moped excursion

on saturday morning we took our first out of town excursion on the moped. chris rented his very own for a week so that we can adventure and not have to ride like thai's with 3 on a bike (plus i don't think our bike would ever make it up a hill then!)
after being delayed by an early morning downpour, we took off, armed with a really vague map and raincoats. our destination was an area the was supposed to have orchid farms, butterfly farms, and a snake farm.

we made it to our destination town and even found the road we wanted on our vague map! it turned out that was not the road with the farms but it had a waterfall at the end so we went to explore that. the road to get there was a twisty and turny country road with lots of hills. luckily our moped cannot go very fast, especially with two people on it! (this is good for me, although i was much less nervous riding out in the sticks where there are no other cars!)
so the waterfall is in a national park and they had some super slippery concrete pathways and slippery old (maybe not structurally sound...) wooden boardwalks. it has been pouring the past 4 nights, so the river was raging and so muddy! the waterfall was not very far in, and it was so big and cool! the water was coming down heavy and fast. i took lots of pictures which are on shutterfly. we were in the jungle!

next we went back to the main road to find the orchid farm. the one we went to also had a butterfly farm in it. well sort of. there was this area that was the 'butterfly farm' where i saw a total of one butterfly. there were a few snail though! kind of a dud. the orchids were sort of interesting, in that they farm them by hang ing them from little planters and their roots are hanging really long and twisty and all dried up! i dont really know how they were alive. we ate lunch there and saw this really cute puppy and alsoa cool treehouse lookout in the field next to the farm.

there was a snake farm and a monkey center nearby, which we might go back to at some point, but our next excursion was another national park waterfall, since we could use our same tickets from the first one. this waterfall was more like the very first one we saw that is near our house. it was a series of cascading falls (not as big as the first one we saw today). some of them were really full of water though because of the rain. we walked about halfway up until we got to this cool bridge walkway that went across the river. the falls were so loud! and this park was bigger so we really felt like we were in the jungle! there were lots of bamboo clusters - some huge! - and crazy jungle vines. we also saw a couple more of the huge monster spiders - including the biggest one yet! ahh!! the jungle is so so green.



45 minutes on a moped can really make your feet numb from all the vibrations!

later that night, we met up with a girl i met in a thailand group on facebook. her name is natalie and she will be here for the same length of time that we will be. we took her to the rooftop bar and hung out for a bit. she just arrived yesterday, but was already brave enough to take a tuk tuk to meet us!

in other news, we will be in chiang rai the 29-30, and then on a riverboat ride in laos, returning home on the 4th. so if i don't talk to you before then happy halloween and don't forget to vote!!!!! (if you are still undecided and need some information, email me and i can get you some facts to help you!)

how to ride like a thai

a motorbike may be small, but in thailand it can carry as many people and cargo as a small bus. luke and i demonstrated our skills and acclimation into thai culture by purchasing a couple of mattress pads the other day. (we also had to purchase some bungee cords!)

it's raining it's pouring

at the moment it is raining cats and dogs. luke is working this afternoon, and i was just hanging out in our room taking a siesta, until i have to go teach my little japanese student. then it started going crazy outside. at first i actually thought it might be hailing, because the drops were so big and so loud bouncing off the metal rooftops in our neighborhood. the big kind of drops that can knock a bird right out of the sky! it has been raining gallons for a solid 20 minutes. this is the kind of rain that makes you want to build an ark.

the following is a video i took the other night when we were exploring new restaurants by the river and checking out the night market. we actually found a bench on this corner so we decided to sit down for a minute. there was this big open cobblestone area in front of us, that looks as if it might house its own market on certain days. then out of no where these two go karts come ripping over and went around and around and around chasing each other right in front of us! it was so random. a couple different perople took turns driving them. luke really wanted to, and he went over to take a look when they were parked and abandoned. no one came over when he was looking. then the owners came back, went around a few more times and disappeared as fast as they had come! thailand shenanigans.

