Goodbye Na Kae - Hello Scotland!!

I am currently sitting in my bedroom in Scotland, and honestly cannot believe that a year has passed this quickly. It's strange - in some ways it seems like I haven't been away, but when I think of myself actually being in Na Kae it seems like ages ago. Then again, sometimes it seems like just yesterday that I was in Na Kae! It's a very confusing feeling coming home after so long away!
My last week in Ban Phon Sanuk was amazing - I loved being able to stay there for so long without having to go to school, and as I mentioned before it was lovely to spend so much time with all my friends in the village.

On the day I left Ban Phon Sanuk, the bus to Bangkok wasn't until the evening so in the morning and afternoon I had a leaving ceremony. I wasn't expecting to be getting anything like this, but I think that as I spent so long in the village during my last few weeks in Na Kae they wanted to give me a send off, which was really lovely of them. During the morning I witnessed a pig and two ducks being killed for a meal in the afternoon with everyone from the village - I couldn't believe that they were making such a huge deal of my leaving day, and I felt very honoured that they were doing so much for me. A blessing ceremony took place where everyone from the village blessed me by tieing thin strands of white rope around my wrists while they said a blessing, wishing me good luck, happiness, safe travel and wishing that I would return to Thailand (which of course I plan to do as soon as I can!). The meal was, as always, delicious - one thing I'm really going to miss about Thailand is the food! I will be attempting to recreate soe of my favourite Thai dishes in Scotland, but I can't help thinking that they probably won't be as delicious as the real thing. One dish that I can definitely say I won't miss is "lap" when it is mixed with uncooked blood...


I went outside to wait for the bus about an hour before it was due and sat in the mooching hut with Mei, Paw, P.Joe's Dad (Whiskey Man...) and the three kids who I wanted to take with me (Big Boss, Big Boom and Donut). Mei went to speak to Pippa on skype, then quickly came and told me that Pippa wanted to wish me good luck so I went back into the house for a few minutes to speak to her before having to go back out to get the bus. The journey to Bangkok was quite good and I was in Bangkok by about 6am.

The day before I left I had packed my rucksack and was quite happy with it - it wasn't too heavy and I could lift it, and it seemed to be a nice even shape. However, this changed when I was given seven Isaan pillows as leaving presents from people from the village (three of them are for Caitlin)! I absolutely love the pillows and genuinely appreciate them, but those (plus Caitlin's tea set which I forgot to pack until the last minute) turned my previously well-packed rucksack into a rushed, lumpy, heavy one...! Eventually, after finding a taxi and getting to Khao San Road then helping someone else to find their hotel, I managed to book myself in to a small room, but my rucksack was so heavy that even after getting someone to help me carry it my back was aching so much that I knew I had to find a way to take the weight down. The remainder of the day was spend un-packing and re-packing my rucksack and donating a huge bag of unwanted clothes and books to the reception of the guesthouse. Admittedly, the reason I found it so difficult to carry my rucksack through Bangkok may have been because even when it was packed "well", I hadn't really tried walking with it for any length of time so I suppose I can't really blame the pillows...

The last few days in Bangkok were great fun. The day after I arrived I met up with the other volunteers who were already in Bangkok in the evening and we went out on Khao San Road. Some of the vols. decided to go to a club called Lava, but for some reason men had to pay 100 Baht (about £2) to get in while girls got in free, plus it was a dancing club and wasn't really my idea of fun, so a group of us ended up just bumping from bar to bar without actually buying any drinks because no one could decide where to go. Before I met up with the volunteers I decided to visit Pippa's brother and sister who both live in Bangkok, so arranged to meet P.Non (Pippa's younger brother) so that he could take me to his sister's house. Soon after I entered his car he started talking about a dog, but I couldn't make sense of what he was saying as his English isn't very good. However, when he pointed to the backseat it became clear that he was saying he has bought a puppy. Further questioning informed me that he had in fact bought the puppy for me, as a leaving present... it took a while for me to explain that it was very cute, but that I couldn't take it on the aeroplane. Eventually he decided that he would keep it until I next came to Thailand, and I can take it back then... I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

After leaving P.Non's house (and the puppy) we drove to P.Neung's house. P. Neung is Pippa's younger sister, and she has a 1 year old son called Dono who is very cute. Caitlin and I visited them once before while we were in Bangkok months ago visiting Pippa, but we didn't get to meet P.Neung because she was at work, so it was great to get to meet her. She is lovely, though I must admit not quite as crazy as her older sister...


On my final day in Bangkok I went to Cha Tu Chak Market, which is an enormous market selling everything you could possibly imagine, with Rosie. I managed to get the remainder of my present buying done here which was good, then we headed to Billie and Rosie's guesthouse to find out what was happening about meeting the other volunteers for a meal. After meeting everyone else at "the big white castle" (which is a large white building resembling a castle which none of us know the real name of) we found a nice restaurant and had our last Thai meal! I had Tom Yum with chicken which was delicious. I didn't used to like Ton Yum particularly, but now it's one of my favourite dishes.

The next day was time to fly! Our flight wasn't until 8.45pm, but as we had to be at the airport for check in three hours earlier and didn't want to get stuck in rush hour traffic, we all arrived at the airport at about 4pm and met Hannah Jelley and Francis, the last volunteers to arrive in Bangkok. They came with a huge leaving party as their project was only two hours from Bangkok, so we all got photos taken as a group which was nice. The return flight was fairly uneventful - I spent most of the time watching films and listening to music. It wasn't as long as I thought it was going to be, and it came into Heathrow early. It still took us over an hour to get everyone through and find our bags, as we wanted to go to meet our parents as a group. Seeing my mum and dad after so long was a very strange feeling - I knew that I hadn't seen them in almost a year, but it still felt like I hadn't ever left. It was brilliant to see them, and after another 6 hours of travelling by train to Edinburgh I met my sister which was also brilliant. Although I stopped feeling homesick after a few months I still missed them all throughout the year.


