and other contraband behind the gym and like a fool you immediately need to get your hands on some. Because after all, you're cool too. Then after your first puff, your throat is constricting, you're panicked and afraid your lungs have turned black, you smell awful and you just know you need chemo. It was a bad idea. But peer pressure is a bitch. Sorry if you're reading this mom. About the ciggs and the profanity. In that order.


So what happens to many expats who live in the Middle East, is that they are earning a bit more money than they were back home, it's tax free, and they usually haven't got any rent to pay. So they decide, naturally, that they should see more parts of the world with some of this extra money. Also, living in the Middle East means that you're relatively closer to more destinations. (as opposed to if you were living in America or Canada, or even Europe and Australia in some cases). So the travel bug hits, right? And so maybe they start out with neighboring Arabic countries like Jordan or Oman. Then they branch out and do a 3 day weekend in Greece or Kenya. Maybe they fly to Sri Lanka over Eid break. They take tons of photos to go with their amazing travel stories. So they're just traveling their little hearts out right? Their conversations include ideas like these. They need new North Face jackets for the upcoming trip to Kashmir. They accidentally left their backpack on a mountain in Kathmandu because they had too much of the local bootleg liquor before they climbed it. (...and other charming travel anecdotes such as this). Oh yeah and please lets don't forget, their precious passports are running out of clean pages, and all these other 1st world difficulties. Yeah. So, you don't want to be left out of the fold. You too could be a world class traveler. You too have a tax free salary and a free apartment. You too have a passport... only yours has tons of empty pages. You must act now! If you don't, what is your life abroad even for? You didn't come here solely to work, did you? You can't run back home to visit mommy and daddy every time you get a holiday break. You too must now go get a NorthFace jacket, those campy little open-toed hiker sandals, and one of those tall, awkward looking backpacks that makes your body tip forward because it's packed to the brim with like, your firestarters and your beef jerky and other stupid outdoor supplies. By the way I hate those backpacks, they make everyone who wears them look stupid, and there's nothing fashionable or cute about them and also they're completely unnecessary. I know this to be true because I backpacked all over Thailand with only an oversized, pewter colored, genuine leather, Marc Jacobs hobo bag. It looked super cute with all my outfits, it carried all the essentials like my iPod, Kindle, eyeliner, Tarte lipstain for a just bitten look, hand sanitizer, wet wipes, (because Thai people happen to not believe in toilet paper or soap, but thats a different part of this blog), and it also has a little pouch inside it that fits my passport perfectly. And for the record, I would never have left my Marc Jacobs bag on any mountain regardless as to how much moonshine I'd drank, because guess what? It was expensive and I think I mentioned before, it goes with everything. How's that for functional, you dreadlocked backpack freaks?


I'm going to take the opportunity now to pull back a bit because I realized that I'm sounding angry and bitter but I absolutely meant everything I said about the backpacks.


Now that I've recovered and I'm back to my usually sunny disposition I will carry on.


Another note about backpacks. Remember that one movie, "Brokedown Palace," with Claire Danes? Loved her in that movie, she was so Bohemian-college-girl-chic. Anyway, so pre-Bangkok, I kept having nightmares about spending the rest of my days in a Thai women's prison like Claire and Kate because some handsome, yet woefully wayward British drug handler named Nick Parsons tried to load my Marc Jacobs bag full of smack, and I had no clue because I was wrecklessly in love with him. Then Kate's dad blamed the whole thing on me, and my slimy hippie lawyer, Hank the Yank just wanted his money and I didn't have any to give him. And also, turns out that Kate is also in love with Nick, so she hates me now too. The Thai girls in the prison kept bullying me and putting dead fish into my sleeping mat. The dream is not original, it's literally a carbon copy of the movie, just replace me with Claire and also I added more sass when I would tell people off in the movie. Also my hair was better than hers…which isn't really a hard thing to achieve because her hair is never really that great on screen or off. Is she so against a few tracks of weave for fullness? All the other starlets in Hollywood are doing it, so it's nothing to be ashamed of Claire. Even in her new series, Homeland, she refuses. Okay, I've gone left. Not the point. But basically the dream was the same. Needless to say, I've been hugging my hobo with a death grip since I entered this country.


It's not that I hated Thailand. Yes, I may have said those very words in one or two heated texts to some friends back home after being taken for a fool one too many times by some enterprising tuk tuk driver, (again another part of the blog), but this statement is not entirely true.  I don't hate Thailand. Do I wish they had less rabid dogs walking on the streets? Sure. Do I cringe at trained child beggars? Yeah. Is it really that impossible to employ one garbage can on an area the size of 6 entire city blocks? Probably not. Could they have any more rats? Don't think so. Still, I didn't hate the place. Thailand has some redeeming qualities. I will share them. In the last tiny paragraph of this blog. Kidding!!!

So my dear friend who I adore more than anything because she's super smart, cute, and brave, in that order, had planned this whole trip to go to Thailand by herself. I should have put brave first. And so one day during our bi-weekly tea link up, I said something like, "Oh you know I can't go to America I've already been there once this year and also the ticket prices are outrageous, even if I use my flier miles it's a ripoff. I should just maybe come to Thailand with you..." What happened during the time between that maybe statement and my booking confirmation number email from the airline is and will remain a total blur... My credit card was out on the table, buttons were pushed on some laptop that I think maybe the waiter brought over...maybe he was in on it.... The tea came and then we were discussing what outfits to bring. And that's how I tricked myself into coming to an unauthorized country that wasn't on my list of authorized countries to travel to.


