Thailand - not ill anymore! Woo!

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Hello again!

Hope you are all well back home and the weather isn’t too cold! Its still pretty hot here - a little too hot at times! Am feeling a lot better now and am pretty much fully recovered after my ‘welcome to thailand’ bug last week. Had a weeks worth of antibiotics which seem to have sorted it.

Has been a pretty good week so far - last weekend in Chiang Mai there was a flower festival which was really cool. People came here from all over so it was pretty hectic. There were processions of floats made from flowers, traditional thai dress, marching bands / kids… I will post some photos. It was really nice to see.

On Monday I booked a massage course - so next week and the week after I will spend 5 afternoons learning about thai massage, oil massage and foot massage which will be great! I went and had a thai massage at the place I am going to do the course and it was amazing. It cost me about 150 baht for an hour of massage (which is about 1 pound 40p - sorry I can’t find the pound sign on the keyboard!!). Makes you think how much the people giving the massages take home as I’m sure they don’t get all of it…crazy stuff. Anyway the massage was great - much less painful that I imagined but I guess the next time I have one somewhere else I’m sure it will hurt as much as everyone keeps telling me it will!

On Tuesday I went to visit some temples with Jen and Isaac - we visited Wat Chediluang Varaviharn (Wat = temple). It was really nice to see inside and to walk around. We then went to ‘Monk Chat’ where we sat and talked to a Monk. Before we went we weren’t quite sure what we would talk to the Monks about or what questions to ask but once we got going we were there and chatting to the monk for nearly 2 hours!!

He started telling us about buddism and its foundations. We talked about karma and how it worked - people who do good and bad things, the different kinds of buddism - there are 2 main kinds in Thailand hence the different colour robes they wear! We found about their daily routines, what they can study etc and that most monks don’t stay monks for their whole lives. He said that he would probably not stay a monk forever and that it was very difficult for the younger monks. They aren’t allowed to touch females at any time - under any circumstances - that includes female animals! This is because they have to avoid any tempations etc.

He was learning English so found it really useful to do the ‘Monk Chat’. It was funny because he was so open and we ended up talking about Valentines Day and whether Isaac gave women chocolates or flowers and which they preferred!? The Monk also told me that he liked my dimples and that I was cute! Wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that but said thank you very much and the others in the dorm have been teasing me ever since!…hehe. Anyway it was really interesting to speak to them all and find out so much about them and their lives.

School has been great this week - the kids are lots of fun. Have lots of pictures but they are on Isaacs camera so will have to wait to put any up unless I get some on my camera next week! The teachers in the school are trying very hard to learn English and speak to us and every day one teacher called ‘Oay’ (pronoucned 'Oi' which is useful!) cooks lunch for us. She tries very hard to make us food that we will eat and enjoy - although yesterday I had to try something - not sure exactly what it was, definitely meaty but not sure whether it was cooked or not or what else was in it!! Isaac and Jen managed to get out of that one as they thought at least one of us had tried it which was fine- thanks guys!! ?

I will probably stay in Chiang Mai this weekend as Isaac is leaving on Saturday so I think we will all be going out tomorrow night. On Sunday me, Jen and Ailine are going to rent some scooters and go up to the mountains near here so hopefully that should be good.

Anyway I will end it here - but I hope you are all well…Look forward to hearing all your news!

Take care,

Nicole
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