Loy Krathong

The costume

Loy Krathong means “floating lantern.” On the full moon of the twelfth lunar month (also known as November) Thailand becomes a continent covered in candle lit lanterns. The pictures of these floating lanterns are some of the most well known photos of Thailand (Google Image them!!) and this holiday was on every OEGers list of things to experience. There are two types of lanterns for Loy Krathong festival: water lanterns and sky lanterns.  The water lantern is a beautifully crafted conglomerate of banana leaves,orchids, incense and candles arranged on a piece of a banana tree trunk. You can also find lanterns made from glass and some kind of dyed bread dough but the traditional lanterns are the ones based on a slab of banana tree trunk. They come in all sizes and colors and they smell lovely. They are set afloat to honor the water goddess and ask her forgiveness for all transgressions made that year. It is also symbolic of letting all your burdens and woes float away, leaving you in peace. The sky lanterns are made from a white, fragile tissue paper. You light the coil on the bottom and when it fills with enough smoke it floats off into the air, carrying your wishes with it.

About to let our lanterns float

The Loy Krathong festivities went on the whole week. I taught the children the names of all the parts of the water lantern, trying to get them to understand “to float,” which had me running around the room swaying my lantern back and forth while making a swishing noise. They loved this. The full moon was on a Sunday so Friday the school had a mock festival where we all lit our water lanterns and set them afloat in the pool. The teachers dressed Jenna and I in traditional Thai garbs and paraded us around the school. It was really uncomfortable, as every parent wanted their child to have a picture with the farang dressed as a Thai princess. Kids I’ve never taught were tossed in my arms while flashing cameras blinded me. Not my favorite activity but how often will I ever be dressed as a Thai princess everyone wants a picture with.

We found ourselves in a park by the Chao Phraya River Sunday for the real ceremonies. It was beautiful. The river was littered with candlelight while huge boats-turned-floats went up and down the river shooting off fireworks.  We bought two lanterns from a family selling them outside the park and walked to the river. Earlier that week I took the time to write something of a hate letter. It’s contents contained some of the more serious issues I’d recently faced and wanted to let go of. I rolled it up, tied it with a lock of hair (you’re suppose to add hair or a sliver of your nail to your lantern) and tucked it underneath the blue orchids of my lantern. After a fight to get to the banks of the river, S and I placed our lantern on a plate that had a stick attached to it (no joke, this is how you put your lantern in the water.)

“Let go of all your bad,” the man said as he lowered the lantern in the water.

S and I shared this lantern

Watching the lantern float away I was suddenly struck with a very strong feeling. It was somewhere between anxiety (I had been nursing some of these issues a while so I can understand the separation anxiety) and clarity. It was intense and then it was gone leaving me grinning at my own sentimentality.

Strictly speaking, the sky lanterns are illegal in Bangkok. But when I looked up at the night sky it was clear there was no one enforcing this law. In true Bangkok form, we walked all of a minute outside the park before we found a woman selling them on the street. We took our lantern over to a small bridge where others were ushering their wishes up to the sky. The four of us held it as it filled with smoke, took a million pictures, made a wish and then let it loose. The pure glee derived from the juvenile simplicity of letting a lantern carry your dreams to the sky is almost feral in its intensity. And while I can’t tell you exactly what I wished for I’ll only say it has something to do with the day after Thanksgiving and a sea of Red…

The sky was a spectacular sight, like hundreds of stars had just been birthed and were shining bright, moving across a full moon and clear sky. The river lapped against the flames of the lanterns, dragging them down to the bottom of the river along with woes of a city, leaving a person feeling brand new. I wish you all had been there.

Bradley versus the not-so-mini Thais

When the high school fired one of the teachers last week they dumped the majority of his workload on H. The administration then had me take over one of H’s classes. The class is called TOEIC, Test of English for International Communication. It’s a lot like a glorified SAT without that pesky math section. Theoretically, the kids can’t even graduate unless they pass the test. All I’m suppose to do is go in there and teach right out of the book. It isn’t graded so I don’t have to create a lesson plan or create tests. H told me just to make them do worksheets from the book.

High school is a horse of another color spectrum when compared to kindergarten.

“They’re going to eat you alive,” Pete told me. “No one is going to pass that test. No one in this school has ever passed the test. And the course isn’t graded so you can’t use that as leverage.”

