Here’s to decisions at 6 am
Lia

I don’t know if it is just me, but this is the affect of 5 months in another country and trying to learn other languages. When Thai is the spoken language around here and my best friends speak Spanish and Portuguese to me, well my brain is working in overdrive trying to pick that up. I also noticed that I forget words, you know the ones that are not used much, I forget them when I am speaking. Whereas some words in a mix of Thai and Spanish have made there way into regular day vocab such as Kob Khun Ka (Thai for thank you) or Te Amo (Spanish for I love you) it does not matter anymore who I talk to these are just the words I use. Personally I hope the habit sticks around.

Lia

Just Another Day, where I visited other parts of the city I have never been before, and visited old places.

It took me awhile to get started but I took a trip out to Makro, which is the Thai version of Costco.  The sun was bright and hot today, I was outside for maybe an hour and I am red as a tomato.

Makro store front

Of course, going to Makro I bought fries and cheese to make poutine, and milk to make pancakes, I’m having a little bit of Canadian cravings.

From there I walked to Addy’s house, talked to Remo on Skype WAAAAY over in South Africa, and ventured to the brand new Nakhon Si Thammarat walking street. We took lots of pictures walking all the way down, tomorrow the plan is to go again just at night.

New Big Bazzar

However I found the best part of the day was going with Addy to a resturant that makes Roti.
Roti is a muslim dessert and it is DELICIOUS! Here we sat for about 2 hours just eating and drinking tea with the sunset in the background, ending another beautiful day in Thailand.
Lia

Tha Wang, Chinese New Year

I am a little upset that I am missing the festivities as my host family is not chinese, however I love seeing the chinese families in the city burning incense outside or setting off firecrackers.

Firecrackers

Also a tradition that I have witnessed is children of a Chinese family receive money from their parents, each child looks forward to the little red envelope which will contain an unknown amount of money.

So far it has been interesting to see, I stopped by my first host family to say happy new year, as they are Chinese, sadly they were not home.

Lia

This is a link to a video created by Veronica (America) which put our whole trip into, a 10 min video

Lia

Up North we stopped for lunch and shopping in Udon Thani. There we invaded The Pizza Company. Finally we reached to daunting point of Phu Kradung.

Phu Kradung was interesting, he we climbed 5 km up, over rocks, through sand, and up steep inclines. It took us 5 hours to get up. Once at the top we did a 16 km bike ride, over rocks, through sand all along the edge of the mountain.. absolutely stunning views. At the top we slept in tents the first night and cabins the second and third night. Finally coming back down the mountain took us about half the time.

Dec 31st we spent New Years Eve in Khon Kaen, there we went to the countdown and Bodyslam concert. There was roughly 200,000 people in attendance, plus walk ins. Bodyslam is a Pop/Rock thai group, my favourite thai band.

The next day we traveled for about 2 hours until we arrive at Chokchai farms, here we made our own ice cream, had a tour around the farm, milked cows, saw an animal show, had western style steak and potatoes IT WAS DELICIOUS! The tents were fantastic, they looked like tent on the outside but inside was carpeted with two beds, electricity, and WI-FI.. It was like walking into an Harry Potter tent.

This was the end of the trip, we returned to Bangkok and wished the North kids well, while those of us from the south continued with some shopping.

In Laos we went with a tour guide too a small town inside the mountain range.  There we stopped at the BIG SLIDE BAR there, we met other foreigners. After enjoying the music and the big water slide, we moved on to the hotel. from there we got changed went out for dinner and celebrated Jackies birthday with a cake and “drinks”. Right around 9:30 pm we decided to walk along the street for souvenirs, then to the market, which had Bumper cars, of course we swarmed to that. The next day we got up a drove to a cave, which we had to climb to.

This cave was used as a mass shelter during the Vietnamese war. During that time America placed bombs all along the border from Laos to Thailand. This is do not believe is taught in history class. People are still being killed today but unintentionally stepping on one.  In the cave was a kitchen area, an infirmary, sleeping area, and a common room. There was also a safe keeping area, where Laos people could drop their money and valuables into a hole, and no one could get at it, there was also a religious reason behind that as well. However looking down into the whole there were coins and bills, I saw some jewelry.

Climbing down the steps from the cave we went to a small pool, the water was cold, but absolutely, clear  with a cave attached, oddly enough there was a current coming from inside the cave, I wanted to swim in further, but no one was willing to come with me, as it got sort of dark.

My general impression of Laos is that it is a very poor country. The language is very similar, and I dont remember even seeing a sign for an airport. A small country, with an even smaller population.

In the last leg of their trip they moved down to NST and was hosted by the 3 clubs in our city. Each member of the team stays with a host family for three days, similar to how I do. The first day I was not involed in their activies however the 2nd day was Tha Sala’s turn to take them out, for this I went along. We went to weaving village, a waterfall, and then to a rotary meeting, including all three clubs. Each GSE spoke about themselves and their family back home, and what they do for work. Addy and I got up and gave an impromptu presentation on NST’s attractions. The third day was my club’s turn, we took them to the musuem highlighting one of the king’s projects, then to the royal home for the family to stay when they come down to NST, as well we went and saw the making of bird’s nests, (which is a delicacy here), along with lunch over a river cruise.

All together it was great to meet them, as well as to see another part of rotary, that I had no idea about. To be honest it was also really nice to have a legit conversation, some days it get tiring trying to slow my speech, with them I was able to speak at a regular speed. It was a relief.

After visiting us, we met them again in Songkhla for the conference. There they gave a speech, and hung out for a while with us.

I wont lie and say this was alot of fun, but truly there was a large amounts of time spent listening to old thai men drone on and on about something I couldn’t understand. I don’t think it is necessary to say we got up and left after about 20 min. To us we thought it was a good thing, as we were making noise, LOTS of noise.

On Sunday we did have to make a presentation if front of everyone, it was not a big deal, there were 15 of us.
The biggest part of the weekend was of the time we had to have a Thai speaking exam.. to be honest I failed miserably, EHH that okay, I don’t blame myself. I blame the lack of a teacher.

The best part of the whole weekend was getting an chance to see everyone and enjoy our limited time together. We toured a museum of arts and went over Thailand longest bridge, connecting 2 islands to the mainland. We also had fun trying to take pictures with a statue of a mermaid on the beach, then without any warning, a torrential downpour, we ended up jumping into the pool, clothes and all.

After the torrential downpour

Blue theme dinner

Shades

All together at the museum

Songkhla's mermaid in pouring rain