Jim Thompson Farm

Here is my desperate attempt to catch up on my blog posts. Hopefully I will have two posted between today and tomorrow so I can be on track before our traveling madness starts. First, let me explain our traveling extravaganza. This Thursday night I will be on an overnight bus down to Phuket to celebrate New Years with three other girls from my program. We will be there until Monday morning when we return back to Suphanburi. Ciana and I will teach classes on Tuesday, then leave Tuesday night to head up to Chiang Mai (our Wednesday-Friday classes were cancelled because all of our students are taking exams.) We will return on Sunday, teach Monday and Tuesday, and then leave again Tuesday night mostly likely for Koh Phi Phi (again our Wednesday-Friday classes were cancelled because the students are going to scout camp.) Soo basically if I don't catch up now I feel like I will forever be behind, so here it goes...

The weekend of December 17th a bunch of us decided to stay in Suphanburi to save money and relax a little bit. Friday was the first truly cool day we've had since we got here, so when we went out that night we had the pleasure of being comfortable in jeans and a cardigan (it was amazing!) A bunch of us went out to dinner then headed to two different bars around town. While we were at the first bar, I had the opportunity to try dried squid. The picture says it all...

(Olivia loved it, I thought it was disgusting, haha)

All in all it was a nice night out on the town. Saturday we relaxed, ran some errands and went to bed early to prepare for our adventure the next day, the Jim Thompson farm. This is an organic farm our coordinator wanted to take us to. Jim Thompson is a famous British artist in Thailand, many people go to see his house in Bangkok, who incorporates art into his organic farm. It is only open 3 weeks out of the year to tourists, and it happened to open that weekend. So Sunday morning we were picked up at 5am and started on the 3 hour van ride to the farm. Let me tell you, Thais do road trips very differently then we do in my family. We literally stopped every half an hour to get food or walk around or get gas. This made sleeping very difficult. Then, once we finally get going and are almost there, the van breaks down. We end up pulling over and up to a roadside mechanic. They jack up the van (with 9 of us in it) and proceed to work on it for an hour. So now we are all stuck in a stuffy van for an hour while they figure out whats wrong. Finally they fix the problem and we are on our way again. Once we get there we immediately realize we were foolish for thinking it would be like an organic farm in the states. It is basically patches of flowers or pumpkins and a bus that takes you between them all. The whole set up is geared for tourists and displaying art, not at all for farming, so we were a little disappointed. Regardless, we decided to embrace this touristy farm and take some pretty ridiculous photos...in true Thai style.

The bus that drove us around the 'farm'

Loving relaxing on the hammock...it was underneath a house on stilts, one of the many art installments

Ryan (a teacher who came with us from Suphanburi) and me playing in the pumpkin patch.

(Thai people, for whatever reason, LOVE putting pumpkins on their heads)

Olivia, Ryan and me relaxing on a bean bag pumpkin

H.M. The King's Birthday

As I have come to learn in my 2 months of being here, Thais love a good celebration. The semester thus far has been littered with holidays and time off, which have turned into opportune travel times. December 5th was the Kings birthday and also a national holiday. However, because it fell on a Sunday, the holiday was celebrated on Monday which meant no school for us. (In addition to no school on Monday, we had no classes the Wednesday, Thursday or Friday prior so our school could throw an exhibition to celebrate the King.) After much deliberation, we decided our first three day weekend was a perfect time to hit the beach. We knew we couldn't travel too far, so our destination became Koh Samet, an island in the Gulf of Thailand that is close to Bangkok. It is a big tourist spot for Thai people in Bangkok because it is close, but has the beauty of a lot of the beaches down south. We left after school on Friday, traveled to the ferry town of Ban Phe, spent a night there, and arrived on Koh Samet early Saturday morning. We spent two and a half glorious days in the sun, relaxing and celebrating.

Playing an English quiz game about the King during the Exhibition

Olivia relaxing on the beach at Koh Samet

Everyone at dinner

On Sunday night, at midnight, everyone was handed a lit candle as they played the King's song over loudspeakers. They also lit a huge sign on the beach that said Long Live the King. The song played and everyone sang until the large sign burned out. It was a pretty amazing opportunity to see such devotion in all these party-going Thai people. They really do love their King and I'm so happy they let us join in on the celebration.

We returned home from our mini vacation with a short, 3 day week of school. December 10th was Constitution Day, another national holiday, so we didn't have school on Friday. After our crazy weekend on the beach we decided to take it easy and head to Khao Yai National Park to do some trekkinng and adventuring. Let me tell you, it was an adventure. We got there late Thursday night, so we spent Friday morning relaxing. Friday afternoon we had a half day trip where went swimming in a natural spring, explored a cave, and right at dusk watched something like 3 million bats leave their cave for their evening feeding. It was insane.