“Can we go back to the part where they eat me alive?”

I wasn’t too worried. I knew I was just going to have to walk in confident and on the ball and be more strict then I had planned on. Not as easy as pie but put easier than making a whole Thanksgiving dinner.

Pete walked me up to the classroom filled with fifteen 17-18 year old Thai hipsters. One of the girls had out scissors and a mirror and was trimming her bangs horribly. The guys were asleep on the desk or floor or throwing things around the room. Ah, high school. 

Pete introduced me to the miscreants then left me in the lion pit. I’m pretty sure the kids didn’t even look at me for most of the first day. I tried to ask them their names and I usually got a finger in my face telling me to wait or a nod telling me they understood. I switched tactics from getting to know them to rubbing their noses in the book. Didn’t work. I picked up three names in 50 minutes and we didn't even get through a fraction of the lesson. I spent most of that time getting things thrown at me, having one student screaming some load bird call, others pretending they were race car drivers and revving their none existent engines. It was a nightmare, worse than any scene from a bad movie about tough high school kids. These kids aren’t tough they are spoiled. And they aren’t tiny like most Thai’s their age. Some of them are huge. One of the big ones decided it would be funny to get up and stand in front of me while I was talking so the class couldn’t see me. When I tried to steer him back to his chair he actually dragged me a few feet in the other direction, which is kind of funny.

After my first class I walked back to the dorms to find out I was locked out. I left my stuff by my door and ran up to grab the spare key. I came down the back stairwell and when I looked out the window there they were; three of the worst of the pack staring up at me from five feet away with cigarettes hanging from their mouth and faces as white as the snow they’ve never seen. Ah, Revenge. Sweet revenge is mine for the taking. I’m certain if you had snapped a photo of my face you would have captured the sweet smile worn by those wounded beings who see revenge dead head. Smoking behind the TEACHER’S dormitory, where all the other teachers sneak off to smoke while school is in session. This act speaks for itself and I will not go on about their stupidity. I walked over to them and calmly told them to leave, not before I made it clear that they were going to be angels in my class tomorrow. Of course, another teacher saw them running away but they received a slap on the wrist because these kids can do no harm in the eyes of the administration.

I wish I could tell you that it was just a case of the Mondays and they were better as the week went on but, sadly, that wasn’t the case. By the end of the week they had started to spread rumors to the other teachers that I was physically harming them in class, kicking and hitting them. A few other more serious issues arose that lead me to believe 1) there is no teaching them. I will prepare a lesson and get up and try to teach the lesson but there really is no teaching them, and 2) I’m just going to have find a way to get by without getting myself into trouble and/or losing my mind. In the meantime, I’ll be watching Dangerous Minds and The Substitute this weekend to try and get some pointers. I refuse to be beaten by Thai hipsters.

Pandas??

Begging Monkey

My body does not agree with Thailand. In the past month I have had every possible stomach ailment you can imagine. I’ve guzzled prune juice, I’ve downed Imodium, I’ve walked the streets holding my stomach searching for a bush to puke behind, I’ve laid crippled on my bed certain of death from pain in my belly. I started taking a round of antibiotics which cleared up every problem in a week except the bone crippling pain, which is probably some kind of worm, a reaction to a weird noodle here, or that ulcer my college diet of caffeine and nicotine always threatened me with, not sure yet. Two days after I went off the antibiotics I fell victim to an Asian flu I was certain would make me pass out in class. I’m sure it was a gift from one of my little darlings at school. What sweethearts. I’ve never had anything quite like it. I was exhausted, couldn’t get my nose to stop mimicking a waterfall, my eyes were so irritated I couldn’t put my contacts in.

“You need Tiffy,” Pete told me.

“Who is that?”

“It’s a drug,” he told me on Friday. “Go down to our shack and ask Pee-Mow (the town drunk’s daughter) for it. It might knock you out but it’s good stuff.”

H, S and Jenna hiding in the WW II Bomb Shelter at the Zoo

He was right. It did really knock me out, in fact I’m certain they lace it with speed, but I couldn’t care less because I felt like a million dollars when I woke up on Saturday. It’s a miracle drug. I found a website on the net that will ship it to America if you ever feel the need for a miracle cure for a nasty Asian flu.

So what do you do on a Saturday all jacked up on speed?

“Let’s go to the zoo and see the panda!” Jenna said.