All in all it took over 31 hours for me to travel from Thailand to my house in Scotland, and although it is great to be back I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss Thailand! I'll be going back to Thailand as soon as I can, and will be keeping in contact with all the friends I made over there. Hopefully I'll be able to find someone who speaks Thai nearby who I can practise with as I really don't want to forgot the Thai I've learned over the past year.

I'd like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported me over the past year and during the months leading up to my leaving for Thailand. If it wasn't for all of you then I wouldn't have been able to do it, and I'm so happy that I did it!

Getting Ready For Goodbye

So, I have now finished teaching in Thailand. My last week of lessons was brilliant fun, I played games like "Bang" and "Hand Slap" (where students sit down and cross arms with each other, and have to slap the ground with their hands in the right order without getting mixed up) and got all of my classes to sign my friendship book. Having such a fun last week made me realise that I should have played more fun games with my classes before now, as even though they're not English based the kids can still chat to you in English. I found that it was actually a lot easier to control the class when they were all up playing games like that, because the trouble-makers are pre-occupied with the games! I know that I shouldn't have favourites, but I do have two favourite classes, both on a Wednesday. One of them is class 2/4 and the other is class 3/1. Class 3/1 is just... crazy. Absolutely crazy. It's like someone took all the most outgoing, talkative, cheeky, loud girls, put them on a caffeine drip, then put them in a classroom. Their English is very good and teaching them has always been brilliant, although it's sometimes been hard to come up with lessons for them because their English really is better than any of my other classes. During my last lesson with them, we decided that it would be a great idea to, instead of giving sweets to the WINNER, punish the loser by covering them in talcum powder. And I mean, COVER them in talcum powder! By the end of the lesson everyone was white with their clothes layered with white dust! Class 2/4 is, in general, quite a quiet class, but there is a girl in it who is the sweetest student I teach. She has always been quite shy and sits at the back of her class with her friend, but recently she's been coming up to me before and after class to chat and has spoken to me a few times around the school. When my last lesson with her was over she came back into the classroom on her own and asked for a hug, and looked like she was crying. Very rarely in Thailand will a Thai person initiate a hug, and if they do then it is usually only when you know each other very well. In almost a year, she is only the third Thai person to initiate a hug that I've met (the other two being a maths teacher from NaKaePit. when Caitlin and I left for the holidays, and Pippa).My classes at St. Joseph were equally as fun, playing alphabet races and taking lots of photos. On the Friday there were no classes because it was the anniversary of the last Princess' death (the current King's cousin) and this coincided with a "Thai Day" the school was having with lots of activities, so classes were cancelled to make way for lots of group activities! I stayed for half the day, and saw puppet shows, colouring in , karaoke and a race involving a balloon, chopsticks, a riddle, a ping-pong ball and a bottle... after this I went to Joe's house (where all my things were being kept after the mice drove me out of my own house) to pack. Thankfully I was done in just a few hours.

I had planned to go to Ban Phon Sanuk the day day (Saturday), but the person who was meant to be giving me a lift there decided to disappear and get drunk in stead, so I went on Sunday with Kru Nid, planning to leave for Bangkok on Tuesday and do a couple of weeks of travelling. However, Pippa's mother and father wanted me to stay with them until I had to leave to get my flight, so I am staying in Ban Phon Sanuk until the 11th August. It was actually Pippa, who is still in Germany, who made it clear to me that it was okay for me to stay at her house and that her parents loved me being here, because although her parents have told me this several times, Kru Nid has always been insistent that if I stay too long I will be a burden for her parents and trouble them. After a really nice conversation with Pippa it was made very clear that this wasn't true and that I shouldn't listen to Kru Nid, so I am staying! I figured that I can go travelling anytime, and I wouldn't have been going anywhere that I hadn't been before anyway because of time restraints, but staying with Pippa's family in the village that's been my home for the last year is something very special, and it lets me spend time with everyone and properly say goodbye to everyone.

I have been in Ban Phon Sanuk now for a week, and I will be here for another 4 days before heading to Bangkok. I wish I could stay longer, I absolutely love being here with everyone. A few days ago my host mother invited me to spend the day with her at her workplace, and I ended up writing out some sort of database from a folder onto the computer. Doesn't seem like too hard a task, but one of the columns was people's names. In Thai. Now, my Thai is good enough so be able to copy out names, IF (a very big if, a very very big if) they are written very clearly. Unfortunately, these names were not, resulting in me having to ask, several times per name, "What letter is this?". Oh, and also, my host mother failed to tell me that when I was typing them out, I had to swap columns 15 and 19, and in column 20 I was to use the figures at the side... eventually, after much confusion, I understood and managed to change them, but apparently the fact that I don't understand things about the fiscal year in Thai means that I don't speak Thai at all, and so for the rest of the day people were talking to me like someone who doesn't speak a word of it! I wouldn't even have understood fiscal year jargon in English, let alone in Thai :P

I also got taken to Dong Luong, a village higher up in the mountains, with P.Dom who lives in Ban Phon Sanuk. She works in a restaurant in Dong Luong, so took me up on her motorbike (a really beautiful journey) to spend the day with her there. I was very proud of my self as I managed to shred 8 huge papayas for making som tham, and none of them collapsed (which can sometimes happen if you get too excited while hitting it with your knife), and my strips were nice and thin like they're supposed to be. My wrist, however, is still slightly sore! I also met a little boy, called Boat, who lives next to the restaurant and "helped" him with his homework (really what I did was watch him as he tormented his dad by repeatedly, and deliberately, drawing the number "6" upside down).

On the days that I spend in Ban Phon Sanuk I help Mei with the cooking and washing up, play with Big Boom and Big Boss next door (both of whom I want to take home with me), visit the rice fields and chat to people. It's so nice and relaxed, and I really am loving spending time with everyone. I think the locals are having a good time with me being here, mainly because of all the laughs I give them! For instance, Mei has been having great fun telling everyone we meet that I dropped a huge lizard in the washing machine... ACTUALLY what happened was, I was doing my washing, and was putting Mei and Paw's washing in with it for them, and as I picked up one of Mei's tops I thought I felt it wriggling. Thinking that I must just have felt the fabric move underneath it or something I dropped it into the machine with some other clothes. A second later I saw something move, and quickly (but carefully) took out all the clothes until all that was left in it was a rather large, very fast black lizard who couldn't get out. I tried to catch it in a big bowl but it was too fast, and I didn't want to try to grab it incase it bit me, so I went to get Mei to help me. Being unable to explain in Thai that I had trapped a lizard in the washing machine, I just asked her to come and see, then watched as s he grabbed it with her hand, got it out and dropped it on the floor where it scuttled off. Of course she was laughing the whole time, and this story has now spread across the village.