So we arrive in Bangkok in the middle of the night. The airport is massive, but it's clean. And modern. And that's probably going to be the last time I use either of those adjectives during this blog. I remember that I said I would be objective. I'll start now. Did I already say how nice the airport was? Yes? Okay well.. They had such nice conveyor belts to take you through the terminals so you don't have to walk so much...air conditioner... They had walls.. yep so moving on now. The time was around 2 am, and my Girl Wonder and I were both dead tired from the flight. We stand in immigration line for about 30 to 45 minutes, (which travelers know that this is quick compared to immigration lines at some airports). So, Kudos to the Thai Immigration department in the airport.  See? Me. Objective. We then get our bags and queue up outside for a taxi. They have a sweet system for the taxi queue too. You show the girl at the counter where you're going, she explains it to another guy who then puts you in a taxi and tells the driver in Thai where you're going. He tells them in Thai of course because the drivers are Thai and they speak Thai. Only Thai. I don't know why I was thinking that I would encounter a little more English here in Thailand. Maybe because it's such a touristy place with so many westerners coming here for holiday. It was stupid of me to assume it because they had little to no English skills. You know what? No problem. It's not their job to learn English. I'm in their country, it's my job to learn Thai, right? No problem. Look at me being fair.


About transportation, since I've just touched on it a bit already. There are a few options in Bangkok as well as throughout the country of Thailand itself. I will start with the taxis. The taxis are supposed to be metered. They all have functioning meters inside. They are all commissioned by a taxi authority department. The taxi driver should switch on his meter when you get into his cab and tell him where you want to go. The only exception to this rule is that if you are white, black, western, or just not Thai. 

If you can check one of those boxes you may or may not get the meter turned on. Sometimes you can say, "Sawahdee kah, (hello) I'd like to go to Soy Rambutrii Road." And he may give you a nod and click on the meter. All good. Other times he may say, "250 baht." Mind you, doesn't matter if Soy Rambutrii is a 60 baht trip from where you are. 250 baht is what he's charging. If you give him the stank eye, which is the universal look for bitch please, and/or other "telling off" phrases, he will do one of three things, depending on the kind of day he's had and how big of a douche he is. 1. He may lower the price because he now realizes you're not the huge idiot that he previously thought you to be before you gave him the "bitch please," stank eye. 2. He may ask you how much you're willing to pay him in an effort to barter with you, which effectively assumes that he now thinks you're a medium-sized idiot. 3. He may get irritated that you're not an idiot at all, and slam his foot down on the gas in search of someone who fits his description of a compliant tourist. You obviously don't want a ride tonight and there are more deserving Americans right down the block who won't be so persnickety when he asks them if they'd like to piss away 250 baht on him and his unscrupulous business practices. So that settled, here scooting down the road is your next transpo option. The tuk tuk. Oh the tuktuk. You know what, I'm not even going to hate on the tuktuk. For several reasons, tuk tuk drivers give me life. They are both fun and funny, and the ride is completely stupid and entertaining. Are they charlatans? You betcha. But in my experiences with them they were overall good-natured. What is a tuk tuk? Well, I'll try to explain it just in case you haven't heard of it, but I'll add a picture because they're pretty bizarre. A tuktuk is like a motorcycle with an open-air cart on the back... It's like a motorized rickshaw. It's like... I can't do any better than that, just look at the picture.

You don't have to flag them down like you do a taxi, because there are so many of them that they actually hunt you down and offer you a ride. Nevermind that you're in the market shopping and you want to walk...,"Mees, where going mees? Yes, I take you, come only 100 baht." All the while they have this cheesy yet endearing smile on their face while trying to lure you into this metal-licious deathtrap. You can actually barter with them for your fare, and depending on where you want to go they can be reasonable. There are two types of tuktuk driver. The shady first one will say, "yes, I show you allll of the city for only 5 baht." He's using the huge-sized idiot approach because you have to literally just have landed in Thailand off of a turnip truck if you fall for this one. So start probing him. Say, "Okay, what will I see? Where will you take me?" His response, as he whips out a tourism map of the city will sound a bit like this, "Yes, we go Golden Mountain, very nice this mountain, and I take you to Golden temple, very beautiful this temple, and I take you to souvenir shopping, and I take you to tourism authority center, and I take--,". You: "Wait, what? What tourism authority center? Why?" I'll tell you why. Bangkok, and Thailand in general has built a huge network of tourism businesses where you can go in and buy packages of touristy activities to make your trip allegedly run more smoothly. They offer activities such as elephant trekking, mountain climbing, bungee jumping, and cooking classes. They arrange for you to be picked up and dropped back off at your hotel. These take both the guesswork and legwork out of you having to plan your activities while in the country. So you could literally just fly into Bangkok with no plans, walk into the "tourism authority center," which sounds very official I know, and get booked for your hotels, adventures, entertainment, activities, transportation, shopping, and eating all through the country. All whipped up for you and customized and tailored to you. And you will pay a nice customized price. One of these "tourism authority centers" sits on nearly every corner in many parts of the city. Just walk in and your trip is planned. Although I've heard horror stories that some of them are as shady as the tuktuk driver and that a small percentage of these authority centers have ripped off thousands of baht from unsuspecting medium to large-sized fools. (Sidenote, and also an opportunity for me to display some more diplomacy: Not all of the tourism agencies are criminal minded. We booked bus tickets through one, and my friend was able to easily book tickets to an elephant sanctuary through one. We had no problems.) Oh, and remember the tuktuk driver? What does all this have to do with him? Well. For every medium to large fool he brings to the tourism authority center that he's linked up to, he gets a small kick back of the package that the fools purchase from the tourism authority agent. That explains why your ride through the city was only 5 baht! (5 baht is about .15 cents US.)


