Happy Birthday and see you soon, Pippa!!

January 27th was the birthday of out best friend, Pippa. It was also the last night before she went to Bangkok to study German. In other words, an excuse for yet another party! We arrived at her house at about 4pm after cycling the 8km and found Pippa, Butschi, Pippa's parents and a few guys from the village outside her house preparing food. We jumped right in and started chopping up garlic, nice and long like we were asked, only to have it shredded by Butschi who decided we were doing them for him. We then chopped up more garlic for the man who originally asked for it. After this, it was time to pluck a duck. Actually, two ducks. The wings were tricky, but I think we did okay! We got called "geng" which means skillful or clever which is good!

The guests started arriving at about 6.30pm, and Butschi started his barbeque. It was really quite funny how the party progressed - about 10 women from the village brought food and sat down on mats outside drinking, slowly getting more and more drunk. 4 village children (Pee An and Pee Biew's two sons, Donut and another girl) were on the edge of the mat playing with toy giraffes and cars. The men sat at the decking getting very drunk, and us crazy farang wandered around speaking very broken Thai, singing karaoke and taking photos! The main food was barbequed pork and beef which was really nice - Butschi was trying to do as western a barbeque as he could, and it worked out well! There was also sticky rice and something we think is made from duck which we think is called "rappit", but we're not entirely sure... it is delicious though!

As I've said before, karaoke is huge in Thailand which is actually a really good thing because I am getting much more confident singing in front of people! I don't know if this will last in the UK because the brilliant thing about Thailand is that people really don't care if you're bad, it's all just for fun, whereas in the UK people are slightly more critical... but I've done karaoke so many times now that people know that "my songs" are Because Of You by Kelly Clarkson and When You Say Nothing At All by Ronan Keating. Pippa absolutely loves the film "Notting Hill" so always requests that I sing "When You Say Nothing At All" which is the main song from it. Caitlin and I also sung "I Will Survive" together, pretending to fight with each other as we did so which went down well!
Caitlin and I managed to get some holy rope from a teacher at NaKaePitt. This is thin white rope which people tie aroudn other people's wrists to bless them. You tie a knot in the rope first, and this is meant to hold the blessing. We took this rope to Pippa's and blessed her, Butschi and Pippa's parents. Other people had brought holy rope too, so there was a small blessing ceremony which was really nice. When you get blessed you are meant to wai with the hand that isn't getting the rope, and people around you touch you to get some luck from your blessing. They also wai with the hand which isn't touching you.

It was a really nice evening and everyone really enjoyed themselves. I really love parties like this because they are so laid back and fun without being over the top. Nothing makes me feel like part of the community more than sitting outside with a group of people from the village simply eating, talking, laughing and having fun. It's really nice that although I don't speak a huge amount of Thai, and most people in the village don't speak much English, when we all sit together I can be completely part of what's going on and understand what people are talking about because the village makes an effort to include us, and we make an effort to be included. In the UK a lot of parties are about how sexily you can dress, how drunk you can get and how many times you can pull. Parties here are about being with friends and family and having a great time with each other.
On Friday we arrived at Pippa's house at about 4pm after travelling to her house not in the back of someone's pickup... Her bus left to Bangkok at about 5.45pm, so we spent the time sitting outside with her, Butschi, her parents and a couple of people who were getting the same bus. It was really sad to see her go, but under her orders we weren't allowed to cry :P Her and her parents have said that we are welcome to stay at her house in Ban Phon Sanuk whenever we like, and we have to look after her flowers.

To Pattaya!!

This Thursday at about 6pm saw Caitlin and I setting off on a 14 hour bus journey. Now, all of the long-distance buses I have been on so far have been quiet, peaceful... almost relaxing! I now realise that this is because they have not been filled with 50 senior kids and a karaoke machine. Thai karaoke machines have two volume settings - off and max. It was loud. Very, very loud... but actually quite fun, and thankfully we had Kru Nid and Kru Keh on our bus, so the karaoke was turned off at about 11pm so we could sleep.

We arrived at our first stop in Pattaya at about 8am - a huge mansion house which I think is the Thai equivelant to a Stately Home. It was very pretty, and really nice to get to look inside but obviously the tour guide spoke in Thai so we understood very little. After a while Caitlin and I managed to sneak outside and found a fountain, which we quickly discovered had steps into it. We then decided that as it had steps, it must be acceptable to swim in, or at least paddle! So we did :) And we got very wet, and got a lot of strange looks from students, but it was worth it!