Over the past week or so there has been a huge amount of rain. It is the wet season so there is always a lot, but there has been much more than usual as it's been falling for several days almost non-stop. Usually there will be heavy rain for an hour or so which will then dry up quickly, but when it's this constant there is no time for it to dry up. Several of the rice fields have been flooded which means that the rice will have difficulty growing. When we went to check a few days ago it was like a lake with only a few tufts of rice poking up, and today, although there was less water on the actual fields, it was impossible to go and see Mei's rice fields because of the torrent of water flowing between them and the road.

Tomorrow I am going into Na Kae again to see some of the kids at St. Joseph - one of them has been waiting to give me a present for over a week, then I'm back in Ban Phon Sanuk until until Thursday evening when I travel to Bangkok. I'm not sure what I'll be doing in Bangkok until I leave, or if I'll go somewhere else close-by for a couple of days. I can't stay in Ban Phon Sanuk any longer than Thursday because Mei and Paw are travelling down near Bangkok for the wedding of the son of one of their friends on the 12th, and they want me to leave the day before so they can send me off on the bus :)

Byebye Caitlin!!

So, after almost 11 months, it's time for me to say bye bye to my project partner, Caitlin, who left to spend a week in Mae Sai before her flight home on Tuesday!

As we are not leaving at the same time it proved quite difficult to organise a leaving party, but we managed to have two parties (one for teachers from NaKae Pitt. and one for friends) and a meal with teachers from St. Jo. The first happened on Wednesday 13th July and was organised by us with the help of our friend, Thitima, for our friends in Na Kae who aren't involved with NaKae Pitt. We thought that teachers from St. Jo would be coming, but instead they decided to have a meal with us instead. About 15 people turned up at a BBQ restaurant called Pilein, and we had a great time! Some of our friends brought us presents which was really sweet of them. It's amazing how many people know each other in Na Kae - we invited friends that we had met from all over the place, but almost everyone knew almost everyone else although we hadn't known that they were friends! This was brilliant because we were slightly concerned that if some people came not knowing anyone they may feel awkward, but of course in Thailand this never happens! After the BBQ Caitlin and I went to a bar in Na Kae called the Albian along with Tony (a teacher from the other secondary school) and his friends Yai and Yui, and Ruth and Laura who volunteered in Na Kae last year with Project Trust and were visiting. Again this was lots of fun - Yai brought his guitar and despite the fact that it was missing two strings we still managed to have a really fun sing-a-long with him playing, Caitlin and I singing and Tony rapping.

The next day Caitlin and I didn't teach and Caitlin was busy packing and we both wanted to spend time with each other before she disappeared. Somehow she managed to get all her packing done in one day - I now realise that this was possible because she left me with all her junk!! That afternoon we went to St. Jo to have lunch with the father and sisters of the school, and some of the teachers in the English department. As always the food was delicious, but there was so much of it! For some reason whenever Caitlin and I eat there they seem to think we need enough to feed an army! In the evening we had a party at NaKae Pitt., to saw goodbye to Caitlin and I as well as another teacher who was leaving, and to welcome two new staff to the school. We had a huge blessing ceremony and got blessing ribbons tied round our wrists by all the other teachers - my mission to to keep them on until I get home, but I don't know how possible this will be! We had lots of lovely food and got some of the teachers to sign our friendship books which was nice. After this, Yai invited us to his house to continue the singing session with a guitar which had all it's strings, so we went there. His house is huge, and his sister can speak very good English. She went to NaKae Pitt. but managed to take part in an exchange programme to Florida while at university in Sakhon Nakhon. The next day we headed to Ban Phon Sanuk in Yai's car, stayed the night there so that Caitlin could say goodbye to everyone, and headed to Ubon on Saturday to see the Candle Festival. Luckily Caitlin could leave her bag in the bus station.

The Candle Festival was brilliant and I really wish we'd been able to stay longer as it was much larger than we realised. There was, of course, a huge market, but in the evening a huge art show was set up with installation art, puppet shows and stalls along with a parade of giant candles sculpted to look like amazing dragons and Buddhas. Several people were doing questionnaires and surveys and as we are white we got asked to do them all. We found out pretty quickly that the art exhibition was huge and had been going on all month, so it would have been nice to be able to see more of it. Later on in the evening people started to set off lanterns which were beautiful - I managed to get some photos of them and they don't look too blurry which is good, and there were also AMAZING fireworks! Really huge ones that exploded several times in different colours, I wish we had ones like that in the UK!

