So on Tuesday I escaped from the rain storms and flooding in Surat to get a jump start on my Songkran holiday. To get up to the airport in Surat I had to get a ride on a military truck with about 30 Thai people. On the trip there we saw houses underwater, people swimming in front of their flooded homes, camping on bridges, and beating down the medians to get the water to drain from the higher street. The trip took about an hour and a half and by the time my flight left a grand total of 20 people had made it for our flight. After I got to Chiang Mai I went to the night bazaar to do some shopping

On Wednesday I decided to just relax in my hotel and walk about the city for a little bit.

Thursday was the beginning of my adventure in stupid tourist things. I started the adventure by letting a Tuk-Tuk driver talk me into going out to a long neck village and orchid farm for the afternoon. The long neck village was a little sad because the villagers were basically treated as props to take pictures with (they were also selling things). I wound up buying a bracelet because after the girl clamped it onto my wrist I couldn't get it back off (luckily it is a pretty bracelet and I was able to work it open enough to slide it on and off my wrist). After the village we went to the orchid farm where I took a bunch of pictures of the different types of orchids and bought jewelry made out of orchids and butterfly.

That night I went to the night safari with 2 of the other teachers from Surat. We decided to all pile onto a motorbike 'Thai style' and see if we could find the safari. We got there with now problems...except for a few speed bumps. On the safari we got to see a bunch of different animals. I almost got to pet a zebra and we all got to feed giraffes...those guys have freakishly long tongues!

Friday was another adventure in being a tourist. I started the day by meeting up with my Tuk-Tuk driver again and going out to Tiger Kingdom. Tiger Kingdom was awesome! I got to play with 3-4 month old tigers and pet some of the bigger (almost 2 yrs old) ones. The tigers were beautiful...sadly the big ones were pretty much all sleeping...but they do tend to be slightly nocturnal. After playing with the tigers and then watching some of the others ones I went to an elephant camp/show. The show was a little weird, dancing and playing kazoos, but watching the elephants paint was interesting. Then I went to a snake show which was basically 3 crazy Thai guys playing with cobras and non-poisonous biting snakes. The best part of the show was when they threw the amazing jumping snake...or piece rope at the group of tourists next to me which caused them all to jump and shriek.

This week is the Songkran festival/water war :)

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The "Superhero" temple

The temple at the top of the hill by
Doi Tung Royal Villa

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MALAYSIA

Roof tiles at the Chinese temple

The stairway to the Hindu cave temple

SINGAPORE

Lunch time :D

The Harbor

The baby Merlion statue

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This post is long over due...I've been highly unmotivated because of the torrential downpours we've been having in Surat. So...the Malaysia trip...I don't really have much good to say about this trip. It was the epitome of poor planning and obnoxiousness. For 90% of the trip the teachers were required to travel separately from the students (I was able to travel with the students in Singapore because of an accident).

On Monday the 21st we made our way to Penang, Malaysia. For some unexplainable reason we stayed in a student dormitory, which included a bed and a shared shower. The campus was far from town so the only way to get to town was by our private teacher bus. The highlight of the day was that I did get to eat some very tasty Indian food for dinner (especially the naan bread :D ).

The next day the teachers 'toured' the city. We started at Kek Lok Si Temple which is a Chinese temple. It was interesting but I've reached a point where all Buddhist temples start to blur to blur together. Then we went to Dharmikarma Burmese temple which is also a Buddhist temple :( After going to TWO temples we spent 4 hours in an overpriced shopping mall (no explanation was really given for this insane amount of time).

We spent the night in the mini-bus traveling to Kuala Lumpur. We woke up at Batu Cave which is a Hindu temple. The temple was obviously in a cave about halfway up a hill/mountain. To get to the temple we had to climb 272 steps...I believe that the other American teacher and I were the only 2 to actually go up to the cave. The temple was interesting mostly because it was in a cave and it was non-Buddhist. After the temple we went to twin towers to meet the students (who had been waiting for hours). After collecting the students and eating lunch (YAY SUBWAY!) we went to our hotel, which was pretty nice. For some reason my room only had 1 window which opened to the hotel hallway, this was actually nice since it made the room really dark. That evening we went to the Chinese market with the students to shop for stuff.

