"Living in a foreign country is just one long game of charades."

Someone from my program said this and it is completely true!

Last weekend Mel and I went to Chiang Mai to meet our friends Jane and Erica again.  They are only contracted for 5 months so they are leaving soon and we are trying to spend time with them when we can.  We decided to take cooking lessons and learn how to cook some of our favorite Thai dishes! It was so fun! They picked us up from our apartment and then were able to choose from a variety of different meals! I cooked Pad Thai, chicken and cashews, som tom, (papaya salad) and fried bananas and ice cream!  It was so much fun and very informative.

Jane, Mel, Me, and Erica

 Making Som Tom!

 Making Chicken and Cashews!

 Then, on Sunday, Mel met up with a friend from Spain and so I went to the mall and saw "Brave." So cute. Loved it! Annnd I had a Starbucks! It was a pretty exciting Western afternoon.

This week has been back to business, teaching like normal.  Coaching for speeches in the morning, of course, though.
I think I said earlier that I am trying to learn students names, slowly but surely.  I am never surprised when I hear that I have a Beer, Garfield, Poop, Piggy, Gef or some other random sound.  But I always make the student spell it when they say Frank, Mark, or even Art. It sounds way too normal.

Teacher Eric, from France, Mel and I did have to teach the police officers of Phrae this week...They gave us some topics to talk about, Mel made a powerpoint and worksheet, and then we each had a day this week and different officers to teach. It was pretty intimidating at first.  50 old men, who cannot speak English all staring at you, while you teach them how to say, "You are under arrest!"  Thank goodness I had one of my co-teachers Khru (teacher) Pui to help translate and help me act everything out. It ended up being ok and they got into it when I made them all do charades. :-)

This weekend Mel and I are going to visit Jane and Erica in their village of Tha Wan Pa in the Nan province! It should be interesting and fun, it is extremely rural, so we'll see!

Miss everyone! Good luck to my sister, Kelly, moving into her first apartment in Boston this week! Wish I could be with you and the fam! Love you!

Fun times in Phrae!

Poom is in another competition and he has to talk about Phrae.  Fortunately he already has a speech prepared from another year and we just have to help him re-memorize it! When we got the speech it had a lot of interesting info about Phrae that I didn't know and thought would be fun to share. So here are some bits and pieces from his speech.

"Phrae province is a small is a small but lovely town in the northern part of Thailand.  The town is surrounded by beautiful mountains and forests and has many natural resources like teak wood.  It is 551 km away from Bangkok. People can go there by bus, train, or airplane.

Phrae is divided into 8 districts. They are Muang Phrae District (Where I live) Rawng Kwang, Song, Nong Muang Kai, Long, Den Chai, Soong Men and Wang Chin District.  There are 78 sub-districts and 645 villages.  The symbol of the province is a horse because in the old time, the ruler used a horse to divide the land with Nan province.  They rode a horse to the meeting point on the top of a mountain.

Phrae province is one of the most ancient cities in the north.  It's the largest reserved teak forest in Thailand.  Phrae is located on the banks of the Yom River.  Teak wood is good for making quality wooden furniture like tables, chairs and cupboards. There is a big furniture community that produces items for sale in many countries. 

Mohamm is a well known and traditional clothing in Phrae.  It is a quality product using a traditional way of weaving, dying, and tailoring.  The clothing is one of the most famous in Thailand apart from Thai silk. People in the Thung Hong village produce it and sell it everywhere in the country.  Also, people wear mohamm shirts every Friday, it is our tradition in Phrae.

Phra Tat Cho Hae is the most beautiful temple in the province.  It was built during the Sukhothai period. (When Sukhothai was the capitol)  People all over the country come to worship the pagoda, especially those who were born on tiger years who believe it to be a source of good luck.

Phae Muang Phi is the grand canyon of Thailand. It's an area deprived of large trees and the landscape's shape is very unique, resembling mushrooms. It is a very famous tourist attraction in Phrae.

People in Phrae are very kind, generous and friendly. We live a simple lifestyle. We love peace and many of us are farmers who grow rice, corn, sugarcane, and teak.  Buddhism is involved in many of our daily activities. 

We have many festivals in the town but the two most famous are Songkran and Loy Krathong festival.  We celebrate the Songkran by splashing water on people.  It is a big family reunion festival.  Everybody in the family gathers and meets each other.  People also go to temple to make merit by offering  food to monks and spring water at the Buddha image. It is a warm and happy moment all over the town.

Loy Krathong is where people float the Krathong, a lotus-shaped vessel made of banana leaves, to worship the goddess of water.  We have a celebration on the banks of the Yom river."


We just happened to go to Phra Tat Cho Hae and Phae Muang Phi this weekend when Erica and Nick and Allison came to visit us for the weekend! It was nice to explore outer Phrae a bit! We also went and hiked to some really pretty waterfalls!