Oh and that souvenir shop that the tuktuk driver was going to take you to? Yeah, it belongs to his brother.


The second type of tuktuk driver is likely just trying to eek out an honest living and will charge you the rate reasonable for your destination. No problem. This driver is more rare but they totally exist. Here's a surefire, fool proof way to make sure you get the second type of driver. Stand on road. Wait for tuktuk drivers to approach. If upon talking to them you notice he's the first type of driver, wave your hand in a shooing motion telling him to beat it. Do this approximately 6-8 times and the 9th or 10th tuktuk will be the second type that you're looking for! There now, that only took two hours of your life to hitch a 10 minute ride back to your hotel. Winning. Only you're not.


The third type of inner city transportation that we took was the Skytrain. It's only in Bangkok, not the smaller towns or islands of course. But it's just a subway type of metrorail suspended above the city as opposed to below. Simple. Cheap. Urban. Effective. That's all.

This is the Bangkok Skytrain. It's like a subway train…except over ground. High over ground.
It wasn't difficult to use at all. You walk upstairs and go in the station, use coins at a machine to buy your ticket, slide your ticket into a scanner, and get on the train. Same as any other metro in the world.

So after being in Bangkok for four days and three nights, I wrote this excerpt into my journal while waiting on the bus to take us to Chiangmai:


The harsh white fluorescent lights in the bus terminal flicked off suddenly, leaving the room a dark shade of charcoal grey, with only a gentle wash of the still undecided morning light from the windows to cast visibility in the room. None of the waiting passengers stirred when the lights flicked off, and upon watching them, I thought it reflective of the general attitude of people throughout the city of Bangkok; despondent if not an issue involving baht. Even the time in the market square when the middle aged Thai man held the bright yellow flowers that are ever-so ubiquitous here in one hand and his slightly less yellow penis in the other hand releasing a steady stream of yellow urine into the manicured and flowered lawn, no one so much as sneezed. And oh.... that other time whilst I was walking from nightclub number 2 over to nightclub number 3, a strange, small, girl child ran and jumped surreptitiously into my arms and gave me a huge kiss on the cheek, and I was still in shock when I placed her back on her feet, yet she then demanded 20 baht... Confuse me? My lips curled into a nervous smile and I look around uncomfortably for her absent mother and see only blank non-reactive faces in the scattered sea of club-goers for they too had caught her in their arms without warning tonight too. Thailand is like this. Perhaps the apathy derives from the same place of ideas in which the ever popular t-shirt catch phrase, "This is Thailand" came from.




For four days I've been in Bangkok, and from the first day I pre-decided that it wouldn't be a place I had to re-visit. Sometimes you just know a thing. You're so sure of it. You think you're in absolute hate with a place. But then, what happens after you spend some time getting to know a place, you come to understand it, you learn about why things work the way they do and you have a broader understanding of the culture. Then you love the place! Yes, that totally happens sometimes. This however, was absolutely NOT one of those times. I had walked the city of Bangkok day in and night out for those four days. I carefully sampled certain selections of the dodgy street food that had not known neither an ordinance nor a code. I spoke a broken, limited edition version of English with a few local people. For sobbing out loud, without any regard for my life, I rode in the back of the "tuk tuk." I learned a couple Thai words, (not just food items, mind you) and I partied and club hopped with the ever popular and iconic Thai lady boys. (Who by the way are a ball of magically delicious, trashy fun.) It was all an experience that I wouldn't trade. It does me good to be able to say I visited this part of the world and semi-immersed myself in their world for a time. I'm still pretty sure I've already had enough of Bangkok to last me an eternity.


---


So very long bus and train rides were how we got from city to town to island, and all across Thailand.  These train and bus rides were definitely horrifying to say the least. Now the word horrifying may err on the dramatic, but in my defense, I was either very cold or very hot, uncomfortable, and un-showered. The bathrooms on the trains and bus stations alike were heinous. You pay 3 baht to use the bathrooms at the stations. You walk into them and urine smacks you in the face like an angry baby mama would when you show up without diapers. The floor is always, always wet. You have exactly a 3% success rate of finding toilet paper or soap in any public bathroom all over the entire country, let alone the train station, so good luck with that. Hope you brought your own. And don't even get cute and look for paper towels. Yeah. Right. 

