If I could, I would eat cheese for every meal

After the fantastic but not overly restful weekend in Bangkok, we decided to spend last weekend enjoying the wonders that Suphanburi has to offer. Namely, the pool, Thai massages (I paid 6 dollars to get beat up for an hour and a half, but in the good way), pizza, and marathon movie watching. I felt so refreshed that the week zoomed by, and before I knew it the next weekend trip was in the works.

The original plan was to head to Ayutthaya, the old capital of Thailand. It has a lot of history and very ancient ruins, and it's only about an hour away. A perfect day trip, with time left over to do nothing on Sunday. We all know how highly I value doing nothing. But on Friday I got a call from Brittany, who asked if I minded a change in plans. What followed was a very confusing conversation, partly because I couldn't hear over the noisy students heading home, but mostly because I had been fixing my hair using the reflection from a van window, only to realize that behind that reflection there was a small Thai student staring back on me. Flustered, I only really managed to make out "beach" and "Bangkok". I like both of those things, so I said yes to whatever was being planned.

When I got home, I found out that the full plan was to go to Hua Hin for the weekend, a beach town south-east of Bangkok. So we all packed quickly and headed for Bangkok, where we stayed the night, and then left very very early on Saturday. I have to admit, I wasn't completely on board with waking up at 5 in the morning and being on a bus before 7, but I'm so glad we did. It took a little over 3 hours to get there by bus, but when we got there we still had a whole day. We also got dropped off right in front of a Starbucks, an auspicious start.

We then found out guesthouse, which may have been my favorite part of the whole weekend. It used to be an old teakwood fisherman's house, and the whole place was beautiful. The common areas were all open-air on the ground floor and the rooms were raised up over them. There were antique sinks and carvings and now I think I want to have a guesthouse just like this one. I'll put it next to my used bookstore.

Our first stop was lunch, but after that we immediately went for the beach. Because it's the beginning of the low season and the weather is getting a little unreliable (it still managed to stay beach-suitable while we were there), the beach wasn't very crowded. And only about half of the people there were tourists. The other half tried to sell us everything from fruit and bathing suits, to horseback rides and men's dress shirts. And the whiter you are, the more you get hounded.

So, in a effort to stave off the hounds, we employed the brilliant strategy of falling asleep on the beach, recovering from the early start. And, of course, we all got sunburned. Because if I still haven't achieved a sunburnless summer at home, I doubt I'll start in Thailand.

We spent the rest of the weekend eating bread and cheese. There were some vegetables and dessert thrown in there, but bread and cheese was the focus. I haven't had cheese in over a month. Even the Mexican food barely had any. I didn't realize how big a part of my diet cheese is until I suddenly stopped eating it. Thailand needs to jump on the cheese train.

A good part of Sunday was spent traveling, but the guesthouse and beach and cheese made it completely worthwhile. I had sufficient time to chill out before school today. And then during school today, I spent a lot of time explaining sunburns, both as a general concept and mine in particular. Thai people love white skin. The whiter you are, the more beautiful. You could look like a toad, but as long as your skin is white, they think you're a model. As a result, they spend as much money and effort lightening their skin as Americans do tanning it. Umbrellas block a lot of the sun, but there's still that pesky Asian skin tone to contend with. To solve that problem, they have whitening cream. Some of it is makeup. Some of it is actually bleaching cream. It sounds terrible to me, but I suppose it's not any worse than voluntarily sitting under lights than can give you cancer.

So they find it baffling that I might lay out on the beach, where my skin is in danger of growing darker. Well, some people get darker. I get frecklier. And, on days like Saturday, I get redder. When I explained that I didn't wear enough sunscreen because I fell asleep and got burned, they only seemed more confused. I'm sure Thai people get sunburns, but they're probably not as visible as mine. A student offered to let me use whitening cream that she had conveniently in her bag. I thought about explaining that bleach was probably the last thing I needed right then, but decided it would be best not to get into it. I just have to accept that Thais and Westerners do very different, but equally damaging, things to their skin in the name of beauty.

Although, in my defense, my sunburn didn't occur in the name of beauty, but in the name of sleep deprivation.