Giant lizard just walking around

We made the now well travelled trip into Bangkok to the Dusit Zoo. Now everyone knows that the zoo in Omaha is the best in America and those who claim otherwise have never been there and are liars. So I wasn’t expecting to be wowed by the place but over all it was quite nice. The zoo presents itself as something of a jungle oasis of flora and fauna, a haven to lizards and lots of monkeys. The exhibits, though, were really sad. The hippos and crocs barely had any water and feeding the animals is a favorite pastime for all who come so there was more than one monkey with a begging hand hanging from his cage. The worst part though was the false advertisement; there was no fricking giant panda!!! I paid B100 to see one of the rarest animals in the world and he’s not even in Bangkok, he’s up in Chiang Mai. Never mind that there are murals of him painted on the walls outside the zoo, it’s just a cheap trick to lure farang to see the elephants and the R.O.U.S. (rodents of unusual size. Oh yes, they do exist! (Princess Bride anyone?)) So the zoo was a bit of a bust. But the sun going down behind the Ananda Samakhon Throne Hall was almost worth the trip.

R.O.U.S. I know it's a bad shot but trust me, they do exists!

Asiatic Sun Bear

The Anaconda...so huge!

Gluttony

The Jersey Shore of Thailand

One week of teaching under our belts and the ladies and I plopped down with the other teachers from the high school at the shack outside the school gates and we didn’t move till closing. The next day we were up early and standing on the side of the road with our bags flagging down cabs or vans to try and find a beach called Cha-am. We grabbed a taxi to the nearest civilized area where we met a policeman who just told us to sit. He made a van appear out of nowhere and ushered us on to it. An hour and a half later we were in what I’m going to say is the Thai equivalent to the Jersey Shore. Note: this statement is complete speculation as I’ve never been to Jersey and I’ve made it a personal goal to never see an episode of the reality series. We were told to expect a lot of looks because this area is more of a vacation hangout for the Thais from Bangkok and the surrounding providences and farangs don’t usually visit the area. What we weren’t told was that this is also a hotspot for the mafia and motorcycle gangs. At all hours of the night you could see and hear hundreds of motorcycles, crotch-rockets and scooters-on-steroids. They seemed to enjoy the one stretch of road that is worth seeing in Cha-am and of course that was the road all the hostels were on.

The mafia was a bit harder to spot but I like to think they were the groups of old guys shitfaced at noon sitting on the steps outside street vendors or 7/11s, yelling and making all kinds of ruckus. I swear they were even wearing bowler hats.

Strip of road across from the beach

The girls and I dropped our bags off at the first cheap hostel we found then walked across the street to the beach. We had been walking for about two minutes when we ran into other OEGers who we chatted with till I noticed the used Q-Tip I was sitting on. Looking around, the beach was filthy. Bottles, glass, bottle caps, trash of all kids was everywhere. We retreated to the pool at the hotel our OEG friends were staying at for the remainder of the afternoon.

We had a simple night. It’s the off season for Cha-am so the crazy Jersey town we were told would keep us up all night actually lulled us into a daze as the sun went down. We grabbed street food then plopped down at one of the beach tables to eat. We sat at the first table for all of five minutes before a woman who has never heard the term "toothbrush" came to stare us into giving her 100 baht so we could sit at the table. We got up and moved maybe 100 feet and were not disturbed for the rest of the evening.

When the sun was gone some of the Thai people sitting around us brought over some candles for our table. The sunset and the sound of the waves accented the magical image candlelight seems to always limn. All night long we commented on the reality of being on a beach in Thailand and how many more beach nights there are to come.

The overpass we were thrown under

Getting to Cha-am had gone a little too smoothly as far as traveling in Thailand goes. We made up for it on the trip back. First we did a nice loop of Cha-am's main road to find a van station to take us back to Samut Sahkon. When we finally found one he still had no idea where we wanted to go. Jenna and S were sitting up front and they pointed at a sign on the highway overpass that was the exit for Samut Sahkon. The driver got all excited, nodding and laughing, and decided to just pull over and dump us under the overpass. We hopped the guard railings and played a quick game of Frogger (points lost for the wicked bruise on my knee from not jumping high enough on guardrails) to get to the other side of the street. We practically jumped onto the first cab we saw. This cab was driven by the Thai dopple-ganger of Morgan Freeman. Mr. Freeman refused to shift out of first gear so we went about 15-20 mph down the highway while he turned up the radio. "Chopin! You know Chopin?" Oh yes, Morgan Freeman knew his classics. Jenna and I were in tears from trying to hide our laughter. H, who was sitting up front directing Mr. Freeman, could only shake her head at him while doing some kind of Thai sign language to get us home, the only form of communication us farang know. Never a dull moment when traveling in Thailand. 