There are these little cafeterias in the transpo stations. The food is never either edible or intelligible. I'm not being ridiculous or picky, or anything like a princess here. Well, there's white rice. And you know that's white rice. But that's the only thing you'll spot with any amount of sureness. Overall, I was not pleased with the entire inter-Thailand travel experience. It's quite funny as I write this because everyone is always so pleased with everything about Thailand. Almost everyone that I know who's gone there absolutely loved everything about the place, and I can't help but think that I am super spoiled rotten and also being kind of snooty and whiny… I tried to be open minded! I tried to experience different things!! I tried. I failed. I need sterile environments. I need food that is distinguishable and preferably cooked in a halal kitchen. Or at least a kitchen with ordinances. If you serve me ground chicken over rice, I do NOT expect there to be bones and feathers in it. I just don't. It's just not what I expect.  (Yes, that happened.) Excuse me for not wanting to eat bones and feathers, I guess I'm a princess for that. Scoff. And I will not be judged by you backpacker types who like to rough it. I believe that while on vacation things should be made easy for you. Someone should come and bring you fresh squeezed juice with a lime and tiny umbrellas and things as such. I do not believe that vacations should be self-imposed hardship. I'm against any form of hardship. Self-imposed or otherwise.

So Bangkok is sort of in the middle of Thailand. We started here because this is where the major Thai airport is. From Bangkok, we caught an allegedly 12 hour bus ride north to Chaing Mai. I say allegedly because there are about 50 stops between Bangkok and Chiang Mai which really make the trip about 14 hours. On the way back from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, we caught a sleeper train. That was my brilliant idea. I thought it would be cool to experience riding the train through the country. (Also, because the ride is like a gazillion hours long, I was excited by the word "sleeper," as I thought we should probably get some of it along the way. Sleep that is.)  I'm glad we did it, actually, because I'd never been on such a train and the experience was an adventure. One that will last me for a while.  Here's another excerpt from a journal entry that I handwrote while on one of the very, very, very, long bus and/or train rides through Thailand.


I haven't been to tons of places in life. This is true. But of the places that I've gone, I've disliked few as I dislike Bangkok. It kind of feels like I got dropped off in a functioning, organized landfill with a metro system for getting you from one pile of shit straight to the second. I like to sometimes fancy myself a writer and somewhat a journalist so I will try not to slander. Everyone who knows me of course knows that I have an exaggerative personality, and I tend to lean toward the dramatic so I'll do my best. I'm actually leaving the town of Chiangmai and returning back to Bangkok. I'm on a train headed there now. 

Chiangmai is... Bangkok turned down low. Real low. Sitting at the north of the country and encased by mountains, it has a small town charm that you appreciate whole heartedly if you've come directly here from Bangkok. The streets are narrow, and only mildly congested. People in Chiangmai are smiling more than those in Bangkok and you have a better chance of not getting ripped off in everyday life transactions here. Which is nice too, because avoiding eye contact, clutching your handbag like a white person in Brooklyn, and looking down at the ground all the time just in case you walk by a open-door policy sex-show with ladies doing unspeakable things with ping pong balls and soda bottles can get real old really fast. Chiangmai is also decidedly less filthy than Bangkok and the food choices are much higher in quality. (

In retrospect, and with all things considered, I preferred Chiangmai the most of all of the places I visited in Thailand. Ironically enough, I have the least to say about Chiangmai right now. Maybe in a later blog…)

Back to this train. It's a sleeping night train more specifically. This train is not like a train in New York that they might call subway or metro or light rail. It's not like the sky train I mentioned earlier. No, this is like a legit choo choo with a conductor who checks your tickets after boarding and departure. I'm feeling very Darjeeling Limited or Slumdog Millionaire except in my iPod earbuds its not "Jai Ho," or M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes." It's Jason Aldean, "Big Green Tractor." What? You can take the girl out of Texas...


This train is honestly older than Jesus. If he ever rode on a train this was the one. There is no AC on the train but true to its advertisement, there is a metal fan hanging from the ceiling; rusted, rickety, and reverberating like the propeller of an old Cessna biplane. They really did list that fan in the specs for the advertisement of this train. Honestly, the train is comfortable enough, I suppose. Maybe I just have to keep telling myself this less I lose the last rays of optimism as the sun goes down and I'm stewing in misery for the next 12 hours which is precisely how long it will take this grinding hunk of steel to pull into the City of Squalor itself. Bangkok. I'd already languished away four poverty-soaked days of my life in that miserly hole. I know what you're thinking. Oh Khadijah, that's so rude... Screw you, you weren't there!!!! Objectivism. Out the window. I tried.

On entry to the train, I had spotted two skinny brown cockroaches fleeing the scene in a guilty rush together. They crawled under a little girls seat, and she was none the wiser. I convinced myself later that they had gone back outside just as the train pulled off, but now as I write this, I'm pretty sure they're underneath my pillow getting warmed up for the night's sleep. My skin is crawling. 
The air outside is seeping through the allegedly sealed shut window of my sleeper cell. It is cold, damp and noxious; it smells of petrol fumes, black wet jungle, and animal refuse. It's the stuff tuberculosis and the whooping cough are made of.


The train is all thunderous, metallic claps against the track. It twists and jolts violently across the tracks and I bounce and rock in my 3x3 sleeper cell, the sea foam green, vinyl curtain drawn shut. I hear the hydraulic whistle of the trains' gears, the angry piercing wind infiltrating the poorly sealed window pane, the painful groans of the engine, and a strange jungle animal who is probably, after all this time, still not pleased by the trains' nightly encroachment.


