Due to the summer holidays in Thailand being so long (over two months in my case), we are meant to do a secondary project of some kind for a week or so during this time. There are lots of different things to choose from in Thailand such as doing a temple meditation course, volunteering at an Elephant or Orangutan sanctuary or volunteering at an Orphanage. As I had the opportunity to learn a lot about HIV and AIDS at school by doing a peer education course with Christian Aid, I decided to volunteer for a week at Sarnelli House Orphanage in Nong Khai - a home for children who have HIV or have been abandoned. I arrived on Tuesday 26th April, and left on Tuesday 3rd May and the time flew by!
The orphanage is run by Father Mike who I met on my second or third day there, and he is brilliant - he is the perfect mix of 'loving' and 'slightly scary' which means that the kids respect him and know that he is always looking out for them. He is extremely realistic too and knows exactly what the orphanage and the kids need all the time. As well as him there is one other full time foreigner, Kate, who helps with looking after the children and day to day running of the orphanage. Then there are the House Mums who are all stars - most of them are from the same family, and are all Thais, who spend their lives looking after the children and making them feel as safe and at home as possible. There are several Houses that make up the orphanage, each for children of different ages as well as two Houses for children without HIV. Each House has several house mothers who cook for the children, look after them when they are sick, play with them and generally love them and give them someone to look up to as their mother. My role was to help the House Mothers in looking after and amusing the children. As soon as I arrived I was greeted and shown around by Marloes, a Dutch volunteer on her fourth visit to the Orphanage, and it wasn't long before I literally had one child on each arm talking so fast I'm surprised a Thai speaker could understand them! I also met Jim who is a frequent volunteer to the Orphanage
The bulk of each day was filled with bringing games or activities to the children, taking them swimming, and generally keeping them occupied and out of trouble! On the Friday some of the kids went to Udon Thani, about an hour away, for a check up with the Doctor and then to the Big C for lunch. They each got some money to spend in Big C (a shopping centre) as a treat after visiting the doctor which they all loved. Some of the girls were also treated to new swimming costumes as they had grown out of their old ones.
The next day there was a trip for some of the kids to the zoo near Kon Kaen. Most of what I've heard about zoos in Thailand hasn't been great, and my experience of the Crocodile Farm in Pattaya was awful so I was a bit wary about what it was going to be like. Thankfully however, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. There were no lions or tigers in tiny cages, mainly just deer and a large enclosure which had a few zebras and giraffes in it. There was a sign pointing to "elephants", but no one could find them... I helped lead around an 18 year old blind girl called TaDum who is absolutely brilliant - we had so much fun wandering around, and the other Thai kids were able to tell her what animal it was that they were looking at. Unfortunately, on the way back to the orphanage we had to stop in Nong Khai to take a boy to hospital as he was having a bad reaction to some medication he had been given a few days earlier. Kate stayed with him for a while and talked to the doctors, and thankfully the next day he was getting better.
One thing that I found the kids loved to do was colouring in, and so I now have a handful of Tom and Jerry and Disney Princess colouring in sheets that the kids gave to me. They are very sweet, some of them have even written "love chompoo" at the top! (Chompoo is my Thai name). They also all LOVE to go swimming, and one time when Jim, Marloes, Kate and I took a group of kids swimming, we took Nut, who is blind, and Soi who had difficulty walking. Both of them were extremely shy at first, I think it was their first time trying to swim. After trying to talk to Soi, who was too shy to say anything, I went away for a while and played with some of the other kids. When I returned to Soi, I managed to get her to take my hand and walk to the end of the shallow end using the edge of the pool as support. She loved it, and after walking up and down the shallow end a few times she got onto my back and I took her the whole length of the pool. By this point she was coming more and more out of her shell, and was making me chase Jim around so she could splash him with water! When she was back in the shallow end she was brave enough to walk across the pool without using the side to support her, then even tried swimming on her front. It was brilliant to see her go from being too shy to speak to actually trying to swim on her own and chatting to me. The same pattern was mirrored with Nut, the blind girl, who went around the pool on Kate's back.
As well as me amusing the children they definitely managed to keep me busy. I have learned how to make paper cranes, how to play "Zombie" on the guitar, and how to get a stubborn 4 year old out of a tree. One boy decided it would be a brilliant idea to swap shoes, so I had to find him and convince him that my shoes were rubbish and he really, REALLY wanted his own ones back. Eventually he decided that an even better idea would be for us each to have one of my shoes and one of his shoes. Halfway there. Finally I managed to get my shoe back and safe, but it took a while!
