Day 8- Balloons and the 7 Hour Trip to Chiang Rai

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This might be my favorite day yet! At 9am, we drove to the elderly school at San Meung Temple. Basically, this is an elderly school which meets 3 times a month to provide fun activities for the elders of the community. The Thai elderly are adorable and so kind!! There was another school from south of Thailand visiting so it was cool to interact with them as well. The school meeting began with us introducing ourselves in Thai. Then, we participated in some morning exercises with everyone who was there. After doing a bit of exercise, it was time to do the activity we brought for the elders and it turned out even better than I planned!!



While planning what to do for the activity, I looked on pinterest for some inspiration! I saw a picture of some elderly in the USA playing balloon volleyball with fly swatters. I thought that it would be fun and a very flexible activity because I didn’t know exactly how many people we would have. We ended up having a lot more people than I expected! The elders were having a blast!! This activity had everyone smiling and laughing. It made my heart so happy J



In the afternoon, eighteen of us left for Chiang Rai. Little did we know, the predicted 5 hour journey would turn into a seven hour journey! We were in the car for what felt like forever. We made several bathroom stops, and had a few walking breaks to stretch our legs. On the way, we stopped at a hot spring which smelled like sulfur. Around 7pm, we realized that we were desperately lost. We ended up getting a police escort to the village! Once we finally made it to the village in Chiang Rai, we were so warmly welcomed by the community. We were greeted with beautiful northern style Thai dancing by women and children. Several men and young boys played the music for the dancing. They prepared a delicious dinner for us which we ate on mats around a short circular food tray. After dinner, we were taken to our host family’s home where I was extremely shocked! Our bedroom was in a home with holes in the wall, animals making noises right outside the window and bugs everywhere. Talk about a culture shock! Surprisingly, I ended up having a restful sleep.

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