Next stop: Surin

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Surin - Town of Whisky-drinking Elephant Riders

Today I said goodbye to Bangkok and embarked on a journey to a little town in the Northeast of Thailand called Surin. The project organiser, Steve, had booked me and a fellow volunteer, Jessie, a train ride in the second class compartment. Now my friend from Bangkok had told me little horror stories about second class train compartments - smelly, squashed, don't trust the food, so I was a bit wary of it all. But on lighting the train, there was no nasty smells, and whilst we had to push through to get to our seats, once we were sat down and the other passengers had settled down, there was plenty of space.

So the 7-hour train journey began. It was all going smoothly and Jessie and I were chatting away. After a couple of hours nature called, so I headed in search of the toilet. Once I found it, what I found was rather disconcerting. There was no toilet per se, just somewhere to squat! Fortunately there was toilet roll and I even spotted soap on the sink. So that was my squatting experience. Really getting into the Thai spirit of things!

After 7 hours we finally pulled in to Surin and we got off the train. Other than having a (very) sore bum, I was fine. I was excited about finding my new pad and explorin the town. A member of Starfish (volunteer organisation) collected us from the train station and drove us to our apartment. We were shown the bedrooms. We saw room 3 first and then taken to room 2....but that was locked. So I took room 3 and left Jessie to wait for Starfish to get the key to the room haha!! Well, he is the boy! Anyway once that was all sorted Jessie and I went to grab some food. We found this cute little restaurant called 'Goodview'. The waiter indicated that we could sit on what appeared to be a roofgarden, so up we went. As the name suggests, it has a good view. I ordered Red thai curry seafood with coconut (not spicy). It was really delicious and was served in a coconut husk (I didn't realise it was that until Jessie informed me!). I do feel as though Ive had a bit of seafood overload though! I'm sticking with the salads tomorrow. Whilst we were eating an amazing thing happened.....we saw a man riding on an elephant! A real elephant just metres away from me. Love it. I was so excited.

After that we went back to our apartment to collect the makeshift map that starfish had given us and we ventured out into town. We ventured around and then we saw an elephant infront of us. So we hurried over and bought some bamboo off the guy leading the elephant and fed him. It was such an amazing experience. This elephant was absolutely massive. The only adjective I can use to describe his trunk is massive. It was much wider than I had expected and he was loving getting that bamboo! Bless. I stroked him but he didn't look too impressed. I managed to get a photo with him, though ;-)

And then we went into an internet cafe. And here I am writing my message. So that's my first little episode in Surin. Tomorrow one of the starfish team are taking us on a tour of Surin in the afternoon.

That's about it for now. I'm missing my people!
Big kiss Karrie xxxx

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Comments

[Lea]

sounds cool so far! :)