Well our plan was to be further North than this at this point, but we sort of got stuck in Krabi! Intentionally because it was such a lovely place. We ended up visiting both Railay Beach and Ao Nang (Nang Beach), which were both lovely. I preferred Railay because there was much more to do though, such as embarking on a seemingly innocent climb to "The Lagoon". It was not innocent. After climbing/scrambling up quite a steep cliff/gully, with the aid of ropes, to a nice little forest walk. This walk stayed "nice' for about 3 minutes, until we found the next part of the journey. Again with the aid of ropes, we had to go down a cliff. Then another cliff. Then another. I found it extremely difficult as I am not a climber, and at first decided to wait at the Top while Caitiln went down. I sat at the top with another girl who didn't want to go down, but eventually we managed to persuade each other to give it another go and we both made it down! When we got to the Lagoon it was quite pretty, but very muddy with quite spiky rocks to swimming wasn't really an option. There was, however, a very nice shelf with lots of sculptures that people had made out of the mud on it!
We intended to go home the next day, but met up with some Americans called Joe, Tony and Sarah and decided to stay a couple of extra days to do some more exploring. We went to Ao Nang, which was really just a long beach, and Caitlin ventured up the 1237 steps to the "Tiger Temple". No tigers, just a lot of steps!
When we finally decided to leave, we had the dilemma of where to go. We decided to try and get to a small village called Ban DanSingkhon where there is a Burmese Orchid Market every Saturday. We thought that this would be a quite an easy journey - we would go to a town called Surat Thani, from there get another bus to Prachoet Khirikhan and then get a song tao to the village. Unfortunetly, it was not this simple. From Krabi we got a bus to a small place called Ban Na Saan (simple because at this point we weren't 100% sure where we wanted to go, and it was one of the few places that we could find both on the map in Lonely Planet and on the ticket...). Not much here but a train station, so the next morning we decided 100% to make our way to Surat Thani. Note to self: Never go there. Never, ever go there. We arrived and tried to get a bus to Prachoet Khirikhan, but the ticket seller was so obviously trying to scam us it was ridiculus. We managed to get the price down from 450B each to 350B each, but that took a very long time and a lot of bantering backwards and forwards. Usually the banter-haggling is quite fun and can be a laugh, but the man selling the tickets was convinced that because we were "farang" we were rich. He got quite heated and shouted at me that "Thai people pay less because they don't have money, white people are all rich so must pay more". I tried to explain to him that I actually live in Thailand and am a volunteer, but he was having none of it. After finally paying for the ticket I had to make quite a fuss to get my 300B change! The bus was supposedly at 6.10pm, so we wandered around the town for a while. At 6.10pm we headed back to where we'd been todl the bus was, only to be taken in a small song tao to another place. Here we waited until 8pm before out bus finally came!! We tried to find out from the driver what time we would be in Prachoet because the bus went all the way to Bangkok, and he glared at us then waves his hand at us to shoo us away! For the first few hours of the journey the bus kept stopping randomly, and finally we pulled over at the side of the road while one of the drivers fiddled with the engine in the back. I went down and politely asked what was wrong, and again the man glared at me then went out and slammed the door! Thankfully when the other driver came back in he was much nicer and said that it was fixed, and off we went. At about 2am we arrived in Prachoet. Or, actually, we didn't... we were dropped off 2km outside the town, despite the driver asking us where we wanted to be dropped off and agreeing to take us to where ther ewere hotels! Finally after about a 1km walk lined with stray dogs we found a hotel and managed to geta few hours sleep before being up at 7.30am to find a way to the Orchid Market.
The Market was actually lovely, and Caitlin and I both bought Pitcher Plants to see if we can keep them alive. If we start to fail we're going to try and give them to Pippa - she likes plants! After the market and a nap at the hotel, I decided to make my way up to a temple on a hill, with 336 steps leading up to it! I managed it and am very proud that I did, and I saw lots of monkeys on the way! On the way back down, I got a bit trapped by the monkeys though... someone had left a bag of food for them and they were swarming onf of the little shelters on the way up the steps, fighting over the food. I decided to wait it out until they had calmed down instead of risking rabies!
