Khao Yai (Offical name Mountain Big)

This weekend I went to a place called Khoa Yai.  It is a UNESCO world heritage sight in Thailand.  Khoa Yai means big mountain.  This park is Thailand’s oldest and most visited.  Only 1.5 hours outside of Bangkok.  About four houras away from Surin.   

The park incorporates one of the largest intact monsoon forests in mainland Asia.   

We left Surin on Saturday morning at 7:00am.  Originally I thought it was a day trip but realized about 10 minutes into the car ride that I should have brought overnight clothes.  The family that took me spoke no English but mentioned (through a translator) the day before that I should bring a friend also because I might get lonely.  I thought to myself, none of my friends are going to go.  But asked anyway and one of the new teachers, who lives with me, said she would come.  So the 6 of us drove back to the house to pick up our overnight things and then we set off to drive 4 hours west toward Khoa Yai.  Of course we stopped at 7-11 about 30 minutes into our trip for some snacks.  Thai’s love 7-eleven as I have mentioned in previous blog posts. 

For lunch we stopped at a local place and had pig skin, which was gross, chicken with herbs, which was delicious, and papaya salad.  Here they make papaya salad using un-ripe papaya so it tastes a lot like cabbage but it is very delicious. 

Before noon we made a pit stop at a tourist trap location.  It was an outdoor mall type place, with an Italian theme.  The shops were all little expensive boutique type stores.  The building looked like what you would see in Italy.  The store fronts had Italian words written on them.  There were of course no other foreigners around, it was mostly a thai tourist trap appealing to their love and need to take lots of pictures.

Then we went to our hotel after passing the entrance for the national park. 

We stayed in a cute little hotel 30 minutes outside the park.

There was a lot of land with gardens and beautiful wooden building. 

Our room had 5 single size beds across it.  There was not much room for anything else.  The sheets were a bright blue turquoise color.  The room had air conditioning and high pressured showers and a plasma TV.  What more could you need in a hotel.  Then we drove to the national park.  It reminded me of the southern tip of Rwanda boarding the Congo.  It looked exactly like that.   

We hiked down a short distance to a nice waterfall.  Then went to a pretty reservoir, and took lots of monkey pictures.  We tried to visit a second water fall but the sign warned us not to enter after 4pm.  It was due to the tigers that often come out at night to that location.  So it was off to the hotel for the evening.  As soon as we arrived both Kira and I fell fast asleep.  It was 5:30pm.  At 7:00pm we were awoken to say that dinner had arrived.  Dinner was brought to our hotel room.  It was great cause for some reason we were both too tired to move very far.  Dinner was great as always.  Typical Thai food such as papaya salad, the best sweet pork dish I have had yet, fish, and an octopus dish.  Then it was showers and sleep.  The showers were amazing.  Had high pressure and because the room was air conditioned, they could be heated.  Amazing to have a hot shower and snuggle with a comforter on.  This never happens unless you have air conditioning.

The next morning we woke up around 7.  It was a pretty relaxed morning.  We all slowly showered, as there were 5 people and only one bathroom.  Afterwards, we headed down to the reception area for breakfast.  In Thailand the food is the same at breakfast lunch and dinner so it was some kind of noodle beef soup dish.  I opted for toast and jam so early in the morning but of course ended up being starving by lunch time.   

On the way home we stopped at a Dairy Farm.  Interestingly enough, the man who started it got his PhD in California.  It is the largest private dairy farm in Thailand.  They produce milk, ice-cream, and milk candies.  Oddly they do not make yogurt there.  We took a tour around and they showed us the machine way to milk cows.  Then they asked if anyone in the audience wanted to try.  So I did and went up and milked a cow.  I’m not sure I’ve ever done it before, if I have it was when I was really young.  I also feed a baby cow milk.  Then we went over to where the ice-cream is made and had samples of their straight pure ice-cream.  I want to say it was milk flavored due to not knowing what else to call it besides plain ice-cream.  I wonder why we do not make more pure ice-cream because I thought it tasted better than vanilla.  After ice –cream we went to ride ATV’s.  It was really fun, I have never done that before either.  They had a bumpy dirt track that you could just speed around like go-karts but in a ATV and using a dirt road.  Then there was a really lame cowboy show in a tiny arena where a cowboy lassoed a cow.  On our way back to the entrance of the farm we stopped to see a sheep dog herding its sheep.  That was really cool to see.   

For lunch we went to an American style Texas steak house.  It was really good.  I had steak cooked medium rare and a chicken croquette with a cheese breaded layer.  Best meal I may have had in 2.5 years excluding my one month in America, where my best meals were home cooked by my Mom.  Favorites included chicken tikka masala and strombli as well as her amazing homemade bread and cookies! :)  It was a great weekend vacation all in all.  I had fun with my new roommate Kira, the 12 and 13 year old girls, and the other two kindergarten moms.  I need a weekend to recover from my weekend but alas its back to school bright and early at 7:30am.   

The Karaoke Bus Ride

On Friday of last week I am asked what are you doing on Saturday.  And I say the typical just relaxing and shopping.  My Thai teacher than asks me “you go with my tomorrow at 5.”  I say ok, I try to say yes to things as much as possible.  I enjoy getting to know the Thai people and Thai culture.  I later learn that the 5:00 means AM.  I am thinking oh no I don’t want to wake up that early its Saturday.  But I said yes already so I can’t easily back out now.  Plus I have nothing else to do anyway.  I get picked up at 4:45am sharp from my house, and then taken to the school (a 5 minute car ride.)  The bus is there waiting and I join the other 20 kindergarten teachers on the bus where we depart at 5:00am.  I am told it will be a 3 hour bus ride so I sleep.  I have no idea where we are going.  Not even the slightest idea of our direction, north, south, east, or west.  I’m starting to drift asleep on the bus when suddenly there is music blaring and teachers singing into microphones.  “What is going on I think.”  Oh of course they are just singing Karaoke at 5am in the morning.  They all take turns singing throughout the entire drive.  Luckily I can sleep through anything so I eventually just fall asleep.      

