It’s 7:30am here now and Christin and I are awake and blogging because…well we are sharing a single bed and both woke up about 6am and couldn’t go back to sleep. We have to check out of our hotel room in about 4 hours and find something to do for a few hours till our flight back to Bangkok. I am still grasping the fact I’m in Thailand, I can’t even believe we are leaving TODAY!! I already miss my little buddies at BCC and I want to cry thinking about leaving and going back to Cleveland Tennessee. It does ease my mind knowing that Mindy and I are more than likely coming back this spring, but still. It’s the little things like eating out on the patio and ordering bottles of water while eating with a fork AND a spoon. Or trying to talk/understand what the Thai people are saying and watching all of them just smile at us. Mostly I’m going to miss the massages, hands down, that’s my jam. I’ve got to learn to cook rice even though I just found out about, oh THREE days ago that rice was fattening!! You may not remember but Christin started a “thighland” blog and we were FOR SURE going to follow the asian ways and lose weight. HA! That didn’t happen and we couldn’t figure out WHY?!? I mean we were walking about 5 miles a day to and from dinner/bus stations/etc. We ate rice for every meal with about a spoon full of chicken, and we drank bottled water like it was going out of style. Who knew that sticky rice, or even steamed white rice was just straight sugar and wheat headed straight for the butt? Not me! About the only weight I lost was from shaving my head hahah. Speaking of, gosh I’m dreading going home to cold weather with no hair. “How am I suppose to live with no hair, hair haaiiirr” (that was the Rhianna song btw). I can’t believe in less two days I will be sitting at home in Georgia telling my family all about my adventures. I keep thinking where the first place I want to eat is, but I honestly don’t miss any of the food or anything from the states so I don’t know, but it will have to be NOT greasy and really light or my body will NOT like me. That’s one thing I’m not readjusting to is American food and PORTIONS. DQ’s family size take home ice cream is a LARGE in America!!! Hahaha really? Like a dinner at Applebees could feed a whole family here easily. Anyways, I’ll be flying into Atlanta Thursday afternoon around 1, then spending two days with the family. I’m coming to Cleveland SATURDAY and can’t wait to see everyone!!! Like, seriously. I haven’t gotten homesick once this whole trip, but I do wish everyone was here with me experiencing the same stuff. I CANT WAIT TO SEE MY FRIENDSIES!!! (Sunday’s happenings can’t come soon enough). So I miss you, and I’ll see you in a few days! I LOVE YOU MUMSEY AND DADDY!!! J I’m not one to get homesick, but not getting to talk or send stupid text to them every few days has been hard! From what I heaaaaaaar, there’s about to a paaaaaaarty in the Usa. See ya in two months Thailand!!!!!
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Tiger Kingdom
Okay so I thought it was cool we rode elephants, until we got to spoon with a tiger today!! Holy cow those things are HUGE! We finally looked Nice Nails up online and wasted so much money on transportation yesterday we WALKED there. Let me make you jealous real quick and say I got a manicure and pedicure for $10 (and that’s with French). It was so very much needed because I had walmart feet and it was just nice to sit and be pampered….(not like we haven’t gotten that our whole trip lol). The lady who owns it was so sweet she drove us back to the YMCA when we were done! We headed up to Tiger Kingdom and it was just amazing. Us three girls payd like $10 each to hang out in a cage with 3 large tigers for 15-20 minutes and take pictures. When we first got in there two of them were passed out cold and the little guy was just dragging them around by their tails and paws. I was so mad because I though “they sedate these poor little animals so we can come take pictures!” so I asked the guy and he busted out laughing and was like “no tigers sleep for 18 hours out of the day!” Duh, they are felines, house cats probably sleep that much. Two of the tigers names were Meatball and Spicy Sauce hahah, and we just layed all over them and took pictures. They warned us not to touch their head our front paws and what do I do? Start talking in my sweet baby voice to him saying “heeeey buddy” and petting his head lol. I’m an idiot. Their paws were like twice the size of our hands and feet and you could just feel their massive muscles when you would pet them. The thought of one of these bad boys attacking me made me get chills, you could feel some of the ones in the cages stare holes through you, no thank you. The guy got ours up and walking so we could take some pictures and I’m not going to lie, it made me a little nervous! We saw baby tigers and they were so freaking cute, all I could think about is how bad I want to be like Princess Jasmine and have a pet tiger . Gosh I love Aladin. After that amazing adventure we came back into town and had our last Thai dinner by the Chaing Mai night bazaar and of course, did some MORE shopping! We stopped by before dinner and got our last massage too, I’m going to quote Christin and I “that was the best massage yet!” We pretty much say that everytime, after every good dinner, always. Each time was the best yet hahha. We shopped awhile and I finished up buying all my gifts and things then we just hung out awhile. Gosh I can’t wait to get home because I have so many funny stories to tell. AHHH I can’t believe we leave tomorrow L
