Halloween

We celebrated Halloween at the kindergarten on Friday since there was no school on Saturday. We, the foreign teachers, decided to have fun with it. We all went to buy Halloween supplies one day at lunch.

In the morning, I wore a long-sleeved shirt and placed my bloody, severed hand up my sleeve. We stand at the front and say, "Give me five!" every morning to the kids. When the kids would hit my hand, I'd let the fake hand fall to the ground and I would scream about my hand. Most kids looked at my hand and were scared because of the blood on it. I even got a couple of parents with it.

My favorite part was our morning show. We had borrowed a school uniform and made a dummy with a water balloon for a head. Chris was supposed to throw the dummy from the 3rd floor but was late, so I had the honor. I stood on the 3rd floor while all of the kids, teachers and many parents were in the center courtyard for the morning show. I held the kid up and screamed, "This is what happens when you're a naughty child!" and threw him in the middle of the courtyard for everyone to see. It was silent for a while. Three of my students told the head Chinese teacher that I had killed a student. We showed them the dummy and they saw that it wasn't a real child.

We spent the morning going class to class, dressed up as the living dead, scaring all of the kids. We spent the rest of the morning and lunch putting the finishing touches on our Haunted Hallway. I was able to convince the rest of the teachers that we should make one. It was great.

We took some kids through it and were able to scare them. I have some great pictures of kids in the middle of their scream. Also, I have some great videos of the kids being scared by the ghosts.

It was a great Halloween. Next year, we'll spend more time on the Haunted Hallway to make it bigger and scarier.

My Birthday

This being my first birthday away from all of my family, I took the morning off to relax a little and watch some American tv on my slingbox to make me feel better about being away from home. That night, Vi took me to an Italian restaurant for a great dinner, as is tradition. When we came back, she had bought me a Haagen-Daas ice-cream cake that was great.

We were still tired from the Thailand trip so we spent a weekend at the Sheraton Dameisha Resort, just an hour away by bus.

Days 4, 5 & 6 - Thailand

Day 4 - Day after snakes (I think)

Today we woke up to a slight rain, again. We had arranged for a driver from the hostel to the airport so we woke up and had a lazy morning. We ate the free breakfast at the hostel and took a quick, post-breakfast nap. We got up and began packing our suitcases. We took an hour long ride back to the airport and hung around for a little while before our flight to Bangkok.

The flight to Bangkok was a quick one, which was nice. We arrived in Bangkok and got in a taxi to head to the hostel. The taxis there work a little differently. To avoid being taken advantage of, there's a taxi stand at the airport where taxis line up for your business. You tell the person at the stand where you're going and they write up a ticket, tell you how much and you just give it to the taxi driver.

It was a little over an hour trip, rush hour traffic in southeast Asia is the worst I've ever seen, but interesting to see the different sides of Bangkok. We drove through the more modern downtown and also through the older, poorer downtown areas.

We arrived at the hostel and were pleasantly surprised. We unpacked and went for a walk in search of street food. Luckily, we picked a hostel just a block or so away from a popular market street. We enjoyed some spicy, strange Thai food and some great coconut, Thai sweets.

After a while, we decided to head back and call it a night. We had big plans for the morning.

Day 5 - Floating Market and Drag Show

We woke up early this morning to catch our tour minibus to the floating market. While there is more than one, we went to the biggest and oldest one, Dumnoen Saduak Market. It took about an hour and half drive from the city. We got to the market and got ready to board a long-tailed speedboat to get to the actual market. Here is where I realized that I had left my memory stick in the laptop back in the hostel. Luckily, there was another couple from our hostel who had an extra memory stick and he let me borrow his for the day. Very lucky.

We took a speed boat into the main area then got off at the center of the market. Here, we were free to explore for about 2 hours. You can walk around the area but we opted to share a paddle boat and get a little tour. It's very interesting to see how these people use a paddle boat for everything in their daily life. The real market opens at 4am for food for the locals and closes around 7am to get ready for the tourists.

The floating market was cool to see but wasn't great...just interesting.

We made our way back to hostel and went for lunch. We just ate somewhere nearby the hostel, some more Thai food.

We took a rest then decided to have a fun night out in Bangkok. In China, everyone is amazed by the drag shows in Bangkok so we had to go see one so Vi wouldn't be embarrassed when she returned home.

I looked online and found what was considered the best drag show in Bangkokg, The Mango Room. It was more expensive than I would've liked but the production quality was very good. Some of the men were very beautiful and you would never know they were men without being told. Just look at some of the pictures posted. The one with me and Vi and 2 women, those are both men.

After the drag show we went to an area called Phatong. It's another walking street on the other side of Bangkok from where we were staying. We walked around for a while checking out the markets. We saw many interesting things that should not be written about on the internet. If my blog wasn't already blocked in China, it would be after I wrote what we saw. I'll just say that this area is the seedy, underbelly that Bangkok is notorious for. Needless to say, we left shortly after for the hostel.

Day 6 - Return to Shenzhen

Today we are returning to Shenzhen. Our flight is in the evening but we're not close to the airport so we had another relaxed day. We woke up and ate the great, free breakfast and then packed. We had to check out by noon even though we weren't leaving until 3pm. The hostel held our bags for us while we walked around the area and mailed our postcards.

The previous night we had gotten in a taxi with a great driver. She painted her taxi pink and everything inside was pink. Since she was a woman, her taxi actually smelled nice inside. Also, she loved to dance to club music. She would be dancing at all the red lights. The best part was that she made sound effects while she drove. Everytime she passed someone, she'd go "Vrrrrrrrrrrrooomm" quietly. She was always smiling and laughing, great woman.

Anyway, we called her and she drove us to the airport. She got us there much faster and much cheaper than the last guy, simply because she knew the side streets rather than the suspended highway.

We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare so we wandered around Bangkok's airport. They have one of the nicest airports I've ever been in. Any top of the line store you can think of, they have somewhere inside. Although the restaurant selection is not as varied or as nice as I'd like.

The flight back to Shenzhen was nice and easy. We were able to get a bus back from the airport to nearby our apartment even though it was after 11pm.

Overall, it was a great birthday trip. Thailand's beautiful but I would definitely recommend the islands over Bangkok. We will be returning to Thailand to visit some more islands.