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Published: February 3rd 2008
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Hello!
Well first hello from Chiang Mai after I arrived here last Friday - sorry for being so slack in the contact so far - I have lots of very very good excuses! I hope everyone at home is well! I was going to send this out as an email but decided to create a blog - so I hope thats easy for people! Also - I look forward to my emails and updates from back home!!
Ok - well the adventure started last Wednesday when I arrived at heathrow airport for my flight to Bangkok - which said it was delayed by an hour. Good start! As it turned out the plane took off nearly 2 hours late but we managed to make up quite a bit of time on the flight. Met a girl from New Zealand while waiting for the plane and it turned out that we were sitting next to eachother on the plane! Then we discovered that we both had wheat allergies which was quite random! Anyway it was nice to meet her as that made the journey quite good fun - lots to talk about - I also even mangaged to get an
hour or so’s sleep on the plane! Other highlights of the flight to Bangkok included the 3 English guys in the aisle next to us having a fight and hitting eachother mid flight after a lot of vodka - they made up / had more fights etc during the flight so that was entertaining!
Anyway after arriving in Bangkok - I got into a taxi to Hua Lampong train station. The taxi driver was crazy and after several near misses made it to the train station where I picked up my train ticket. I was amazed that while on the platform just walking up to my carriage on the train I couldn’t breathe at all. The smog / pollution was so awful and literally it made you feel sick after a minute of breathing it in.
The train itself looked pretty basic and when I got on was very confused about how the seats would actually turn into beds?!? The train became quite full quite quickly and soon I was on my way to Chiang Mai. They served food if you wanted it and eventually a guard (each carriage had its own guard) came in and converted all
Thai Toilet :)
The lovely thai toilets... the seats into beds / bunk beds - it was like watching a magic trick! I had a lower berth and it was really pretty comfortable with my own light and I had the window which was great. The journey took around 15 and half hours in the end and then I arrived in Chiang Mai where I was met by Jim who is the co-ordinator for Travel-to-teach the organisation I’m teaching with.
I had a very very brief tour of the area around our house and then was showed our house and my room. The house is ok - although has not been kept that clean - there is a western toilet and a ‘thai toilet’. I have a mattress on the floor (which I think could be the hardest mattress in the world!!) and small plastic chest of drawers for clothes. I am on the ground floor though and the floor is tiled which means that I have the ‘coolest’ but ‘loudest’ room in the house - all the other rooms upstairs get really hot but I get all the noise from the street and the temple across the road.
Every morning at 4am the monks
ring all the bells to wake up the monks - but of course this also includes waking up everyone surrounding the temple...us! Not only do you get the bells though - you also get every dog in the area (and there are A LOT of dogs!!!) barking and howling like crazy when the bells ring! It wasa bit of a shock on the first morning as I wasn’t expecting it but its just normal now - and have even slept through it the past few nights.
I was quite homesick the first few days. The support here from the organisation wasn't great and generally not that helpful and like I said, after my very brief tour of the surrounding area, I was left on my own in the house. I think a mixture of this and tiredness meant that I wasn't that happy on my first day here!
On the first day -I met the 2 Swedish girls who are also volunteering here in Chiang Mai. They were booked on a tour for the next day which they invited me on, so I decided to join them. We went white water rafting, elephant riding and quad biking up
a mountain to a temple which was awesome! Of course, we got stuck between some rocks while white water rafting, the raft filled up with water and we had to be rescued by several of the guides, which was all really good fun too!! Hehe
The temple was amazing - we climbed to the top and had the most amazing views of the area and all the rice fields etc. I will post some pictures of everything.
When we got back from the tour in the evening I met the other 2 people in the house: Isaac from Switzerland and Jennifer from Holland. They are really great and we got on straight away. We stayed up quite late chatting on the first night and they have the same pretty silly sense of humour that I have and so we have happily talked rubbish for the past week!Really glad they are here as its made things a lot more fun here.
On Sunday Anna and Matt were in Chiang Mai! We met up and spent the day together which was really nice. We had lunch and looked around some of the city. Also went to the Sunday Market
which was great fun. It was really nice to catch up with friends from home especially during the first few days.
I started teaching on Monday with Jen and Isaac in the Temple School which is slightly further away from our house than the other school. We teach 3 hour long classes a day in the morning from kindergarten up to grade 3 but the kids up to age 15. The kids are all very sweet with a very low / non existent level of English. They are all fascinated by the ‘falangs’ or foreignors. When we left on the first day all the kids were hanging out of the windows of their classes and in the playground waving and shouting goodbye to us - very surreal!
I only went to school 3 days this week as have not been well since last Sunday. Have had some stomach bug / infection so havent been able to eat all week. Spent a lot of time in bed and at home but made it to the pharmacy on Friday where the lady was so so helpful. She gave me some antibiotics and last night I managed a whole meal! Feeling
a lot better today so fingers crossed it stays that way 😊
Last night we all went out for dinner and Thai dancing with one of the teachers from the Chiang Mai international school called Kate. She had her kids over from New Zealand who had brought some friends from back home too and so we ended up having a really good night out with about 10 of us after dinner.
Anyway this is the longest entry in the world now so I won’t bore you any longer! I will be in Chiang Mai for at least the next 5 weeks as after that the schools have summer holidays. Hopefully also going to do a Thai massage course next week and the week after which should be good fun!!
Would love to hear how you are all doing back home and hope you are well ?
Take care,
Nicole
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Sally Franks
non-member comment
Jealous!!!
I am JEALOUS!!!! JEAAAALLLLOOOUSSSS!!!