WWIII in our back garden

So Tuesday morning at 8am, Kelly, Shaleas and I were woken up to the soft gentle sounds of gunshots...Yea.

Turns out our guesthouse is right next door to where the local military branch train, which apparently begins at 8am on Tuesdays. After about 20 minutes of lying in bed listening to what sounded like a town massacre, I stepped outside to see what was happening. After seeing our landlady casually doing laundry I decided it was safe, and ventured out a little further into the porch to see dozens of men in green getting dropped off at the field next to our guesthouse where they were apparently running drills. Thanks for the warning guys. Really appreciate it.

After our less than welcome wake up call, I got to ride on the back of a motorbike (our buddy, Jet, who runs the internet cafe gave me a ride home), and we shared beer and a game of gin rummy with a man who invited himself to our table on the porch that evening. He also insisted that we call him if we ever need a ride to Chang Mai, so we have clearly got the hook up. We can't remember his name, so we have christened him 'Mr. Dude' in our usual highly intellectual fashion.

Meeting the locals is definitely helping us out big time. Orn, our friend who runs one of the shops around here, said she'd help us buy motorbikes so that we can find a good deal. So we have officially been accepted into the Tha Wang Pha commuity.

We ate dinner at the Thai version of a fondue restaurant, which I loved. Maybe mostly because I could control the ingredients and the spice level of my food, which is definitely a blessing after the chaos this stuff is starting to create in my stomache...

Next step - figuring out how the post offices around here work. Then maybe some people reading this blog will receive some fun postcards! Also - Tha Wang Pha doesn't have postcards, because they don't have tourists; we are officially the first white people to ever step foot in this place, so your postcards will come from Nan, the closest place to civilization around here.

Wednesday - the day of NOT going to Nan...

The only problem with everyone being so desperate to help us around here, is that it's actually hard to figure anything out by ourselves, because they won't let us. So instead of figuring out how to take the bus into Nan, walk around, explore, find the post office; we were driven to the Tha Wang Pha post office, where they also do not sell postcards. People reading this might be saying "why didn't you just say, 'no thanks, but could you help me find the bus?'" well trust me, we tried. But they just keep asking us EXACTLY what it is we're doing, until you answer, and they didn't seem to understand that we just wanted to walk around and explore, I'm not sure why, I guess they don't really do that here? So when we mentioned the post office, it was all downhill from there. I shouldn't be so bitter though, because at the end of the day, everyone around here is desperate to help us out which is very nice, and something we certainly don't get on this level in the UK/US. Tonight we ate dinner at Kru Noy's house (kru means teacher, Kru Noy is one of our coordinators/a teacher at our school). It was her and her whole extended family. Her oldest daughter spoke pretty good English luckily, and helped us out with some Thai that we were struggling with. So here are some fun things I have learnt:

Thai lesson #3:

Moo = pig/pork. NOT the sound a cow makes

Cow = rice. NOT the animal that beef comes from

Gai = chicken/far away/near/guide depending on how you say it. Thai is made even more fun by the fact that there are FIVE different tones. Whoever though making 'near' and 'far' the same word was a good idea??

Today Shaleas took off for Chang Mai before Kelly and I even woke up, so hopefully she's having fun! This morning we were supposed to teach a private English lesson to Jet, but he wasn't able to make it. So we'll see what the rest of the day holds for me and Kelly. Possibly the purchase of a motorbike if we can find Jet or Orn or someone to help us out with translation!

I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore...

Here's some photos relevent to my previous posts.

Lisa and I eating street food and beer at about 4 in the morning in Bangkok

My favourite part of the Grand Palace - the demons and the monkeys. (The monkeys are barefoot). Everything you see that looks like it might be made of gold or gold leaf - it is.

A group of us out at the Happy Beer Garden in Bangkok before experiencing ping pong...

It’s been a crazy few days since I last wrote.
As expected, elephant trekking and bamboo rafting was a fantastic experience. I highly recommend Kanchanaburi if you are ever in Thailand, it’s beautiful, and there’s a lot that I didn’t see, so I’m hoping to find time to return.

On our way to the hotel (which was a paradise in itself) we stopped by the Bridge over the River

Kwai, which apparently is really famous thanks to a movie that was made with the same title.
If you’ve heard of it, sorry to let you down in the movie culture side of things. I guess I haven’t seen as many films as I thought!
But the bridge has some interesting history that you should look up, to do with how it was built during WWII by POWs for Japan, thousands of which died during the construction/reconstruction (after the Allies bombed it). We almost got run over by a train, because we were not warned that the train tracks running along the bridge are still active! Luckily there’s little platforms along the bridge for pedestrians to cram onto to prevent death. How thoughtful.

Our hotel, as I said was a paradise running along the river Kwai, where I enjoyed a fantastic Thai massage. It’s hard to describe the hotel without this getting too long and boring, but just think peaceful jungle paradise. The picture is of the river by our hotel. The lamps are where we ate dinner.

Lisa and I shared an elephant ride, which was great. I got to ride on the elephant’s neck! And they went walking into the river and through the jungle. Then during our bamboo raft ride down the river, I actually spent most of the time swimming; so I get to say I’ve gone swimming in the River Kwai which at least my parents are exceptionally jealous of. The bonus is that I haven’t been sick since this experience either, which is probably against all odds. 