One thing I've noticed pretty much immediately is that there is a huge contrast between the South of Thailand and the Northeast, where I am in Na Kae. The feeling that I got in Surathani was that the locals were almost resentful towards farang. I think that this is probably because being near such a tourist filled area they have quite likely had bad experiences with typical farang party goers, but there seems to be a lack of the community spirit which is obvious in Isaan. I haven't yet seen anyone eating outside and having the whole street join them as can often happn in the villaged around Na Kae. As I have now travelled around Isaan a bit, I can say that it's not just in Na Kae that there is a strong sense of community - it really is all over, and the locals wherever we've been in Isaan have been extremely welcoming and impressed that we both speak Thai, even if they haven't met us previously. It's a shame that this has been lost in more southern parts of the country.
Saturday 19 March 2011
Saturday 12 March 2011
In the South!
On Monday Caitlin and I set off on a school trip with some of the teachers from NaKaePitthayakhom. We went to possibly the furthest away place that we could without leaving Thailand - Phuket! After being told that the bus would leave the school at 4.30am, Caitlin and I decisded to deliberately not get much sleep beforehand so that we would get on the bus and instantly fall asleep. Unfortunately, this plan failed because a) the bus didn't leave until about 6am and b) as soon as we were on the bus the teachers decided that Thai Karaoke would be a fantastic idea! As I'm sure I have mentioned, Thai Karaoke has two volume settings - off and max. It was at max. Caitlin and I had brought a DVD of "Mamma Mia: The Movie" in the hope that at some point during the 35 hour bus journey we would be able to watch it. After eventually convincing the driver that if he stopped pressing buttons the DVD would load, we got to watch it. Well, we got to watch about half of it before the school's Director came up and said that they were turning it off because they wanted more karaoke, and they couldn't understand it because it was English! I found it a but annoying that in a 35 hour journey they couldn't deal with 2 hours of an English film, but hey ho!
We eventually arrived at Koh Pang Nga and went straight into the days activities! We visited markets galore of course, and went to the "James Bond Island" which is very beautiful. I decided to sit on a big rock and get my photo taken with the island in the background, and ended up dropping my shoe down the side of the rock... got it back though, managed to rope some kids into climbing down to retrieve it for me :) The rest of the day was filled with visiting a lovely temple and another lovely market, then heading on to Phuket to check into the hotel. After eating, we all went to bed. Well, actually, most people went to bed, but Caitlin managed to find Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix in English on the TV, so we stayed up to watch that. Then we slept.
The next day started at 6am with a wake-up call from the hotel. Since breakfast wasn't untl 7am, we decided to continue sleeping until 6.40am. This resulted in about 4 missed calls from the head of English, Kru Nid (who is strangely punctual for a Thai...) and another hotel wake up call. We were still down to breakfast at about 7am though! After breakfast, it was time to take a boat to Maya Bay, past Koh Phi Phi for snorkeling! The fish were beautiful, but unfortunetly most of the coral had been killed - I suppose that is typical of a tourist snorkelling spot. We then went back to Koh Phi Phi for lunch, and got to wander round the island a bit.
That evening we had a party in the hotel and of course ots of Thai Karaoke, but the disk was realy old so they didn't have many English songs that we knew. We spent most of the evening playing with the kids (once they got used to the fact that we were "farang' and stopped being scared of us :P) wth balloons and generally acting like a 9 year old! Much fun!
The school eft the following morning, but Caitlin and I stayed on Phuket for a couple of days to explore and ended up staying at Patong Beach. It was really nice, and I loved swimming in the sea!
At the moment we are in Krabi, trying to find a way to either Railay Beach or a temple with monkeys... aah, decisions decisions!
I will try to keep updating when I can, but I doubt I'll be able to upload photos because of the time it takes to upload them. More often than not the only internet I can use will be in an internet cafe.
We eventually arrived at Koh Pang Nga and went straight into the days activities! We visited markets galore of course, and went to the "James Bond Island" which is very beautiful. I decided to sit on a big rock and get my photo taken with the island in the background, and ended up dropping my shoe down the side of the rock... got it back though, managed to rope some kids into climbing down to retrieve it for me :) The rest of the day was filled with visiting a lovely temple and another lovely market, then heading on to Phuket to check into the hotel. After eating, we all went to bed. Well, actually, most people went to bed, but Caitlin managed to find Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix in English on the TV, so we stayed up to watch that. Then we slept.
