A friend of mine who is serving in Cameroon has a friend who decided to go to Thailand for a month and she put us in touch. I figured I would offer up some travel tips for the country, places to go, must sees. After getting in touch, I offered to let her and her travel companion stay with me if they wanted, thinking that I’m a bit far off the beaten path and they probably wanted to hit the major sites, as there is a lot to do here in Thailand. I was happily surprised when I got a call on Friday asking to be taken up on the offer.
I met Veronica and Kyle at the bus station in my provincial captial. Initially, they had been dropped a block away and I was able to negotiate over the phone in Thai with a tuk tuk driver. They had spent the last couple of days partying in Bangkok and so this was quite the change of pace for them, but they loved it.
In the Village
We walked around the village on Sunday and met some of the locals, who invited us to sit and drink with them. Which we did. I stopped by my former host family’s house and introduced them to Yaai(grandma). We ate pad see ew that my landlord made and I made some fried veggies and quinoa for dinner. It was a super relaxing day in the village.
On Monday, they came with me to school. I didn’t actually teach last week, the first week back, so this was the first time in the class since school break. I figured the students needed to review and that it would be easy to play games that the students knew already. Kyle and Veronica were excited to play with the kids. At first the students were extremely apprehensive of them. But once they started to play the games with, the kids really warmed up to them and started to constantly hang around us.
On Sunday, when we walked to the school, I pointed out the dta graw court and explained the game to Kyle. Dta graw is like volleyball and soccer combined. There are two teams of three people who volley a rattan ball over a net in three hits or less using any part of their body, except for their hands. He was excited about it and wanted to play. Luckily, the kids were out playing both before and after school and he got to join in after school, which delighted the boys and the spectators.
Thai Festival
That evening, there happened to be a festival going on in Bua Yai which my co-teacher Ning took us to. They got a taste of what Thai festivals are like, with everything you could think of being sold and food everywhere. Eating pad thai on the street and drinking out of a coconut were two things that they wanted to do while in Thailand and they got to experience that at the festival, which was a lot of fun.
For me the best part about having visitors was being able to see my village through new eyes again, to see how beautiful my village is, to see the students get excited about English and to share Thai culture and all of its quirks with someone new. They headed off to Chiang Rai this afternoon, but I will probably have some more visitors soon which will be more excitement and definitely keeps things fresh for me here.
Christine November 18, 2013
Of course, Emilio. One of the things I like to do is paint postcards of the pictures I’ve taken here and I would be happy to send one your way. I love that other people are also interested in postage and mail.
Have a great day and keep an eye out for a postcard. 🙂