Bradley versus the mini Thais: Round 1

Elf is the little guy looking straight at you. My favorite.

 

I wasn’t really nervous for my first day of class. I’d been shadowing other teachers for about a week and it didn’t look that difficult. The kids were rowdy, as expected since they are 3 and 4 year olds, but they looked eager and, dare I say, fun.

So I walked into my first class, filled with energy, smiles and a CD filled with the likes of “The Wheels on the Bus” and “The Hokey Pokey.” The kids have been trained in earlier classes in the traditional greeting for the start of their lesson so I started with that.

“Good morning, class!” I beamed.

Silence.

“Good morning, class,” I said with a bit less gusto.

Nose picking. One girl in the back may have actually snored with her head in her arms on her desk. The Thai homeroom teacher then literally screamed something in Thai and I got a response from a few of them.

My first solo shift at the coffee shop I use to work at ended with the espresso grinder breaking with a line of people out the door. Staring at those kids, all I could think about was how much I would have loved to take on a broken grinder instead of these guys. My lesson plan was full of greeting games that I had thought would let the students see I was this cool teacher they would bond with and love and because they loved me we would have a great semester were they would learn tons and I would be the best teacher they ever had. All I got were crickets.

Luckily Neil, the head English teacher who had been at the school for seven years, had accompanied me to the class for some moral support. He got the kids moving and helped me with the introductions. The lesson plan got thrown out the window and I spent the next thirty minutes trying to pronounce names like “Preaw” and “GuayTeow”. I believe I’ve mentioned before how the Thais can’t grasp the concept of Roman letters so these names are actually pronounced “Prell” and Goodie-ow.” Neil was a lifesaver.

I repeated the same process in all of my classes that day, quickly spotting the star students and the troublemakers. One kid is aptly named “Erk”. He refuses to do anything I tell him and the only English he knows is “Teecha, go away.” Wonder where he learned that one.

Jenna’s day also went something like this. She is teaching in the nursery, where they don’t talk or read or stand up much.

“I ran out of things to do after ten minutes,” she told me. “They just sat there looking at me. Johnson (the teacher giving her moral support) emptied a bucket filled with balls and we spent twenty minutes congratulating the kids for putting the balls back in the bucket.” Oh, the joys of the kindergarten.

The first day was the worst. The rest of the week went by in repetition as I drilled the kids in what the teachers wanted me to teach them in English. The school runs much the same as private schools in America run. Every morning there is an essembly of all the students where we sing the national anthem and raise the flag. Then the Thai teachers sing a song for the kids followed by the American teachers and Chinese teachers. The nursery and K1 kids get a nap in the afternoon. In fact, everyone gets a nap during the day if they want to. The head of the kindergarten English department (not to be confused with Pete at the high school) regularly puts her head down on her desk and naps away the afternoon. It's the same with the Chinese teachers. I'll have to try it soon.

I’ll save my critic of the Thai educational system for another entry as that rant would be far to long to include here. I will just add that I’m trying to not feel like an incompetent teacher because I’m not allowed to teach in a way that is effective for the students. Very frustrating. But then the kids sit on my lap during story time or give me a kiss or wave in the halls screaming “Teecha!” and my heart melts a bit.

May I please have a smoking elephant?

Jenny sent me some pictures of the elephant trekking so this post can finally go up! Travel back in time about three weeks ago. The whole OEG group is still at orientation. We had just been dropped off at this beautiful resort with private balconies and two pools and a view of the river where everyone sang karaoke way too late into the evening…

I was told by an OEG alum that riding an elephant was like off-roading with no shock absorbers while the car is stuck in first gear. This description is quite accurate. So when we awoke after a late night no one was feeling great, even those who snuck to bed early, and the prospect of swinging around on an elephant at 7:30 in the morning suddenly didn’t sound so appealing. These feelings evaporated the moment the bus pulled into Taweechai Elephant Camp and everyone spied the baby elephant strutting around the pen near the driveway. We darted off the bus and started snapping hundreds of photos while he posed for us. Then I turned around and saw a massive elephant move inches past me on the way to the boarding platform.