The next day started at 6am with a wake-up call from the hotel. Since breakfast wasn't untl 7am, we decided to continue sleeping until 6.40am. This resulted in about 4 missed calls from the head of English, Kru Nid (who is strangely punctual for a Thai...) and another hotel wake up call. We were still down to breakfast at about 7am though! After breakfast, it was time to take a boat to Maya Bay, past Koh Phi Phi for snorkeling! The fish were beautiful, but unfortunetly most of the coral had been killed - I suppose that is typical of a tourist snorkelling spot. We then went back to Koh Phi Phi for lunch, and got to wander round the island a bit.
That evening we had a party in the hotel and of course ots of Thai Karaoke, but the disk was realy old so they didn't have many English songs that we knew. We spent most of the evening playing with the kids (once they got used to the fact that we were "farang' and stopped being scared of us :P) wth balloons and generally acting like a 9 year old! Much fun!
The school eft the following morning, but Caitlin and I stayed on Phuket for a couple of days to explore and ended up staying at Patong Beach. It was really nice, and I loved swimming in the sea!
At the moment we are in Krabi, trying to find a way to either Railay Beach or a temple with monkeys... aah, decisions decisions!
I will try to keep updating when I can, but I doubt I'll be able to upload photos because of the time it takes to upload them. More often than not the only internet I can use will be in an internet cafe.
Saturday 5 March 2011
A crazy few days!!
How many crazy, spontaneous things can happen in 4 days? Turns out a lot!!
On Monday Caitlin and I headed to That Phanom, about 26km away, to try and find the Laos market which is there once a week. Once we got there we wandered around and found a few small markets selling nice silk tops (beautiful but very expensive!) and food, but no Laos market. That Phanom isn't huge, so we decided to continue wandering around and see where we got to. Eventually we managed to find what we think was the market, but we're still not entirely sure! It was a large covered market selling everything from clothes and toys to food. Being me, I went straight to the brightly coloured, sparkly clothes and quickly saw a really nice black top with a butterfly on it but didn't buy and and I didn't actually want it as it was made of material that would get very warm in the hot season, plus it was black which would make it hotter. While we were looking at it Caitlin heard the market stall owner saying "farang" and "peng" - "farang" means foreign person (i.e. us) and "peng" means expensive - she was telling her co-partner to make the price expensive because we are farang! It is very commonly thought that white people are rich, no matter what, which means that buying things in markets can be extremely frustrating, especially as Caitlin and I have both been in situations where a Thai person in fron t of us has been told that something is one price, then we've been told it's much higher! As most people assume that white people don't speak Thai, it can be quite funny to watch their face when they realise that we understood exactly what they said :P
The next stall we saw had lots of lovely bright Tie Dye t-shirts, and somehow 50B magically transformed into a lovely pink one... not sure how that happened! I did manage to haggle the price down from 60B though!
Tuesday showed us just how unorganised and spontaneous Thai people are! Our plan was to go to Sakhon Nakhon to see a girl called Print - we met her in Ban Phon Sanuk as her family is friends with Pippa. However, we couldn't get hold of her so we decided to go and see other friends, Tae and Tee, in Sakhon. In the morning, at about 10am, Tae phoned and told us that he was extremely sorry but he was busy as he had to do something for university. So we started on a plan B. This was to go to Sakhon Nakhon and from there get a bus down to a city called Kalasin where there is a dinosaur museum and lots of fossils. We phoned Kru Nid about this and she said that she didn't want us to do this because it is very difficult to get a bus to the dinosaur museum from the city. Plan C was then born, and was to go from Sakhon Nakhon to a small village called Ban Panom where there is a National Park and some waterfalls nearby. Kru Nid said that this would be fine and we could get a bus straight from Sakhon to Ban Panom. Brilliant! All that was left to do was to go up to school and see if we could borrow a tent to stay in. At school, we bumped into Kru Nid who asked us where we were going. After saying Ban Panom in several different accents with several different tones, we decided to get the map out and point instead. Her reaction? "Oooh no no no, there will not be any buses" despite telling us earlier it wouldn't be a problem! Caitlin talked to her while I found a tent, and I couldn't keep a straight face when I heard Kru Nid tell Caitlin that instead of going to Ban Panom we should go to Kalasin - the very place she told us earlier that we shouldn't go to!! As Caitlin tried to tell Kru Nid that we wanted to go to Ban Panom I went back to the house to get some water, and when I came back there was a completely different plan! Is this plan D now? Anyway, instead of going to Ban Panom OR Kalasin, Kru Nid said that it would be brilliant to go to Udon Thani because a very famous Monk called Luangta Bua who lived there had died and there was a huge pilgrimage to pay respect to him at Wat Ban That. We decided that this was something we would definitely like to see, so quickly went outside to try and catch the 1pm bus, missed it, so sat around and caught the 1.45 bus instead!
