Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! We hope everyone is happy and healthy.  Thought we would share our holiday experiences with you all, since it was definitely an experience...

For some reason, Thai people love Christmas.  The country is over 90% Buddhist, but I think they just like any excuse to celebrate so they embrace the "holiday spirit". Although, they don't have it all quite down yet...I was playing Jeopardy with my kids, and for the Christmas category I asked where Santa lives.  They shouted out England, Canada, Alaska, and everywhere in between, but only 1 student knew it was the north pole.

Our school had a big assembly in the morning, and they made us wear santa hats and sing "Jingle Bells" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" in front of everyone (because that's obviously what they thought we would want to do on Christmas!).  It turned out to be really fun, and we got to walk around the courtyard and throw out candy to all the kids.

We also go to see a special performance by Santa's elves, at least I think that's what they were supposed be. See the picture below.  It was hilarious, and we couldn't stop laughing.  They went out into the middle of the courtyard and did a little choreographed dance.  We loved it.

For Christmas Eve, Cyrus and I just had our own little celebration in our apartments. First, we started out with a gourmet appetizer plate made up of oreos and multi-grain sour cream and onion pringles.  If that doesn't say the holiday season, then I don't know what does! Yummmm.

 

Then we opened presents.  Guess which one Cyrus wrapped....

For dinner, we attempted to cook a home style meal, which actually turned out pretty legitimate.  We made pasta in our rice cooker, with salad, rolls, and baked potatoes.  

It definitely wasn't the Christmas we were used to, but it was fun and something that we probably won't ever do again!  Next week we are heading to Bangkok for New Year's Eve, which should be a fun time.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays,
Paige and Cyrus

Kanchanaburi

Hello world! My name is Cyrus and this is pretty much my first blog post (the last one didn't really count). Paige has been writing all the other ones but I promised her that I would write this one. I included a few random links that I thought were funny or somewhat related to what I'm talking about. Feel free to click on them or don't if you don't want. Well, here it goes...

This past weekend Paige and I decided to finally take a weekend for ourselves to kind of relax and explore Thailand without a group of 20 other Americans by our sides. We ended up going to Kanchanaburi, which if you're not familiar with, is where the famed Bridge Over the River Kwai (actually pronounced like square without the s) is located. We had another three day weekend for Constitution Day and Kanchanaburi is only two hours away so it was a pretty easy trip for us to make.

The first day we were there, we jumped on a bus and drove for an hour and a half to a nearby national park. The park was called Erawan and is a hiking trail with waterfall after waterfall. This is a big tourist spot which was obvious to see because of the number of people we saw in their speedo's, 2-sizes-too-small bikini's, beer belly's and flip-flops. The hike was actually pretty tough which made it even more amazing that the Europeans were able to get all the way up the trail in their flip-flops. But the hike consists of seven different "tiers" with a showcased waterfall on each tier. Some of the waterfalls that we saw were amazing. You would think that you were at the showcased waterfall and would hike 100 more meters only to realize you were then on the proper level and saw a whole new waterfall.

So many dirty people counting this as their bath for the week...

 

It took us about two hours to get all the way up to the seventh level (video of us sitting on the top level) and we finally decided to jump into one of the pools of water. The craziest thing about seeing all of the waterfalls was just how clear the water was through the whole hike. You could literally see the bottom of the river we were hiking next to the whole time. However, when we did finally jump in we were quickly surprised by the amount of fish swimming. Not only were they swimming right next to you but as soon as you get in they start swarming your feet and legs and eating the dead skin off of you. It is a strange, strange feeling and we ran out of the water pretty quickly and had no desires to get back in. The hike down was a lot quicker and only took us about a half hour. After that we jumped back on the bus and went back to our hotel.

 

Later that night we went down to the market and got our shopping on. We both finally splurged and bought some clothes but the highlight of our night was walking back to the hotel. As we were walking down the street a man stopped us and told us to look up in the sky. It was a "black moon" as he called it but we realized that we had already missed out on half of a lunar eclipse and hadn't even noticed it. It was the last one until 2014 so it was pretty cool that we got to see it while we were here.