The orphanage is a few km out of Nong Khai town itself, and is in a very rural area. There is Sarnelli House and Nazareth House which are close to the house that volunteers stay in, then there is House of Hope, Jan and Oscar House and St.Patrick's Boys House about two km away. This is where the swimming pool is. Our Lady Of Refuge House for Girls is in Viengkhuk which is about 10km away so I only got to go there once, but all the houses are equally as cared for and looked after. It was brilliant spending time with all the kids and seeing them enjoying themselves - as soon as they see a volunteer approaching it's like they set off some sort of signal and the whole troop comes running to see what game you've brought or just to spend time with you.
Charlene House is where the volunteers stay, and P.Daa works there cooking and cleaning and generally keeping the place in order. She is lovely, and believes that Charlene House is haunted. After a few nights there, I must admit that I believe it is too!
I definitely plan on coming back to Sarnelli for a couple of weeks or so when I come back to Thailand.
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Friday, 15 April 2011
Song Kran!!
Have you ever felt like you love something so much you couldn't possibly love it any more? That's what I felt about the phenominal place of Ban Phon Sanuk until Song Kran happened, and I realised that my love has no limits!! I stayed with Pippa and her family over the festival, and had an immense amount of fun. Song Kran in Nakhon Phanom is celebrated from the 12th to the 15th of April. Before the celebrations began on the 12th I spent the day helping Pippa's parents on the farm by taking black seeds out of fluffy stuff. I did get told the name of it, but it escapes me I'm afraid. The fliffy stuff is white and comes out of quite large, green pods and Pippa's mother uses it to stuff pillows with. Not quite sure what she does with the pillows, there is a huge cupboard full of them in their living room. When we were done and Pippa was out of bed, we headed to another small village a few kilometers away called Ban Phiman. The journey here is absolutely stunning - through all the rice fields and farms and it looks so naturally beautiful. In Ban Phiman there was a festival procession with floats covered in flowers and people dancing going through all the little roads, and ending in a large field where much dancing, soaking and fun was going on. As soon as I arrived I was surrounded by dancing people and had talcum powder smeared all over my face - it seems to be a Thai way of saying "welcome to the party!"! We went to a large tent and watched part of a beauty pageant that was going on, and there I found Nong Print, who is the most adorable little girl in the world. We have met her a few times and she seems to get cuter every time! Of course I got soaked by her. We headed back to Ban Phon Sanuk in the evening, and I got told that the next day the Song Kran party would move to Ban Phon Sanuk, and believe me, it did! The next day we all got up at the lovely time of 5.30am and headed to the temple next to the lake in Ban Phon Sanuk to pray and make merit. Before coming to Thailand the thought of this would have scared me to say the least, but I have to admit I actually really enjoy the merit making ceremonies. The whole village came together and prayed, then gave food to the monks. Outside the temple after this the waterfights began. It was at this point that I realied how happy I was to not be in Chiang Mai - it was the most amazing thing to see everyone in the village having fun together. I can't help thinking that if this sort of festival happened in the UK there would be groups of people who were friends ganging up on th un-popular kids, and it would end up being very clique-y. Here, there wasn't a sniff of that. All the kids in the village were soaking each other and even older people who are very respected, like Pippa's father who is one of the most respected men in the village, were getting attacked by kids and water guns. One of the highlights of this part of the day has got to be one of my students pouring a HUGE bucket of water all over Pippa :P. Because we are in a more rural part of the country where Buddhism plays a larger part of everyday lives, there was as aspect of paying respect to the Buddha in the waterfights, in that people were blessing each other with (very cold) holy water. There was a small ceremony where people poured holy water over a wooden Buddha's head and then into the hands of respected and older people in the village, and from that people were blessing each other. I'd like to pay a special mention to the "coyotes" - three older woman dressed in crazy outfits dancing crazilly pretty much all day! After following a truck with a band in the back through the back roads of the village, we arrived back in Ban Phon Sanuk to begin the car soaking. Two large buckets of water were set up at the side of the road, as was a decking to stand/dance on. Music was blaring loudly, and the rule was if a pickup goes past and the back is full of people, soak them. It was brilliant - pickups were going past constantly, so full of people that the sides were down and people were literally hanging off the edge, and when they saw that we were ready for a waterfight they would jump down fromthe pickup and soak us all or cover us in talcum powder. Again it showed here how considerate people are in this part of Thailand. I've heard a lot about the festival in Chiang Mai and apparently people are knocked off motorbikes and if you go outside, you will get wet. Here if someone went past on a motorbike and didn't want to be soaked for whatever reason, they weren't. By the end of the night Pippa and I were both completely drenched and covered in talcum powder. The next day I got to experience actually being in the back of one of the pickups! Lots of the people from the village were going on a Song Kran Soaking Spree to That Phanom and then to Renu Nakhon, with the pickup so full that 4 people were sitting on the edge hanging their legs off. Despite it being so hot, with the water and the breeze from travelling it was actually quite cold! It was brilliant fun, we were stopping every few minutes to be doused in water and talcum powdered up! When we got back to the village it was the same deal as the night before, but this time with more dancing because Pee Ying came who is absolutely crazy! Every now and then I went to sit and have a drink, but was soon back to throwing waterand dancing! Big thank you to Pippa who took on the job of taking lots of photos as she was deliberately not getting wet - camera wwas definitely much safer with her! Day three of Song Kran saw another early morning as Pippa and I were heading to Bangkok inthe evening and I had to go to Na Kae to get some stuff from the house and she had to pack up everything for another two months of learning German. By 8am I had been to Na Kae, packed up all my stuff and got back! I spent the morning helping (watching) Pippa pack before the watering began. I tried to not get too wet as I had to take my clothes to Bangkok, but despite trying to stay at the side, drink and chat, I still got soaking wet, mainly because I couldn't resist the waterfights once they started! After a few hours of soaking and being soaked I got changed and packed up my wet clothes into a plastic bag to head to Bangkok. Back to Na Kae full time in a month - I can't believe that it's only 4 months until I go home!!
