Flaky South Africans and good food

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The King's birthday! The Thai people show a very special reverence towards their King, almost to the point of worship. Everybody wears yellow, which is a sign of respect for him. I think it's really neat to see such a high level of respect and love for a public figure. We don't see too much of that in America.

So, if everything went as planned, myself, Marieke, Kas, Jo, and Jean were all going up to the Doi Inthanon early in the morning. When we woke up, however, Jean told us he was going to go do something else that day (flake), and Jo had come down with the same bug Kas had before, and so Kas wanted to stay there and take care of her (as a good friend would). That left me and Marieke, however, and we didn't want to do the trip by ourselves because it was going to cost too much. We enrolled in a cooking course instead, and were on our way by 9 AM. We first went to the local food market which was really neat, as all the locals shop there as well. After doing our shopping and learning about some of the foods, we started cooking which was a lot of fun. In total, we cooked five dishes each and got to eat them all. By two, we were so full we could hardly move and felt very satisfied with our decision.

We went home and chilled out for a bit, and continued to meet people who were going to go on the trek with us. In the end, I think we had eleven lined up to go. A group of 9 or so gathered up to go for dinner that night, which was all fine. Then, everything went to hell in a hand basket that night...

I was feeling pretty tired and my stomach hurt a bit around 9, so I went to bed in preparation for the early morning the next day. I had all my bags packed up neatly and was ready to go. Then, after an hour or two of restless sleep, I got wickedly sick. I spent the rest of the night puking and liquid pooping everything in my body out, and I'm pretty sure trying to puke with NOTHING in your stomach is one of the top 5 worst feelings you can have. I finally got to sleep around 4 AM or so...

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