When I arrived back in Na Kae after saying goodbye to Caitlin, the mice in our house decided to rebel and show their protest at Caitlin leaving, along with their obvious dislike for me, by dying. In my rucksack. In my rucksack, which was packed with all the things I'd bought from markets and wasn't going to use in Na Kae. He didn't even die at the top, he died in the middle of all my things! The only reason I found him was because I went to put on a DVD after getting back from Ubon and was near the rucksack which stank so checked through everything. While I was checking everything I was also smelling things to see if I really could smell dead mouse, and all that was going through my head was: "No... it's not dead mouse I can smell. It's not. Nope. No, no, no. Wow that's getting stronger, but I am still reasonably convinced that I can't smell dead mouse. Stay positive. Reasonably convinced. Reasonably convinced. Reasonab- oh. Hi mouse." This lovely discovery was made at about 1am, so, while on the phone to my mum and sister VERY annoyed, I upturned the rucksack releasing the dead mouse so I could dispose of it (also releasing a lovely aroma of death into the house...), left my things on the floor in a heap and went to bed. The next morning I got to work bagging up everything that could be washed into bin bags to take to the laundrette, and called Tony who can with Yai to help me take these items to be washed. For some reason I wasn't feeling well, and felt dizzy and sick so got taken to Yai's house to sleep. I managed to sleep for most of the day, then went to Tony's house to spend the night. I could have stayed at Yai's, but I thought it would be better to be with a native English speaker as I still wasn't feeling great. Later on that evening my muscles started to ache so I went to the hospital in Na Kae. After running the most technologically advanced tests of "weight", "blood pressure" and "heart rate", they announced that I was fine, gave me three packs of free drugs ("This one good for sleep. This one stop you dizzy. This... same same paracetamol?") and sent me on my way. Thankfully the next day I felt much better and, with encouragement from both the in-country rep and my Desk Officer on Coll, began the process of moving everything I owned out of my house as it was decided that it was probably best I don't like there anymore. I may have forgotten to mention that the rucksack mouse was the 5th dead rodent we'd found in a few days due to the school janitor putting down piles of rat poison, despite the fact that Caitlin and I had both said to our host that we really didn't want the poison anywhere near us. This moving process took 2 days, but now, finally, all of my things except my jewellery which I have just remembered is hanging on the window, the fish and the turtles are safely at Joe's house. Next years volunteers are getting a new house, so the school janitor/handyman is taking everything that doesn't belong to me out of my house to move it to the new house. So far his contribution to the moving efforts has been to move the mosquito a grand total of 8 steps, leaving them halfway down the stairs. Hopefully he will speed things up...

Now that I have no house I am having to stay with my friends in Na Kae and of course in Ban Phon Sanuk, meaning that things like where to keep washing, where to keep clean clothes for each day and where to keep toiletries is proving slightly difficult. And I have just remembered that I have left my bag of clothes for wearing in Na Kae in the smaller rucksack (with the lit and all possible entrances firmly closed), so I'll have to retrieve that and find somewhere accessible to leave it! Only 1 week left of teaching before I leave Na Kae, I really am going to miss so many people so much.

Wow time goes fast!

I know I say this a lot, but I honestly can't believe that this year has gone so fast. I didn't realise that I had so little time left in Na Kae until it hit me that today was Caitlin's last ever day teaching at St. Joseph primary school!

However, before thoughts of how close our leaving date was actually started to hit home, Caitlin and I took part in an English camp in Loeng Nokta, organised by two of the other Project Trust volunteers, Anna and Fleur. Loeng Nokta is about 3 hours away on a bus, so it was nice and easy to get to and we had a great time. Caitlin spent the weekend before it in Ubon which is a city a couple of hours away from Loeng Nokta, butI decided to stay in Na Kae and meet Caitlin in Loeng Nokta on Sunday afternoon/evening. When we arrived we met Anna and Fleur and were taken to their house - it is lovely! Smaller than ours, but with more rooms and lots of storage space. Plus it has no mice or rats which is nice! We spent Sunday evening watching Glee and chatting to the other volunteers who arrived - Clara and Chess from Kutchum, Clem and Rachel from Si Sakhet and Billie and Rosie from Phanaa - before being taken out to a buffet BBQ by one of Anna and Fleur's Thai friends. Actually Billie and Rosie arrived while we were at the BBQ, but unfortunately had got off at the wrong stop on the bus. Apparently there are two places called Loeng Nokta - old and new - and they had got off the bus at the wrong one which is a few km away from where the project is. Thankfully the guy we were with was able to phone someone and get them to pick them up, so they weren't lost for long. The BBQ was nice, I really love them. It's not like a traditional UK BBQ, instead you sit at a table with a hole in it and a bucket fire is placed in this whole with a funny shaped pot put on top of that. The pot is shaped like a wok but with a large hump in the middle. Soup and veg is cooked round the outside of the bump, and meat, which you collect from an all-you-can-eat-buffet, is cooked on the hump itself. Surprisingly I haven't given myself food poisoning yet, but I don't know if I should thank my cooking skills or the fact that I'm used to meat being slightly more than overdone thanks to my father :P


The next day, the camp started. There were 8 categories to teach (shapes, body, clothes, personal info, animals, numbers, fruit and directions) so everyone chose one, except Anna and Fleur who teamed up with Chess and Clara. I decided to do shapes which went quite well, although I sometimes found it difficult to fill up 30 minutes teaching only shapes, especially as the kids all came from different primary schools so some were very good at English. It's amazing how meaningless the word "triangle" can become once you've said it for the 200th time! It was fun though - I got the kids to draw robots made of different shapes and then label each body part with what shape it was, as well as getting them to create different shapes as a group (getting them to stand in a circle, in a square, in a triangle etc.). There were 8 groups of kids and the groups rotated round the lessons throughout the day - 3 on the first day and 5 on the second. In between the lessons we playes games like Musical Statues and a group version of Rock, Paper, Scissors which I'd never seen played before. It was great fun and a really nice break from organised classroom teaching. On the evening of the second day we were taken to Anna and Fleur's host's house for food and karaoke which was great - I hadn't done karaoke for a while and I actually missed it, so it was nice to have it again! Wow, I never thought I'd say that! Throughout both days all of us volunteers were constantly stopped by large groups of primary kids (all the students were about aged about 10 or 11) wanting us to sign their books, asking for our facebook names and email addresses and taking photos of us. It's lovely and they are all really sweet, but after signing books for 20 minutes I found that my name became shorter and shorter...


Last weekend Caitlin and I decided to head to Nong Khai. I went there during the holidays only meaning to spend a couple of days and ended up staying for almost a week because I loved it so much, and I wish I could have stayed longer this time too. We only stayed one night and went to see the Sculpture Park, which is amazing. The sculptures are all very abstract and quite weird looking, but really beautiful too. Unfortunately the artist died in Laos while creating a second sculpture park by falling off the top of one of his statues. We stayed in the same guest house that I stayed in - Mut Mee - and again had a brilliant experience. The people who own it are really friendly and the whole place is just like a giant group of friends. It's busier in the hot season when the schools in Thailand are on holiday as it's a place that a lot of foreign teachers go to get a nice break, but it was still buzzing with people. When I come back to Thailand I am definitely going to try to spend a long time in Nong Khai because there are so many things to see around the city/town and just outside it.