Unfortunately our next stop was not so fun. We went to a Crocodile Zoo, and if you think that zoos in the UK are bad, then do not ever come to one in Thailand. The first thing we saw was what was called a "Crocodile Show" and consisted of a man putting his head into a supposedly tame crocodile's mouth to show the control he had over it. He also did things like shove his entire arm down the mouth of the croc and put on music which he then forced a baby crocodile to "dance" to. This dancing consisted of him waving the baby croc's arms around.

After wandering away from the show after a few minutes we came to a series of cages, genuinely no bigger than four double beds. Inside each bare cage was a fully grown tiger with nothing more than a water bowl (which was empty). The cats were pacing round in tiny circles looking petrified and emaciated. Nearby were two podiums, each with a large, obviously tranquilised, tiger chained to them to that tourists could have a photo of them with a tiger. Next to the tigers was a bear in a similar situation, only this beast had been trained to do high-fives, shake hands and collect money. He was so terrified of simply the noise of the metal stick his "trainer" was holding that I hate to think how he was actually trained. There were also bears in cages similar to the tigers. I genuinely do not understand how any human could think that this was entertainment in any way. After leaving this area of the zoo we walked past some more enclosures, this time with crocodiles inside. I have never seen so many crocodiles in a cage, you literally could not see the ground. Plus there was not a drop of water in sight for them. I think that what I find the most shocking is the number of tourists I saw smiling and laughing as they walked past these enclosures. The tigers and bears constantly had people paying to take photos with them. I do not understand how any human could find a zoo like this entertaining in any way, and to be honest if you do I hope I do not know you. I apologise for the photos below but I feel I need to show you what I saw.



After this experience we were going to go to the floating market, but one of the buses broke down so we went straight to the accommodation so that our bus could pick up the people from the broken bus. Our accommodation was inside a temple which was really nice - I think it is probably quite common for people to stay there because there are large rooms for sleeping in and a corridor of toilets. It would have been nice to be able to have a wander around and explore around the temple, but there was no time as as soon as we arrived all the students and teachers made their way to the beach. The beach was really lovely - not too crowded and very pretty. Caitlin and I went on a banana boat with four students which was amazing fun, and yes of course we fell off! :D At one point I stupidly flipped the entire boat upside down by trying to get on when no one was at the other side... turns out boats un-balance when you do that! After about 5 minutes of us all trying to recover the boat, the man controlling the speedboat managed to do it by speeding up so the rope tightened and forced it to flip. After this a group of students buried Caitlin and I in sand, making sure to give us large breasts, gentlemen equipment and a stegosaurus spine. Much fun! We got to bed at about 11pm, which was good because Kru Nid decided it would be a good idea to wake us up at 4.30am to tell us that the queue for the showers was going to be long. We got up at 6am, and the queue was not long. We are still unsure why the 4.30am wake up call was necessary...

Sunday morning saw us waiting in the bus for about an hour while one of the boys went to the doctor (he had a stomach upset), then going to the floating market which we were meant to go to on Saturday. It was a really nice market and I am glad that I decided not to take much money or I would have spent far too much! It was quite hard to find your way around though... Thailand is making me realise how awful my sense of direction really is! Caitlin said that she went to a floating market near Mae Sai where they actually went around the market on boats, but this market was walkways and a really cool swing bridge!

After this we went to the open zoo. After my experience at the Crocodile Zoo previously, and not being a fan of zoos in general, I was not at all looking forward to going, but thankfully it turned out to not be as bad as I thought. The animals were still kept in enclosures, so the name "open zoo" was slightly misleading, but the enclosures were much bigger and well equipped than the Crocodile Zoo ones. The tigers here, for instance, had both a large indoor and outdoor section with a waterfall and pool for swimming in. Not exactly what they would have in the wild but at least they are being treated with some care.

