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!
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