Maesa Elephant Camp
WE RODE ELEPHANTS TODAY!!! We got charged WAY to much to take a sang tao out to this place and we didn’t even care, we’ll know for next time though lol. I hate having odd numbers because then there is always someone left out, but I think we’ve done a pretty good job of taking turns. Christin and I rode the elphant together and our buddy was 22 years old and his name was Mae Wampan. We rode for like 30 minutes and there were a few times when we literally thought we were going to fall out of the little carriage thing we were in on his back. Alyse had to ride by herself L but don’t feel to bad for her because her elephant and tour guide was so freaking cool! I would love to put a picture up of us on our elephant, but our tour guide didn’t smile, talk, nothing. Alyse’ s elephant was huge with two big pretty tusks, and again was just freaking big (her little guide took like 20 pictures of her on him too!) But the ride was cool, I didn’t enjoy it near as much as I did riding camels in Egypt…but it probably made a difference because I was riding those around the Great Pyramids and up Mt. Sinai! It was super cool, but we just walked this little dirt trail right behind all the toher people riding…pretty lame. I can say I rode an elephant though, and need I even say that Christin and I made it fun lol. The coolest part was watching the elephant shows after we rode, they are so smart with so much personality!! One elephant kept standing on his hind legs and spinning his trunk around and around…it was hilarious. They were spinning hula hoops around their trunks, taking peoples hats on and off, all kids of crazy things. I had heard of elephants painting, but it was just unreal to actually see it. The guy standing behind them wasn’t guiding them at all, he just held on to their little chain, I don’t know how they train them to do that. The elephant in front of us painted a picture of…an elephant lol. I would have loved to buy it but it was definitely $60 and our (Christin’s) camera works just fine…so we just took plenty of our own pictures lol. Oh yea, we bought the professional picture of us on the elephant and it came in a picture frame that says “we love elephants” and the frame is made of elephant dung…haha…I love cheap fun souvenirs. After we hung out there a few hours and got our moneys worth, we headed back into town and wandered around the rest of the evening. When I say wandered around I liteally mean we got dropped off at a shopping center with no clue where to go and looked for “nice nails” for about 4 hours. No one could tell us anything, it was the first time the language barrier has even been an issue. We were so stressed we literally got DQ twice during that 4 hours, and eventually ended up at ANOTHER MALL…still couldn’t find nice nails, so we went and saw Valentines Day…so cute. I was really disappointed though, with that many famous/good actors it could have been way better. I always love Ashton’s roles in movies, I think he’s just adorable. Anyways, it was a good ending to a not so good 4 hours, but a great day in general…I mean we rode elephants. Here is a cheers to being single on valentines day too, although Christin was the best valentines ever!!
Chinese New years!!!
So our bus was like sitting first class on an overseas flight, and it was only a 3 hour ride! I’m talking, our seats leaned all the way back with room to recline and prop your legs up, and they even served us a sweet roll and water! We are staying at the YMCA during our time here and I can’t wait. Tonight we got our room and went straight to the “Chaing Mai Saturday night walking market” which is pretty huge. I bought tons of fun junk then we went across the street to eat Mexican to celebrate Alyse’s birthday (since we’ll be flying on her bday) and Chinese New Years!! We all wore our little matching asian outfits…since that’s clearly the thing to do here (obviously Christin). Everyone walks in twos and always matches, its like you have to have a uniform for EVERYTHING. Anyways, this was probably the best Mexican food (and cheapest) out of the three times we’ve got to eat it here lol. We all had chicken fajitas and a drink and it cost us $7 MAYBE. Crazy huh? It’ll be hard to get use to paying $10 for a meal again in the states! After dinner we had our usual 30 cent McDonalds ice cream cone (I can’t figure out WHY I didn’t lose any weight!). So we have three people staying in a two person room, aka two single beds…and being the poor college kids that we are, we didn’t want to pay that extra $6 for an extra bed. So what I’m saying is…Christin and I being the large lovely white women that we are, are sharing a single bed somehow and its really not that bad hahaha. I mean lets be honest…we’ve had our beds pushed together the last two months, whats a few more nights. I’m going to feel so lost when we get back to Cleveland and I don’t have her one foot away, talking about what we’re reading and pondering life till we fall asleep. I’m not okay with this…I have to convince her to come back with me.