The next trip was to the Ancient City, which is a large park filled with miniature statues of famous landmarks and buildings from all over the world. I saw Ankhor Wat, the Leaning Tower of Pizza, the Statue of Liberty, the Pyramids, Easter Island Heads, the Taj Mahal... all without leaving Thailand! After this we went to a bee farm and saw lots of bees. We only stayed for a short time at the bee farm... although I love bees, once you've seen one hive you have really seen them all...
We then went to the aquarium, which I think was my favourite trip of the weekend (aside from the beach). Although it is still animals kept in cages, it was brilliant to see all the different fish and they were all in good condition. It is so long since I have been to an aquarium, and it made me realise that I actually love fish. I am actually thinking that this might lead me to go back to thinking about Biology as a uni degree and then going into Marine Biology... what do you think mum? :P I loved the stingrays, and took about 6 photos trying to get a good picture of one. The bus driver had to come to collect Caitlin and me because we got distracted in the gift shop looking at a "First English Words for Children" book. It had Thai words and sentences in it too, we weren't just looking at the pictures, honest!

We then started to make our way back to Na Kae, stopping about an hour in to look at a food market next to a really beautiful temple. The drive back was much the same as the drive there, except that instead of Karaoke we got to watch a couple of films. One of them was Narnia: The Dawn Treader (in Thai) and the other was a film called "Accidental Death" (also in Thai) which seemed to be a series of people seeing their own, or other peoples ,accidental deaths. It did not make much sense to us, but was nice to watch a film.

Thailand, Parties and Goodbye Non! :(

The last few days have been brilliant, crazy and fun! Actually, they were really just typical days in Thailand!!

The week started with the entire village of Ban Phon Sanuk laughing at us at I tried to take Caitlin a couple of kilometers up the road to Loung Ang's on the back of my bike (because hers was broken) and promptly lost control leading to Caitlin rolling around on the floor like a turtle. We thought that not many people knew because it happened just outside the actual village, but the next time to saw Pippa we quickly discovered that word had spread...

On Thursday (13th January) Caitlin went to Scout Camp. I was planning on going, but Caitlin kindly gave me her cold (which thankfully is better now) so I decided to give it a miss. Instead, I spent the day planning lessons for NaKaeSa. and St. Joseph, thinking about my Community Report which we have to do for Project Trust and relaxing! I must admit I did feel like a but of a skiver, but I really don't think that spending a day and a night on a hill in a tent then having to get up at 5am to get back in time to teach at St. Joseph was a good idea! I went on a walk up past the school towards one of the temples too - it is really pretty out there, you can get right into the rice fields and there are lots of little tracks into small foresty areas etc. The perfect place for a picnic I think!

Friday was a really good day. We taught at St. Joseph as normal, and met a couple from Canada who are going to be teaching there. They are called Lorna and Eddy, and Eddy is originally from Scotland!! He has a really strong Scottish accent, so I don't feel quite so strange anymore! Actually on the subject of accents, I've lost count of the number of times I've had people not understand me simply because of my accent! The other day I was trying to tell Pippa that there was a scout camp, and I said "camp" about 4 times and started to look it up in the dictionary when she said "OH! You mean "camp"?" with a slight American accent, then told me (jokingly) that Scottish was "mai dee!" (not good!). Maybe I should try putting on a fake English accent, practice my RP for doing drama? :P
Anyway, back to Friday! After St. Joseph Pippa said that she would come and pick us up. We thought she's be coming in her brother's car, but instead her and Butschi turned up on bikes. There was only one bike at our house because we'd only managed to take my un-broken bike back from Ban Phon Sanuk (wheeling it the 2 kilometers), so between the four of us we had three bikes. Pippa assured us that this wouldn't be a problem because she would take me on the back of her bike. We then discovered that we weren't actually going back to Ban Phon Sanuk right away - we were going about 6 km in the other direction to collect rocks. So off we went with me on the back of Pippa's bike which, after a while, gets quite painful. Luckily after about 10 minutes or so we met one of Pippa's "sisters" who we managed to mooch a lift off! After getting to the place Pippa wanted to get rocks from, Caitlin and I watched as Butschi and her tried to explain to each other what kind of rocks they thought they needed, which was extremely funny. Butschi is very "everything has to be organised and we need to have exactly the right things from the right places and I need to know exactly what is happeneing". Pippa is more... laid back about things - basically, he is German and she is Thai, so they make an interesting couple! In the end we didn't get rocks (goodness knows how she thought we'd take them back if we were still on our bikes and we did take some).