Udon was really great - we arrived at about 6pm and after wandering around for a while decided to splurge and get a Thai massage. I was a little nervous because I had one in Bangkok and it was incredibly painful, but I hoped this one would be better. Unfortunately it was now. I vow to never, ever get one again! I thought my muscles were going to explode! After this we got some food, then tried to see if the temple would still be open this late. A tuk tuk offered to take us for the "cheap" price of 500B, so we declined and found a Backpackers to stay in and get the free bus in the morning. Morning came and after asking the owner of the backpackers we went to the bus station and caught a free minibus up to Wat Ban That. Although the Monk's funeral wasn't until Friday people came from all over to pay respect and we met a lovely woman who had come from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. There was a large campsite and a covered tent that seemed like it was reserved for Buddhist Nuns. There were also lots of tents serving food and drinks, so we went to get noodles and also got given some odd, but really nice, crunchy boiled potato things. After wandering around for a while we made our way back to find a ride to Sakhon. We managed to find a tuk tuk, and this time we haggled in Thai and bantered with the driver a bit and got there for about 57B! When he realised that we spoke Thai he stopped trying to charge us ridiculous amounts.
From Udon we headed back to Sakhon to see if we could get hold of Print again, but couldn't, so decided to be spontaneous and jumped on a bus to Kalasin! We arrived at about 10pm and while in the bus station we made a list of some monuments that we wanted to see, and ended up seeing two of them as we walked down the road towards the market! We quickly found out that we couldn't have chosen a better time to go - there was a massive festival! It cost 10B to enter the main part of it, which was a giant market spread over several very long streets selling everything with minigame stalls and fair ground rides.
As we walked around we found a large Toyota tent, some very excited Thai girls and a very gay guy. They came running up to us, surrounded us, and asked us to say their slogan which was "TOYOTA!! LOVE YOU!! CHIP CHIP!!". After saying it they gave us pens that were also torches! We wandered around the market for a while, then at about 11pm headed back to find somewhere to stay.
On the way out of the market we bumped into one of the Toyota girls (the craziest one) called Pedzi who asked us where we were going, then said to come with her to meet her friend. We went to a large monument not far from the market and found the very gay guy, who is called Ton (as is the gay guy in Bangkok who is friends with Pippa), who said that we could stay with him! We decided to go for it, and got taken to a song tao full of the other Toyota girls. They were all going to Ton's house to stay over, and were mega excited that we were coming too! I don't think I've ever met crazier people! The song tao journey was free because I think one of Ton's friends was driving, and took about half an hour. We got to his house and made up lots of beds on the living room floor, then had some food and chatted to everyone in broken Thai. They are all absolutely lovely - Ton, Pedzi, Nitzy, Chip, Nampun, Nong, Eve, Art and Boo Noi are their names. We had planned to go to see the dinosaur museum the following day, then head back to Sakhon and back to Na Kae in the evening, but when we were asked to help them with the Toyota craziness there was no way we were saying no!
The following day was brilliant. We got up at about 10am and headed to a nearby lake in the middle of the ricefields to have a small picnic and a swim which was lovely. Not everyone swam - Caitlin and I did, as did Ton, Pedzi, Boo Noi, Nong and Chip. We then headed back to Ton's house to start hair and make-up! Caitlin and I asked Nampun to do our makeup, and Pedzi did out hair. I got a lovely french braid done across my fringe, which somehow stayed in all night!! No idea how, but Thais are brilliant with hair! Our job at the Toyota tent was to dance crazily and advertise Toyota with big banners. There were dressed up clowns and people in large alien and robot costumes, and a show on in the tent with lots of dancing and magic tricks etc. Every now and then everyone got called into the big tent to do a dance, which we picked up quite well! Also, two young boys were doing break dancing and I must say they are the coolest little guys I've ever met (except Big Boom who lives in Ban Phon Sanuk). We gave out leaflets and balloons and got people to come in and see the show under the tent. There was also a lucky draw to win a motorbike, and to enter you had to complete a list of activities including singing karaoke and having a go on a driving computer game! It was brilliant fun, I loved it when the time came to try and make people say the Toyota slogan ("TOYOTA!! LOVE YOU!! CHIP CHIP!!" which when translated into Thai becomes "TOYOTA!! RAK NA!! CHIP CHIP!!") and give out free pens to people who did it! It was Ton's birthday, so at about 10.30pm we headed out to a discoteque (like a large bar with a stage and people singing and dancing on stage) and got to drink whiskey for the first time in what seems like ages! I ended up being lifted onto the stage to dance with a band at one point, which was mega embarrassing but lots of fun! We headed back to Ton's house at about 2am. Obviously we stayed at Ton's house that night as we didn't think there'd be buses at that time, and we'd been told that the next day a Thai Superstar called Duki was going to be coming to the Toyota tent and we didn't want to miss that. "Morning" the next day was at about 12pm, and the whole afternoon was taken up with hair, false-eyelashes and make-up for Duki. Our bus was at 8pm and Duki was meant to arrive at 7pm, but unfortunately she didn't come in time, so we didn't get to see her. Instead we did the usual dancing and talking to clowns, then headed to the bus station.