"The Grand Canyon of Thailand" -This is seriously the slogan...

 Famous Phrae temple

 

beautiful waterfalls!

 

Everyone in the song-taeu!

Shout-out to my Mom in the Netherlands! Hope you are having fun and not working too hard! Miss you and only 7 1/2 weeks until you and Sarah come to Thailand!! Looove you!

Chiang Rai for the Queen's Birthday

We had another semi-long weekend here in Thailand! It was the Queen's birthday on Sunday which means that on Monday all of Thailand has the day off and everyone celebrates Mother's Day! Wat Metang celebrated Mother's day at school on Friday.  It was suuuper emotional! The 6th graders all brought their moms to school and there was a huge ceremony all morning.  There was singing, dancing, and many different speakers, in Thai, of course so Mel and I had no idea what was really happening.  Everyone was crying though so we knew it must be touching...Then all of the students took their moms up on the stage and wai-ed them, gave them some jasmine, (The Queen's flower) and hugged and cried a lot, until their turn was over.  The Lockers came up to us and told us we would fill in for the moms who were working or who had died.  Yeah, it was that blunt.  At one point she brought me two girls who were crying hysterically and said, their mother died, go up with them.  It was so sad.  Mel and I even cried, it was so emotional.  Seeing some of my tough 6th grade boys crying with their mom was so sweet.  I had to call my mom after the ceremony. It was so tough to see so many children without moms and made me so grateful to have such a great mom!


Anyways...we decided to go up to Chiang Rai for the weekend.  It is the Northern most province and is in the mountains and super beautiful! And it isn't even that far away, only 3 1/2 hours! We were excited! We went and saw the White Temple, which was only built in 1998 and is really different than most other temples.  The architect wanted to show lots of heaven and hell references and it is stark white instead of the usual gold. 

The White Temple!

Our "punishment" skirts for wearing shorts to the temple :-(

So pretty!

The next day we decided to go on a tour of the Golden Triangle, where Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet.  We found a tour company that would take us on a tour all day Sunday and to many different things! We were so excited! We went and saw the Monkey caves....

We fed them some bananas!

Mel did NOT like them and was prepared to use her stick to scare them away!

They were pretty scary actually...

The monkeys were very aggressive.  I got a bucket of bananas to feed them and probably 40 of them all came at us at once! Our tour guide, Kern, took charge and started hitting his stick to clear a circle so they wouldn't attack us.  The babies kind of looked like Gollum from Lord of the Rings and the older monkeys were very mean and fought each other for the nanners.  It was sort of scary sometimes.  We then moved on to Scorpion Mountain, which is the mountain that overlooks Myanmar.

Hanging over Myanmar

 Scorpion Mountain with our tour group, Italians!

 

Theeeeen, we headed over to Mae Sai, the northern most city in Thailand. It was really interesting because it has a lot of Chinese influences because they come over the border there.  It reminded me a lot of Taiwan! 

We then made our way to a yummy restaurant that had Thai food, Chinese food and Burmese food! (Sorry Laos! :-/) It was so fun! Burmese rise, chow mein, and som tom all on one plate! Good times. Next stop was the infamous Golden Triangle! This is where Myanmar, Laos and  Thailand all meet, along with their rivers! It is also very famous for producing and trafficking opium and used to be the number one exporter (? I don't know drug terms very well?) So we also went to the Opium museum and learned about opium! We learned the best position to smoke it, there are special pillows that looked really uncomfortable to smoke it on, and if you smoke it long enough you go cray cray! Good times with opium. 

We went from opium to jumping on a boat and cruising down the Mekong River! We were so excited about this! The famous Mekong! With Myanmar behind us and Laos to our left and Thailand to our right, we couldn't believe it! Another one of those moments, where Mel and I look at each other and can't believe where we are!

 

The Golden Triangle!

 Cruising down the Mekong River!

 

We docked on the Laos side and hung out in Laos for about 30 minutes, I wouldn't even really say that we have been there because it was all knock off purses, clothes and not much Loatian history...but it was cool while it lasted. 

 Our last stop was the ancient city of Chiang Saen, another old capitol city of Thailand.  We were so tired by this point though that I can't tell you much about it...

 The whole car ride back we slept and the whole bus ride back to Phrae that night we were EXHAUSTED! Such a great and tiring day and weekend! 

Miss you all!

Koh Phangan and Full Moon Party!