I adjust my long legs on top of what was before dusk my seat back, and wrap and tuck my thin hole-ridden blanket around me. It's no use. Newspaper might be more efficient. My teeth chatter like the rails, and my breath is jagged and smells of sleep. There's 3 more hours to go. Those are the roughest. When I'm on the 17 hour journey by plane to Texas from Abu Dhabi, the entire first 14 hours are manageable. Only just, but manageable. The last 3 or even the last 2, can be a form of torture. The seat on the plane starts to feel even more unbearably rigid and uncomfortable than it actually is. I start getting very hot despite the air con blowing from the vent above my head. Babies everywhere use this time as the official flight soap box. That's what's happening on this train complete with the 6-month old preacher. She's had it and so have I.



This is a picture of the train station. You walk to your platform and you board your car. Antiquated, but surprisingly efficient.

This is what the inside of the sleeper train looks like when everyone has drawn their curtains, the seats have been pulled out and made into beds, and the train is chugging it's way through the jungles of Thailand…..

This is what the train car looks like before the beds have been pulled out. The two seats facing each other pull forward and meet each other. A long cushion is laid out on top of them and then a sheet is fitted over the cushion. Not exactly a Sealy posturpedic, but sleep-able for about a three hour time period.

This guy comes out with his face mask on and it's his job to put your bed together, and make it comfy for you. Comfy is really a relative term… He also shows up in the morning to turn your bed back into a chair. He's no nonsense, non-smiling, and very fast. He can turn down a bed in like ten seconds flat. I hated him.

This, my friends, is the bathroom on the train. State of the art, metal squatter. You can just use your imagination.

I'm ending this blog on Bangkok here. It was not all bad. The shopping for example. So good. So cheap. They practically give you the merchandise for free. More blogs to come on my Thailand experience. I promise I will include lots of positives!!!!
I still have to tell about the night markets, the lady boys, Chiang Mai, and the islands. Lots of good stories. My apologies about the depressing nature of the Bangkok blog, this is the way the city made me feel.

Thing 1 and Thing 2

So since I am here as a teacher, as of now, I think it’s appropriate I blog about some of my experiences teaching here in Abu Dhabi. I’m not sure why this hadn’t occurred to me until now.  Maybe it’s because internally, I feel as though, living here is not really about one’s work. That isn’t true for all ppl living here obviously, but for me luckily, I feel as though the totality of my living here is more of an amalgamation of all of my experiences. And my work, be it though the thing that brought me to this lovely place, probably makes up about 15 percent of my concerns. I am laughing out loud as I write this, because I realize how it may sound, and I swear I don’t mean it to sound disrespectful. I think fortunately, that I have been gifted a personality that is a bit free spirited. I don’t think I came to that realization until I got here. As I remember it, I was always worried about something or the other back home in America. I was always running from place to place, fretting over some nondescript issue. Of course, maybe I have just started to realize which things are important.

For example, now that I am here alone and my family is back home so far away, I find myself in two precarious situations. The first is that I seem to have a considerably large amount of time on my hands. I can fill these spaces of time with normal things that I like or don’t like to do like going to the gym, cooking and trying new recipes, lounging for tea and chatting time with a friend, or sleeping. The other thing I find myself doing is missing my family. A lot. I think about them mostly every day. The reason this is so precarious is because I have zero desire to leave this place, but I want to be with my family in the worst way! It’s certainly a quagmire with nothing to be done about it.  I’m not homesick, because I don’t miss America so much; just the people I left there.

At any rate, I came here to be a teacher. And I am. I teach. Sundays through Thurdays, I go to my school, which is here on the island of Abu Dhabi. I teach grade 4 boys. I am now in my second year of teaching here. I will type the next sentence with much chagrin, because my dad told me it would happen, and I now have to admit that it has. Stubbornly I have tried to resist, but I have grown to absolutely LOVE the students. Eck. There. I said it. I love them. The boys in my class are between the ages of 9 and 10. They have varying levels of English, and they all speak Arabic as their first language. They are smart, funny, and extremely sweet and kind. Before I came here, I would hear these horror stories about how you don’t want to end up at a boys school. (You don’t get to choose your school, what grade you teach, or whether you have boys or girls. It’s all decided for you.) People banged on and on about how awful and rude and unruly the boys were. So needless to say, when they told me I had been placed at a boys school my heart dropped and fear set in. When I met the boys and even better when I got to know them, I knew almost right away that we were a match made in teacher-student heaven. I find them to be quite easy going and laid back. They don’t make too big of a deal out of things. They don’t take themselves too seriously. They never cry. They never whine about things. They try their level best to make me laugh whether its doing the gangnam style dance throughout the hallway (gets me every time) or telling me a joke which has zero punch line, and then saying, “Get it miss?” Everyday it’s a riot. Their parents are a different story for another time, but the boys themselves are hilarious. And I dearly love to laugh.

I go to work at 7:15 every morning. I teach 3 periods for 40 minutes each in the morning. Then I have a break for 1 hour and 35 minutes. During this time, I do nothing. By nothing I mean hanging out with other teachers and making way too much noise in the teacher room. In the afternoon, I teach another 3 periods for 40 minutes each. When the whole circus is said and done, the time is 1:30. Home time.  First of all, I would have never dreamed of leaving the school-house rock in America prior to 3:30 or 4:00. Second of all, it’s magical how quickly the day flies by when you know you’re going home to a beautiful, beach-adjacent apartment on an island that you can view in your sitting room from your floor to ceiling windows. It’s a hard life sometimes. You gotta try to adjust.

