Biking in Phichit

I LOVE biking around Phichit! We bike around everyday, our city is so small so the traffic is not as bad as other cities in Thailand. The most common places we bike to is Tesco (the local grocery store/mall), the open market, the sports park swimming pool, or just random street markets around the city.

These are all the bikes we have! We have six girls and there are six bikes for us and then there are two other teachers who are here for two years and we are only here for four months. There are two bikes that are everyones favorites, the others are fine, but they are not as an easy ride as the two.

Do you see the dog in the photo? They are everywhere!

Well, I brought up dogs, so I said I LOVE biking in Phichit and I definitely do, but there are sometimes reasons I don't like it, here are just a couple reasons.

1. At least one person in our group gets chased or barked at by a stray dog every couple of days. I am trying to learn how not to get chased by them. I have tried not to get chased by them these ways. One: Is don't go biking when the sun is down, they get scarier and more dogs are roaming the streets at that time. Two: Let them go onto the side of the road and bike slowly past them. Three: Be bigger then them and yell "NO" or "STOP" and they will back away.

I tried number two once and it worked the first time, but not the second time.

2. Cars honk at us all the time, for some reason. I think it is just to protect us so they don't hit us, but I hate when people honk at me, also people never honk in Utah, so I have needed to get used to it. When I am walking and a person honks, it makes me jump every time!

3. Trying not to get hit by a car. Seriously... They will hit you if you are trying to cross the street and they don't want to stop.  Even though I have not seen any car accidents here, only one person accident. One of my friends has actually gotten hit by a motorcyclist while riding her bike (he did it on purpose and lost his shoe while at it).

This was near the beginning of our trip here when we needed to wear a jacket to bike around.

Reasons I love biking:

1. I get to see the city, the city is a lot different then in America and it is really cool. There are a lot of street markets everywhere (we don't have street markets in America), and a lot of small shops everywhere that are really close to one another. A lot of the stores have no doors because of how hot it is here, they have a gate as a door or a garage type of door that they keep open all day because they don't use an air conditioner in some places. 

2. EXERCISE! This is the most common way we get exercise here. There are a couple bikes that make us peddle harder so I guess if one of us wants to work harder that day we take that one.

3. I have needed to get used to changing, biking on the left side of the rode, passing people on the right side instead of the left, getting honked at, etc. Also the country right next to Thailand drives like America it is Cambodia.

4. SUNLIGHT! Also warmth and humidity! Biking is our most common transportation so if we want sun, bike somewhere!

5. Everyone is so friendly to us, we pass people and everyone says "hello" to us, even children know how to say hello to us every time we pass them. 

6. Just biking in general and many more reasons!

Phichit Temple

There are many temples around Phichit, but there is one main city temple. We went to this temple on the Thais national holiday for the Monks so they were having a whole celebration at the temple. There were a lot of people there! They were having a speech from a Monk and then all of the Monks in Phichit (maybe) were at the temple.

Right when we got there we got a couple fancy flowers, incense, and a candle. When we got there a lot of people were already sitting down and listening to the Monks speech, but it was about over when we got all of our items. 

When the Monk was done speaking everyone stood up, bowed, and lit there candles. Then started walking around the temple three times (with there candle still lit). When I was walking around with all my items the candle kept dripping and burning me and at one point the the ashes from the incense fell off and burnt me. When we were done walking three times (they walk three times which is part of there meditation practice) we put our incense in some ashes, put our candle in a candle holder, then went inside the temple and put our flowers in a basket. Once we put our flowers away we bowed three times in respect for the three refuges in front of the Phichit Buddha.

Each city has there own Buddha and each day of the week also has there own Buddha. This is my Buddha because of the day of the week I was born.

When we were about to leave the temple with our big group I finally tried a drink in a bag, they have them everywhere, it is convenient to have a drink in a bag, but at the same time not really! While I was holding baby Flynn (Tang's baby) and I was at the Phichit Buddhist temple! It felt like a total Asian moment.

More in Chiang Rai

Another activity we went to in Chiang Rai was a waterfall. It was HUGE! The temperature was actually not blazing hot either, it was actually cool. Chiang Rai is closer to mountains so it makes sense why it is cooler then Phichit, but it felt like there was less humidity too.

The hike to the waterfall was about a mile hike that was down and up hill most of the time. It was nice going on a hike in the mountains! What we were hiking through was a bunch of bamboo and tall trees. It kind of felt like we were in a rain forest. It probably is a rain forest during rainy season most likely (it is hot season right now) because the waterfall still had a strong flow.

The red dot below the waterfall is a person, it shows how big the waterfall is!

Some of the trees, it was a little shady because the big leaves on the trees cover the sun on the hike.

 This is all bamboo, and a lot of our hike looked like this. I have never seen this much bamboo in my life. It was sooo cool, there was bridges, railing, and more made out of bamboo.

The next thing we did was we had lunch at Hungry Wolf, and then went to some gardens with a huge statue on top of the hill. That is common next to Buddhist temples.

