Phuket With The Family

I had tried to book plane tickets for us out of Nan, but they only have a few flights a week & not at the time that we needed…so we had to take a night bus. The bus arrived in Bangkok at 5:00 in the morning & we took a taxi to the airport. Our plane was supposed to leave at 10:00 but was delayed. We were stuck there until noon.

We eventually arrived in Phuket & after some last-minute complications, we were off to our hotel.

We went out to dinner & on the way back were able to catch the performance of Thai Elvis. He was AWESOME!!!

The next day we spent some time on the beach.

And got more foot massages.

The next day, we went on a “James Bond Tour” where they took us to James Bond Island

& we did some kayaking. It was a lot of fun!

We even got to see some wildlife!

And the next day we were off to Ko Phi Phi!

P.S. Sorry about the different sizes on the pics...it's been acting up on me again!

Nan With The Family

We arrived in Nan late in the afternoon & took a songtao to the hotel.

I then took them to the market where I do some of my shopping.



I also took them to one of the temples. We ate dinner at the hotel & then turned in for the evening…there’s not much to do in Nan.

The next morning we headed over to Fhu Travel as I had arranged for an elephant trek for the day. But when we got there, Mrs. Fhu had forgotten about my reservation. She told us to give her a little while & she would get it arranged.

We spent some time wandering around the market & then I took them to the museum. By the time we got back, she had gotten everything set up & we set out to ride some elephants!

When our elephant riding had finished, the driver took us to my village & they got to see my house.

That evening, we had dinner with the people at my work. It was really nice & I’m so glad that my family was able to meet everyone.

A very nice gentleman from England let us use his home for the night. My house is not large enough to sleep 7 people…so he was kind enough to let us use his house.

The next morning, the driver took us back to Nan as I had also arranged for a Hill Tribe Trek. We all piled into the back of a songtao & set off. It was really nice because we were able to see some rice paddies…

And a water buffalo…

The guides were a lot of fun. They knew a lot of neat tricks…here is Kimberly with some popping plants. They explode as soon as you add water to them.

And here is one of our guides blowing bubbles.

We ate lunch in this little hut up in the hills.
They took us to quite a few villages, but the neatest one was the last one. We went to this older guy’s house & he showed us how he cooks dinner. They stick meat (in this case pork) in a bamboo pole & stick the pole in the fire.

It was really interesting to see. After the tour finished, we were dropped off at the bus station as we had a night bus to catch!

Chaing Mai With The Family

The family’s plane got in at 11:00. I had never been to the Chaing Mai Airport, so I left the hotel at 9:30. It didn’t take long to get there, so I had about an hour to wait until their plane got in…and then they had to go through customs. I don’t know why, but as the time neared, I got incredibly nervous! I had butterflies in my stomach like you wouldn’t believe! It had been a year since I had seen them & it was torture having to wait! The wait was even longer than it should have been, because the airline had lost my Mom’s luggage…so they had to get that taken care of.
Once the hugs were taken care of, I greeted them with the Thai wai…

We then grabbed a songtao to head back to the hotel.

I knew that they would be pretty tired after the flight…so I didn’t plan too much for the day. The ladies went & got foot massages while the men went to a pub.

We then got some dinner & I took them to the Night Bazaar. I remembered when I first got here, I was ready to drop at about 8:00 & sure enough, when 8:00 hit, they were ready for bed.

Chad’s plane got in the next morning, so I went back to the airport to pick him up.

Poor Chad didn’t get much of a rest. We headed over to Doi Suthep which is this temple that is situated on a hill overlooking Chaing Mai. You have to climb about 300 steps to get to the temple.

But the view is amazing!

That night, I wanted to take them to The Riverside & take the dinner cruise, but when we got there, they were full (I didn’t know you needed reservations). So we had dinner at the restaurant instead.

After dinner, we took a tuk-tuk back to the Night Bazaar so they could do some more shopping & again they were ready to drop by 8:00.

The next day we took a bus over to my site.

New Years

Ok. I know it’s been a while…but I promised that I would tell you all about the family trip. So here it goes…

A Peace Corps volunteer from Samoa had gotten in touch with me (through this blog actually). She was coming to Thailand with a friend & wondered if I would be able to show them around a little bit. I told them that I would be in Chaing Mai over New Years & would love to meet up with them then.

They were a lot of fun & it’s always interesting to hear about other volunteers’ stories. We ended up hanging out at a rasta bar for a little while then we decided to head over to The Riverside. Traffic was horrendous so we had the driver let us out a little ways from the bar so that we could walk. We found people lighting off lanterns along the bank of the river so we decided to give it a try.

When we finally got to The Riverside, it was packed so we decided to try another place. We ended up staying there for a little while then headed back to the gate where they were having the “big” celebration. It was pretty neat as they had this big tree-like structure set up with these lanterns…it was really pretty & everyone just hung out drinking & talking. They started lighting off fireworks & we were expecting a countdown, but it never came…so we ended up doing our own (a little past the official time but no one else knew that).

After that, we headed back to the rasta bar & met up with even more volunteers. It was getting late (about 3:00am) when the other volunteers decided that they wanted to go to Spicy (this really sleazy after-hours bar). I had to pick up the fam early the next morning so I went back to the hotel.