We got back to Pippa's, ate som tham and sticky rice (which I love!) and then made our way to Pippa's friend's house (past a cow slaughtering) for a goodbye party for Non, Pippa's brother. He's been staying with her since New Year but has to go back to Bangkok to work. It was great fun - dancing, singing, eating and drinking as usual! It was really sad to have to say goodbye to Non though, he is lovely. We'll no doubt see him again at some point though.

Caitlin and I taught at Na Kae Sa. as usual on Saturday, but it was a really pointless lesson. Throughout the last few weeks the kids have been learning about four topics in English - The Seven Pagodas in Nakhon Phanom, Nakhon Phanom in Brief, That Phanom and the Illuminated Boat Procession. Saturday was meant to be their opportunity to put everything they'd learnt together to create brochures and billboards, in English. Instead, we as teachers wrote out information on the topics and the kids cut then out and stuck them on paper. That was it. Some of the kids didn't even know what they were meant to be creating the brochures on, even after 5 weeks of learning about the topics! In Thailand, unfortunetely, the mentality seems to be"what the box looks like is more important than what's in the box". After teaching Caitlin and I cycled to Pippa's and got taken to what we think was a wedding reception for someone in Kru Nid's family. It was outside in the evening, and although we are in Thailand and you people in the UK reading this won't believe me, it was FREEZING! The party was fun - lots of dancing and singing (not karaoke, actually good people singing! At one point a man got up on stage and Pippa started cheering then said to us "This man is crazy, but sings very good!"). We got back to Pippa's quite early, about 10pm. Since Butschi has come she's been sleeping at much more normal times!

Lots of happenings!

Okay I'll blame the fact that I haven't blogged in a while on the fact that a) the school computer is mega slow and b) I've been too busy enjoying myself in Thailand! Haha, seriously I should blog more often. This will be my (late) New Years Resolution!

The last week and a bit have been a brilliant start tothe New Year! I can't believe I've in been in Thailand for over 1/3 of the year though, I'm sure time didn't go this fast at school?!

Last Thursday we taught at the after school group that a teacher called Kru Pen has for about an hour and a half, and we decided to do Animals. Our aim was to teach them lots of animals, and then teach them the words to "Animal Fayre" (We went to the animal fayre, the birds and the bees were there...). This plan was going brilliantly - all of our drawings were recognisable as what they were meant to be, and the kids were able to remember them all (although we did realise that we had taught them the word "zoo" when in fact the song was clearly about an animal FAYRE). This continued until we realised that we had to draw a baboon. Unsurprisingly, not one of the kids recognised what we were drawing (we did have suggestions of "human" and "seal" though!), so for a moment we were a little panicked as one of the lines of the song is "the big baboon by the light of the moon". However, we managd to get by and teac them the song without needing to draw a baboon! Instead, we improvised the lyrics to "the big flamingo by the light of the disco" - I'd call it a success! Our next plan was to teach them Old MacDonald had a Zoo. Again, this was going successfully until it was my turn to sing it with them, and I merrily sung out "Old MacDonald had a farm... NO! No, he had a zoo!" thouroughly confusing the children. Thankfully we managed to get them to sing both songs with the correct lyrics by the end!

The next interesting happening has got to the the arrival of Butschi! Butschi is Pippa's German boyfriend (or husband as she calls him). Pippa went down to Bangkok to meet him on Tuesday, and we thougt that she was staying in Bangkok for at least a week, but an excited phone call from her on Friday afternoon informed us that she was at her house with him and wanted us there NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!! Gotta love her! He is actually very sweet and it's lovely to see them together, they obviously love each other a lot!

Caitlin and I had our first trip to Sakhon Nakhon at the weekend to see Tae who was a pupil at Nakaepitt last year. He was best friends with Ruth and Laura, the volunteers in Na Kae last year, and he is really nice. We met with some of his friends - his roommate Tee and two girls who I think live in the same apartment block. They weer all lovely, and Sakhon is a really nice place. I probably spent too much money - bought shoes (which I actually genuinely needed!), a hat (which I claim I need because Thailand is colder than Scotland :P), a bracelet which I definitely needed, and nail varnish which I needed more than anything... Hm, maybe I should start budgetting. I also found a 7/11 that sold proper slushies! The ones in Na Kae don't do them because they are quite small 7/11s.

