Coughing up Green Stuff, Welcome Back to Seoul!

There's a subtle difference between Thailand and Korea. In Thailand, you are a person, just one of many roaming around and unless you have purple hair, tattoos on your face and your pants down, people leave you alone. In Korea, white skin scares people, you're a monster, and it's not the stares that bother me anymore, it's just the all the time feeling that I'm being watched, even if I'm not being stared at. And it's not a friendly feeling, most of the time. Of course, there are plenty awesome Koreans, one guy downtown this morning helped me find the dentist office for a good half an hour in the pouring rain, but there's too much negative b.s. in this country to deal with. Younger Korean guys, forget about it, they act like 12 year olds if they see a white guy even look at a Korean girl. If there was ever a country, that, collectively, just needed to get laid, it is Korea. Loosen up. Chill out. Just try to be a little bit cooler.

Anyway, Thailand was an awesome experience, even though the weather was brutally hot and I dropped a ton of cash. We went to some of the seedier areas in Phuket and Bangkok, mainly because seedy is fun, if used in moderation. Which basically means you go into a bar, a girl is sitting next to you within 30 seconds. They ask you the general rundown, name, age, location, 15 minutes later, they think they have you on a string, they ask you to buy them a drink. That's when you tell them to F-off and wait for the next dumb girl to come over. That was all cool, but in Patpong in Bangkok, we were definitely in a lady boy joint, where half the girls in there did in fact have penises at one point. But you walk in there, and maybe 3 or 4 are obviously guys because they are 7 feet tall and have hands bigger than my head, but the other 100 are hot. Like really hot. Some of them I would stake my life that they were chicks, guys can't be that hot, or I'm gay, but it did cause some serious reflection the next morning when I tried to figure out if I had been heavy-petted by guys all night. On the last night in Bangkok, we hung out with 19 year old German girls, I felt like their grandfather.

The beaches in Phuket, especially Laem Singh were incredible, I was tempted to just sleep on the beach for the next five years. We spent two nights on Phi Phi Island, which is about a two hour ferry ride from Phuket. Something like 2,000 people died there when the tsunami hit in 2004 and that kind of creeped me out. We bought a lot of crap from small children during the trip. It's a great strategy. If a kid begs you to buy something enough, even if it's a rusty old fork, you'll end up giving him twenty bucks for it. We thumb-wrestled a few of them to try to get out of buying a crappy looking rose, but these kids are poor, they put up a good fight and when you've already drank a bucket of Thai Whiskey, well, you lose.

For all the hype around Bangkok, it wasn't as amazing as I was expecting. Some parts even look dirtier than Seoul, and that's sick. The touristy things were OK, but I get sick of looking at crap pretty quickly. I like to do things. Like sleep. Our hostel also would only run the air-con from 6pm-11am, which was annoying. Who the hell wakes up before 11am? The most amazing site in Bangkok wasn't the palaces or temples, but instead the 50 year old white guys walking around with 18 year old Thai guys. Not just walking, but holding hands, hugging. Not behind a wall. In the middle of the mall. I'd give anything to see something like that in Korea. Now I'm certain that I would have had a better time if I decided to teach in Bangkok, but the place isn't cool enough for me to justify the cash I'm going to leave Korea with, not even close really.

Monday was an awful day at work. I got off the plane at 7am, back to my apartment by 11 and then to work at 2. I had missed the kids a little bit, but it was still painful. I made one girl cry because she was being a bitch. Things are better now, I can see the end now, less than 3 months, and all I really need to worry about is going to every doctor and dentist possible here since I probably won't have health insurance in America until 2012.

I brought back a dozen of these little dolls from Bangkok for the Korean teachers. In typical fashion, even when you think you're doing something positive, something bad will probably come out of it if it takes place in Korea. I handed out the dolls on Monday. On Tuesday, the head Korean teacher told me the school director was "sulky" and "pouting" because I hadn't given her a doll. Fact is I rarely see the director plus I just kind of forgot. So now I have the last doll on my desk, just waiting until the director comes into the office again, which will hopefully be sometime before October. I also gave a doll to the girl who gave me a birthday present. Not surprisingly, since she's great, she wrote me a thank you note that I got a few minutes ago. It just says "Teacher, thank you give a doll. It is very cute. Thank you." But then under the note, pre-written on the paper, is "I wish fall in love with you." First off, kind of strange. And second, why don't Koreans get native speakers to spell and grammar check the crap they post all over the city? And also, apparently on the little post it notes they make? Koreans will pay a million bucks to mass produce something that looks completely retarded to anyone that really speaks English. Great business strategy.

Oh, I almost saw a 90-year-old nipslip in Phuket. That would not have been hot.

A bunch more photos from Thailand up top. And yeah, the last one, thats me with the same guy from the banana video, probably taken just moments before I got under a table and simulated fellacio with a pole.