Shortly thereafter we stop at 7-11 for snacks but then I continue sleeping.  There are various other stops along the way for bathroom breaks, markets fruit buys and any other good deals seen on the side of the road.  We arrive at the school at 8am.  They serve us hot noodle and pork soup for breakfast.  It is actually very good.  I notice the school is also called Anubarn, which is also the name of the school I work at.  (Later I am told there is an Anubarn school in every province of Thailand.)  That’s when I guess that this is a sister school that we are visiting to get advice and share ideas.  I believe kindergarten is new at my current school.    

Then around 9am there is a meeting in an upstairs air conditioned meeting room.  Thai people can’t stand the heat of their own country.  This amuses me as I have air conditioning in my house but do not use it because fans are enough.  In the meeting, we were shown a 15 minute video about the school with lots of pictures and videos of the children’s activities.  The school has a lot in common with our school.  Then the director of their school gives a 30 minute speech and the director of our school gives a 30 minute speech.  We are then given a snack.  It was a ball of white bread stuffed with pork, vegetables and a sweet salty sauce.  It was good.  Along with it was a cup of way to sugary ice coffee.  They drink their coffee with sweetened condensed milk.  It is really gross but I’m slowly getting used to it. 

Next we take a tour of their school.  Mostly the teachers are all just enjoying taking photos of me in front of silly things at the school, and taking my photo alone in front of these things.   

Once it hit 11:30 we bus off to lunch.  A mere 5 minutes away, but Thai people do not like to walk.  The lunch is so delicious.  We had dried sweet pork bits, plain sticky rice, a coconut curry dish, papaya salad; grilled fish, a few other dishes but those were my favorites.  The Thai people were impressed that I could eat every dish, even the spicy ones. 

After lunch we set off for home.  On the way home we also karaoke the entire time.  Since I am a little more awake this time I realize how bad the singing is but they are having so much fun.  The teachers keep asking me what I want to sing.  At first I just tell them in Thai “my die, my die,” which means I can’t, I can’t.  But later into the bus ride I figure if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em.  And I made them all so happy by singing.  I let them pick the song, just so long as it was in English.  Then I start singing but realize I have no idea what the song it.  But the other teachers know it so they help me out and before I know it I am singing in a microphone on a bus with 20 Thai kindergarten teachers.  It was a lot of fun! 

Life after 11 weeks!

             I have been in Thailand for 11 weeks (on Monday).  So far I am still loving it here.  I work about 9 or 9.5 hour days Monday through Friday.  The work is exhausting since I am playing with 4 year olds all day, trying to keep them entertained and teaching English at the same time.  It’s a lot of fun especially the art projects we do every day.  I love the atmosphere of the school.   

The teachers and parents are all really loving and happy.  They love to buy food for the foreign teachers and test our ability to eat spicy foods.  So far I have passes every test.   

I love spice and spicy foods here do make you tear up a bit and get a runny nose but I love the effect.  On the weekends I have been trying to be with Thai people which is quite easy as they love to taking me out to eat or invite me to their house.   

Side Note: everyone here loves 7-11 and there are tons around.  To be precise about 6,000 half in Bangkok.  Having the 3rd largest number of stores, after the US and Japan.

 

I saw these pig parts in the market the other day.  Delicious!  Just kidding I actually haven’t tried any yet, that I know of…

I have a very set daily routine.  Something I never had in Rwanda.  I am constantly busy and happy about that.  Since I have no bike I have to walk everywhere. The Big C grocery store is 35 minute walk away.  I prefer getting food from the markets but other items mostly just come from Big C since I don’t know where to get things yet like fans, dishes, sheets and things like that.  The school has a 25 meter length pool open Monday-Saturday so I enjoying swimming there sometimes.  Karaoke is a very popular thing to do here.  There are rooms everywhere that you and your friends can rent out and karaoke in private.  It’s a lot of fun to do.    

New update on my house:  A third roommate has arrived and moved in.  Therefore we have turned the downstairs living room into my room.  Now our house is cozy but still plenty of space.  Our food and dishes now live on the TV stand shelf which came with the house.  It’s kind of funny but actually works great.  The school is still getting new foreign teachers.  So far 3 have quit this year and 6 new teachers have arrived after I came on May 7^th.  The total number of foreign teachers is 19.  I think we are still waiting for 3 more teachers to arrive.  The goal is to have 3-4 teachers per grade.  The school is a public primary school with Kindergarten to 6^th grade.  The EP (English Program) just started this year and only exsits in three classes )kindergarten 1, kindergarten 2 and 1^st grade.  These kids get a foreign teacher all day every day and had to pay extra for this luxury.  The others have a foreign teacher 2-3 times a week for 50 minute classes.

Oh Thai Nicknames :)

I have officially learned all my students’ nicknames.  Here in Thailand everyone has long complicated names so everyone has a nickname that is quite different from their real name and may have nothing to do with their actual name.  People’s nicknames are usually in English.  Thai people are very confused that I do not have a nickname.   

The name Sonya is used here in Thailand so everyone can pronounce it but they add emphasis on the -ya and the draw out the -son so it sounds a little funny to me sometimes.  There are people names Pie, Air, Cake, Jackpot anything you can think of.  I enjoy having such fun names like that.  Why not name your child after your favorite dessert.