Most of my classes so far this week have been fine, but one class was awful. I don't know what got into them, but the boys decided that they don't like Farang so I got told numerous times to "go home", and at the end of the lesson they left a drawing of a burning Scottish flag on the board and a sign saying "look at the picture". The head of English at Nakaepitt knows and has said that they will "talk to them". Hopefully they'll be better next week, or they'll just stop coming to class. It's only a few boys in the class that played up, but unfortunately it means that the rest of the class suffer which is a shame as there are lots of pupils who behave really well and seem to enjoy being there.

Happy New Year!!

Wow, New Year in Thailand is crazy!! Caitlin and I had planned to spend the weekend on Koh Chang with the rest of the volunteers, but we decided that instead we would stay in Na Kae. Pippa invited all of her family and friends round for a party at her house, and we though that we can have New Year on Koh Chang anytime and it will be pretty much the same, but this is probably the only opportunity to spend it in somewhere like Na Kae.

The Party started on 29th December when Pippa's brother, Non, arrived from Bangkok. It takes us about 12 hours on a bus to reach Bangkok - he made it in his car driving in less than 5. Thai driving is pretty crazy! Anyway, he arrived at about 3pm and we welcomed him with whiskey. It was really nice to sit outside Pippa's house with her family and some of her friends from the village talking (or rather trying to understand what was being said) and enjoying ourselves. After a while, at about 9pm, we moved from Pippa's house to a house down the road where there was a karaoke machine set up and more people from around the village. Caitlin and I had planned to sing a couple of songs, but just before we were meant to sing one of our friends got very upset so I went to make sure she was okay, meaning that Caitlin did it solo!! Very well done, too! After this we went back to Pippa's house for the night.


The party continued until around 2nd January, and involved a lot of meeting fantastic people and having fun. On 30th December we spent the afternoon at Pippa's family's farm. They have a rice field and a large pond for fish farming - it's really beautiful. The evening was spent again with lots of people from around the village, and some more of Pippa's family who arrived from Bangkok.

Of course, the big party day, and night, was 31st December. In the afternoon Pippa took us to her friend's house, quite close to Ban Phon Sanuk. Her friend is married to a Russian man who lives in America, and she speaks really good English. She is also absolutely crazy and lovely! It was great to meet her and her family - She has the most adorable children too - her daughter has just been a model in a Thai parenting magazine, there are a good four or five pages of photos of her in it. We were only meant to stay there for a couple of hours but we ended up staying a lot longer. Both Caitlin and I definitely want to see her again.


We made our way back to Pippa's house a little later than planned,and got there at about 6pm to see Non setting up the karaoke machine. Karaoke is huge in Thailand, a party is not complete without it! It's actually a lot of fun - I don't think I would ever get up and do karaoke in the UK but here no one cares what you sound like, it's all about having fun! There was lots of delicious food and, of course, whiskey. We stayed outside for hours talking, laughing, singing, dancing, eating, drinking and generally having a fantastic time. After a while, Pippa's friend who we had met earlier in the day came with some other people which was fantastic, and we went along the road to another of Pippa's friend's houses! She really is one of these people that just knows everyone! Again there was karaoke, and we sung a few songs. One of our favourites to do now is "I Will Survive" because it is so much fun. Back to Pippa's house, and the party continued until about 5am when we finally all made our way to our beds. It was an absolutely brilliant day/night spent with the most amazing people, and although it was a shame to miss seeing the other volunteers, I am definitely happy that I spent New Year in Na Kae.

The next couple of days were filled again with music, dancing and karaoke. All day and night there was music coming from outside Pippa's house and people sitting on her deck eating and drinking. It was really nice to be able to spend so much time with people. :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

This Month's (slightly late...) Missings!

Wow! Another month and another list of things I've missed from home.

Mum
Dad
Ailsa
Alan
The Felines
Firehawk!
The Irn Bru Christmas Advert
The Coca Cola Christmas Advert
Baked Potatoes
Macaroni Cheese
Cauliflower in Cheese Sauce
Boiled Eggs in Cheese Sauce
Cheese
Cereal with milk
Making rum truffles with Ailsa
Eating rum truffles
SNOW
Having less hairy arms (the sun does strange things...)
Having no tan lines (tanning is good, but it stops halfway down my arm because of the school dress code)