Photos of Thailand ..... so far!

---

Hello again,

Here are some pictures from our time in Bangkok as well as our time in Chang Mai, as well as a brief list of all the fun things we have been up to.

For the last 5 days, we have been in Chang Mai celebrating Songkron. This is the fesitival that celebrates the Thai New Year. We have just passed into the year 2556 according to the Thai Lunar Caldender! In this festival everybody celebrates with water, which means there is one big water fight for 5 days. It was fantastic fun, including locals and tourists. There was so many people with water pistols firing each other, others threw buckets of ice cold water! People lined the streets and you couldn't leave a building without getting wet. Some people even drove around in open top 4x4 cars so that they could fire water at people. The atmosphere was so good - everyone was happy and really took part in the right spirit. The symbolisim of the water fight shows that the Thai's are washing away the old year and cleansing, ready to welcome the new year.

We have also managed to visit a few sights since we have been here. We visited the most popular Buddhist Temple called Wat Phra That Doi Suthep which is situated on a hill. You have to climb over 300 steps to reach the top. It was really busy with people bringing offerings to Buddha, which is part of the celebration linked with the Thai New Year. As well as visiitng temples, there are large processions in the streets with people carrying Buddha images, as well as offerings of flowers and food, that are then taken to the temples. Everyone wears beauiful clothing and the procession lasted about 3 hours. It was really interesting to watch.

Another special experience we have had, is that we took part in an Asian cooking school for the day. We were taken to a local market to be taught about produce, where it is from, how they can be processed or coloured and different uses for different ingredients. This was great as we then went back to the cooking school and got to use these ingredients to make 6 different dishes; a soup, starter, stir fry, dessert, curry paste and then this was turned into a curry. I made coconut milk chicken soup, spring rolls, Pad Thai, Sticky rice and mango and a Red Thai curry. It was all really yummy and we hope to cook lots more when we get back to the UK.

One of the slightly strange things we have done is to eat lots of insects, all were dead and fried!! We have tried grasshopers, meal worms, beetles, wasps, ants (again) and silk worm grubs. They were not as bad as you would expect - some were really crunchy, others tasted more fishy. There was only one I really didn't like and that was the cricket because it had a really crunchy shell.

We have also visted another temple in Bangkok called Wat Pho. This was an amazingly beautiful and big Wat that contains the largest reclining Buddha. It is 46 meters long and painted in gold. It is in a very detailed and intricate building that has so much detail and patternation on the walls. The feet of the reclining Buddha also has lots of small pictures of different animals and creatures. The whole of the temple had beautiful carvings everywhere you looked, from the roofs to the doors. There was a large number of Prangs and LOTS of different Buddhas. We spent ages just wandering and taking in the beauty of this temple.

That bring us up to date on the main things we have been up to. Later tonight we are getting on a bus and going to Bangkok. It will take 12 hours and we will sleep overnight on the bus. We are hoping from Bangkok we can get another bus down to the southern islands as we have a friend coming out to meet us for 2 weeks, so we need to make sure we are in Phuket ready for her flight to arrive.

Bye for now,

Miss T

---