Chiang Mai Elephants and Markets

We started on our way to Chiang Mai on the old train at seven at night and arrived at four in the morning. I thought it was going to be a seven hour train ride and it ended up being nine, the train was cold, gross (the trains in Thailand are not as nice as other countries, they are not very sanitary), and the people selling food in the middle are obnoxious. A good thing is we made a friend who is a spaniard and we met a Canadian in the hostel.When we got off the train we got a tuk-tuk and headed to our hostel, finding out that we didn't have a room that night so we ended up sleeping on wood pallets with some thin pillows for a couple hours in the front room.

Panda Tour (the elephant sanctuary) picked us up from our hostel at 8:30. The elephants were an hour away from our hostel. When we were getting close there were a lot of trees and elephants that were roaming around. When we arrived we began right away, we put on denim clothing (not the most flattering outfits ever). We also made a friend who was Italian!

First we had our training, we learned the commands and how to feed an elephant while standing. We fed them whole bananas, not even peeled!

Second, we got on the elephant learned and said all of the commands and fed them, while on top of the elephant. Also while saying the commands you use a bamboo stick and scratch them in a certain area so they go the right direction. After that we were finished with training and we started our ride around the area.

Third, we finally got to ride them. We walked into a river, seen the other elephants, swam with the elephant, washed the elephant, and much more! At one point our elephant started to sprint down a hill  and I needed to hold on for my life. :O :P :) When we were done we needed to get off, and to get off you slide off the front of the elephant or the elephant walks up to high land and you step off.

After the elephants we went to the night markets, I enjoyed them and I got pretty good at bargaining! For the first time bargaining I got elephant pants and Birkenstocks. The elephant pants started at 200 baht and we got them down to 110 baht (about three american dollars). The Birkenstocks ended up being nine american dollars. Definitley going back again to bargain some more items!

Chat Trakan Waterfall

A couple weekends ago was our first vacation to Namtok Chat Trakan National Park near the city of Phitsanulok. We went there to see waterfalls, we saw six of the seven waterfalls!

Our journey begins for our vacation the Friday night, we were going to the waterfalls on Saturday. We dropped our items off at our hotel and we went to Central Plaza (a mall in Phitsanulok), we found out they were closed after we were there so we went to McDonalds instead and went back to our hotel right after. We were going to be taking a lot of taxi's and tuk-tuks this weekend.

This is a tuk-tuk.

On Saturday we woke up headed to the bus station, got on a bus that was three hours long, and we were on our way to the waterfall. We were expecting a two hour bus ride, so when it ended up being three hours we didn't know when to get off. We got off at a bigger bus station even though we were not there yet, we decided we didn't know where we were going and we were going to head back, but when we stepped off the bus everyone knew where we were going and told us to get back on, telling us and pointing to the bus "Chat Trakan, Chat Trakan!" At least we knew that we were going the right way, when we arrived at the Chat Trakan bus stop we got off and a tuk-tuk driver told us to get in, not even questioning him where he was taking us we got in. He ended up taking us to the National Park though! Yay!!! We made it after a three hour bus ride, a couple taxi's, and many tuk-tuks later and a lot more to go!

We were so excited to see the waterfalls! The hike was straight up, but it was worth it!

These are three out of six waterfalls we saw!

We walked underneath this waterfall, it was so fun!

First Views of Thailand

I left for Thailand on January 7th, 2015 at 8:48am. I met my group at the airport, we said our goodbyes to our families, and we went on our way. We arrived in Thailand about 30 hours later and we arrived in our home city (Phichit) about 5 hours after that, it ended up being a total of about 35 hours of traveling time.

There were three flights total, the first flight was from Salt Lake City, Utah to San Francisco, California. This flight was only two hours long! Our next flight was San Francisco, California to Tokyo, Japan. This flight was a total of 10 hours long, on the planes they feed you a lot more then someone expects, they fed us two meals and a snack that was almost as big as a meal with lots of beverages, but the plane food tasted awful and fills you up. Our third flight was from Tokyo, Japan to Bangkok, Thailand! This whole plane flight I was motion sick and dehydrated, so I didn't eat anything for hours. We arrived in the airport and I still wasn't feeling good, so while my group grabbed my luggage I was sitting against the wall of the airport. While I was sitting there a group of Thai's were passing me and giving me a weird look because I was sitting on the ground and I am American...

After we finally arrived in our city it was January 9th at 5:30 in the morning so all of us haven't gotten very much sleep in awhile. We then needed to adjust to Thailand time which is 14 hours ahead of Utah!

We got settled in our rooms which are next to the school; we decided our rooms are Hagrid's hut because we teach at a school that was designed off of Hogwarts. That day we met the main coordinators of the school, Tang and Ake!

Right outside most places we put our shoes by the door when we go inside, but some stores and restaurants we do wear our shoes inside. This is where our rooms, kitchen, and bathroom are.

The city we live in is small compared to other cities in Thailand so there are not very many Americans. Close to none, other than us, actually. People here are very nice, so when we drive or bike around the city they love seeing us! Thailand is known as the land of smiles :D :), everyone is always smiling and waving to us! When we do see them we say "sa-wad-dee-ka," put are hands together, and bow our heads, that means hello or sometimes they know some English and they think it is so funny to say hello to us in English! :)

When we bike around the city we see a ton of stray dogs, every block there is at least two dogs laying on the ground or walking around the area. A lot of the dogs are also the same breed, which is weird. Quote from another person in my group, we were talking about how many people were in the city of Phichit and we thought Ake said "There are 500 people in Phichit," and then someone said "500 people, more like 500 dogs!" He made a mistake and corrected himself that there are actually 500,000 people in this city, there is quite a difference. :P

Street food is everywhere! The first street food we had were spring rolls and roti. The spring rolls we had were spicy, but when we were eating them the first two I had I could tell they were spicy, but not to bad. The third spring roll I had was really spicy because it was at the bottom of the bag and it got covered in a lot of sauce, it burnt my mouth and that is when I realized how spicy some Thai food was going to be. The other food we had was roti, so far we have described roti as a thicker crunchy crepe, they are so good! :D

Thai drivers are courteous bad drivers, someone told us there are driving rules here in Thailand but no one follows them, when Gop (A driver in Thailand that picked us up from the airport) or Ake was driving us it was scary, but they are such nice drivers. Thai's don't stay in the lines, they drive all different speed limits, pull off in random places, etc. They have no road rage, if they were to get in a car crash they would never get mad at each other.

When Ake was driving us back to our school everyone needed to use the bathroom, so when he went fast going over bumps he heard us all say "awhhh" then we hear him in the front say "awhahaha, sorry, haha" in a quiet English Thai accent voice

I have enjoyed it here in Thailand so far! :D