We hoped to get to Na Kae from Sakhon that same evening, but we didn't arrive in Sakhon until about 11pm and there were no song taos. On our search for places to stay we met a Thai woman who spoke fluent English who was extremely helpful - she was with her daughter and husband and offered to take us to a hotel! We ended up saying 175B each, which was a little more than we wanted but the hotel was lovely. After getting ready for bed we turned on the TV and found an English kids TV channel! It had a progamme called "Real Kids, Real Adventures" on which was about kids who had been in dangerous situations and saved peoples lives or nearly died etc. - I loved it! We watched it until about 2am, then decided to go to sleep.
We'd been told by the woman who drove us there that in the morning the receptionist would help up get back to the bus station and tell us where to go, but I think we slept a little later than he was expecting because when we went to reception at about 11am he wasn't there. Instead there was a woman who told us to go outside and get a song tao to Na Kae from the side of the road closest to the hotel. No luck. We then went to the other side and tried to get to Na Kae. No luck. After asking her again she came out with us and asked a song tao driver about Na Kae. No luck. Back to the other side of the road again, this time asking about the bus station, and eventually found a song tao heading there! At the bus station, as we headed to find the Na Kae song tao, we bumped into one of our friends from Na Kae called Mama Fine. She is absolutely lovely - she lived and worked in America for years so speaks fluent English and said that she would take us to lunch and then drive us back home!! So we had a lovely lunch in the Big C in Sakhon, then got a lift home with her and her step-daughter.
The rest of today had been filled with sorting out our packing for the holidays - we leave for Phukhet with the school very early on Monday morning (the sort of time that I would still call Sunday night...) and after that we have two months of holiday! I will try to blog when I can about what I am doing, but I doubt I'll be able to post as regularly as I don't know when I'll have access to the internet.
On Monday Caitlin and I headed to That Phanom, about 26km away, to try and find the Laos market which is there once a week. Once we got there we wandered around and found a few small markets selling nice silk tops (beautiful but very expensive!) and food, but no Laos market. That Phanom isn't huge, so we decided to continue wandering around and see where we got to. Eventually we managed to find what we think was the market, but we're still not entirely sure! It was a large covered market selling everything from clothes and toys to food. Being me, I went straight to the brightly coloured, sparkly clothes and quickly saw a really nice black top with a butterfly on it but didn't buy and and I didn't actually want it as it was made of material that would get very warm in the hot season, plus it was black which would make it hotter. While we were looking at it Caitlin heard the market stall owner saying "farang" and "peng" - "farang" means foreign person (i.e. us) and "peng" means expensive - she was telling her co-partner to make the price expensive because we are farang! It is very commonly thought that white people are rich, no matter what, which means that buying things in markets can be extremely frustrating, especially as Caitlin and I have both been in situations where a Thai person in fron t of us has been told that something is one price, then we've been told it's much higher! As most people assume that white people don't speak Thai, it can be quite funny to watch their face when they realise that we understood exactly what they said :P
The next stall we saw had lots of lovely bright Tie Dye t-shirts, and somehow 50B magically transformed into a lovely pink one... not sure how that happened! I did manage to haggle the price down from 60B though!