Yesterday and today were Caitlin's last days teaching at St. Joseph primary school, and I only have two and a half weeks left teaching in Na Kae! The pupils at St. Jo are extremely bright and very talkative and friendly, and poor Caitlin had to spend at least 20 minutes at the end of every lesson signing books! Actually, not just signing books - both of us got asked to sign bags, pencil cases, books, textbooks, Scout hats, bamboo poles, ping pong balls... I'm sure that most of these things don't actually belong to the kids, but hopefully the teachers won't mind! Friendship Books are big in Thailand. They are lovely hard-back notebooks and on each page there is a small "about me" section, and then lots of space to write in. The pages all have things like "I Miss You" and "I Love You" written on them, the idea being that you get your friends to sign each page. Caitlin and I have both bought these, and the kids love signing them! I haven't got any of the pupils to sign mine, I'm waiting until my last days teaching there, but it's been great to watch them sign Caitlin's books and has given me a few ideas on how not to get crushed by children trying to sign it - always put a table between yourseld and the army of 50 10 year olds! We got given several drawings and notes saying that the kids loved us which was really nice. Next week I'm not teaching there as it's Caitlin's last days in Na Kae and I plan to "help her pack" as well as try to get started on some of my packing, so the week after that will be my last week teaching at St. Jo. The week after that I'll be teaching at NaKaePit. secondary school but not at St. Jo as I plan to stop teaching on the Wednesday and spend until Monday in Ban Phon Sanuk staying with Pippa's family.

At the moment we have two main parties lined up - one organised by us and one of our Thai friends, Thitima, at a BBQ Buffet place in Na Kae for all our friends, and one organised by the teachers at NaKaePitt. for all the teachers there to say goodbye to us. Thitima was one of Pippa's best friends at the New Year party we had, and is absolutely lovely. She speaks very good English as she has an American husband and two Thai-Farang children who are also adorable.

Oh, another piece of news - we now have pets. Yes, with only a few weeks to go, we have aquired three turtles fromthe market (Morris, Constance and Mowgli) and two Siamese Fighting Fish (Morvin and Marvin). We had been planning to buy turtles for weeks but for some reason they were never at the market although we'd seen them there before, until last week when we finally found some! At the moment they are living in our wok because the other bowlhas floor cleaner in it, but they seem to like their new home and as long as we don't need to use the wok they canb stay there. We may have to find somewhere else for them to live before giving them to the new volunteers though, as I doubt that Kru Nid would be too happy at us turning our cooking facilities into reptile houses... The Siamese Fighting Fish were taken by me and Caitlin from a group of Thai men who were betting on them. It's horrible - animal fighting is a "sport" here and it's something that I loathe. We did have three fish, but unfortunately one of them didn't survive long after we brought it home as it had been fought the most. He was called Borris. We've asked our friend, Joe, if he'll take the turtles after we leave until the next volunteers come and he said yes, but we haven't told him that he's also agreed to take the fish :P

Trips around Na Kae and Dancing!

As Caitlin and I only have a few weeks left in Na Kae (she has about three, I have between four and five) we've been trying to use the weekends to visit places around Na Kae that we haven't had a chance to properly see yet. So far over the past few weeks we've managed to visit Mukdahan, Nakhon Phanom and Kalasin.

My favourite of these is Mukdahan, mainly because of the huge Vietnamese market! For some reason everything at the market was extremely cheap, even though Caitlin has told me that in Vietnam the same items are more expensive. I don't understand how this works, because surely transporting the good to Thailand would cost money, and so everything should be more expensive, but I'm not complainaing! It wouldn't surprise me if the reason that it's so cheap is because it is illegal in some way - some of the stalls (which I kept away from and didn't buy anything from) were selling elephant tusks. The result of me going to a large, cheap market is that I now have a 3 foot long fan, a small chest of drawers, a large mug with a painting of a lighthouse on it and a jewellery box to take home. It appears that my brain has decided to ignore the advice given to me of "buy things that are easy to pack". My plan of senidng some things home surface mail isn't going to work becasuse it is far too expensive. I sent hom two shoeboxes recently - one went airmail because it had birthday presents in it, and the other went surface mail. The surface mail parcel was more expensive! Both Caitlin and I have noticed that the price of sening things from Na Kae seems to change randomly, and as the weight limit of our luggage on the way back home is 30kg instead of 20kg, I've decided to just try and pack the remainder of my things. Hopefully I won't have to carry my rucksack too far! Aside from the market, I loved Mukdahan because it is right on the Lao border next to the Mekong, and is beautiful. I'd really like to visit Laos at some point. I doubt I'll get over there while I'm in Thailand this time, but it's definitely a place I'd like to see in the future.



Nakhon Phanom was also a lovely place. We've been there before, but only briefly to renew our visas, so it was nice to go there to have a good look around. Caitlin wanted to visit Prathat Nakhon, which is one of the seven Pagodas in Kakhon Phanom province and is meant to bring good luck to those born on a Saturday. We weren't sure where it was, but while on the song taw (bus) Caitlin saw a large gate with something written in Thai on it. She read the first part and it said "wat" which means temple, so, thinking we were right in front of where we wanted to be, we got off the bus. It was then that we read the rest of the sign. It did not, in fact, say "wat"; it said "jangwat" which means province. It was some sort of government complex. You'd think that we'd have realised it wasn't a temple by the fact that there wasn't actually a temple, but apparently not! We wandered around for a while before going to get some food, then took a tuktuk to the actual pagoda. It was nice, but not as big at the pagoda in That Phanom, and obviously not as famous becuase when we asked where it was at the restaurant we were in, it took them a while to remember! When we decided to go back we went to fing a song taw and got told that we had missed the last bus home. This presented two options: 1) phone Kru Nid and ask her if she could come and pick us up, which we know she wouldn't be particularly happy about as Nakhon Phanom is about 70km from where she lives, or 2) find somewhere to stay and get a bus back in the early hours of the morning to be back in time for school. This option also did not have us jumping for joy. Thankfully we didn't have to do either, because a kindly tuktuk driver managed to phone the driver of the last bus and gt them to wait where they were while he took us to it, which was lovely of him!