Friday, 1 April 2011
Trapped on Koh Tao!
When Caitlin's friend, Jake, arrived to visit on Thursday we thought that it would be brilliant to head south and see some of the islands. This plan would have been flawless if Thailand hadn't decided that it would bring freak monsoons! We arrived on Koh Tao on Saturday I think, and planned to spend a few days here snorkelling. It started to rain as soon as we arrived, and literally has not stopped since. After about 48 hours of constant rain, all boats to and from the island were cancelled, and floods were causing havoc all over the south. Soon, almost every road on the island was a river and every building we passed had some sort of damage - knee deep water on the floor, roofs caved in, tables and chairs broken and floating... it really was crazy. It was so bad in the south of the island that an entire resort literally floated away - building and all! Some parts look like a tsunami has hit with trees uprooted and roads and rivers blocked with sand washed in from the sea level rising. It continued to rain until yesterday when it held off for just enough time for people to start getting things back in order, but then today more rain came and the forecast is for even more. When it became clear that boats would be cancelled for a good few days, a navy ship was sent to take tourists off the island. However, due to Thai disorganisation, this didn't go to plan and most tourists were left here, including two friends of ours who have now missed flights! So Caitlin, Jake and I are still stuck here. We are booked on a boat that leaves tomorrow morning, and hopefully that should leave, but if it continues raining I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't. I must give credit to the Thai people on the island and everywhere in the south - this sort of situation should that Thais are survivors. Everyone is just getting on with it - their house is flooded, so they do whatever they need to do to sort it and deal with it as fast as possible to get back to normal. When floods happened in the UK the chaos was incredible and it went on for weeks, but people here who have literally had enire streets washed away in places like Surathani, are just getting on with doing whatever they have to do. I can't explain how crazy the weather is - I can understand that from the UK it might just seem like a lot of rain, but even in the wet season it never, ever rains like this. In the wet season there is maybe an hour or so a day of torrential rain, then it disappears. This is constant torrential rain, in the hot season! We spoke to a teacher in Na Kae earlier today who said that the temperature there has been between 7 and 11 celcius - it should be nearing 40 by now! Hopefully things will get back to normal soon, but for now the south of Thailand has to just keep surviving.
Saturday, 19 March 2011
Still in the South!
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.
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, 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.
Friday, 25 February 2011
February's Missings!
Time for this month's missings! I apologise for not writing down what I missed in January, but with the excitement of Christmas and New Year, plus with Butschi arriving and being pre-occupied with parties and socialising I couldn't think of much that I missed! But here is what I've noticed myself missing this month:
Avocados
Tuna
Avocado and Tuna salad
Mayonaise that isn't mega sweet
Noddy
Domino
Butch
Polly
Bitsa
Jasper (I want to meet you properly!!! :3)
Mum
Dad
Ailsa
Alan
Caroline
Kids TV that I can understand
UK chocolate
Public transport that always comes and leaves from the same place!!!
Uhrm.. That's really all I can think of!! What I thought and hoped would happen is definitely happening - every month I miss less and I love more. The way of life here is becoming normal, but somehow it's still so new and exciting.
Avocados
Tuna
Avocado and Tuna salad
Mayonaise that isn't mega sweet
Noddy
Domino
Butch
Polly
Bitsa
Jasper (I want to meet you properly!!! :3)
Mum
Dad
Ailsa
Alan
Caroline
Kids TV that I can understand
UK chocolate
Public transport that always comes and leaves from the same place!!!
Uhrm.. That's really all I can think of!! What I thought and hoped would happen is definitely happening - every month I miss less and I love more. The way of life here is becoming normal, but somehow it's still so new and exciting.
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