“What to share an elephant with me?” Jenny asked.

“Oh, yeah,” I replied.

We migrated with the rest of the group to these huge platforms where you do your best to climb onto the elephant. I wouldn’t recommend a skirt in this situation, as there is no graceful way to board an elephant. It’s mostly a jump/pull sort of motion followed by a frantic search for the railings of your chair because you feel as though you’re going to fall and get stomped on any minute.  Without warning we were off.

Elephants are a lot like the Thais in that they don’t keep to any lanes or speed limits. They seem to enjoy running into each other. They are also thoughtful, like the Thais; one girl dropped her camera and our elephant went right over, picked it up with his trunk and handed it up to our driver.

Our driver was a small Thai man who didn’t say much in the beginning. His mouth is a disgusting palate of blood red, a side affect of eating the local stimulant betel plant. He looks like a zombie munching on someone’s innards. He warmed up to us after a while, getting off the elephant so Jenny and I could take turns riding on the neck. The elephant can feel when your balance is shifting too much to one side and holds your legs to his neck using his ears. Very thoughtful.

There is a chaotically blissful cacophony of American voices all around us. We are all taking pictures of each other, waving to others as their elephant speeds by. I look over to my left at my friend Allison and we start laughing like children who just discovered chocolate. Then she lights a smoke. I’m about to tell her that probably isn’t the smartest idea when I see her passing them out to all the guides on their elephants. I tap mine on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, can I smoke on the elephant?”

“Cheyeah!” was his reply.

After that I sort of left the boundaries of everything I’m comfortable and use to. It wasn’t the normal culture shock feeling I’d been dealing with but something else. I was moving into the realm of the completely absurd. It was so absurd I was sure this wasn’t really happening (remember, still a little dazed form jetlag at this point.) I’m swaying on the back of this mammoth beast with a barefoot, red mouthed zombie dude as my guide. Absurd.

Then we moved into a clearing and the elephants waddled into the river. They started filling their trunks with water, drinking and splashing, getting us wet. I looked around and noticed the mountains densely covered in trees and shrouded in fog. The experience becomes real: I’m on the other side of the world in a jungle smoking a cigarette on an elephant. Cross that one off the bucket list.

The Gentle Art of Thai Massage...

This pose symbolizes the Buddha when he reached Nirvana.

We headed into Bangkok for the final hoorah before we became real teachers in charge of our own group of munchkin Thais. It would appear that most of OEGers had the same idea, as the hostel we stayed at was mostly rented out to OEG. I was there to meet up with the lovely Jenny, my previous roommate at orientation. We spent the day at the weekend market but it’s so massive you could probably spend weeks in the market. After that we headed to Wat Pho. Wat Pho is famous for housing the statue of the reclining Buddha. It lives up to its title; it’s a huge golden statue of the Buddha chilling on a pile of pillows looking relaxed. I was debating whether or not to even bring my camera in this temple but in the end I gave in and snapped some photos. So far, the Buddha seems pleased with my offering from the Grand Palace.

The next day before check out we decided it was time to try the infamous Thai massage. After two weeks of sleeping on a wooden bed, sitting in my office at school for 4 hours everyday, and weekends walking around all of Thailand what I really need was someone to really work out the knots and kinks in my shoulders and lower back.

Thailand is famous it’s massage parlors. In most neighborhoods in central Bangkok you can find them on almost every street so it wasn’t long before we were sitting in a chair getting our feet scrubbed by an angry looking Thai woman. She scrubbed away for a minute, dried them and then led me upstairs to a room where there were about 6 mats on the floor. I had expected this, as one of my friend had warned me before I came that the Thai massages happened on the floor in full view of the five other people in the room with you. Jenny and I were the only ones in the parlor at the time so we lucked out a bit. Next they gave us a light green shirt to put on and the largest pair of dark green pants I have ever seen. This should have been my first warning. After all, how does one use massage oils when I have clothes on?

I laid on the ground and my angry Thai woman came back and took her aggression out on my poor body.