We had both been to Kalasin before during the Kalasin Festival, but we wanted to go again because there is a Jurassic Park and some dinosaur fossils and footprints. We had planned to see these things the first time we went, but got distracted by the festival and involved in helping out at a giant Toyota exhibit, so didn't manage to see them. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to see them this time either! We arrived in Kalasin in the afternoon on Saturday and decided that we'd spend the evening exploring and then find the dinosaurs the next day before heading back to Na Kae. Our hotel was right next to a really nice park with a large lake, so we had a walk around that. As we were walking it became apparent that there was a mutual agreement between the walkers/runners that you walk around the lake anti-clockwise. We were the only people walking clockwise round it, but by this point were already half way round and didn't want to have to backtrack all the way round again, so pretended to be oblivious to this rule! We found a nice place to eat, reccommended by a Welsh man that we met at the bus station, and then continued wandering around. As we'd been there before there wasn't a huge amount of new things to see, but there are some sculptures around the town that are really pretty. The next day we found out that the jurassic park which we thought was in the town was actually 26km away. We managed to find a song taw, but this was the end of our dinosaur journey because the driver was the most awkward, annoying and useless bus driver we've experienced! We needed to know if there were buses that could take us back to the town from th park, and he said that he could take us at 2pm. We told him that we needed to get a bus back to Sakhon Nakhon at 12.30pm and would there be anyway for us to get there, and he said yes, that he would take us at 2pm. We then explained again our need to get back for a bus at 12.30, and this time he seemed to understand. Another two woman came onto the bus and the driver said something to then in Thai. We asked him, to confirm, of we would definitely be able to get back for 12.30, and he told us that yes, he would take us. At 2pm. The next 20 minutes or so was filled with us desperately trying to explain that we don't care if it's him who takes us back to Kalasin, another bus driver or an elephant - we needed to know if there was ANY way to get back for 12.30pm. It didn't help that one of the other women on the bus was also extremely annoying and kept laughing at speaking Thai. Most of the time people will be surprised when you speak Thai because you're white, but usually it's just a sort of "Oh! They can speak Thai, that's cool" reaction. It's really infuriating when, occasionally, you get the "Haha, look at them! They're WHITE, and they're speaking THAI! Isn't that hilarious?!' people. Eventually it ecame obvious that if we went to the dinosaur park we probably wouldn't be getting back in time to get Sakhon before the last bus back to Na Kae, so we abandoned the plan and got something to eat instead. Just as well that we did because when we got to the bus station we found out that the bus was actually at 11.40am, not 12.30pm, so we'd have missed it anyway xD

Teaching has been quite good this week, but it's been overshadowed by the fact that our house seems to have a vendetta against us. Not only have the mice eaten one of our electric fans (breaking the fan but somehow surviving), stolen several photos from our Thailand wall (Pippa and Tomtom's sections are noticeably smaller than they were a few weeks ago...), nibbled holed in our mosquito nets, eaten the wiring of some of the lights and stolen countless slices of bread (one of which was found half-way up the stairs - how thet got it there we have no idea), but our water supply is now very temperamental. For most of last week we could use either the shower, the hose or the tap for about 30 seconds, or flush the toilet, before all the water in the house was reduced to a trickle. Luckily we stay at other people's houses a lot anyway so could use their showers, but it made washing up difficult, and meant that you could only use the toilet once every two hours or so. After Kru Nid phoning the water suppliers in That Phanom it seems better, but experience tells me that it may break again at any second. Also our drain is still blocked even after the handyman pouring fizzy, thick black stuff down it. And we have a family of huge spiders (biggest is abound hand-sized) living in our bathroom, and three or four large, blue tokay geckos living in our poorch. Thankfully I can see the funny side of all this, and we're only here for a few more weeks so I think I can live with it!

Teaching at St. Joseph Na Kae primary school this week has been brilliant. Kru Fon, the head of English there, asked us to sing a song for the kids at morning ceremony that they could dance to, so we chose Hannah Montana: Hoedown Throwdown and taught them all the dance. We then got asked to teach the dance of some of the classes, so had a great (and tiring!) time teaching them all the dance moves! I never thought I'd have the confidence to dance in front of anyone, let alone an entire school (and looking at the videos perhaps there's a reason for this...!) but it was so much fun! On Friday some of the kids were involved in a drama performance and singing contest in the morning so we got to watch that which was good. The students at NaKaePitt. Secondary School have also ben doing singing competitions for something called "Rock Isaan" so we've been watching that at lunchtime. Some of the kids are really good singers - even though the songs are in Thai and I don't understand most of what they are saying it's obvious that some of them are really talented. One of the boys in 6th year came 3rd in a singing contect in one of the nearby cities.

Later on today I am heading t oLoeng Nokta to take part in an English Camp for two ays with some of the other volunteers, so that should be fun. No idea what to expect as I've never done one before!

Happy Birthday to me!

Yes, the month of June has come around which means that it's birthday month, with mine, my mum's, my dad's and my cousin's birthdays all in the space of a few days.

I've never been one for huge birthday parties, I like to keep it quiet and enjoy it with friends and family, so instead of organising anything in particular I just had a quiet drink with Caitlin, Joe (another foreign teacher we're good friends with) and his girlfriend, Lamai. Caitlin was lovely and bought me a cake, which was actually very nice! Birthday cakes in Thailand aren't the same as the ones in the UK - they are usually very, very soft with lots of very "creamy" icing (although it's not real cream). Mine had huge flowers, a dog, swans and two angels all made of icing on the top and looked very pretty. Usually, although they are nice, they aren't brilliant to eat, but this one was one of the best ones we've had!




