Festivals and Suphan

Hello, Hello!

Cyrus and I have been back to the grind ever since we got back from our two week winter break.  This means our weekends are limited to hanging around Suphan, and finalizing our lesson plans for the end of the year.  We don't have any big adventures or trips to write about, but I hope these snapshots of "Suphan Life" will be entertaining enough...

Thai people love festivals.  It seems like they have one every other weekend. The first couple festivals we went to were fun and exciting, but I feel that once you've seen one, you've seen them all.  Every Thai festival includes the following things: stupid carnival games (almost always involving popping a balloon), vendors selling anything and everything including $2 watches, used shoes, t-shirts with bad English on them, colored contacts, car cleaner, and stalls and stalls and stalls of meat on a stick.

You can also buy bunnies in dresses if you want...

And sometimes there are elephants...

This is a picture of one of our favorite people in Suphan (the woman on the left).  She is fondly known by all of the Western teachers as "Pad Thai Lady", but her real name is Mon.  Her restaurant doubles as the family living room, and it's not the cleanest place I've ever been, but her pad thai is "the bomb" and there are hardly any other restaurants that make it.  We go at least 3 times a week, and a meal there sets us back 30 baht....or $1.

This is the night market in town.  It's just a road with a bunch of food vendors.  Some of our favorite things to get are pad see ew, sushi, green curry, spring rolls, mango and sticky rice, and pineapple smoothies.

People will drive right up to the stall on their motorbike, order, then take the food back home in plastic bags.

On the back of a "song tow", a.k.a. a pickup truck with benches that drives people around.  Needless to say there are no seat belts.

This is the road our apartment is off of.  If you walk 100 yards you will get to Pad Thai Lady's restaurant.

We spend a lot of our Sunday mornings at this coffee shop.  A super cool woman named Banya owns it.  She speaks English really well and makes a deeeeelicious Thai iced tea.

We only have three more weeks until our big two month break, so we are just counting down the days. Hope everything is good at home!

Paige and Cyrus

p.s.  Look out for the next post detailing Cyrus' Thai basketball debut....

Sports and Sukhothai

Being the lucky ducks that we are, Cyrus and I got a 2 week break from school.  They told us it was something about a sports week and midterms at school.  All we know is that we don't need to be back until the 17th.  Jackpot! 

After our New Years trip to Bangkok and Koh Sichang, we hung out in Suphan for a few days to get ourselves together.  Our coordinator told us that we should try to go the opening ceremony for the Sports Week, which was at the soccer stadium in town.  Since we were in Suphan, we decided to show some school spirit and go check it out.  We expected it to be a little performance by the school, maybe some songs, and a few track and field races or something.  Well, it went down a little differently.  Sports week is actually called the "OPEC Games" and schools from all over Thailand come to compete in a week long tournament of all different sports.  The opening ceremony was seriously like watching the Olympics.  We saw first class marching bands, choreographed dances with hundreds of kids, fireworks, the lighting of the torch, and the procession of all the different school teams.  And we are talking about elementary to high school kids...in public schools.  For a seemingly poor country, they know how to celebrate sports. 

Students from our school performing:

During the procession of the schools:

The lighting of the torch!

After being in Suphan for a few days, we packed our bags for Sukhothai.  It's about 6 hours north of Bangkok and is known for it's ancient ruins from the kingdom of Siam, and fun fact: it's also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The ruins were built around the 1200s and I'm not too well informed on the history, but they were really beautiful.  It was around the time when Theravada Buddhism became the official religion of Thailand, so there were a lot of huge statues of Buddha.  Obviously I'm not Buddhist, but there's something about the statues that makes you feel relaxed and kind of spiritual.

  

The ruins are contained in the Sukhothai Historical park, which covers a pretty big area.  We rented bikes to ride around to all the different temples, and because the complex is so big there were a lot of times when we were the only people at a site, which made it a lot more authentic.  Also, please note the artistry that went into taking some of these pics.

If only we were as good at using the camera timer as my mom is....

Just cruising...

A friend of Cyrus' from Kalamazoo teaches in Taiwan, and is coming to visit Thailand this week.  So we'll spend the rest of our break hanging out with him and his girlfriend in Bangkok and showing them around Suphan.

Paige and Cyrus

Happy New Year!

Happy belated New Year to everyone! We had a whirlwind weekend to bring in 2012, consisting of rooftop parties, last minute destinations, island ferries, motorbikes, and too much whiskey.

For New Years Eve, a group of us met in Bangkok to celebrate.  It's funny how jaded we get by being here; to us Bangkok is just an hour's ride away and no big deal, but a year ago, Bangkok sounded so foreign and exotic.  We had to keep reminding ourselves where we were and to appreciate the experience. For the countdown, our group decided to go to a rooftop party on the 40th floor of a hotel.  Unfortunately, it was "farang" central ("farang" are what all westerners are referred to in Thailand, a term that we are growing to resent, because we feel we are more than just tourists), but I guess that should have been expected. Regardless, we had a good time and did a proper job ringing in the new year.

It was awesome to be eye level with all of the fireworks.

Our relationship with Bangkok is what you could call "love/hate".  The "real" Bangkok is alive, loud, dirty, beautiful, in-your-face, and exciting.  But the Bangkok that you are most likely to encounter is  glossed over and full of tourists.  We've been here for three months, living and working in Thailand, so it's disheartening to be treated like "just another farang" when we're there.

So after having enough of the city and all of the tourists, our group decided to relocate for the rest of the trip.  We had originally planned to go camping in a national park, but we had a spark of spontaneity and just chose a place out of the guidebook instead.  It felt so adventuresome to literally choose a destination, pick up our backpacks and go to the bus station.  That's the thing we've noticed about Thailand, there's no use in planning or worrying about not planning, because nothing ever goes the way you want it to anyways.  But everything seems to works out in the end.  You many not take the route you intended on, but you ultimately end up where you're supposed to be.

So we headed out to a small island south east of Bangkok, called Koh Sichang.  The island is nothing that would be on a postcard, but it had an authentic atmosphere and we made up the majority of tourists. We spent the trip riding motorbikes, exploring the island, and eating good food.  It was one of those times, when it's not so much where you are, but the people you are with that shape your experience.  Our small, yet wonderful group hailed from all over the US and the world. With people coming from California, Texas, Philly, Manchester, and South Africa, the conversation and company were always of high quality.  How we all ended up together on a small island in the Gulf of Thailand is an amazing thing.

There's a feeling I'm constantly having here that is much rarer to come by at home.  It's hard to put into words, but it's an overwhelming sense that you are exactly where you are meant to be, doing exactly what you are meant to be doing, with the exact people you are meant to be doing it with.  For that brief moment, everything feels right. 

Lots of love,
Paige and Cyrus

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