2 Weeks Away from Site

Friday: BKK…yes, I went to Bangkok yet again.  It’s not like I love the city or anything, but it is a great central place to meet up with everyone and there are places to go out to at night…and, I had to go to BKK before heading off to Issan to enjoy a three day weekend in Khao Yai National Park.  The first national park of Thailand.  We stayed at our usual hotel…you know, the one that only cost 450 baht a night and you cram 5-7 people in a room.  Apparently, some other PC peeps had discovered a farang bar the last time we were out there, so we decided to hit that up for the night…it was just like being back in America.  It was a good ol’ dive bar.  There we met some people from New Zealand, Australia, UK, and Kenya….I guess everyone had figured out where to go…the only Thai’s there were ones that were brought by other farangs…drinking, dancing and friends.  Good times.

The next morning we packed up to head out to our intended destination.  I am used to all sorts of bus’ in Thailand…there are fabulous ones and dingy ones, but this bus was the all-time worst that I have been on so far.  Luckily our trip was only 3 hours.  The bus gets underway, each of us has our own set of seats so we can sprawl out and get some sleep because we hadn’t gotten much the night before.  I have been dozing for about 15 min when I feel something fall on me.  I open my eyes, look down, and see a black speck on my chest.  I wipe it off and close my eyes again. 

15 min later:  I feel something again…open my eyes.  This time, there are 4 or 5 specks of black.  Again I brush them off.  I just want to go to sleep.

10 min later: Again…

5 min later: AGAIN…ok, this is getting ridiculous…I look around; there are no seats to switch too.  The bus is getting hotter as we move toward noon and I am stuck in a seat that is raining black stuff on me…for another 2 hours

10 min later:  Ouch!!!  What the… I look down.  A screw.  Yes, a screw fell on me.  The bus was shaking so violently, that it unscrewed the screw causing it to fall onto me…so much for sleeping; now I have to keep watch for the killer screws that want to gouge out my eyes.

For another hour I continuously am wiping black specs off of me and am vigilantly watching for additional screws that may attempt to attack me.  Finally!!! Finally, a seat opens in the back.  I move to in.  Immediately sweat starts pouring down me.  This seat is situated in the sun and it sits right on top of the engine.  But, on the bright side, there are no falling screws…score one for Megan.  I attempt to sleep again as the bottom of my seat slides out from under me with each vibration of the bus.

Finally, we arrive…

Our first day in Khao Yai we took a half day tour through an underground cave, watched 2 million bats fly out of a cave for their nightly hunt, and swam in a beautiful mineral pool after dark.  The underground caves were full of bats, spiders, and other bugs and living things.  We were shown each and every one of them and were given the chance to hold all except the spider and bats. 

Above ground, watching the bats leave their cave was amazing.  We ate fresh pineapple and watched the bats swirl out of the cave in spirals as they headed into the night.  As the wind shifted the spirals would swoop in a new direction.

All the black things on the ceiling are bats

I'm holding a spider that has evolved into more of a crab...the front legs have pinchers

Who doesn't love holding snakes

I think the ears are adorable

Bats weaving through the sky

I don’t know if any of us really knew what we were getting into when we set out on our second tour.  We thought we were going to have a few short walks in the jungle to see different viewing points then head back to our song taew for a drive to the next point.  Well, we were partially right.  Our song taew was our main source of transportation, but we had a 3-4 hour trek into the jungle ahead of us…and it was raining.  I am so glad I remembered my rain jacket.

Erin and I had just congratulated ourselves on making it so far into the jungle without falling a single time.  It was at this point that we looked ahead of us and saw a trail of people climbing a muddy path up a hill making it more treacherous with every step that they took.  With my first step up, I knew I was a goner.  One, two, three, four steps.  Five ste- bam – I hit the ground. Ugh!  And, down I slide.  I get up again.  Make it three more steps, and then I slide again, right in between Erin’s legs.  We are laughing so hard there was no way I was going to be able to get up.  The tour guide had to come down and grab my hand to help me stand up again.  I think it ended up taking about 10 minutes to get up this little hill because I could not stop laughing at myself.

And, that was just the beginning.  After that point, the trail only seemed to get slipperier.  I may not be a graceful walker, but I am a graceful faller because I came out of this with no serious injuries and I feel 50+ times (no exaggeration implied).  The park was beautiful though.  You could hear the birds calling to one another, monkeys jumping through the trees, and you could see bugs and spiders inching their ways up vines and across the ground.  We ate lunch in a small building on stilts looking over the park before heading on to find more wild life.

Leech socks.  We had to put them on before we started trekking
into the jungle

After falling all over the place - leech socks are officially brown now

A leech got me - twice actually

After a fun filled weekend at Khao Yai National Park, we moved back to central Thailand to Suponburi for Reconnect.  This included a 3 day conference with our counterparts and then a little over a week of additional training in speaking, reading, and writing Thai along with other skills to assist us at site. 

The counterpart conference was great.  I learned more about my community than I had learned in 3 months, and I got more specific details about what they would like me to do while at site.  I am going to be spending the next couple of months talking to people and doing research on fish and aqua-culture, to see if I can implement some of my supervisor’s ideas.

We were all excited that the fourth of July occurred while we were at the conference.  This was the first real American holiday that we were going to be able to celebrate together, and all 63 of us from group 123 were going to be there.   The US Embassy helped us out a lot by providing us with hamburger from the states and other supplies from a store at the embassy.  Some fellow PCer’s cooked our burgers, while others made potato salad.  ****I ate my first homemade chocolate chip cookie in 6 months, and it was amazing!!!! – Thank you Frank for using American products and a New York recipe…it was delicious.

Of course, it’s not only the food that makes for a great fourth of July…We spent the previous day creating costumes for our parade that we were putting on for the PC staff and our Thai teachers.  Almost all volunteers were part of the parade depicting characters from the Mayflower, immigrants, the industrial revolution, space travel, etc…  I must say…we put on a pretty kick ass parade if I do say so myself.

Then came our firework…yes, I did mean to say that singularly…it was a single firework put on just for us and our celebration.  Sparklers were handed out as well and we danced and laughed around the parking lot remembering times when we used to do this with our friends back home.

Winners of the contest

And, finally, who can have a fourth of July in Thailand without a costume contest…Ok, it was more of a way to introduce ourselves to the new director, but we put on a show to include all the volunteers and we had a best t-shirt contest hosted by 2 fabulous volunteers and judged by our new director.  I didn’t win, or place…but I thought by outfit was pretty good…oh well….after it all, we danced, drank and sang…until we all finally dropped into beds until our 8am meeting.  Overall, good Fourth of July.

I learned to read/write Thai much better at the meeting and I am slowly able to decipher sentences and figure out where one word starts and another finishes.  I am super excited to keep learning at site. 

After Reconnect, I spent a couple more nights in BKK before heading back to site.  At Mo Chit (the bus station in Bangkok) 3 women from my village recognized me – I didn’t recognize them, oops, and had me get off the bus early and head back to Bangrakam by truck…yes! 1 hour was cut off of my bus time and I got home early.  I got home, took my first cold shower in 2 weeks, ginned some kaao (Thai-glish for ate some food) and was asleep by 7pm. 

I arrived at work this morning to discover that my desk had been moved to my supervisor’s office, a package had arrived for me while I was gone, and my house is still in the process of being built.  Such is life – jai yen yen.

I soon will be leaving my office to head home and start my 2 week’s worth of laundry.  Fun times!!! But, I had a blast and that is what really matters.

Whew!  Tired maak maak…sleep will be coming soon too, I am guessing.