When Kru Nid found out that it was my birthday she went out to rally up P.Noi and P.Jim (two other English teachers) and came back with cards and presents which was lovely! I got quite a large, fluffy Hello Kitty toy, a t-shirt and a skirt from them. I'm not entirely sire how I'm going to get the Hello Kitty home, I'm hoping she'll fit into my hand luggage so I can use her as a pillow. The teachers sang Happy Birthday to me too which was suitably embarassing, as all renditions of Happy Birthday should be! :P

The evening was spent watching films and eating party rings (thank you mum!) until Joe and his girlfriend came round, when we had some food from the market and a couple of drinks. The market in Na Kae is brilliant - every day different stalls are set up selling all sorts of food and is very cheap. One of my favourites is Lap, which is a spicy meat dish made of minced meat (best with duck), lime juice, several herbs, several chillis (or several hundred chillis...), garlic and I'm sure there's lots more in it! We keep meaning to ask Pippa's parents to teach us how to make it, and I definitely want to be confident in making it by the time I get home, so fingers crossed!

While I remember, there are a couple of interesting (well I think they're interesting) stories that I forgot to put in my last blog.

While we were cleaning our house, one of the nieghbors saw us outside rinsing out feet. Because it was hot we were wearing the bare minimum, and probably should have put on something a bit more respectable. However, we thought that as we were only outside for a second and we were still within the boundaries of our house, it would be okay. Unfortunately , the neighbour who saw us phoned Kru Nid, and the rumour is now that we both shower outside at the garage. We're unsire how us rinsing our feet mutated into us showering in public, but gossip is huge in Na Kae so any opportunity to create an interesting story to spread around will be taken, and unfortunetly us foreigners are often at the centre of such stories!

When we found out that Pippa was leaving for Germany, Caitlin and I both made her good luck cards. I spent a great deal of time over mine, trying to make it as pretty as I could, and spending hours making sure that all the Thai I had written made sense. One time while we were up at school, I decided to take our microwave back home (it was at the school for a while). I put my good luck to Pippa on top of it along with a packet of sparkly gel pens and a few sheets of paper, and started to lift it. I wasn't ready for how heavy it was, and it started to tip backwards. Terrified that I was going to drop the microwave out the window behind it I took my hand off the top and quickly supported the back, letting go of everything on top of it. Fortunately, the microwave didn't go out the window. Unfortunately, I steadied it just in time to watch everything on top of it float swiftly out the window and onto the roof of the building below. I needed to get my card, pens and paper back, so I did the only thing I could think of - climb out the window onto the roof, and with Caitlin's help, all was retrieved! Thankfully I don't think anyone saw this!

While we were staying at Pippa's before she went to Germany, we decided to watch a horror film we'd brought called "Orphan". Pippa loves horror films. It was bought in Bangkok so had both Thai and English audio and subtitle, so we watched it in Thai with English subtitles so that Pippa could understand it. We were a bit concerned at how she would react to some parts of the movie. However, the sex scene came about and she didn't bat an eyelid. The little girl swore and again, no reaction. A woman was beaten several times with a hammer, and not even a flinch. Then, the mother closed the dishwasher with her foot. Pippa jumped, gasped and squeaked all at the same time! In Thailand feet are considered the lowest and dirtiest part of the body, so to use your feet for something is a no-no here. Still, I found it quite funny that this would get a bigger reaction that other parts of the film!

End of the holidays and back to Na Kae!

Sorry it's been such a long time, I've been back in Na Kae for a couple of weeks now and it's been a little bit hectic! But for now, the rest of the holidays.

After my amazing trip to Sarnelli Orphanage and Nong Khai I headed to Chiang Mai to meet my project partner, Caitlin. She had been doing a temple meditation course there as her secondary project. I spent a few days in Chiang Mai going through all the markets - there are so many of them! Every evening from about 7pm there is amn enormous night bazaar that seems to go on forever, and on Saturdays there is a walking market on one side of the city, then on Sunday there is another one on the other side. If you're not careful you can end up buying lots... not that I'm talking from experience or anything! While we were there we decided to do a cookery course, something which I've been wanting to do for a while, so we booked ourselves onto the full day one. It was brilliant! The day started at about 9am when we were taken with four other tourists to the market by the man running the course. He was hilarious and spoke really good English so was able to keep craching jokes. For instance, while he was showing us various different types of the same vegetable he described them as 'same same, but different" which is a joke for ladyboys. A ladyboy is a boy who wants to be a girl, so the joke in Thailand is that they are the same as a girl, but different - hence "same same, but different". Unfortunately we didn't know that this phrase refers to the ladyboy culture of Thailand so when Jake, Caitlin's friend, came over he bought a t-shirt with this slogan printed in huge letters across the front and back! Possibly there was more than one reason why he kept getting whistled at in the street while he was here! At the market we got told how to pick out good vegetables and what each different vegetable was used for which was good. We were also shown how to pick out good eggs, but when Caitlin and I tried this back in Na Kae we ended up buying a bag of eggs that literally broke when you picked them up... possibly more practice is needed!
We were then taken to the man's house (I have unfortunately forgotten his name, so will refer to him was Ben) to begin the course! We got to make 3 dishes individually, 3 dishes together and were shown how to make several small things like sauces and curry pastes and helped make them together as a group. I chose to make Tom Yum (spicy and sour soup, usually with shrimp), Paneng Curry and a stir fried noodle dish on my own, and as a group we made Som Tham (which, being in Isaan I've already made countless times so this was definitely the easiest!), Sticky Rice with Mango and Spring Rolls. We also got shown how to make red and green curry paste - it takes a lot of mashing with a morter and pestel, but you can cheat and use a blender if you want to :P
The Tom Yum wen't really well, usually it's not my favourite dish - it's nice but can sometimes be a bit overpowering, but I really liked the taste of the one that Ben cooked with me. Hopefully I'll be able to re-create it without the help of a Thai cook! I chose to make Paneng curry because Caitlin wanted to do red curry and I know that my mum has recipes for red curry at home already, so thought it wouldbe good to try something different. It was nice, but I prefer the traditional red and green Thai curries. The paneng curry we made was with tofu but it can be made with meat too which I think would be nicer. Noodles aren't as big a food in Thailand as rice is, but noodle dishes are still around. They aren't in Na Kae much because so much rice is grown, so the only noodle dishes you'll find regularly around here are Pad Thai (fried noodles, Thailand's national dish) and noodle soup which has been brought over from Vietnam. You do get the occasional noodle dish though, often at shopping centres like the Big C in Sakhon Nakhon, and they are really nice. The dish I made went quite well, it was nice and simple which is good so I'm thinking it will possible be a good uni food to make!
As I've already mentioned, the Som Tham wasn't anything new to us because we've made it so many times with Pippa and her family, but we were disappointed that Ben decided to use a grater to shred the papaya instead of the traditional "attack with a knife until strips fall off" method that we use here. Admittedly it was a lot faster though!
Sticky Rice and Mango is one of my favourite Thai desserts. A lot of That Desserts are... strange. A lot of them are jelly lumps in condendes milk, and after trying them I must say that I'm not a huge fan. However sweet sticky rice is delicious, and the mangos in Thailand are also delicious, so putting the two together is genius!
Spring Rolls were fun to make, you fry soaked glass noodles and pretty much any sort of shredded vegetable that you like with whatever meat you feel like eating, and then roll it up in a spring roll case. Ben said that usually to seal them egg white is used, but he made a really cool gluestick out of a banana! Much more fun!
All in all I think I did quite well - everything turned out quite well, and unlike Caitlin I didn't manage to mash the chillis in the morter so hard that they bounced back out and went everywhere. I was also able to flip my noodles in the pan without them going everywhere which I was quite proud of. At one point Ben showed us that by adding water to hot oil you make the wok catch fire for a few seconds. After this we prepared out woks for the next dish which I think it was the noodle dish. I obviously wasn't paying attention because I failed to notice that what he was making us do was exactly what he had just done to make the wok catch fire. Everyone else was ready and expecting their wok to erupt in flames. I, however, was not, so I screamed and nearly dropped it, much to everyone else's amusement! Note to self: Pay more attention!
When the course was over we got to eat everything we'd made, and we got a recipe book which had the recipes to every dish in it and lots of information about the ingredients. We got a certificate, too. It was a really enjoyable day and I'm so glad I did it - the whole thing only cost us 900B each which is about 18 pounds! It was meant to a bit more but we had the old leaflet in which the price hadn't been changed, so Ben said that we only needed to pay 900B instead of the new amount, which I think was about 1,300B.