Yay! Mel and I were finally able to go down to the beaches! And it was all because of the Buddhist Lent that was beginning on Thursday, August 2.  Interesting fact:  The Buddhist holidays start and end depending on the phases of the moon. Since it was a full moon, it marked the beginning of lent and in three months another one will signal the end.  I think it's pretty cool.  There are full moon parties on the islands to celebrate this and of course they have become HUGE tourist attractions, Koh Phangan being the biggest.  For the past three months we have been meeting foreigners all over the North who were heading down for the big full moon party, I guess it is kind of a big deal.  Mel and I were mostly just excited to see some beaches and a lot of our friends from OEG, who were meeting up there.

It was going to be quite a journey there and back. We bought plane tickets from Bangkok to Surat thani (where our ferry would leave) about a month and a half earlier and our bus tickets to Bangkok 2 weeks earlier.  We were pretty prepared, but not super prepared for the length of the journey...
We left for the bust station at 7:30 pm on Wednesday night for our overnight bus, which turned out to be SUPER nice! The seats reclined all the way, we got neck pillows, some snacks, and I slept like a baby.  Thank goodness I can sleep anytime, anywhere.  I definitely appreciated that trait this trip.  We arrived at the bus station in Bangkok around 5 am and grabbed a taxi to the airport.  We told him our flight left at 7 and boy did he step on it for us! We made our flight and met some of our friends at the airport who were also on our flight! I slept on this flight also... Then we took a bus from the airport to the ferry station, and then got on the ferry to the island! We arrived at our bungalows around 2pm.

Total time traveled: 18 1/2 hours
Total modes of transportation: 7

Our bungalows were right on the ocean and since it was a full moon the tides were way out during the day and you could walk out to lagoons and it was just so beautiful! Everywhere you looked was a post card.  We met up with more friends and immediately put on our bathing suits on headed to the beach! The water was like bath water, not freezing like our California coasts! I went snorkeling one day and took my underwater camera, and the fish were SO beautiful! They were huge and tropical, it was great.  We mostly just hung out at the beaches during the day and hung out  all together at night.  It was really nice.  It was also super un-Thai.  If we ever tried to speak Thai they looked at us like we were cray cray! We had super good western food and the BEST mango shakes! A mango in a glass! MMMMMMM!

Saturday night was the big full moon party everyone was waiting for, we dressed in our neon and tie-dye and put on our body paint and headed to the Haad Rin, the beach it was held on. The night was full of dancing, buckets, and friends.  Four of us were able to stay up until the sunrise and it was worth it, so pretty! Of course the next day I was exhausted and slept on the beach the next day, but that was fun too!

 

We were super sad to come home, especially because the journey was going to be incredibly long.  We took the night ferry on Saturday night, where Mel and I felt like immigrants coming to America.  555 it was a thin mattress on the wood with a little pillow and we were all lined up like sausages.  It was pretty funny.  Then a van picked us up and took us to a bus station in like the middle of nowhere, an hour later another van picked us up and dropped us off in the city telling us the bus would be by soon to take us to the airport...We still needed to check in and our flight was leaving soon so Mel started freaking out a bit and we decided to take a taxi instead.  We made our flight in time and arrived in Bangkok around 10am.  Then we took the light rail and trains to the bus station to catch a bus at 1 back to Phrae.  We finally arrived back to Phrae around 11 pm...ugh longggg day!

Total time traveled: 26 hours

Total modes of transportation: 10

Whew! It was long but super worth it! I can't wait to go back and explore more beaches! 

Update on my computer: The logic board crashed? I don't know what that is or what it does really but it is gonna cost A LOT! I hope I can work something out with them soon cuz it sucks not having a computer here! Thanks to Mel for letting me use hers all the time...:-)

 

Nan, Chiang Mai, and Buddhist Lent!

Oh my gosh I have SO much to catch up on! So Friday, July 27th Teacher Nongnoot (Mel and I affectionately call her Nooters) and another teacher, Tiantong, took us to Nan to work on immigration stuff.  We were told the day before, after school, it was all very last minute, of course.  We drove in the school van and the driver, Nong, put on a DVD of Rod Stewart in concert, immediately. Teacher Tiantong asked us if "he was a gay?" So Thailand.  We sang and danced to some songs and then they put on a weird Thai video. It was a beautiful drive through the mountains that only took about an hour and a half.  The actual immigration stuff took about an hour, where we filled out paperwork, showed passports and were told to report back in 90 days.  Then they took us around Nan city and to a really yummy lunch by the river!  I love going to meals with Thai people because they order the weirdest stuff that we get to try!

Then they took us to the famous temple in Nan, Wat Phumin.  It has a mural of a whispering couple that is the symbol of Nan. 

Famous whispering couple

The Nooters, Tiantong, Mel and I in front of the Temple in Nan!

