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.
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