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Published: July 23rd 2008
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The reason we had a long weekend was in honor of a Buddhist holiday on Thursday and Friday. In order for the non-Thai staff at
Warm Heart to learn about the Buddhist traditions. Now that we are well into the rainy season, the monks stay at the Wats until the season ends, so we decorated a 3 month candle to give to them to use for light during their long stay inside. It has been great to participate in some of the religious ceremonies here, as it lends a lot of insight to the people here.
The holiday weekend caused us to give up on work by 2:30, and we were off to Chiang Mai to catch our (my friend Huyen was traveling with me) bus to Bangkok. Since we left 3 hours earlier than anticipated, we had 4 hours to kill in Chiang Mai. Our friend Rose was staying in Chiang Mai all week, so she and Pi Nan met us for dinner. We walked until we were too tired to stand, hoping that it would help us to sleep on the bus. It mostly worked.
I'm trying to fill in the gaps here from my last entry, so
I'm going to try not to repeat myself... Our arrival in Koh Samet culminated in our arrival at the Ao Phai huts, where we had made reservations. Our room was supposed to cost 600 baht a night. In Chiang Mai, 600 baht gets you A/C, breakfast, nice beds...in Ao Pai on a holiday weekend it gets you a run down "bungalow" consisting of a piece of foam on a raised platform, sheets full of stains and holes, a run down bathroom, and a lot of bugs. Unfortunately Koh Samet is a favorite of Thais - its proximity to Bangkok coupled with its low amounts of rain during the rainy season mean that everyone heads here on the weekends. Especially holiday weekends. We managed to talk our rate down to 500 baht for the room, but the only way to do better was to switch to a 3000 baht room down the beach the next day. We eventually opted to just sleep on top of our towels, cover ourselves in bug spray at night, and hope for the best. It didn't turn out to be so bad, and we were glad we saved the 2500 baht. And at least we were
only a 2 minute walk to one of the nicest beaches on the island (well, at least one of the nicest on the end of the island that we saw).
Friday morning's highlight was massages on the beach. Not the best Thai massage Huyen or I had experienced, but for 200 baht to get a massage and listen to the ocean, not bad. I could have done that all weekend if I'd had more money!
We had met a woman from England, Becky, while waiting for our bus in Bangkok. We ran into her again on the beach on Friday, where she was staying with Les, an American from D.C. who is spending a year teaching English at a girls' school in Bangkok. We all had lunch, and hung out, then parted ways for the afternoon. We spotted Les again around dinner time and invited him and Becky to join us for a seafood dinner on the beach. We all had a great time trading stories, drinking beer and eating well. Fortunately we didn't have too many beers - otherwise we wouldn't have caught on to the extra 3 beers our waiter tried to charge us for. From
there we wandered down to some of the full moon parties, enjoying a fun night of dancing and drinking. Of course, by dancing, I mean that Huyen and Becky danced, while I kind of bounced, and Les just looked annoyed. But it was still a great time.
Saturday night was spent wandering Khao San and Rambutri in search of a place to spend the night. Six guesthouses later,
we ended up with adjacent rooms at Orchid Guest House on Rambutri. Huyen and I ended up at an Israeli restaurant for dinner, although we ended up bypassing the Israeli dishes in favor of some Thai curry. A few hours later I caught a minibus to the international airport to wait for Wes. By the time I arrived his plane had already landed, and, worried that I'd miss him, I foolishly waited in the "meeting place" line for a full hour before he appeared. It had been a full month since we had parted ways in San Diego, and it was really great to see him again. We payed a ridiculous fee for a taxi back into town, but were grateful to be staying in a backpacker haven where we could
eat at 2 in the morning.
To recap my last post, Sunday morning was spent touring the Grand Palace and Wat Pho, which were really impressive, even for those of us who had seen a million wats already. Plus we took our first ever tuk tuk ride, which was worth splurging on once.
Wes came to work with me on Monday, but since there wasn't a lot for him to work on, he left for Chiang Mai today. I've got two more days of work and then I'll join him Friday night for the weekend, and our cooking class on Saturday.
Miss you all!
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