The next morning we met Teacher Tiantong for a 5:30 am bike ride (!!!) At first I was dying, it was so early, but it ended up being really fun. She rode us over to the "Blue Shirt Village" where the Mohamms are made.  Mohamms are what Phrae is known for.  They are blue dyed shirts and everyone in town wears them on Friday.  Then at 8, Nooters picked us up to take us to Area 1 (The headquarters for the school district in Phrae) because we needed to judge the next round of the speech competition! There were four different provinces in this one, Phrae, Sukhothai, Uttaradit, and Lampang.  Mel and I got broken up and I was judging private schools and she was judging the Mini English Program.  We both agreed later that the judging seemed weird, every person that we liked the other two judges didn't like as much.  Umm who is the native English speaker here?!? (They were both Thai)  The judges all had clear favorites, whatever, we made 500 baht! It was an experience, and at the end everyone wanted to take a picture with us.  Nuey ended up getting third in the Government school division.  Of course, there is another competition in a month and we must start preparing the four again for that in the mornings, it's never ending!

After the competition Nooters dropped us off at the bus station because a couple of Mel's friends were in Chiang Mai for the weekend and we wanted to meet them for the night, and Jane and Erica were going to be there! When we got to the bus station all of the tickets were all sold out! Woops! Lampang? Two left! Sweet! So we took a mini van to Lampang hoping that there would be a bus/van to Chiang Mai!
aaannnddd....everything is sold out. We were just starting to feel dejected when a random ticket seller came up and asked if we wanted to go to Chiang Mai? YES! How did they know? So we hopped aboard and headed to Chiang Mai where Jane and Erica had already saved a room for us at a guesthouse.  We met them and actually ended up running into Mel's friends at the mexican food place we were going to for dinner! Small world.

Then we all went out and have a really fun time! There is an area in Chiang Mai where the farangs all hang out called Yellow Bar and it is really fun. 
The next morning I was feelin the night before...if you know what I mean...Mel and I were going to meet our friends Nick and Allison but I needed to sleep it off a little more so while they had breakfast, I slept at the table near by...:-) (Love you Mom!!) I felt better by lunch though and was able to be a regular human being again. 
We headed over to the bus station around 3, like usual and looked into heading back to Phrae.  EVERYTHING WAS FULL!! AH! Everything to Phrae was full, everything to Lampang was full, everything to Uttaradit, Sukhothai, anything we could think of was full...so we headed over to the train station to see if that could be an option! There was one at 5:30! Thank goodness! We wouldn't get in until late but at least we would be in our own beds tonight!

We were so excited for the train! It was our first time! And it was super fun and beautiful!

We ended up getting to Denchai, the closest train station to Phrae, (20-30 minutes away) around 11 and of course there were no Songtaus around... Thank goodness a guy came out and asked if we wanted a taxi. YES! It was SO  expensive but we didn't even care. Our night wasn't over yet though...The guy kept wanting to take us to the nearby hotel even though we kept trying to explain that we lived here.  We had to get some hotel people and random passerbys in on it before they all got that we lived at the UD apartments.  Ahh one of those nights.


Also, we had a 4 day weekend, because it was the start of the Buddhist lent on Thursday, August 2.  So on Wednesday, everyone went to nearby Wats and there was a parade to celebrate the beginning of the lent.  The lent last for three months and means the monks must stay on Wat's grounds at night.  Usually they go out at receive donations early in the morning from people in the streets, now however, the people must bring the donations straight to the Wats for the monks.  Also, you shouldn't drink or smoke or do drugs during this period of time. Everyone at school had prepared beautiful donations for the monks and they were making a really cool float for the parade.  They donate a really large candle that lasts a year and the monks used to use it for their light but now, since they have electricity, it is used more as a symbol to remember the olden days.

Teacher Melissa joining Poom in the parade!

 One of the floats and a giant candle!

 meditating

Mel and I got to go to the temple with pratom 6 and we went to Wat Metang, the temple that helped found our school, our mother temple, if you will.  It was really cool, they did some chants, we were allowed to donate some food to the monks along with the other teachers, and then we walked around the Wat three times while making a wish/dream.  I love being included on that kind of stuff! Teacher Nonglak (Locksmith/Lockers) took us to watch the parade, which was pretty fun! We had some tea (Thai iced tea!) and watched our kids march by! Loved it! Such a fun day!

Especially since the day before my computer died! The closest Mac people are in Chiang Mai and it could take 2 weeks! AH! I am dying. Hopefully it isn't completely broken though...cross your fingers!

Also I guess I need to explain 555 a little more (ELISE!)  So 555 is the same as Lol.  5 in Thai is Ha and if you say 555 you are saying HaHaHa, kind of like laughing. So they just say 555, it's cute!

Ok, another big post coming up later! Mel and I met a bunch of OEG people in Koh Phangan for the four day weekend! SO FUN! Love you and miss you all! Sorry if I am a little out of touch, I have to just borrow Mel's computer when she isn't using it!