On the 24th we went to Jahor Baru where we stayed at yet another sparse dormitory. The next day we went to Singapore. At Malaysian immigration a small group of students and the teachers were confused by the bus system and once we got it figured out the Thai teachers didn't want to get on the same bus as the students, because they were supposed to be traveling alone. However, we found out the next bus wasn't for another hour so I was told to go with the students :D. I told the students that now they are my tour guides and had to tell me how to get everywhere. We started by getting their tickets back to Hat Yai and then ate some Thai food for lunch. After eating we went to the Merlion Statue where we were supposed to meet the Thai teachers for a checkpoint, but they weren't there. We figured this was because we were really late for the checkpoint. We spent a bunch of time taking pictures of the harbor and the mini-merlion statue (the big one was in a box/hotel room thing :( ). Then we went to Sentosa island (checkpoint 2) where we had some ice cream and looked at the rides. The students started to get worried because the other teachers were late for the checkpoint and they didn't have much time before they had to go catch their bus. Fortunately, the other teachers showed up before the students had to leave...but just barely.

Overall, I didn't have a lot of fun on this trip...Singapore was fun but Malaysia wasn't. I highly doubt I will go on this trip again...unless it's drastically overhauled.

Pictures coming soon.

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So I am home after another 30 hour bus ride...I'm really starting to hate buses!

On Thursday we went on an adventure of poor planning (which is actually what happened over most of the trip). So, we started the day an hour late...or right on time for Thailand...at Doi Tung Royal Villa. First we went to a temple at the top of the mountain. It was a little hard to see things because it was so foggy out. Then we went down to the villa which was the summer home of the king's mother. For a royal home it seemed rather small but this could have been because the tour only got to go into the main room and could look into the loving quarters. During this trip cold became miserable and the students stopped having fun. Everyone was glad to get out of the cold and get back onto the buses.

We had to rush to make it to Burma so we would have some time at the market...we wound up only having about 1.5 hours in the market instead of the 3-4 that was originally planned. In Burma the students had fun shopping and helping me haggle. I didn't buy much this year but I did have fun with the students.

On Friday we went up to the Golden Triangle to tour an import-export company before we headed home. I had fun watching the boats load and unload goods since I couldn't understand any of the tour. And for some reason the sun decided to grace us with her presence on the one day that was going to be spent on a bus...grrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Overall the trip was fun but it could have been a lot better if we had hired 2 bus drivers per bus (so we didn't have to stop in the middle of the night for the driver to sleep) and if it hadn't rained and been freezing the whole time.

Tomorrow morning I'm heading to Malaysia/Singapore for another school trip. I'll post pictures from both trips after I get back :D

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So, I am about half way through my first trip of the summer. I am currently in Chiang Rai working as a chaperon for my faculties 'Chinese Camp' . It's been and interesting trip...we've done a lot of the same things as last year but the experience has definitely been different.

To start with some genius decided to only hire 1 bus driver per bus...it takes at least 24 hours to get to Chiang Rai and with only 1 driver it wound up taking just about 30 hours. We left at about 7 am on Sunday and arrived here at 1:30 on Monday. In that time I got to read an entire 450 page book and take a ton of naps. We also stopped in Hua Hin for an hour to go shopping/waste time. The market we went to was incredibly over priced and not that interesting. The idea behind the stop was to delay our arrival because last year we got up to Chiang Rai at 7am (when the decision was made I don't think anyone realized we only had 1 driver per bus).

Yesterday we went sightseeing around town and went to two temples. The first one, Wat Rong Khun, was the strangest temple I have ever been to in Thailand. Wat Rong Khun is like an edgy pop culture explosion. To get to the temple you have to cross over a bridge, under the bridge are spikes and hands reaching up (which reminded me of hell especially since some of the hands were holding skulls). Then in the temple there is the traditional Buddha statue and hand painted murals, but incorporated into the murals were different characters from pop culture. There was Neo from the Matrix, a pod racer from Star Wars, Doremon, a transformer, Superman, the head of that creepy puppet from the saw movies, and many others that I can't remember. The only down side to this trip was that it was raining and you couldn't take pictures inside :( After the crazy awesome temple we went to Wat Phra Kaew again to see where the emerald Buddha was found.

Here are some pics of the mural from Wat Rong Khun I found on the web.

Today we went up to the mountains to visit the tea factories. It was freezing and raining which would have made the trip miserable if the students hadn't been so funny about things. They were absolutely thrilled that they could see their breath and glomping onto me to try and share my umbrella...we were only able to get 4 people under it and still be able to walk. Fortunately, half way through the trip we found a shop that sold sweaters and gloves (I was an idiot and forgot my sweatshirt back in Surat)!

Tomorrow we're heading to Mae Sai and Burma :D Hopefully it'll stop raining because the market will not be as fun if it's cold AND rainy.

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Here's another one of my students superhero's:

My hero's name frogman. He was the impact of water polluted with bacteria and amoeba. The bacteria in the water to accelerate the current grow. Frogman will come out to help people and fight crime by spraying toxic rubber out of the skin. Sticky hands and feet. He is a super hero of the frog.

I don't know what kind of froggy crime Frogman fights but I have a feeling he's behind some of that croaking that keeps me up occasionally.

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