Sunday morning we woke up and decided to finally make our obligatory trip to the Bridge Over the River Kwai that we had heard so much about. Seeing the bridge was pretty anti-climatic. It's one of those things where seeing the bridge isn't actually that cool but knowing the history behind it makes it a lot more interesting and relevant. We walked across the whole thing and even did a little march while singing the song from the movie. Overall it was a good experience and we can now check that off the Thailand list.

Most of the original bridge was destroyed during the war, but the wood used on the edges of the bridge was salvaged.

On our way back from the bridge there was a little market that we walked by. We stopped to look and noticed that there was a spokesperson from the nearby zoo who had a baby leopard in a cage and was taking donations for the zoo. We gave a donation and Paige was able to hold and feed the leopard for a few minutes. She loved it and got mad that I only took one picture (who knew you needed more than one picture of something) but here is a video of it. And don't worry I will be looking for jobs as a narrator after we get back.

Now we are back to school and no more long weekends until our New Years break. We are just going to be hanging around Suphanburi enjoying living the dream here for a while to relax and catch up a little bit on sleep that we've been missing out on the past couple weekends and throughout the school weeks. Hope my post wasn't too long and boring and maybe I'll start writing a few more of them from now on. Hope everything is going well back home for everyone!

And as always GO LIONS! Let's get that last wilcard spot!

Love,

Cyrus, Paige and the baby leopard.

PS. I don't think the Packers need any more luck, they have everything locked up already.

Koh Chang

After six weeks of being in Thailand, it’s finally happened.  It hit me suddenly and without warning, not like the gradual creep that I had expected.  But I’m ready to admit now that I’m in love, and I don’t care who knows it.  I’ve fallen in love with this country and I don’t think there’s any turning back…

This Monday was the King’s Birthday, and a national holiday, so we got our first three-day weekend.  We decided to pack our bags and head to the beach. From Suphan, we took a van to Bangkok, and then caught another van to Trat (after getting McDonald’s first of course).  From Trat, we took a truck ride to the pier, then a ferry ride to the island of Koh Chang.  It took about 8-9 hours total, but after the first view of the island, the long ride was all worth it.  Koh Chang (meaning “Elephant Island”) is about 20 km long and is mostly mountains and jungle.  It’s starting to become a popular tourist spot, but not quite as bad as some of the better known islands.

Our hotel was called Blue Lagoon, and it was made up of one-room bungalows on the bank of a little inlet from the ocean.  It had a lot of character and was about 200 m from the beach (plus it was only $20 a night).  We walked to the beach when we first got there, and the only thing everyone kept saying was, “this just can’t be fair”.  It was unreal how pretty the beach was.  You could see other islands in the distance, and looking back towards land all you noticed were the jungle covered mountains.  We knew already that it was going to be a big struggle leaving the island to go home.  Words can’t describe the feeling of pure bliss we had as we took in the surroundings. Here's a video of the beach: Beach Video

A big group of our friends from orientation met up on the island as well, so we had a lot of people to hang out with. The first day was spent lounging on the beach and walking into town for food (we probably had about 10 mango/banana smoothies in 3 days).  And on Sunday, we learned a little more about why it is called Elephant Island.  There is an elephant sanctuary in Koh Chang, so we got to ride elephants through the jungle!  It was really crazy and really awesome.  They are so smart, and such big animals, it was an unforgettable experience. 

After the elephants, we rented motorbikes and drove down the coast to some other towns.  The roads were pretty steep and winding, but thankfully Cyrus had a lot of scooter experience from home, so he was pretty much an expert!  We had one minor incident, but I survived with only a scraped knee. Don’t worry mom, we were really careful and were both wearing helmets. 

 This picture is at a lookout spot we found on our motorbike ride:

Unfortunately, we had to leave early on Monday.  I easily could have spent another week there, but it was a good trip.  We had a long ride home, but eventually made it to Suphan and promptly fell asleep.  We have another three-day weekend coming up, so we’ll be heading somewhere new.

Paige, Cyrus, and Elephants