My students. I could talk about them all day non-stop but I don’t for a couple of reasons. Number one. It’s annoying. I can listen to other teachers talk about their kids, but after about 10 minutes I’m visibly cringing with the desire to talk about something else. I just can’t talk shop too long and that’s the way it is with me. There are just too many other interesting things in the world. But for the sake of this blog, I will just discuss two students that I’ve had that are truly remarkable. And not remarkable in the ways you might be thinking.  These two boys are not really all that gifted or incredibly overly smart. They are not hard working or particularly studious. Both of them are lazy as all get out, actually. They might bring homework 50% of the time. Neither one of them is particularly adorable. But if I had my way, I would take either or both of them in every class I ever taught for the remainder of my teaching career. However long that career may be. Ironically enough, both of these boys have the same name. One of them was in my 4^th grade class last year, and he is now in 5^th grade. The other one is in my current class. For the sake of privacy and for the purpose of this blog, I will call them Hamad. Hamad #1 will be the boy who I taught last year, and Hamad #2 the one I currently have in my class this year.

Hamad #1 is in every sense possible, me. He acts like me. He thinks the way I think. He says some of the same rude, asshat things that I would say. If I were a nine year old boy who was born in the Emirates instead of America, I would be Hamad #1. Hes even a chubby kid! See? Same, same. Hamad #1 is just…well he’s me. That’s about as simple as I can put it. English is his second language, but he has a pretty good grasp of it. His mother is a teacher so he probably just has extra help at home. More than he understands English however, he understands sarcasm. I shouldn’t use sarcasm with the students, but because sarcasm is such a huge part of my personality, it sometimes just slips out. My wit is of course, lost on 99% of the boys. Who’s the 1% who understood it? Hamad #1.  He’s in his desk, with his chin tucked downwards into his fat neck, smiling like he’s got a secret no one else knows. I can never tell a little white lie to the other boys, or pretend like I’m interested in something they’re telling me when I’m truly not. Hamad #1 knows. I hate and love him for it.

Case and point. One day a darling little boy whom I shall call Abdullah, was telling me about his new twin baby brothers and how awesome they were. I did everything right. I said, “Wow!” I nodded my head in interest, and raised my eyebrows in mock excitement as he prattled on and on about the new babies. All the while I could feel a tiny pair of rude, beady eyes to my left trained on me. Hamad #1 had his secret smile on his little all-knowing face. He was on to me. When the kid was through telling me his story and he left the room, Hamad #1 walks straight over to me, with zero shame, and says, “Miss, you don’t like babies, yes?”  I feign shock and horror at his question, to which he doesn’t falter. I reply, “Why would you say that Hamad? I love babies.” He starts laughing then. The gig is glaringly up. “No miss, you don’t like them. You tell Abdullah the babies are nice, but you don’t like them,” he retorts. Then he spills over in laughter, spins his round little body around and waddles away. How dare he? I could only laugh. I had been caught, and by a bloody 9 year old. As if. He did it a million times over the course of the year. We were the snake and the mongoose. We had this love hate relationship all year! He would pretend to hate me in front of all the boys, but in the mornings when I got to my room, he would be the first one in the class sharpening pencils and cleaning my board. He would ask me in those moments, what it was like in America. What were the boys like? Were they the same as boys in Abu Dhabi? We would have nice conversations right up until the other boys came in and he had to be rude ass Hamad #1 again. He really was the highlight of my job. Up until this day, even though he’s in 5^th grade, he will stalk the fourth grade hallway and poke himself into my classroom, his round, protruding little stomach leading the rest of his body through the door.  He will then proceed to bully my poor little fourth graders who are really quite innocent and sweet. He tells them, “Miss Khadijah she don’t like you. She is only nice to you for fake. She don’t like any boys.” Then he laughs out loud. At himself. Lolol. Seriously. Laugh out loud. Then I have to say, through the attempt to muffle my own laughter, “Hamad, why do you come in here messing with the Grade 4’s? Is it because you think they are afraid of you?” And he says, “They are afraid, look at them. Very afraid. Because me I’m Grade 5 and I will beat them.” “Get out of here Hamad and go on and harass the Grade 5’s.” He laughs and slaps one of my kids on the head hard before he stalks out. What an ass! Why I love this kid, I couldn’t tell you.