Olivia, me and Chelsea swimming in the spring

A short portion of the never ending line of flying bats

Afterwards we headed home and to bed to prepare for our full day of hiking. We woke up at 6am on Saturday and headed into the National Park for what promised to be an adventure.

Chelsea, Olivia, me and Ciana

We were driving along the windy road and then stopped it was seemed to be a very nondescript area. We then headed into the woods. No trail, no nothing. We were lead by a Thai guide named Jib, who was amazing. He has been leading tours for 10 years and knew the woods like the back of his hand. We looked at many different bird and plant species, working our way to a thundering waterfall. Once we got there, he assured us it was safe to jump, so I took the plunge. It was amazing!

After climbing up along the side of the waterfall, we all enjoyed a snack and then keep trekking. We were traveling along the river and let me tell you, it was not easy. We were jumping between rocks, climbing up rock cliffs and assuring each other this was, in fact, something we could all do. On the way we were lucky enough to see a Gibbon! This is one of our closest primate relatives and are not easily spotted, so I was SUPER excited to see one. We also made pit stops at two more waterfalls along the way, the second of which was in the movie The Beach. It was so beautiful, but filled with tourists, so after our photo opp we decided to leave.

Literally scaling the side of a small rock cliff

Gibby the Gibbon!

Us at the second waterfall

The whole tour at the waterfall from The Beach

Afterwards we had lunch in the park and relaxed for a little, before starting our elephant siting adventure. Jib warned us that the likelihood was low because SO many people were in the park that weekend, but we would try anyways. Sure enough, after about half an hour, we spotted 4-5 elephants along the side of the road. We slowed down to drive by, when one of the elephants starting charging our car. It was nerve wrecking to say the least. But then, we turn around and try to drive by them again! There is now a traffic jam of all the cars that are too afraid to pass, but we pass them all and head for the elephants again. And what do they do? They charge...again. Our driver threw the car in reverse and started backing into all the other cars. Once we joined the other cars the elephant hung back. Finally a ranger car came and drove straight at the elephant, which forced it off the road, making it safe for us to drive by again and return back to the hostel.

The elephant before it decided to charge our car

All in all it was an exhilarating and exhausting day, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I look forward to going back sometime later this year.

Loy Krathong, Thanksgiving and an English Competition

So I know these posts are a little behind...but I'm working on it! On the 21st of November was the holiday Loy Krathong. This holiday is all about thanking the water god for the ability to use water and also asking for forgiveness for any misuse of water over the past year. The celebration is usually held at night when people release Krathongs, which are usually made of bread, leaves, flowers and a candle, and made previously that week, down the river. You typically release a Krathong with your significant other. Side note--we learned from our coordinator that it's a very popular night for teenage couples to loose their virginities. In addition to being a holiday of thanks, its a holiday of romance, second only to Valentines Day (which they take VERY seriously here.) So Ciana and I spent the evening with our coordinator along the Suphanburi river watching all the festivities.

A Krathong

Krathongs floating down the Suphanburi river

A float of various images to celebrate the holiday

The following Thursday was Thanksgiving. It was my first Thanksgiving away from home, and let me tell you I definitely missed the food. We tried to put something resembling a Thanksgiving dinner together, but it wasn't quite the same. There were about 12 farangs, or foreign white people, that gathered together at Lin's, which is the restaurant across the street from our apartment. We had chicken, rice, stir fried veggies and KFC mashed potatoes and gravy tying it all together. Leave it to American fast food to save the day. We all went around the table and shared what we were thankful for and then dug in. The meal was topped off with fresh pineapple and Chinese donuts dipped in sweetened condensed milk. Not quite the same as pumpkin pie, but delicious nevertheless.

Chelsea, me, Ciana, Andrew, Christie, Peter, Laura, Chris, Cassie, Olivia and Jenny all enjoying our Thanksgiving dinner

Family style veggies, rice and chicken

KFC pulling the meal together with gravy and mashed potatoes

The Saturday after Thanksgiving was our first English competition. As I have learned, these students are basically in school every day. They oftentimes travel into Bangkok, or nearby cities, on Saturdays and Sundays so they can go to class. This is obviously so they can improve their education but also, I swear, so they can win more competitions. It seems like almost every weekend there is a different competition in a different subject. On Saturday a school near ours hosted a competition with 85 different participating schools. The students had to express knowledge of many different subjects in English. My competition in particular was technology and English. The students had to read an entry that was about a page long, answer 5 questions about the entry, then send their answers to us via Skype. Why Skype? I have no idea. I don't know anyone who uses Skype to send files...but that's what they had to do. Afterwards, they picked a topic out of a had and had 10 minutes to prepare a 2-3 minute speech. They had to deliver their speech to us by calling us on Skype. This task seemed like a little more appropriate, but it still seemed bizarre that we were all sitting in one computer room but had to listen to the student speak through the computer. Oh well. In the end we actually had a pretty good time and it was interesting to see exactly what a competition was like. I'm sure it will be the first of many.