Our next stop was the grand Temple of Angkor. The day was becoming wet as we walked down the long sandstone causeway across the moat. The Moat was still other than the light tapping of raindrops that always fall lightly before a downpour. Once through the main entrance, we went in through the gate that contained a statue of Vishnu. After stepping into the dark, damp hall lit only with candles and the hovering sent of incense, our eyes were first captured by the bright orange of Vishnu’s robe. The only movement in the still darkness was a nun dressed in white attending to the candles and flowers at his feet. A unique aspect about this statue is that it is a statue of the Hindu God Vishnu, but when the government tried to rid the ... read more

We awoke the next morning to the roaring fan ahead, viciously swirling the cool night’s air with the brutal heat that poured in through our guesthouse window. It was only 6:30 am when our day began. We met our English friend down the hall and went for coffee at guesthouse’s restaurant. Despite the heat, it was quite a dreary day, overcast but still dry. When we went to meet the Tuk-Tuk (the go cart/taxi) driver we found that the tour guide had not yet arrived. After waiting 20 minutes we were ready to move along without, but the driver called him and insisted that he was only two minutes away. Ten minutes later he arrived, and we all piled in the Tuk-Tuk and headed to the Temples of Angkor. Driving past the five-star hotels and other ... read more

Sunday Night Jan and I took the night bus from Udon Tani to Chiang Mai. We had to first take an hour bus ride to Udan Tani from Nong Khai. We waited there for a few hours and had dinner. To our surprise we found this little crazy monkey that was the pet of the ticket seller. He enjoyed using our limbs as branches and jumping on our backpacks as though they were trampolines. "Ok." I thought, "SO maybe it is cute the first 20 times it uses you as a tree branch, but after it pisses on you and ravishes your hair and bites your stomach, maybe its cuteness begins to fade." I was glad to be rid of the vermin when we got on the bus at 7:00. On our journeys we decided that ... read more

Three weeks have amazingly flown by since my last entry. I moved from Nong Khai to Ho Kham village on the first of July and have been here since. Ho Kham village is about 110 kilometers from Nong Khai and is a medium size village. I have been Staying with the Pee family at their home only 5 minutes walk from the school. LIVING in Ho Kham for three weeks I feel like I understand Thai culture and life style more than Korea’s, despite the fact I spent 5 months living there. Village life was simple to me at first. I met the smiling faces of the children at class and joined them in games of volleyball when we finished. I tutored children and toured the countryside with my host family. I met kind hearted families ... read more

Driving into Non Khai was an exotic experience. The bus driver sent me on a Tok-tok (The taxi/carriage/go cart) with a man who couldn’t speak a word of English. He had no idea where he was suppose to drop me off. The Thai women who was helping told me he was just going to drop me off in the middle of town where I could find someone who spoke English and could ask them. I was oddly not too uncomfortable knowing the driver would be abandoning me with only an address on a piece of paper written in English. As he drove me down the dusty, worn road, I felt like Anna from the King and I. There I was: the new English teacher in the back of a carriage being toured into the town and ... read more