moonlighting as a preschool tutor

so yesterday i got a call from a japanese woman who saw the flyer for english help. she has 2 daughters, 4 and almost 2, and she wants me to teach the 4 year old english! we chatted on the phone, and after a little confusion i figured out where they live. so this morning i set out on my bike to meet them at their apartment, which is in a really tall, really nice condo building on the river. it was a 20 minute bike ride. i got their early (with enough time to stop sweating) and hung out under a tree for a few minutes. then i went in and called her via the receptionist, like she said to do. i was nervous, but it all went surprisingly smooth! the girls are so adorable! the little one was romping around in her bathing suit, and the 4 year old named 'U' greeted me at the door. they gave me some juice and we chatted. basically they want me to come to their house once a week and work on conversations with the 4 year old! she is going to kindergarten at an international school and they want her to be able to talk to her classmates! so i will go over on monday for an hour and have preschool chat with this super cute japanese girl. she has an american preschool teacher, so she can say 'my name is' and the days of the week, and she said 'see you next monday!'. these are all good things, because that means i am not starting completely from scratch! they are living here until march, which is pretty much our schedule too! the father has a job here for 1 year.

in other news i rode on the motorbike yesterday. so much for easing into it and practicing around campus. luke got to practice driving but i did not get to practice being the scared passenger. my first trip on it was across town! we got a little lost but i got comfortable enough to hold the map in one hand and luke with the other, as opposed to the death grip i was using before! i might be willing to get on it again....
we rode it to this really cool restaurant on the river. there is some very cool stuff over there. we discovered the foot bridge across the river which was cool because you can see all the lights on both sides of the river.

i am a listmaker

so i am a list-making freak. and therefore, i think my best method for describing several events that have happened over a series of several days will be to list them since they are a little too disjointed for a story. so here it goes.

1. chiang mai food festival - this was great. it was a thai carnival/live music/eating fest! they also had little mini pitchers of singha beer. but it was great because there were all these food vendors displaying their eats, so you got to look at all the options instead of ordering blindly. we shared and sampled lots of different things, including bbq-ed sticky rice on a stick! who knew you could bbq rice! i saw a baby cow being bbq-ed - ahh!!! gross!! they also had whole squid and crawfish and whole fish as well - a thai favorite (i have no idea how to eat around the bones!) there was a stage with thai pop singers and dancers in feathery costumes. there were all these cool light things around (see photo page) and also the most rickety ferris wheel i have ever seen! along the back side, there were a bunch of carnival games, 2 giant inflatable jumpy things (including one that looked like a shark!!! - clarke i thought of you!!). then there was the ferris wheel and a couple other kiddie rides, including this one....



2. after returning from a tune up, our work informed us that the motorbike was ready for pickup! ahh!! ok, so i am terrified of this thing. and i will never drive it. but luke is all excited. it has a clutch. so we walked over and luke got on and practiced going around the block. we thought we might have to share the bike but we get to take it home and put it in the parking garage! so against my better judgment, i get on the thing for the 2 minute drive home. slightly terrifying, but at least we had all left turns (remember traffic is backwards!). so maybe i will ride it to out of town trips where there is way less traffic, but no thanks, not in the center of town! chris is excited though because he wants to take it up to the mountain temple to take pictures at sunrise. we will have to do a photo shoot with it soon. and also name it. it is silver, although i was hoping it would be pink (so that luke would want to ride it less!). i am all set with my bicycle for now!

3. luke and i took our first siesta at the pool near our house. it was a super hot day and was amazing. the water was so warm just from the weather here. it is just a regular looking pool that is a part of this gym in the middle of all these townhouses and apartments. we made our first friend here. he is a teacher of spanish and french at a university here for a few more weeks. he is a brazilian from germany and his mother was italian. confused yet? he also speaks some thai...and perfect english. what's the language count at? 10, 15? so this guy is buddhist, and said he just got back from an amazing trip in japan where he did meditation in these beautiful zen gardens. he also has 3 passports - germany, brazil, and italy. pretty amazing. he was cool.