Tuesday showed us just how unorganised and spontaneous Thai people are! Our plan was to go to Sakhon Nakhon to see a girl called Print - we met her in Ban Phon Sanuk as her family is friends with Pippa. However, we couldn't get hold of her so we decided to go and see other friends, Tae and Tee, in Sakhon. In the morning, at about 10am, Tae phoned and told us that he was extremely sorry but he was busy as he had to do something for university. So we started on a plan B. This was to go to Sakhon Nakhon and from there get a bus down to a city called Kalasin where there is a dinosaur museum and lots of fossils. We phoned Kru Nid about this and she said that she didn't want us to do this because it is very difficult to get a bus to the dinosaur museum from the city. Plan C was then born, and was to go from Sakhon Nakhon to a small village called Ban Panom where there is a National Park and some waterfalls nearby. Kru Nid said that this would be fine and we could get a bus straight from Sakhon to Ban Panom. Brilliant! All that was left to do was to go up to school and see if we could borrow a tent to stay in. At school, we bumped into Kru Nid who asked us where we were going. After saying Ban Panom in several different accents with several different tones, we decided to get the map out and point instead. Her reaction? "Oooh no no no, there will not be any buses" despite telling us earlier it wouldn't be a problem! Caitlin talked to her while I found a tent, and I couldn't keep a straight face when I heard Kru Nid tell Caitlin that instead of going to Ban Panom we should go to Kalasin - the very place she told us earlier that we shouldn't go to!! As Caitlin tried to tell Kru Nid that we wanted to go to Ban Panom I went back to the house to get some water, and when I came back there was a completely different plan! Is this plan D now? Anyway, instead of going to Ban Panom OR Kalasin, Kru Nid said that it would be brilliant to go to Udon Thani because a very famous Monk called Luangta Bua who lived there had died and there was a huge pilgrimage to pay respect to him at Wat Ban That. We decided that this was something we would definitely like to see, so quickly went outside to try and catch the 1pm bus, missed it, so sat around and caught the 1.45 bus instead!
Udon was really great - we arrived at about 6pm and after wandering around for a while decided to splurge and get a Thai massage. I was a little nervous because I had one in Bangkok and it was incredibly painful, but I hoped this one would be better. Unfortunately it was now. I vow to never, ever get one again! I thought my muscles were going to explode! After this we got some food, then tried to see if the temple would still be open this late. A tuk tuk offered to take us for the "cheap" price of 500B, so we declined and found a Backpackers to stay in and get the free bus in the morning. Morning came and after asking the owner of the backpackers we went to the bus station and caught a free minibus up to Wat Ban That. Although the Monk's funeral wasn't until Friday people came from all over to pay respect and we met a lovely woman who had come from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. There was a large campsite and a covered tent that seemed like it was reserved for Buddhist Nuns. There were also lots of tents serving food and drinks, so we went to get noodles and also got given some odd, but really nice, crunchy boiled potato things. After wandering around for a while we made our way back to find a ride to Sakhon. We managed to find a tuk tuk, and this time we haggled in Thai and bantered with the driver a bit and got there for about 57B! When he realised that we spoke Thai he stopped trying to charge us ridiculous amounts.
From Udon we headed back to Sakhon to see if we could get hold of Print again, but couldn't, so decided to be spontaneous and jumped on a bus to Kalasin! We arrived at about 10pm and while in the bus station we made a list of some monuments that we wanted to see, and ended up seeing two of them as we walked down the road towards the market! We quickly found out that we couldn't have chosen a better time to go - there was a massive festival! It cost 10B to enter the main part of it, which was a giant market spread over several very long streets selling everything with minigame stalls and fair ground rides.
As we walked around we found a large Toyota tent, some very excited Thai girls and a very gay guy. They came running up to us, surrounded us, and asked us to say their slogan which was "TOYOTA!! LOVE YOU!! CHIP CHIP!!". After saying it they gave us pens that were also torches! We wandered around the market for a while, then at about 11pm headed back to find somewhere to stay.
On the way out of the market we bumped into one of the Toyota girls (the craziest one) called Pedzi who asked us where we were going, then said to come with her to meet her friend. We went to a large monument not far from the market and found the very gay guy, who is called Ton (as is the gay guy in Bangkok who is friends with Pippa), who said that we could stay with him! We decided to go for it, and got taken to a song tao full of the other Toyota girls. They were all going to Ton's house to stay over, and were mega excited that we were coming too! I don't think I've ever met crazier people! The song tao journey was free because I think one of Ton's friends was driving, and took about half an hour. We got to his house and made up lots of beds on the living room floor, then had some food and chatted to everyone in broken Thai. They are all absolutely lovely - Ton, Pedzi, Nitzy, Chip, Nampun, Nong, Eve, Art and Boo Noi are their names. We had planned to go to see the dinosaur museum the following day, then head back to Sakhon and back to Na Kae in the evening, but when we were asked to help them with the Toyota craziness there was no way we were saying no!
