Field Trip with BWS

Hi!

So, I figure that it's about time I uploaded the photos and stories from my recent trip with Bunyawat. In brief, I took a trip with about 10 teachers and 120 students and we headed out on a sightseeing tour of south-central Thailand for five days.

Day 1 - We arrived at school in the afternoon immediately following finals. I spent the morning grading finals and imputing grades and then left school to go home, pack and get my hair cut before meeting the students at school. We climbed aboard three tour busses and were off. The teachers were mostly in the lower level of the bus (the buses have an upper level where most of the seats are and a lower, more private level. The students were upstairs and the teachers were downstairs (for the most part...there were three teachers upstairs). As soon as the bus left, the men downstairs started to drink. It was as much of a vacation for them as the students and that continued the entire trip. I amused myself by chatting with the students and teachers, watching Palmy (a Thai singer) in concert on the TV, reading and otherwise trying to pass the time. We stopped about every two hours for bathroom breaks and such so it was hard to get much sleep.

Day 2 - We arrived at our destination at 4:00 am and went straight to the market to by breakfast before heading to the train station to catch the train. Our destination, I should mention, was Kanchanaburi - home to the famous Death Railway and Bridge over the River Kwai. On our way to the train station we passed several allied cemeteries from World War II. The railroad was built by the Japanese during WWII as a means to connect Bangkok to Burma and southern China. It was mostly built by allied prisoners of war and Thai and Burmese conscripted labors. The railway crosses some very difficult terrain and was difficult to complete and was consistently a target of attack by allied bombers. It took many years to complete and it's said that it cost one life for every railroad tie. So, after a little history lesson we boarded the train and headed off to cross the bridge. The bridge is just outside the city and is surprisingly hard to see from the train. Any attempt to get a picture was foiled, but we did cross it. The ride was wonderful. Since we had boarded the train at about 6 am, we were greeted with the sunrise over the mountains and through the fog. It was really beautiful and made getting up so early worthwhile. The ride was pretty standard at first. We crossed through many rice and sugarcane fields but as we wound up into the mountains it became clear why this railroad was so difficult to build. With steep mountainsides on one side and a river on the other, the railroad was perched up on elevated tracks right up against the cliffs. You could almost reach out and touch them. We wound up into the mountains and got off at the Waterfall station but then ran into bus problems and had to wait for a replacement bus...we ended up scratching the waterfall in order to save time and headed off to Muang Singh Historic Park. This is an old city that now consists of ruins scattered in a beautiful part. It resembled Ayudhaya, but possessed its own unique quality. It was much smaller, but was still wonderful to visit. Here I spent most of my time taking photos of the students and acting as their photographer as they toured the small city. Despite the overnight bus ride everyone was very energetic and excited to be on vacation and away from school and we enjoyed the opportunity to spend time together outside of the class and joke around a bit. After the park we headed to a temple in the neighboring province and continued our southward journey. The two highlights of this temple were a floating nun and a cave. As I translated the itinerary prior to leaving I had translated an attraction as the floating nun and wasn't sure what that meant. Even P' Aoy in the EP office didn't understand exactly what it was talking about. But sure enough, it there was a floating nun. At this temple there is a nun who is very overweight who climbs into a pool of water and floats on the surface and does a sort of meditation while floating in this pool. They charged 10 baht a person to come sit in the little arena around the pool and watch this nun float for a few minutes. It was a bit strange, but everyone seemed to enjoy it. I guess it even made it onto a TV program at some point. The cave was a much better sell in my book and was a pretty typical cave with the entrance filled with Buddhist icons and symbols. It lead back into several small chambers which then after a climb up a ladder through the exit put you just outside of where you entered. After enjoying those two sites and a few popsicles we headed off to see a very large chedi. The chedi is the center-point for the temples and is a large bell-shaped structure which houses Buddha images or relics underneath. Typically people will circumambulate the chedi three times during their visit to the temple. This chedi was enormous. They are typically striking and a famous one outside Chiang Mai is covered in gold, however this one was simply huge and dominated the temple. It's being huge made walking around it a bit more challenging, but there were many people do so. After a quick stop there we headed into our last province of the day and stopped at a market to grab dinner before heading to the hotel. Upon arriving, I showered and crashed into bed watching Back to the Future II on TV. After that was finished I headed over to Laura and Dan's room (Laura is another foreign teacher from Bunyawat and Dan is her brother who came to visit) were we ate sticky rice and mango (amazing!) and drank a few beers while watching the Fantastic Four. It was definitely summer vacation at that point it is was just what the doctor ordered after a long semester and a long day.

