An Odyssey: Oh the places I've gone.

As I sit in a hammock outside our bungalow, I'm going to tell you about last week. Let me first explain this hammock-bungalow situation. A couple weeks ago, Sasha (a volunteer from Boston), was talking about how she was going to travel to Pai after she was finished at the foundation, but she had no one to go with. She turned to me and said, "You should try to take a week off from volunteering to come with me. I think you would really like it." Pai is notorious for being a hippie, laid back sort of town. It has a variety of restaurants including Greek, Israeli, Yummanese (I still don't know what kind of food this actually is), Indian, Organic, Vegetarian, and Vegan food. . Once I finish at the foundation, my roommate and I are flying straight back to Bangkok so I knew this was my only opportunity to see more of the north. I talked to a couple of the staff member about leaving and now I'm sitting in a hammock in Pai. The names of stores and restaurants here are hilarious. Some of the ones I've seen are "You are Ting Tong," "Witching Well," and "Don't Cry". I couldn't imagine a better place to spend my official one-month mark in Thailand. That's right ya'll, I've been here for a whole month.

We're going white water rafting tomorrow and I'm not taking my camera, but I'll make sure to let you know how it goes. We have many activities planned while we're here, but I'll get to that another time. For now, I want to share our most recent adventure to the Golden Triangle. The Golden Triangle is about two hours north of Chaing Rai and it's where Burma, Laos, and Thailand meet. Back in the day, it was also where the country's supply of opium was smuggled in. Fun Fact. Sasha, Lauren (another volunteer), and I decided to make the adventure up there last weekend so we hopped on a non air-conditioned bus with all the locals and headed up to Mai Sai. From the bus station in Mai Sai we had to catch a taxi into town and from there we had to take another taxi up to the Golden Triangle. The taxi from the center of Mai Sai to the Golden Triangle was a tourist taxi and since we've had trouble before with taxis picking us up (see my first post about the ambulance), we asked this lady about seven times when she was going to be back up to the Golden Triangle to take us back down. She repeated over and over that she comes up every thirty minutes. We were against the clock because the last bus from Mai Sai to Chiang Rai leaves at six. We see where the countries meet at the river, hang out with a giant Buddha and take some fun tourist pictures, hiked up to a temple, and then went back down to meet our taxi lady. Three thirty rolls around, then four, and she’s nowhere to be seen. By this time we’re stressing out because we have to make that last bus. All the other tourists up at the Golden Triangle came with tourist agencies so catching a ride with them was out of the question. We found a taxi service guy and he told us it cost 600 baht ($20) to get a ride down. It was blatantly obvious he was ripping us off because we only paid 50 baht ($1.75) each to ride up. None of us wanted to pay even though it was only about $8 dollar each. We were less mad about the money and more upset that he was charging us so much based on the fact we’re tourists. From his broken English I gathered he knew the taxi we took and informed us she wasn’t coming back. It seems that they scam together; she takes tourists up for a low price and then doesn’t pick them back up so they’re forced to pay a ridiculous amount to return and they share the profit. We tried to hitch hike for about fifteen minutes but we found out the thumb out hitch hiking sign isn’t universal, in case you’re wondering. After a little stress and frustration we paid the 600 baht and were just happy that when you get scammed in Thailand it’s for fewer than ten dollars. We got to the bus station a little before five and got on the five o’clock bus. It was burning hot and by five fifteen we were still sitting on the bus in the bus station. The bus didn’t end up leaving until six o’clock and since it was the last bus of the day, it was beyond packed. I literally had someone sitting on my back for a majority of the ride. It was quite the adventure.

When I got back from Chiang Rai, one of the volunteers, Delyce (from San Francisco!), was looking at getting a tatoo. She had been planning it out for the last couple years and had a tattoo artist in Chaing Mai draw up the design. There’s a renowned artist in Chiang Rai but his wait list is three months long. She walked into his parlor and asked if there was any way he could fit her in before she left and he said that she could come that night. So I grabbed my camera and took photos of her momentous night. The tattoo is in Thai script and it reads, “Love is everywhere”.

As far as teaching goes, I had a really awesome week. I taught some of the older Thai staff and the older monks. Most of the Thais learn English through memorization so most of them don’t know their phonics and it’s hard for them to read. One of the volunteers made a phonics sheet to help one of the Thai housekeepers, Moey, with pronunciation and phonics. Moey caught on really fast and by the end of the lesson she was finding words in a book we had and was sounding them out. It was definitely one of my highlights from the week. Another fun teaching moment was when I taught the older monks (20-25 year olds). We mostly went over grammar since they’re English is pretty advanced. Near the end of the lesson we played a game and most of the time it’s just team one against team two. If the students seem like they’re into the lesson we’ll have them name their team and it’s always hilarious what they come up with. The monk’s game was “Price Tags” against “Fried Eggs”.

We’re leaving Pai in about an hour and it’s been a great trip. I’ll tell you all about it in my next post.