Thailand July 06

I'm baaaccckkk!

Yeah, seriously, I wanted to make at least one entry while I was overseas but I could not find the time or the access to the internet to blog. While I was in Thailand, or more specifically Phrao, I used the internet for two blocks of 30mins and that time was spent replying to emails, checking soccer scores and doing netbanking.

So yes, for those of you that weren't aware, I left for Thailand on the 28th June and came back last night around 9pm.

There is so much to write I really can't do any justice to the trip unless I hang out with you for 10 hours straight, and talk for around 9.5hrs with you interjecting with questions every now and then. So I'll just mention the major points etc.

So we spent the whole of the 28th June travelling (all times are in local time):
12:15am flight from Tullamarine to Kuala Lumpur.
6:30am arrive at the new KL airport - here Karl realises that he left my digital camera on the plane so we spend about 45mins tracking it down and thankfully retrieve it at lost and found.
10:00am flight from KL to Bangkok.
12:30pm reach Bangkok airport, catch a bus to the next terminal to catch a 1pm Thai Airways flight to Chiang Mai.
3:00pm reach Chiang Mai and finally get to leave a world of airports and duty frees to get our first taste of Thailand. The ten of us were herded into a mini-van and a ute then shopped around for a few hours getting drum sticks, amps and arts and crafts.
8:00pm reach Phrao and had a very spicy dinner at a local hawker store opposite the church.

Phrao is a small town about a 2hr drive from Chiang-Mai, where we taught English at the local Banjaengkuruang primary school and the Prowittayakom high school. I myself taught some P5 classes (equivalent of Grade 5s) and the M6s (Year 12s). That was a great experience, I quickly learnt that the youth there loved us since we were foreigners and we were almost like celebrities! The whole town eventually got word we were there and we had a few visitors come to the church and talk to us.

The high point of the trip for most of us (or mainly the boys) was the concert we held on Tuesday (4/7) especially for the high school. What happens is that the language classes are predominantly female since the boys usually take subjects like metal work or something. Anyway, so only the language classes were invited to come to the concert in this big hall they had, and they went nuts! All the girls were screaming and shouting it was so weird! I felt like I was Taylor Hawkins or Flea! That motivated me to let loose on the drum kit and I felt pretty relaxed. Haha but yea, all the boys loved it, we were gods among men, or in this case, among women. So that was definitely something that will stick in our minds for the rest of our lives.

Apart from the teaching, we also managed to get some free time to look around the local shops. Ken was dying for some khao man gai (Thai chicken rice) and Sunday (2/7) after the church service, we went looking in earnest for some KMG with the help of some of the local M6 girls Justin and I taught. The first store we went to were closed! Ken was sad about that, but eventually we found a store that had a chicken hanging up in the window and we all had our first taste of the KMG this trip.

Another feature of our Thailand expedition was the sleeping conditions. We had to sleep in mosquito nets otherwise we'd wake up with half our blood drained from our bodies. So in Phrao, each night we were forced to set up these nets over our matresses (if you were lucky enough to have them, otherwise it was 5 sheets of blanket laid on the floor).

Seeing as food was high on the list of things to do, we ended up making friends with the local "Pancake Girls" who made and sold pancakes (with blueberry or chocolate or banana jam) on the street corner down the road from us. The coincidental thing was that the older girl, Maria, was in mine and Justin's M6 class that we taught at the high school. So on the last day we were there, Maria with her two best friends came to the church to give us all free pancakes! That it was really sweet of them.

Here are the two classes Justin and I taught the most while we were in Phrao with Peter helping out. The P5/4s and the M6/3s.

After spending about a week in Phrao, we made our way back to Bangkok via a flight from Chiang-Mai airport. That Wednesday (5/7) we spent another full day travelling, leaving Phrao at 9am, arriving in Bangkok at around 3pm and then spending about 2hrs in a shopping centre that only had IT stuff and food. That was pretty crappy. But at 9pm it was off to the train station to catch an overnight train to Surin. We took the 2nd class carriages, which had beds on them, as opposed to the ones in 3rd class which had upright seats. That would've sucked. First class had beds, but had other amenities like showers, porters to carry your luggage and other things like that, but at double the price (1000 baht = $35) we thought 2nd class would do nicely. The ride was okay, at least I got some sleep, but we all had to wake up at 4am and quickly rush out the door because we woke up late! Who knows where would've ended up if we missed our stop!

We headed to Banchok village, which is a 40min drive from Surin town and we were met with loud blaring Thai music because one of the girls in the village, actually next door to where we were staying, got married. Apparently this music began at 4am in the morning everyday and went well into the night where there was lots of drinking as well, over a period of about a week. Luckily for us though, that was the last day of the festival and so we had some sleep that night.

Since we lived in the village, we got to know the kids really well. They came round to the house every waking moment when they didn't have chores to do, or school. It was a world apart from Phrao even, because this was a rural country village. If mosquitos and red ants were a part of life in Phrao, Banchok village had it all! It was common to see poisonous (only to foreigners) toads hopping around at night, or even baby toads hopping in the shower! Bright red centipedes which were also poisonous, but not to locals, crawled around the front yard and if you went a day without a mosquito bite, you'd count yourself extremely lucky.

The kids were something amazing! Apart from being really cute, they were extremely tough. They ran and played, fell over, grazed their knees and got back up immediately. Climbed trees, shot down birds with slingshots, the whole deal. Justin being the first aid dude on the team ran out of band-aids patching them up, but it was not needed. After Juzzy patched up one boy who cut his finger and had blood pouring out if it, within about 20 mins, he took off the band-aid and was playing around again. They ran on the extremely hot tar on the road in barefeet, and also on sharp rocks like it was carpet!

The teaching was at a school our church had never taught at before, but they were very welcoming and greeted us enthusiastically. Here, Justin and I taught one of their pre-school classes, and their P3s as well as one P2 class on the last day. We also taught at the Poomsatterng school which we had been doing in the last few trips. There I taught their P3s. Below are photos of the P3 class, P2 class at the new school and the P3s at Poomsatterng.

We left Banchok village around 6pm on Friday (14/7) and took the overnight train from Surin to Bangkok at 9pm. We arrived in Bangkok around 4:30am and hung around the airport till about 11am where we boarded our flight to KL. I won't talk about KL here, might decide to blog about that in the next entry, but arrived there about 4pm on Saturday (15/7) and departed Tuesday (18/7) 10am flight.

Anyway our team had a great time, working hard, having little sleep, dealing with sickness, food poisoning and not ripping each others' heads off. I learnt a lot about myself and the rest of the team and I can't imagine any tour or holiday coming close to offering what I experienced over the last three weeks. So thank you God, I am thoroughly satisfied and wouldn't trade it for the world.