Day 3 - We woke up early and hit the buffet that came with the room and gorged ourselves preparing for the long day ahead. The first stop on the tour for the day was the floating market. Now, when I first found out about this I was thrilled. I've wanted to go to these floating markets for a while now thinking that they would be really neat. I wasn't wrong. These are pretty much markets along a system of canals where the shoppers are in boats floating along the canals and the stores are perched alongside the canal or on other boats in the canal. It literally is a floating market. It was wonderful to float through the market shop from a boat...it puts a whole new perspective on shopping. That was thoroughly enjoyable and after that we stopped in a little shop and had the famous old-fashioned coffee and "boat noodles". Climbing back on the bus we headed toward the beach and our ultimate destination of Cha Am. We stopped for lunch at a little beachside market which had a wide assortment of seafood. I ate my fill of squid, shrimp and these little seashell sea critters of some sort. This market was named after them and everyone was eating them so it seemed appropriate. And they were tasty (which isn't always the case in situations such as these). After that we headed to Cha Am where we checked into our bungalow and were given the afternoon/evening to play in ocean and do what ever we pleased - most all headed straight to the beach. We played in the water and the sand and did all your normal beach activities. One unique feature of Cha Am is the banana boats they have just off shore. You hope onto a long air-filled tube which is pulled by a jet ski and as it careens through the water you cling to your little tube and hope you don't fall off (which you do...it's inevitable). After falling off, you climb right back on and do it again. It's wonderful fun and since the tubes hold 5-7 people it's a great thing for groups of friends to do. I was sought out to be the anchor on the back and went for a ride with several students. It was funny because most people in Thailand (especially the north) can't swim. I asked the students before we left and they all said that they had done it before and could swim but as soon as we fell off they were clinging to me and asking me to help them back to the raft. I was definitely sore after several trips on the banana boats. After that excursion we showered and grabbed a seafood dinner at a little restaurant on the beach and called it a night after sipping a few beers on the porch. Another long day, but it was great to be back on the beach again.

Day 4 - Again waking up early we headed off to a large statue of a monk. Much like the chedi, it dominated the surrounding landscape and was very imposing. It appeared like the monk's eyes would follow you as you approached. Other than looking at this imposing statue and paying your respects, there wasn't much to do so we meandered back to the bus and bought some amazing guavas. They take the guava and soak it in sugar syrup and it makes the guava so tasty. Guavas are good to begin with, but add a green apple or strawberry flavored syrup and it's amazing. So we snacked on that for a while as we waited for the rest of the students to return. From there we headed to an aquarium on the ocean. It was a neat aquarium and provided some interesting information about southern Thailand, but other than that it was your basic aquarium. Our last stop of the day was at a border town market. The border towns near Burma are known for their cheap goods and there are several in the north that I've been to and those were actually much better than this one. It was a very small market and mostly had gems and the like so there wasn't much to do there. The neat thing about the market is that it is located at the narrowest point in Thailand. Thailand gets real narrow there as it moves down the Isthmus of Kra and some of that territory is shared with Burma and so at this point, Thailand was at its narrowest. There was a sign. It was neat, but that's just me. We headed back to Cha Am for another afternoon on the beach and after our full on afternoon the other day, this experience was much more relaxed and laid back. We had dinner on the beach and I got more seafood...I'm falling in love with fresh squid and crabs. What'll I do once I'm back in landlocked Colorado? Then we called it a night.

Day 5 - Our last day was filled with a trip north to Bangkok and a day at Dream World (an amusement park in BKK). We drove for about five hours in the morning and arrived at Dream World at about lunch time. After a quick lunch, we hit the park running. I had been to Dream World before when I came to BKK with the Project Citizen group and Yui and so it was neat to go back and the thrill wasn't lost. We hit Snow Land again and that was a blast as we got in several snowball fights with different groups of students. In Snow Land, I was taking lots of pictures and the students wanted their pictures with me and so we were taking lots of pictures. It appeared that several other people thought that I just a nice guy and was taking pictures with just anyone (since they didn't realize that I was these students' teacher) and asked to take pictures with me. For a moment, it seemed like I was more popular than the reindeer. Oh boy. But after a few more snowball fights and a trip down the little sledding hill we moved on to the Grand Canyon Adventure and then on to the roller coaster. We would join up with different groups of students as we say them and hit different rides with them which were fun. After riding most of the rides, we tried our hand at the carnival games. I really have never tried any of those and it was fun to try, but like I thought it's a waste of money and addicting as you think it'll be easy, but always alludes you. We then headed back to the bus and drove to Future Park. Future Park is just a shopping center near Dream World and on the way back to Lampang and so we stopped there for a few hours for dinner and to kill time so we didn't arrive back in Lampang in the middle of the night. We ate dinner and did a little shopping and then headed back to the bus. At this point, I split off from the group. I headed into BKK to get a guesthouse and take the GRE the next day. I grabbed a cab and called it a night once I arrived and then took the GRE on Wednesday and grabbed a bus back to Lampang on Thursday.

Oh, funny story. I was in line to buy my ticket to go back to Lampang and there was a mom and her daughters in front of me. They were buying a ticket for the mom to go back to Lampang since she had come down to visit her daughters who were studying in Bangkok. While we were standing in line, they were talking about me and when I bought my ticket they told the person to sit me next to their mom. I had a few minutes to kill and then wandered to the bus and sure enough I was sitting next to the mom. I sat down and she started a conversation and eventually told me that her daughter told her to ask for my phone number. I gave it to her and she called her daughter and told her and then we proceeded to have a conversation while on the bus using her mom's cell phone. The whole thing was entirely innocent - she just wanted to talk to a foreigner and all that but it was nonetheless funny and weird for me. I've still not gotten used to all the attention that I get here. It started in Phrae with the parade and continues. It's just not something that happened back in the US.

Anyway, I'll wrap up that novel and put in the link for pictures here. So, if you want to check out picture click on the pictures and it'll take you to the website. Enjoy!
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Thanks for reading!

Ry