We finished orientation Sunday afternoon and were all unbelievably excited to get out of the hotel and see some of Thailand. Orientation was great, but definitely got long (often hearing overlapping ideas/info throughout the day) Anyway it was a welcome relief when I walked on the bus and Vanessa handed me a Chang (a local beer brewed in Chiang Mai). Thai beer is pretty funny: it's either in a small can or a huge bottle (reminiscent of a 40 back home and for 40 baht, how can you go wrong!) Other beer brewed locally includes Leo and Singha (brewed in BKK).
Anyway, we stopped at the Prawn Volcano restaurant (yes the names here are that awesome) for dinner. The name speaks for itself as we were served prawns that were inside of a metal container that looked like a volcano and then lit on fire to cook the prawns. Weird.
We stayed at the Pavilion Rim Kwai resort which was a really awesome escape for a couple days. It was set up as an open air hotel with each room having A/C (YES!) Here is the website:
http://www.pavilionrimkwai.com/
Monday was the best day we've had in Thailand by far. We woke up and had our buffet breakfast (man I'm going to miss those) and hopped on the bus to Taweechai Elephant Camp--literally a camp where people live and train and take care of elephants (among other animals like huge yellow pythons which I held!) Josie and I rode an elephant together and our 'driver' was so awesome. after about 5 min he got off the elephant and was just wandering around while we were terrified the thing was going to take off through the jungle.
He would come back once and a while and yell some command and it would get back on track, but I guess I never realized how tall elephants are until I was perched atop its back. The guy took one of our cameras and snapped pictures of EVERYTHING (including some innapropriate pictures of an elephant's 'member.' We rode the elephant for a while and even went into the river on its back (both of us got to ride on its neck (without being buckled in to the bench on its back--which was pretty scary). We had to dodge splashes of water too as elephants dropped 'suprises' into the water in front of us. It kind of reminded me of the state fair and getting out of the way in the animal barns!
Our next activity was floating down the River Kwai (pronunced like the -qua- in the word square). We floated on these bamboo rafts that just had benches chilling on them while a guy (burmese in our case) paddled and steered with a stick. There were about 7 of us who were on two rafts and we all jumped in and floated down the river using the raft as a foot rest. So refreshing after trekking through the humid jungle! Not sure how clean it really is, but the paddler man said "eets okay jump, swim, berry fun!"After the floating we had lunch at the camp overlooking the river (it was awesome--kabobs and FRENCH FRIES!! it's a big to us to get some american food once in a while) This was after I was tackled by a 25 day old baby elephant who was very friendly and playful and covered me with elephant snot --just a little too big to wrestle with :)
We had some free time in the afternoon and I think almost all 90 of us hopped into one of the resorts pools for a few hours. SPRING BREAK KANCHANABURI! That was the Thailand we were looking for! It was pretty reminiscent of a spring break with that many people hanging out, talking, listening to music.
At night we went to the Bridge over the River Kwai (yes the famed bridge of the hollywood movie!) It was kinda of eerie after learning the backstory behind it and thinking of how many people died to make the 'death railway' as they call it, between Burma and Thailand. For dinner we ate at a floating restaurant on the river right next to the bridge and just kind of thought about how lucky we are to be experiencing such amazing things.
That night we all let loose and hung out in the hotel---we played kings and Tourette's which as always turns into fits of laughter. We went to the hotel's 'club' that night and did some night swimming before bed. Don't worry we got some snacks from the front desk (after trying to break into the snack cupboard cuz we couldn't find the workers--once they heard us they came running though haha) Their idea of snacks are a little different than ours: puffed chips flavored like pasta or teriyaki...not exactly satisfying.
Everyone in the program is so nice and outgoing and there are about 6 of us that got pretty close during orientation and will hopefully be able to stay in touch over the next year--it's good to know that there are other people going through the same things all over the country here. We all said our goodbyes after a long busride back to BKK and began our teaching journeys....and oh what a journey it has been and will be!
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