Hamad #2 is a much simpler case. He just wants love and sandwiches. Hamad #2 is the kid who’s currently in my class. He’s just as hot of a mess as #1. But in a kinder, sweeter way.  I don’t know Hamad #2 too well, because it’s only been about 2 months into the year. But I already have a spot in my heart for him. If I had to diagnose him, just with the experience I’ve gained from being a teacher over the years, I would definitely say he was probably somewhere on the autism scale. He’s not the brightest crayon in the box, but he has a personality of a firework. He reminds me of a baby giraffe. He comes stumbling into the class, clumsy and all smiles, far too eager. He hasn’t lifted a pencil over the last 2 months and can’t really write his name without assistance. And for some reason, he has a weird affinity for sandwiches. But he’s kind. And sweet. He’s so kind in fact, that even though he’s obviously different than all the boys in the class, they are so enamored with him, that they all fight to sit next to him in class. They know he’s different, it’s really obvious, yet they adore him. What’s ironic about this is that this country doesn’t really raise kids who are too accepting of those who are different from themselves. These are kids who highly value their own nationality and openly make fun of other cultures and downright ostracize people who come from other countries. Even neighboring Arabic countries are not exempt from the taunting. All too often, I hear them teasing boys who have been rumoured to be from Oman, Kuwait, or Sudan. In the hallways they jeer, “Omani, Omani, Khaled is Omani! You are Sudani! You’re black like galaxy!” (Galaxy is a popular brand of chocolate here.) You have to experience it to understand it. And here is a boy, who is in every fundamental way, different than them. But they love him. And so do I. Hamad #2 is hard to explain. There’s something that I haven’t cracked yet. Something that starts with whatever home situation he has. He doesn’t have his mother at home, and he can tell me that, but his English is too limited for him to tell me where she is. He tried to explain it one day, and I just got the word, “sick.” Nothing more. He is also unspoiled by wealth the way the other boys are. I always usually tell the boys, “I am a teacher. Ana miskeena. ( I am poor.) You boys are rich, but Ms. Khadijah is poor.” Well, one day, Hamdan replies, “Me too miss, Ana miskeena. My dad maffi faloose.” (I’m poor too. My dad has no money.) It struck me as odd for a couple reasons. Firstly, one thing that my students (and local people here generally speaking) will never do, is tell you that they’re poor. They learn early, that money is important. They know already at the tender elementary age, that money makes power, and some of even them feel as though they wield it. Perhaps some of them do. I’ve been told by several local people that most Emirati people, well a good majority of them, are well off. This doesn’t mean that they are all loaded and stinking rich, but just that their government takes good care of them. There are a lot of variables involved in who gets what, and how much; variables that are not necessary to jump into for the intents and purposes of this blog. The point is, is that in the event that someone were not as well off as the average, you could sooner be led to go on believing that they were before they’d tell you they had nothing. As Hamad #2 did that day.  There was something completely refreshing to hear this boy tell me this.  Mind you, he said it in front of other boys, and he wasn’t even mildly ashamed. What was better, is that none of the boys laughed or even so much as snickered. They kind of protect him in this way. He’s a simple boy, and they take care of him. He’s the best kid ever, really. I just love him and all his little quirks. This brings me to his obsession with sandwiches. We could be doing anything in class. We could be doing fractions or writing a composition, and Hamad #2 will find a way to work sandwiches into the conversation. It's even funnier because he pronounces it, "sand-ahwich." 

Me: “Today, boys we are going to write about what we did on our Eid holiday vacation.”

Hamad #2:  “Miss I want write about the sandahwich.”

Me: “Alright, so which fraction is bigger? 2/4 or 3/5?”

Hamad #2: “Miss, can we make 3/5 sandahwich?”

I’m not kidding you. Everything is about sandwiches.

Me: “When we pollute our oceans, and bigger fish eat little fish, the big fish can die as well”

Hamad #2 “No Miss Khadijah. Big fish no eat little fish. Big fish like sandahwich.” His face is as serious as a statue.

I can’t make this up. This is how class goes. You can just try to imagine. You can see why it’s a complete and total riot. Sometimes if I’m really trying to drive home a point and make the kids understand a concept, Hamad #2 can drive me bananas with his antics, but I can’t ever get mad at him, because he’s just a simple boy, with maffi faloose, and an intense love of sandwiches. I can’t.

All in all, I think I’m lucky to be so entertained on the job. I can’t deny how grateful I am that my job isn’t boring or monotonous. No two days are ever the same. You have to love that, right?

I don’t know what the Emirates has in store for me. I know that I love it here. I know that I’m waiting patiently. I’m waiting to get tired of this place and grow a desire to move on. I don’t see it. I absolutely love waking up here.

Save The Date

Save The Date

Got a sweet tooth? Well, head on over to the Liwa desert oasis in Abu Dhabi’s western region for it’s Annual Date Festival. If you are in the city during the warm summer months, you can taste the sweetest fruit the desert has on offer. Liwa is located in Abu Dhabi’s western region, and has been hailed as a cultural and folkloric hub. If you’re heading to Liwa from Abu Dhabi, it will take you between 3 to 4 hours.  That is, if you can stop yourself from taking a million photos on the oh-so-scenic drive along the way. Colossal, camel-colored, sweeping sand dunes almost dare you to take your eyes off the road and stare longingly into their eternities. After miles of driving, they turn a deeper sandier color, red almost, and you’re truly captivated. Half the treat of getting to this oasis in the Liwa desert is this drive. You’ll also stop along the way to see lots of adorable smiling camels and their babies, for this is camel country and the landscape is dotted with camel farms. You will be lucky if you get to lay your eyes on a very special breed of black camels. Yes, they do exist! And they are gorgeous!

Pretty Liwa Dunes

Gorgeous Black Camels. These guys are cute!!!!! 

What are these guys laughing at? :) Camels are always smiling. 