That afternoon we went to visit an orphanage and teach a short English lesson. I left wanting to take every orphan home with me. Thai children are irresistibly cute and they loved us. I spent about 45 minutes straight in the hot sun doing nothing but bumping kids up and down on my lap, which they never got sick of, even if I couldn’t feel my thighs afterwards.

Finally, after a crazy Thai bus station experience, an 11-hour ride on a pretty amazing bus that had reclining seats, a stewardess, a hot meal at a random restaurant at 1:30am, and Thai karaoke music videos, Kelly, Shaleas and I have arrived in Tha Wang Pha. Our coordinators (Patarin and Amporn) met us and broke the news that we cannot move into our apartment yet and are stuck in a guesthouse for about two weeks (but who knows, on Thai time that could mean anything).
Kelly and I are sharing a room that we have already had to rid of enormous spiders, a massive cockroach, and an ant infestation. But other than that….it’s still pretty annoying. The room is actually ok, it’s just frustrating since we have to continue living out of a suitcase, and school starts next week. Also, the shower is the bathroom. So each time we shower, the toilet, sink, and anything else in the bathroom gets soaked. But we have a Western toilet, which trust me is a blessing.

We saw the long boat racing in Nan on Sunday, which was fun. It’s one of the things this area is most known for, and we managed to catch the last day, which was lucky.

We are clearly the only white people for miles because we get treated like celebrities everywhere we go. At the boat event several people took pictures of us, and one guy even videotaped us. Everyone who can speak a little bit of English makes an effort to talk to us though, and last night we went out to dinner with Patarin, her husband and bunch of his friends who all had at least eight whiskeys each, and they spent the evening teaching us a lot of new Thai words, although I can’t remember most of them. I'm not sure if that's because of the whiskey or the completely foreign language. We rode home sitting in the bed of Patarin’s pick-up which was amazing because the weather in the evenings up here is perfect, and the sky is full of stars, more than I've ever seen thanks to my city-dwelling life. There's not much to see in the skies of London, New York, Baltimore or Boston I'm afraid.

There’s a good market five minutes from our guesthouse, which we will be buying everything from toiletries, clothes, school supplies, and food from since we have no kitchen. It’s going to take a few days to adjust to this place, but all in all Tha Wang Pha is a really nice area, as is Nan (the main city, about half an hour drive from here). In order to get around, it’s becoming more and more clear that our only option is going to be renting or possibly buying motorbikes. Absolutely everyone here has a motorbike of some sort, and the public transportation seems to be very sparse, if it exists at all, so we’ll be looking into that pretty soon.

That’s it for now. I’m here for a week, possibly going to Chang Mai for a couple of days if we can make it, and then school starts on November 3rd! I’ve already met one boy who goes to the school and also works in the market; he’s in the highest grade and spoke relatively fluent English so that’s a good sign!

I’ve tried to post a few photos (hopefully it has worked!). There are a lot more, but I’m borrowing Kelly’s thumb drive to upload these at an internet café so the rest will have to wait I’m afraid.

My future mode of transporation: literally everyone has one.

Thai lesson #2:

One = Neung
Two = Song
Three = Saam
Four = Sii
Five = Haa
Six = Hok
Seven = Jet
Eight = Baad
Nine = Gow
Ten = Siib

Sawatdee ka!

Whiter skin in just 14 days!

Just a quick post since I'm actually not sure when I'll next be on this thing. Tomorrow I'm off on a my two day trip to ride elephants/go bamboo rafting/visit an orphanage, then on Saturday we leave for our sites where my internet may be slightly limited, I don't know yet. 

Tonight I meet my school coordinator and hopefully get all my questions answered about what I'm doing and what to expect, including what to wear. All the days of the week have a colour here which I love, so that's going to take some of the guesswork out of what to put on each morning! 

Monday - Yellow

Tuesday - Pink

Wednesday - Green

Thursday - Orange

Friday - Blue

Saturday - Purple

Sunday - Red

There is a specific yellow polo shirt that a lot of Thai people wear on Mondays with a royal emblem on it, because the king's birthday is on a Monday, so every Monday they all wear this shirt to show their love for the king. There's an equivalent shirt in pink for Tuesdays because the most popular princess was born on a Tuesday, but it's not as common as the yellow ones.

Other things I've learned: 

Everyone assumes you're rich if you're white, but any price can be bartered and brought down, including camera chargers in a camera store inside the BIGGEST mall ever (called MBK....massive). My brand new camera charger chose to break immediately after entering this country, but as I said, the woman selling me my new one and I had a little discussion and we completed a nice little transaction.

Just as Americans/Brits try to be more tan by buying sunless tanning lotions, the Thais buy skin whitening lotions. Vaseline have large billboard advertisements all over the place promising whiter skin in 14 days. 

Porn means beauty in Thai, so a lot of beauty parlours have the word 'porn' in them, and a lot of women have it added to the end of their name as well. This fact causes many smile and giggles from naive foreigners.

Some Thai phrases that don't work when translated directly into English:

"I speak English snake snake fish fish." (means I speak very little English)

"You are sweet mouth" (smooth talker)

"Banana story" (very easy)

"You old man snake head" (dirty old man!)

You have heart water (you're very kind)

That's it for now! I'll post again whenever I can to tell you about the elephants!!! I'm so excited!!!! Can you tell?

Sawatdee ka!