The following day was brilliant. We got up at about 10am and headed to a nearby lake in the middle of the ricefields to have a small picnic and a swim which was lovely. Not everyone swam - Caitlin and I did, as did Ton, Pedzi, Boo Noi, Nong and Chip. We then headed back to Ton's house to start hair and make-up! Caitlin and I asked Nampun to do our makeup, and Pedzi did out hair. I got a lovely french braid done across my fringe, which somehow stayed in all night!! No idea how, but Thais are brilliant with hair! Our job at the Toyota tent was to dance crazily and advertise Toyota with big banners. There were dressed up clowns and people in large alien and robot costumes, and a show on in the tent with lots of dancing and magic tricks etc. Every now and then everyone got called into the big tent to do a dance, which we picked up quite well! Also, two young boys were doing break dancing and I must say they are the coolest little guys I've ever met (except Big Boom who lives in Ban Phon Sanuk). We gave out leaflets and balloons and got people to come in and see the show under the tent. There was also a lucky draw to win a motorbike, and to enter you had to complete a list of activities including singing karaoke and having a go on a driving computer game! It was brilliant fun, I loved it when the time came to try and make people say the Toyota slogan ("TOYOTA!! LOVE YOU!! CHIP CHIP!!" which when translated into Thai becomes "TOYOTA!! RAK NA!! CHIP CHIP!!") and give out free pens to people who did it! It was Ton's birthday, so at about 10.30pm we headed out to a discoteque (like a large bar with a stage and people singing and dancing on stage) and got to drink whiskey for the first time in what seems like ages! I ended up being lifted onto the stage to dance with a band at one point, which was mega embarrassing but lots of fun! We headed back to Ton's house at about 2am. Obviously we stayed at Ton's house that night as we didn't think there'd be buses at that time, and we'd been told that the next day a Thai Superstar called Duki was going to be coming to the Toyota tent and we didn't want to miss that. "Morning" the next day was at about 12pm, and the whole afternoon was taken up with hair, false-eyelashes and make-up for Duki. Our bus was at 8pm and Duki was meant to arrive at 7pm, but unfortunately she didn't come in time, so we didn't get to see her. Instead we did the usual dancing and talking to clowns, then headed to the bus station.
We hoped to get to Na Kae from Sakhon that same evening, but we didn't arrive in Sakhon until about 11pm and there were no song taos. On our search for places to stay we met a Thai woman who spoke fluent English who was extremely helpful - she was with her daughter and husband and offered to take us to a hotel! We ended up saying 175B each, which was a little more than we wanted but the hotel was lovely. After getting ready for bed we turned on the TV and found an English kids TV channel! It had a progamme called "Real Kids, Real Adventures" on which was about kids who had been in dangerous situations and saved peoples lives or nearly died etc. - I loved it! We watched it until about 2am, then decided to go to sleep.
We'd been told by the woman who drove us there that in the morning the receptionist would help up get back to the bus station and tell us where to go, but I think we slept a little later than he was expecting because when we went to reception at about 11am he wasn't there. Instead there was a woman who told us to go outside and get a song tao to Na Kae from the side of the road closest to the hotel. No luck. We then went to the other side and tried to get to Na Kae. No luck. After asking her again she came out with us and asked a song tao driver about Na Kae. No luck. Back to the other side of the road again, this time asking about the bus station, and eventually found a song tao heading there! At the bus station, as we headed to find the Na Kae song tao, we bumped into one of our friends from Na Kae called Mama Fine. She is absolutely lovely - she lived and worked in America for years so speaks fluent English and said that she would take us to lunch and then drive us back home!! So we had a lovely lunch in the Big C in Sakhon, then got a lift home with her and her step-daughter.The rest of today had been filled with sorting out our packing for the holidays - we leave for Phukhet with the school very early on Monday morning (the sort of time that I would still call Sunday night...) and after that we have two months of holiday! I will try to blog when I can about what I am doing, but I doubt I'll be able to post as regularly as I don't know when I'll have access to the internet.
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