You will know you’ve arrived when you see the massive tent, (which is air conditioned by the way, thank you very much!) On entrance to the grounds at the festival, you can smell two things. Camels and dates. In that order. You can entertain yourself with camel, horse, and car races. There is a falconry competition as well that will leave you in awe. Falconry is an ancient sport and pastime in Abu Dhabi, and the showing of this tamed and beautiful bird is just breathtaking.  This year there was also a local farmers mango tasting competition. The sweet flesh and the syrupy thick nectar of this prize-winning mango at the festival was truly something to write home about.

Mango Competition - Seriously some of the juiciest most delicious mangoes ever. In life. Like, ever. Omg.

Falconry Competition- These guys are serious.

Just chilling. Having some tea. Camel hanging out in the background.

The dates are the star of the show, however, and there are more varieties of this bejeweled fruit than you can imagine. There are over 300 varieties and you can taste all of them. Once their sweetness bursts onto your tongue, that will be the point you will come to understand why this place is called an oasis. How can it be? How can a place in the middle of a dry and barren desert produce such sweet delicacies? You will savor them with wonderment. Each type of date has slightly different notes and subtle flavor variances. If you think this festival is just for fun, think again! The farmers take the festival very seriously, and there is over 5million dirhams in prize money to be won amongst the farmers with the best produce. So you can guarantee that you will taste some heavenly bites.

Not a smile to be found. Dates are serious business. 

Youngsters sampling the fruit.

"Hmm, my friend. How will we ever decide which one?????"

This festival has everything, and it’s truly one of those local experiences and a place that you won’t find too many Westerners or expats.  If you’ve got little ones, don’t leave them at the hotel, for the festival has a kids’ tent with tons of kid activities. The kids at the festival seemed to be having a grand time running around, tasting the local fruits, and watching camels. Inside the kids tent they can learn about UAE heritage and play some traditional games for kids.  You can get your shopping fix because in the larger tents are local handmade crafts and woven goods.  Most of these goods are made with the date palm tree itself. We were lucky enough to see some of the local ladies weaving baskets, hats, and other crafts from the palm fibres and fronds. The best thing about the Liwa Date Festival is that you really get a feel for how the date is a hugely inextricable part of the region itself.

Local ladies making crafts with palm fibers. 

Baskets and hats and bowls made with palm fibers and fronds. 

Hard at work. 

A Shopper's Paradise... Coming To An Island Near You!

If you’ve been thinking of coming to Abu Dhabi for work or for play, you’ve probably done a little bit of research. If this is the case, you’ve most likely heard that shopping is kind of our thing.  We have our fair share of shopping havens, and the newest one on the horizon is looking pretty great.  I’m talking about one of Abu Dhabi’s latest projects, Maryah Island. Centrally located and adjacent to downtown, you’ll have no trouble at all finding Maryah, and if you visit now you can literally be one of the first people to grace it’s beautiful grounds.  Even in it’s infancy, one can already see that this place has gorgeous potential. Along with the monumental Galleria shopping center, the island is also buzzing with the new Rosewood Hotel, the latest concept residences, and innovative new office spaces. Add to that a host of popular dining options in several new international restaurants, and you can easily see how Maryah is being named Abu Dhabi’s new Central Business District.  

Some images of the new Maryah Island. The oblong rectangular building is the new Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi. 

The Rosewood Hotel is equipped with luxury penthouses, a state of the art wellness center, tranquil spas, and fine terrace-style restaurants and lounges. It’s a 5-star accommodation and it’s style and modernity won’t disappoint. In it’s opening stage, the Rosewood hotel offered up a sweet discounted deal on a Deluxe suite. A concierge greeted us on arrival to the hotel, and from that point on, he personally catered to our smallest needs.  Our room was plush, immaculate, and thoughtful in both design and detail. 

The Rosewood Hotel's sharp and edgy architecture. 

The pool and garden at the Rosewood Hotel. Relax much?

Terrace-style shisha lounge, "SMOKE" at the Rosewood Hotel. 

Opening in August 2013, the Galleria at Sowwah Square is both fresh and fashionable. It will feature some of the hottest global designers such as Prada, Bulgari, Christian Louboutin, and Alexander McQueen. You will be able to peruse top international brand stores like Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Tom Ford, and Jimmy Choo. Trust me, you will be completely spoiled for choice. After shopping, you can sip an espresso and unwind in The Great Room under the all-encompassing scalloped roof which has a new and cutting edge design that was constructed to simultaneously keep the inside of the building crisp and cool while filling the entire mall with Abu Dhabi’s famous natural sunlight. The roof’s structural design, which is made of sculpted glass and steel, sweeps across the central area of the mall. It’s quite the impressive architectural feat, and upon arrival you’ll take some time just to stare at it as it blends harmoniously into the Abu Dhabi skyline just beyond it. The Galleria roof was designed by none other than the architectural geniuses who built the inverted pyramid in front of the Louvre. Of course! 

Some image projections of the inside and outside of the soon-to-be-iconic Galleria at Sowwah Square. 

Maryah Island is definitely shaping up to be one Abu Dhabi’s destination islands. The thought and planning that have gone into every aspect of it guarantee a utopian experience. Spend the night at the Rosewood hotel. Treat yourself to a world-class spa experience and some shopping cardio, and I have no doubt that each time you come to Abu Dhabi, you’ll return to the very exclusive and the very unique Maryah Island.