It was an odd experience. At first I thought she was just warming up, pounding the feet lightly to get the blood flowing, hey that pressure point feels nice, okay that one’s a little more painful, perhaps you don’t have to hold it that long, up goes my leg, okay it could use a little stretch, um, I don’t think it bends that wa…oh, ok guess it does but it might snap off in a sec…hiyo! Where are your hands going?

I’m sure it resembles rolfing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolfing) a lot but to me it felt like I hadn’t done Yoga in months and someone was contorting my body into the positions for me while I laid there helpless, I mean motionless. And they really aren’t afraid to put their hands in places that would make a masseuse in the States blush or worry about a lawsuit; plus their bodies are quite entwined with yours. My favorite stretch came when she lifted my leg and bent the knee at 90 degrees and put one foot on my cheek and the other on my hamstring and pulled my ankle towards her slowly. It was interesting.

While it wasn’t the relaxing experience I was really looking forward it I did walk away from the experience feel great. My body felt straighter and more in sync that it had in days. With all my muscles and ligaments moved back into their correct position I returned to the school dorms to get an almost good night sleep before my first day of classes. 

Travel like the Thais

All the taxis are Toyota Corollas and almost all of them are
bright pink.

I’m a person who has what you might call “power issues.” Some will say I’m a bit neurotic, others will say it’s a control thing that seems to run in the family. Power issues are probably the more accurate term. I like to make sure I know how I’m getting somewhere, what I’m going to teach, what I'm commenting on, etc. I find a type of personal confidence in knowing I have the ability to do whatever needs to be done without assistance, especially if assistance is hard to come by. So getting acclimated to the public transportation system of Thailand has been stressful and strange. It’s not at as hard to move around Thailand as I first thought. I spent an hour studying the different maps and studying Wikitravel to find the major bus stations in Bangkok that will take you all over Thailand. I’ve spent enough time exploring central Bangkok that I feel as though I can recognize the names of all the stops on the subway and sky train. Getting to Bangkok and moving around there can be easy but getting anywhere else in Thailand can be problematic.

Last week Leah, Mia and I needed to get on a bus to take us to Bangkok. No one in Leah’s province spoke English well enough to understand we were saying. Finally we went to a scooter taxi stand and, not hoping for much, said “Krungtemp?” Krungtemp is the abbreviated Thai name for Bangkok.

There was a little chatter, then I pulled out my map of Bangkok and pointed to the place we need to get to.

Tuk Tuks are a lot of fun but the drivers are
not trust worthy. As a Farang, they will charge
me a lot more and they will always try and take
me anywhere except where I want to go.

“Ok. Sit.” One of them said. And so we popped down in the shanty that was the scooter taxi stand and the drivers walked to the road and started flagging vehicles down. He flagged down a few vans and then just stopped a bus and said “This.” He and his taxi buddies wouldn’t except money for their services but they kindly excepted cigarettes (Thais can get very strange about money so cigarettes have been a key factor in my negotiating skills or as a way to say thank you.) Unless you are at a bus station, flagging down the bus in the middle of the street is the normal way one gets on a bus in Thailand.

In almost any travelling I’ve been doing there has been a similar scenario. I have to ask a Thai person who doesn’t speak any English how to get here. They almost never understand me yet somehow, magically almost, they always get me there.

 All day long Thais are leading me, grabbing my arm, pushing me or waving me onto some bus or into some taxi or into a boat or onto a scooter taxi. All I can do is sit and hope that they are taking me to where I need to be. I believe this experience is called “faith.”  Faith and I do not have a good track record, both religiously and with people. It appears it will be the most challenging difficulty to overcome during my stay. I’m blaming all this in my power issues and I’m finding that these issues will quite literally get me nowhere in Thailand. There is no other choice but to trust the people here to get me moving. It’s one of the best qualities I’ve come across here; it’s a land filled with people who are always making sure you aren’t too lost. 

The Chao Phraya Express is the river taxi service. It's the
hardest way to travel but one of my favorites.

Recently I got lost finding the nearby squat hole. I encounter a barefoot homeless Thai on the corner who started yelling and banging on the corroded stand he was sitting on when he saw me wandering around wondering which stall to get into. I danced in and out of the bathroom because he was screaming at me every time I entered. I didn’t know if it was the men’s room or if it was broken or what. In the end, he walked over and flipped a switch I hadn’t even noticed. The homeless Thai just wanted to make sure I didn’t pee in the dark (he got two cigarettes.)