It’s been a few days since I got back from my second trip, the last trip I had with my group of exchange students. The trip was 10 days long and I enjoyed every second!
On the 4th of April I stayed at my YEO’s house in Nakhon Pathom to be closer to the train station because I needed to be at the train station at 8 AM on the morning of the 5th. I always have the best time when I go to her house! Her family is so amazing and her little nephew is just the cutest little thing ever so I love spending time at their house.
On the morning of the 5th I got the news in typical Thai style that we were not meeting at the train station but now meeting at the temple because we are taking a van and not the train! We got there took some group photos and then we left for Bangkok. Then we got dropped off at the Train station in Bangkok and I don’t know if the bus driver thought we could not speak Thai or he thought we knew where to go from there but we all just kind of stood there for 20 min looking around and laughing because we had no clue what to do. Finally we had a brainwave to just call the trip organiser and he just told us to go inside and look around we will see people we know. So yeah we stood outside confused and laughing when all we needed to do was go inside pure genius right :p . we got inside met up with more of our friends and then went to buy ice-cream for breakfast because that has become a Bangkok tradition for us. Then we had the day free to walk around in Bangkok. After taking 30 min to convince our Rotex babysitters that we would be fine going to the other side of Bangkok on our own I became the tour guide because I live in Bangkok and I took my friends to a great little Danish restaurant I found a while ago. When we got there the Danish people in our group freaked out because they saw Danish people and her Danish and read Danish and ordered Danish food for all of us, when the food came they made us all wait until everybody had food and then explained how we should eat it! We sat there for 3 hours just talking and eating and laughing and catching up. Simple memories like that that I will always remember and cherish. After that we went to the big mall and looked at very nice cars followed by coffee from Starbucks. We then went back to the train station and waited for our bus to come. We got into the bus and started watching movies because we had a 14 hour drive.
The next morning we arrived in ChiangMai, tired, dirty and excited. We took a quick shower and got dressed and got put into our groups, we would stay in those groups for the rest of the trip. Then we were off to a temple on a hill with 306 stairs to the entrance and we walked 3 times around the temple for good luck and almost died of heat. And if we didn’t die of heat we would of died of laughter because Frederik was saying the most horrible things in broken Spanish he had learnt on the bus and telling people he was wishing them good luck in his language, priceless. After that we went to a umbrella making place where they make the umbrella from trees. They use the wood for the handle and mash up the roots and leaves to make a type of paper and then paint on it. We each got a umbrella and got to paint it ourselves in a competition to see who could make the best one.
Right before dinner I squeezed in a few minutes in-between getting dressed and doing my hair to call my baby sister who turned 15!! She was sick and down and was not nice at all! But at least I got to talk to her. We went to dinner at a traditional northern Thailand restaurant with great food and a traditional dancing show. After dinner we had free time to walk around the city and go to the night markets. Its amazing to me how we hardly slept at all the previous night but we all had energy o walk around night markets at 11 PM. We met some people from other Rotary districts and spent some time with them then went back to the hotel and went to bed!
On the 7th we went to a natural hot spring. The Highest hot spring in Thailand and we got to just sit around with our feet in the hot water. They had like 3 water pools, one for taking pictures with, one for sitting around with your feet in it and one for boiling eggs in. THAT’S HOW HOT THE WATER IS. I thought it was kind of weird and I didn’t like the idea of putting my feed in the bacteria boiler but did it anyway. After 2 of my friends slipped and fell in we decided to get out and eat Roti instead.
–Let me take a minute to explain to everyone why I am getting fat in Thailand, one word ROTI. Its like a thin dough that the stretch out and then form a square with, they make 2 of them and them fry them in sweet oil and then place them of a medium heat pan and put blocks of sweet butter on them and let the butter melt and then sprinkle sugar on followed by condensed milk along with ether chocolate or milo or strawberry or just plain. They then wrap it into cylinder and you eat it… and its like R2… getting fat explained—
After lunch we went to the white temple called Wat Rong Khun. This is the one temple I just needed to see from the time I found out I was coming to Thailand so I was super super excided. When we got there you could see it from afar and I was SOOO excited. After actually seeing it I don’t really know how I feel about it, don’t get me wrong it is so so beautiful and designed perfectly and the details are amazing but it is so dark (weird for a white temple I know) filled with weird and evil images and the inside is covered with paintings of things that need to be taken of the earth before it can be pure and those paintings really upset me. So I was disappointed but it was beautiful none the less. At 4 PM we went to the golden triangle where Thailand-Myanmar-Laos meet all along one river. We were sitting on a little boat doing a tour of the river and we were talking about what would happen if we were taken hostage by one of these dodgy countries and they demanded a ransom from our home countries. I could not stop laughing after they said my country would leave me there. We went to Laos for a few hours to do shopping and then we went to our hotel and had a small orientation with the outbound students telling them about our countries and the do’s and don’ts in our countries. We then had a camp fire and sat around all night talking and singing. It is amazing to me how all of the exchange students only met a few months ago but we all fit together so perfectly and effortlessly and we all just go together so well. I will never in my life be able to explain how amazing it is to have friends like this. Friends that I so easily would never of had because we are all from different countries but I simply cannot imagine my life without them in it now.
On the 8th we went to Mae Sai the most northern tip of Thailand and then crossed into Myanmar for a few hours of shopping. Once again I love my friends so much. We didn’t really buy anything we just walked around in and out of shops singing and making jokes and playing with things in the shops and there is never a dull moment and I would not want it any other way. At lunch we decided to provide the restaurant with some exchange student entertainment and performed the cup song with glass cups and about 8 people doing the cups, 4 people singing and the rest clapping. Needless to say we attracted a crowd but I will never ever forget that moment!
In the afternoon we visited an orange plantation and me and Miri found a little baby rat and named him Albert. We walked around the orange plantation for a while and then took a lot of crazy pictures and then left for our home stay.
Let me just tell you that we spent many many many hours in vans on this tour and I had the good/bad fortune (im not so sure witch one) of being in a van full of guys the whole trip… The conversations I became a part of on this trip will forever be stuck in my brain and believe it or not I had the most amazing time and not a moment went by without us laughing about something.
I will do the next part of the trip in my next blog post 🙂
