Choking down a cup of instant coffee in the morning may be the hardest part of your day, and it is made easier by the view. Across the road, through a few trees and over the sand, the Gulf of Thailand gleams in whichever outlandishly beautiful shade of blue or green that the waves and morning light have conspired to create today. An inexpensive, and perfectly seasoned crab omelet helps to rid your mouth of the bitter Nescafe taste.
You have to pull your eyes from the view -- somewhat -- for the morning commute. Already in second gear as you turn out of the driveway onto the coast road, you feel the wind in your face. You shift to third and the wind gets stronger as the needle creeps past 30, 40, 50... and you let the throttle go and kick it into fourth. As you get up past 70, the trees and the roadside shops and stalls fly by in a blur, as does the road beneath you. The only constant now is the shimmering sea to your left and the sky overhead.
As the bridge approaches, you slow down. Ahead on the left a grove of palm trees sways in the sea breeze and as you reach it, you come to the turn. You take one final look at the sea, now through the fronds of the coconut trees, before leaning into the right turn. You come out of the turn and you're now heading inland. The roadside is lined with trees that explode with golden blossoms, and behind these, verdant grassland stretches out, dotted by sparse trees and the occasional wetland.
The water buffalo chew away diligently at the grass, and they look a lot like cows. Despite the similarity, you know you're not in Wisconsin. The buffalo look, for lack of a better way to say it, oh-so-very Asian. Southeast Asian. Actually, the whole landscape does. The small farmhouses along the road are fenced in by rows of banana trees bending under the weight of their fruit. The yards are planted with small garden plots and dotted with papaya trees, and big, healthy chickens peck and cluck their way around it all. Your eyes drift quickly from the road to the fields and back, and you notice the egrets. A foot tall, and pure white, they stand in contrast to the bright green of the field. They seem to pair themselves up with the water buffalo, one bird to one bovine.
The road bends around and you see the gravel drive ahead to the right. You turn in and bump your way along the unpaved road and bring the bike to a stop outside of the school, your morning commute hardly begun and already over...too quickly...too quickly. But not to worry, no sooner is your head out from under your helmet than you look up and see them all, the novice monks, lined up along the balcony wall side by side, on all three floors. They stare down at you, dark skin, bald heads, wide eyes and big smiles, a palpable curiosity radiating from behind their saffron robes.
It is here in the monastery school that you will do your teaching practice. It is a three week crash course in the basics of teaching English as a second language. The classes get tedious. You're glad for all that you're learning, and you know you'll be thankful for it when you're teaching your own students in a few weeks, but you'd really like to be outside. There you are, in Thailand, in a Buddhist monastery school, stuck in a classroom with the same 18 English-speaking Westerners that you live with. There aren't any window panes and the shutters are all wide open and you stare out of the third story window into the lush green canopy outside. Bumblebees fly in and out, teasing you, reminding you that you're stuck inside. But the classes usually aren't so bad, and you really like those 18 Westerners that you're stuck in there with, and before you know it break time comes around. You're free to wander the well-kept grounds, and over the weeks, as your own shyness and that of the monks melts away, you start talking more and more. They are eager to practice their English, and you want to gauge the level of the students you will conduct part of your teaching practice with, but mostly it is a deep curiosity on your part and theirs that draws you together.
You get to know a little bit about them. They have no possessions, they wake at four every morning, they beg their food, they eat breakfast and lunch, then fast from noon on, and they spend hours a day meditating. But you also find out that their monastery has wifi, modern computer labs and a poster that juxtaposes Buddha and Einstein. Some have a high level of English, and they will all go to university, after which they will decide themselves whether or not to return to the monastery. And they like awful Western music -- Britney Spears and Linkin Park in particular. You get to know a few by name, and suddenly they're not the collective whole of "the monks" anymore, but individuals, and not so different from anyone else.
Photo by Jamie Crutchfield
After your break, more class. Then lunch, then three more hours of class with one more break squeezed in. The reverse commute is as wonderful as the morning's. The afternoon sun is blinding over the water as you come back out to the coast road. The feeling of relief at being finished with a long day is replaced by the 90 km/hour bliss of riding back alongside the sea.
You can go into town -- Ban Phe is a nice fishing village a ten minute ride away. There are some really good seafood restaurants and a great night market twice a week. But today, you just want to relax. So you put on your swimsuit, grab a beer and head for the beach. You take a quick swim, read a little, and glance up occasionally to check the sun's downward progress. Some of your friends are there, and more come as the sky turns pink, Another spectacular sunset. Words here would be as futile as those you stammer while there, trying to describe the beauty as you watch a red sun dip into the Gulf of Thailand.
Dinner, as always, is really good and really cheap. Then you head back to the housing, a sort of timeshare condo building, a little bit dumpy but really not bad, and in such a fantastic location. You go to the pool for a quiet night swim with friends. If you managed to pick up any stress during the day, and you didn't shed it on the ride home, over a beer, swimming in the sea, having a beer on the beach, watching the sunset, or having dinner among good friends, it slips away now as you swim under the night sky. Tomorrow, you'll do it all again. Life here really isn't so bad.
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