It was really great to meet Laura & Stephanie & I hope they had a wonderful time while they were in Thailand!

Moments

I’ve found that I’ll have moments here where I love what I’m doing and where I’m at. Moments like when the kids across the street from me shout “hello” to me whenever I get home. Or when I’m sitting on a bus/songtao and the person next to me gets so excited when I understand what they’re saying. Or when I’m sitting at home listening to the rain hit my tin roof. I love these moments.

But then there are also moments when you just stop and say: “What in the hell am I doing here?” I’ve had a few of those moments lately:

Moment 1

I think that I’ve mentioned before, but the walls on my house are VERY thin. It’s basically planks of wood nailed to a frame…no insulation…no drywall…just wood planks (which, as my brother found out, makes the roosters very loud!) But it wasn’t the roosters that woke me at 2:00 the other morning (I’ve gotten used to them), it was my neighbor…getting sick! Yep…he was throwing up & I could hear EVERYTHING. The retching, the coughing, and the splat as it hit the ground. Not a pleasant thing to wake up to! I just hope whatever he has is not contagious…does anyone know if bird flu causes vomiting?!?

Moment 2

Killed another scorpion…this makes 10!

Moment 3

I was lying in bed reading a book when a bird flew into my room. Now some of you may know that I am terrified of birds. I think that they are evil & I don’t like them. So I hid under my blanked until it flew out then ran and closed my bedroom door. I didn’t leave my room for a couple of hours…I didn’t want to take the risk that it was still in the house.

Please keep in mind that these are only moments…I do really love it here. I mean I don’t know anyplace else where you can but 2 kilos of mangos for $1.25!

P.S. I got some photos uploaded to the last blog! Now that it’s working I’ll get to writing!

I'm Back

Ok…first off…I am sooo sorry that I haven’t updated this in a while…I have a good excuse…REALLY!!! My family came to visit & I was traveling with them for about 3 weeks (with very limited access to internet & not enough time to write a blog) and then when I got back, I found that my work had changed the internet setup. You see, before when I wanted the internet I would just unplug the cable from the computer (they only had internet for one computer) and hook it into my computer and I was good to go. But when I got back, they had changed things so that they now had a router and had multiple computers hooked up to the internet & none of them had a cord that I could unplug and plug into my computer (the cords weren’t long enough). Now that doesn’t mean that I have been without internet access…you see, I have this really cool cell phone & I can hook a cable from my cell phone to my computer and link up to the internet that way, but it is EXTREMELY slow. Slower than dial-up in fact. Which means that there would be no way for me to upload pictures (and I know you all come for the pictures). But good news…when I showed up at work yesterday, they had a cable just for me so now I can plug in with no problems (and people won’t kick me off when they want to look at porn…they have their own computer for that). So I am now “back in the saddle” so to speak.

So now for what’s been happening…there’s been quite a lot actually (it has been 2 months after all). I’m going to go a little out-of-sequence on the updates…mainly because I didn’t take a lot of pictures when my family came to visit…my mom & Karmen did that & Karmen was even nice enough to send me a disk of all of the pictures that she took (the disk from my mom is coming). The problem is that there is something wrong with my disk drive & it wont read any disks…so I have 3 disks filled with pictures & can’t access them. I am going to Bangkok this week & will take my computer in to get it looked at & hopefully fixed. So until then, you will get to hear about stuff where I took the pictures.

First things first, I’m no longer a rookie. That’s right, the new volunteers are now in Thailand. It’s weird to think of myself as an “upper-classmen” because there are still days where I have no idea what I’m doing or even where I am. But I’ve learned how to fake it pretty well.

The new volunteers flew into Bangkok on the 23rd of January & there is this tradition where the current volunteers go to the airport to greet the new volunteers. I remember when I first got to Thailand…I was sooo exhausted (we had been on the plane for what felt like days) and I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing or how I even got myself into this situation. We were hearded through customs & shuffled through the airport to the buses. And as we rode down the escalator to the buses, there was a huge group of people yelling and cheering for us. It didn’t seem as scary anymore (for a little while at least).

So I was really looking forward to greeting this new batch of volunteers. Luckily, my brother’s plane left a few hours before the new volunteers’ plane was supposed to get in. So I took him to the airport & saw him off then waited with some other volunteers for the plane to arrive. Now keep in mind that my brother’s plane left at 10:45 pm & the new volunteers’ plane was scheduled to arrive at 11:30ish & of course it was delayed. So we stood around the airport and waited with the Peace Corps staff (luckily they have a Starbucks).

We finally got word that the plane had landed so we all went to where the bus was parked. There were not too many of us…maybe 9 or so (they had about double that last year) but one of the volunteers had gotten her students to make a really awesome sign.

As soon as we saw the first volunteer (we recognized them because (a) Dr. John our director was leading the way and (b) they were all wearing lei’s) we started cheering.

I was among the group holding the sign & some others had little snacks that they gave to the volunteers as they walked by.

They weren’t given much time to talk as the buses were waiting & they had to get their luggage loaded, but we were able to talk to a few very briefly & they seemed like a good group! We left when they were all loaded onto the bus...it was 3:00 in the morning and we were all exhausted! They are going through training right now…So technically my group is still the rookie group of volunteers, but their swearing in is coming up soon!