 We went to a Singha Park that had a lot of gardens that were in process being set up. The gardens we went to were not finished yet, they just started doing this garden not long ago, only this little part we were standing next too was finished, the rest was just grass and dirt for now.

The last activity we went to before we headed back to Phichit was a Tea Plantation. We didn't even ask for our drivers to take us there, but I am glad we went. Before we rented a van we were going to go on a tour that had a tea plantation as an activity, but we were planning on not going because it was a tour activity, but our drivers took us! It was exciting and it smelled really good. The disappointing part was that we couldn't buy fresh tea leaves there.

This was the whole area of the tea bushes.

Chiang Rai White Temple

We recently went to Chiang Rai, we ended up renting a van for 24 hours that would take us up north. That was a lot cheaper then what we were going to do. We were going to go by train, buses, and take a lot of tuk-tuks and taxis to get everywhere, but instead our van took us everywhere we wanted to go. When we went to Chiang Mai we took a train and it ended up taking nine hours to get there, Chiang Rai is farther then Chiang Mai and it was only six hours to get there by van.

We stopped by the White Temple, also known as Wat Rong Khun. This temple is the main reason we went to Chiang Rai. It was so cool! It has been my favorite temple I have seen so far! The whole temple is white except for the inside which has a dead monk inside.

There are superheroes, movie stars, and cartoons all around the temple, not just a couple of painting that are inside. They did that because the artist named Chalermchai Kositpipat decided he wanted the temple to be a place of learning, meditation, and people to gain benefit of Buddhist teachings.
The bridge is known as "the cycle of rebirth" because you cross the suffering stage, the rebirth stage, and then you are free of suffering once you cross the bridge. The bridge symbolizes the way to happiness, by overcoming some temptations, greed and desire.
After the bridge you reach the "Gate of Heaven" that is guarded by two huge creatures that represent Death and Rahu, who decides over mens fate.
Next is the most important building. The whole temple is white except for the inside which has a dead monk inside and pictures of Buddha. Also, the inside walls are painted with colorful murals that is a modern representation of good and evil. Someone told me before I came to the white temple that there was some cartoon characters painted on the wall inside the temple. When I went inside I forgot they told me that, but when I was about to exit the security guard by the door told me too look at the wall next to him. Then I saw blended into the art there was a hello kitty, a batman, despicable me, etc. I couldn't take pictures inside the temple, but if I could I would have gotten a picture of it.

 It is so weird that it has hands coming out of the ground, but I read that they symbolize desire. It represents that humans are suffering and going to go through the cycle of rebirth over the bridge that is after the hands.

These two statues are called a Kinnaree, it is a creature from Buddhist Mythology that is half human, half bird.

These type of ghostly heads are hanging from the trees everywhere. The heads in this picture are Batman, Hellboy, Freddy Kruger, and Pinhead... Super random. Probably another one of the artist's additions. 

This building is the bathroom, but the bathrooms actually stand for something. The gold represents the body and the white of the temple represents the mind. The gold symbolizes how people focus on worldly desires and money. The golden building represents the idea to make merit and to focus on the mind, instead of possessions.

This temple was so fun to learn about and to walk around and to see all the cool details of the temple.

Sukhothai Ruins

The Sukhothai Ruins are so far the closest vacation we have been to, it is right outside of Phitsanulok and it is really cheap to get in. Plus we rent bikes for the day to bike to reach ruin that only cost us 30 baht (about one dollar), the brakes didn't work on the bikes we got so it was an adventure trying to stop! :P
There were a ton of ruins around the area! A lot of them looked pretty similar, they all have at least one Buddha for the day of the week and a lot of stone! I am learning a lot about Buddhism while I have been here, such as they have a different Buddha for every day of the week.

There were a lot of cool bridges around the ruins also, we took a lot of pictures by them! The flags represent the kings birthday color and a thai symbol in the middle.

 

I made a goal during our time at the ruins that I was going to take a picture by every Buddha and I needed to match the Buddhas position. I couldn't make this position though, I am not that flexible. :P

This was our whole group that went, the Phitsanulok girls came with us. It was fun getting to know them more during this trip to the ruins.

Chinese New Year Market

On February 26th we went to a Chinese New Year Market, Festival, Dinner thing. I was expecting a huge market that people were selling food and random items, but it wasn't anything like that. It was more like a lot of street food markets on one road, karaoke next to the tables, and some decorations for the Chinese New Year!

We had some of the Thai teachers come with us, the boarding students, the main coordinators, and our whole group! These are two of the boarding students, Kaow-Phot and Aishi.

We taught one the students how to take a picture! :D

This is how our table looked, a lot of people and a lot of food and water. Also the Chinese New Year decorations in the background.

We also had a ton of food, we thought we were done getting food, but more and more just kept coming. We had fish, chicken, some vegetables, sprouts, won tons, a thai desert and a couple more food items. We didn't even finish it all because it was so much food. Moopee even thought it was a lot of food.

When we were done eating we decided to do karaoke! This was my first time doing karaoke and it was actually really fun! We did the song "I Will Survive," when we started singing there was no one around the stage, but throughout the song more and more people started to gather around. :) It was a fun night!