Farewell Chaingrai...off to Chaing Mai
We woke up this morning (Sunday) and had breakfast while the kids went through their praise and worship practice. A lot of kids from another orphanage and around the neighborhood came and listened to Pat bring the word, I really enjoyed listening to him talk, he works well with the kids. One little girl attached to me and played/messed with me the whole service, she was the cutest little handful though. Afterwards we packed up and had lunch with the kids and just hung out till Deb took us to the bus station. I was totally not ready to go, I could have spent my whole time in Chaingrai!! I love the Wheeler’s and especially the kids!! Matao is one of the boys they took in and he just won my heart in the four days we were there. He is 17 and has Cerebral Palsy but as Deb said “has peace like a river” and is the happiest boy ever. The first time I saw him was after Deb came to get us from the airport and as we pulled up to our gate she said “one of our boys is in charge of the gate” and he was just hauling butt running down the driving way…I got so tickled. That’s when she told us all about him and he gave us this big ole grin and I immediately just fell in love with that kid. Watching him play with the dogs, try and help the kids out around the house, or even play the bongo drums and dance during praise and worship just made me melt. You can’t understand what he says but he chattered and hung out with us the most probably when we were just hanging at the house. I seriously couldn’t help but to just smile when I would look at him, he as precious when he rode with us to the bus station today too. I cannot WAIT to come back this next year during some of my teaching breaks!!
River of Life-Chaingrai
The older girls were a University break, so Gonchanna took us to the Burma border to do some shopping. I’m just throwing out that I got some sweet white converse with a picture of Michael Jordan…in his 23 Bulls jersey, holding a soccer ball hahaha. Six dollars, yes please. We got tons of stuff for so cheap, story of our lives while shopping here, and had an amazing lunch. I’m so glad she went with us though because although we’ve been here two months now, they don’t know near as much English here in Chaingrai as Bangkok and we would have never got our way around!! Friday we all piled in in the back of the truck and the Wheeler’s took us to see some stuff. First thing we saw was a huge white temple, with little pieces of mirror all over it so you can see it glimmer from a mile away. It was by far the prettiest temple I’ve seen yet, and it had a little white buddah sitting above the monk inside. Then we hiked through this bamboo forest to a waterfall…so cool. Christin couldn’t go that day because she was sick, but Alyse and I got in that freezing cold water and went under the waterfall for about 2.8 seconds till we freaked out and jumped back out. The water was coming down so hard it hurt my head, and once we got under there it was so loud and water was getting in our face so we jumped right back out. I can’t even tell you how cold that water was (I wish I had pictures, but no. Old Thai lady had to go and steal stuff). Sorry had to get that anger out just then. That evening the three of us took a little bike ride up to the convient store and got our usual icecream BEFORE dinner, don’t ask why these two retards want it before dinner, but its whatever lol. On Saturday we hung out with the kidders after they did their chores, watched them practice their praise and worship songs, then headed to a place down the road called “hot springs” and got a full hour Thai Massage for THREE DOLLA!!! It may have been the best one we’ve got yet. That evening Deb took us and the girls to a night bazaar, lets just say Christin and I spent more money on food and drinks than we did souveniers lol, they had soooo many goodies and food stands it was ridonkulous! It was really awesome though because things are a lot cheaper in Chaingrai than Bangkok and its a lot more authentic. There was a band playing and all these cute older Thai’s out doing this little Thai jig, and wouldn’t you believe CHristin and I had to take a shopping break to get out there and dance. It was seriously so awkward and fun (cute American boy with his mom…spotted). But yeah, I got all my friendsies gifts out of the way with one bulk purchase, lets just hope it all fits in my little bag I brought with me here till I can put it in my suitcase in Bangkok!!!
