We had a mission for ourselves on Friday: find cheeseburgers.
The Nan Steakhouse is one of maybe two restaurants in the city that offers them (or any kind of western food), and as we were growing a bit tired of noodles and rice this week, we were determined to find it for a Friday night feast. A few hours after school let out, we met up with Markus (who was visiting again from Tha Wang Pha this weekend) and hit the road in search of burgers and beer. After getting only a little lost, we pulled up to the restaurant on our four beach cruisers and motorbike. Ingemar, the Swede who runs the Nan Steakhouse, enthusiastically greeted us at the entrance. We sat next to a British guy named Mark and his Thai wife - both teachers in Nan - as well as Jenny, another American our age teaching 9th grade English at a secondary school in Nan. As the night went on, we also met a handful of other Brits and Americans (all men in their 40s or 50s, all teachers as well). Apparently, we had found the unofficial watering hole of all "farang" in and around Nan. And apparently, though we had never met any of these folks, they knew who we were. "I've seen you girls!" one exclaimed. "We call you the ducks" (referencing the way we tend to ride around town in single-file line on bicycles). Yep, that would be us.
Before ordering , we each wrote our names next to a final game score (to the USA-Slovenia match) - with a promise from Ingemar that if we were correct, our meal was on him. I predicted 3-2 USA (actually it was less predicting and more writing-in-whatever-the-next-blank-was-'cause-I-wanted-food-quickly). Granted, the real final score was 2-2... but Ingemar agreed that last shot should have counted. It was the best free cheeseburger I've ever had, and he even gave me a shout out in the Nan Steakhouse email the next day.
Saturday was beautiful, and our team of 5 (some might say, the Mighty Ducks) headed out on a field trip. After coffee and lunch at a Japanese food stand, we visited the Nan Museum and Wat Phumin. At Wat Phumin, we were given an informal tour of the murals that lined each wall by a group of young girls who spoke pretty good English. When we arrived at the mural depicting fiery scenes of torture and death, one of the girls said (very matter-of-factly), "Welcome to Hell."
In the afternoon, we decided to try out the rooftop swimming pool at the Dheveraj Hotel. We donned our one-pieces (forewarned that we might run into our students there), paid 60 baht ($2) to enter, and spent the rest of the hot 95-degree afternoon in the water. It was blissful, but the trade-off was that we were the only ones in the pool above the age of 9, and we were being stared at the entire time - mostly by little boys who would dive under water with goggles on and swim in circles around us. We started to throw up peace signs under water to get a reaction.... but instead of laughs, the kids gave us even more frightened looks. I'm still not quite used to feeling like an alien all the time.
On Sunday we went back to the Dheveraj (it's their air conditioning... we can't resist!) for their brunch buffet we had heard about. Turns out the buffet doesn't happen on weekends, but our non-buffet (or Nan-buffet... ha!) lunch was perfectly delicious. Afterwards, Anna and I decided to try out the hair salon. I got a great cut at a nice salon for 200 baht (less than $7)... Now I'm actually glad I ran out of time to take care of that when I was still home, where it would have cost me at least $70.
Emily's bike is now officially out of commission: the chain came loose as we were biking home from dinner tonight, so we pitched it over the fence at school (which was much closer to us than home) to deal with tomorrow. In the meantime, we are doubling up with the extra seats that come on the back. As if we didn't call enough attention to ourselves already...
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