After our few days in Chiang Mai it was time to head back to Na Kae for the start of term. Now, we'd previously been told that the kids started school again on the 6th, but that we didn't need to start until the 15th. We then saw that the 15th is a Sunday, so actually we start on the 16th. We were then told that in fact the 17th is a Buddhist holiday anyway, so we don't need to start teaching until the 18th. After arriving in Na Kae we were then told that actually, we weren't needed until the following week because all the kids were doing questionairs at Na Kae Pitt., and the primary school kids were too busy with start of term activities and classes. So we decided to clean the house, which proved to be rather an epic task.

When we arrived at the house we were faced with a note on the door telling us that at 9pm every night until 6am the following morning a dog, names Pui, would be "released" because of burglars. The note said that she can be aggressive to people she doesn't know, so the best course of action if we meet her just back away slowly saying her name in a calming voice. It then said that an even better course of action is to avoid facing her. Brilliant, another dog to avoid! Once we entered the house we soon discovered that much bigger problems were lurking. Piles on plaster on the floor below freshly nibbled holes in the ceiling told us that the mice who we had lived quite happilly with before this had either multiplied or decided that the house belonged to them. Our nibbled mosquito nests enforced this. We then found a dead mouse on the living room floor and quickly removed him. In the kitchen however, Caitlin had the delight of discovering a huge, dead rat. Again this was quickly removed. We phoned our host to ask for her advice, and got none, so phoned Lucie, our rep, who said that the rodents would probably move out once we moved in, and siggested that in the meantime we "borrow a cat". It took us the best part of three or four days to completely clean the house - this included mopping every floor at least three times, washing everything we owned because the mice/rats had decided that the best place to use as a toiler would be our wardrobe, sweeping everywhere, washing our bedclothes, and finally trying to unblock the shower plug. We couldn't unblock it on our own, and we couldn't clean the bathroom until it was unblocked (in Thailand showers don't have cubicles, the water just goes onto the floor then into a hole), and we didn't want to to buy the scarilly strong looking drain cleaner from Tescos because it had several "toxic" and "danger" labels on it, and the instrustions were entirely in Thai. We asked the woman who has taken on the job of being our main host several times, and she said that she would phone the owner of the house. This went on for a few days until we got tired of having to shower at our neighbors house, so eventually found someone else to help. After having black drain cleaner which fizzed poured down it by the handyman, it seems to be better, and much cleaner which is good. So, the house was finally finished!

Now, back to Pui. After reading the note about this dog which would be on patrol every night, Caitlin and I were expecting some sort of "Hound of the Baskervilles"-esk creature. A doberman or such like. What we were not expecting, and what we got, was a rather small, orange and white collie/spaniel cross. She is quite flightly, and if you make any sudden movements instead of charging at you like the note would suggest, she flees. One time I thought I was in trouble because she came right up to me and started nudging against my leg with her mouth part open. Scared that I was going to get bitten I started to back away, only to have her roll onto her back and grin a doggy grin at me. She does have an annoying habbit of circling your legs making it difficult to walk though. I am very glad that she isn't a giant doberman who wants to eat me, but I must admit the note on the door was slightly over the top!

We are both teaching again now, and I'm actually really enjoying it. I was concerned that after the holidays, and because this term we are teaching more lessons, I would find it much harder but in fact I think the opposite has happened. I've really enjoyed seeing my classes again, and the new year ones are lovely. Some of them have come from the rural primary schools so know very little English, if any, so it's a challenge to teach them as I also have some who have come from the private primary school and so know a fair amount of English.

I can't believe that this year is passing so quickly - I only have about 6 more weeks left in Na Kae before I go travelling for another month, and I've had and am having so many amazing experiences.

Massive good luck wishes to Pippa who landed in Germany yesterday to spend 3 months there. I don't know if Germany know's what's hit it... Unfortunately she'll not be back by the time that we leave, but hopefully we'll get to see her again sometime, either in Thailand or in Germany. Good Luck!