4. after dinner one night, luke and i ventured to out neighborhood wat. i thought it might be lit up in the dark, and we had not been there yet. so we walk in the gate and there are all these people there. inside this one building there were lots of people dressed head to toe in white, chanting, and there were all these people sitting in plastic chairs watching. so we decided to sit in the back row to observe for a minute. well guess what - it was a funeral! i saw a coffin shaped mound inside (we were outside looking to the inside ceremony) with lots of red and white flowers on it. then i realized there was a large framed photo on an easel. so we snuck in on a funeral - i wonder what that does to your karma! we then quietly left to explore the grounds. there was a group of monks in the main building and there was one who was lecturing and chanting. we peeked in the sides to watch. the large golden chedi was lit up and there was a full moon! really beautiful!
5. future trip plans - for work at the end of october, we are going to a town 3 hours north - chiang rai - to do an outreach program. chris gets to come for free because they have space for him! then from there we are going to take a trip to laos! every so often we have to leave the country to get visas reset. chris has to do his sooner, but mine and luke's last 3 months each time. so we are going to take a bus to the border, spend the night, and the next day we will be crossing into laos and taking a slow boat down the mekong river!! so cool! it is a two day trip to get to luang prabang, laos' old capital. then we will spend two days there and fly back to chiang mai. should be pretty cool. at the halfway point on the river we get to stay at a small village.

6. one night luke and i decided to buy beers and we were going to find a cool place to sit and drink them. but there was one flaw in our plan - there are very few places to sit in thailand. there are very few benches along the road to sit on and the park by our house closes the gates at night. so in our search we ended up making it all the way home and we sat on the front stairs of our building and drank our beers. and in the process we made a friend. we had seen this guy before coming into our building with his really nice powder blue road bike. his name is kyle and he has been teaching here for a year and a half. he is from atlanta. he seems cool so hopefully we will get a chance to hang out with him.

7. there is an amazing amazing massage parlor 2 blocks from our house. they are so good. i got just a back, head and neck massage instead of the full body thai one. it was great - i even got a face massage. we will definitely be frequenting that place!

a brief history of the past few days

i have been neglecting my writings in the past several days, and meanwhile we have had several mini-adventures that i want to tell you about. so the following will be a smattering of events, hopefully in chronological order, but if not you get the idea.

1. over by the river, a couple miles from our apartment, there is yet another market area - warorot. this market was different though, because it is exclusively thai. very few tourists and very few items that aren't useful (aka no tourist trinkets). there is a section outside that is all flowers. across the road from that there is a big building with vendors lining every inch of the streets. if you can manage to snake your way through and in, you can get into a big old building full of vendors. there are three levels and the middle is a big tall open ceiling, so you can see down from the top to all the levels. there is a picture of this on shutterfly. there are escalators to get to each floor, except that they dont work and you have to walk up them like stairs - kinda creepy! there was also a secret passage to get out to a pedestrian bridge that over looks the road. also very cool. on the bottom floor of the market is food. i found these cool rice cake snacks (but made with real rice and flavor!) they are delicious. they had tons of weird snacks that i want to try.

2. one day when luke was at work, i decided to go swimming pool hunting. i had a few leads from books and maps, so i first went to the closest one. it is in this big mall type condo hotel place. the mall attached to a hotel is pretty popular in thailand. so i wandered around and then found a desk, where the lady told me the pool was on the fourth floor. so i got in the elevator, and there was also a thai lady that worked there in it. she giggled and said something to me in thai about water and made a swimming motion, so i said yes. when we got to the fourth floor the elevator opened about 2 inches. oh good. me and my fear of being locked in places. so the lady shoved her mop into the slot and tried to pry it open. no go. then she called on the elevator intercom. thank god she was there and speaking thai in the intercom, or i probably would have freaked! so anyway we just took it back to the 2nd floor and walked upstairs. she was giggling about it and speaking to me in thai. i was just glad to be alive.
the pool is pretty cool though. at first i though it was free, but it turns out you have to enter through the gym and pay $1.25 per day if you dont have a membership. i think that will definitely be worth it at some point.

3. near our house there is a little market that is mostly produce, some strange looking cooked foods and a couple vendors with piles and piles of everything, including lots of little baskets. well, luke was working and we needed fruit, so i decided to venture over. it looked like rain so i brought my raincoat. after riding 2 blocks the drizzle got annoying enough to warrant putting on my raincoat (aka sweat city). the market is close so i thought nothing of the rain. while i was shopping around for my fruit it began to pour. really hard. like many non modernized thai buildings, the roof of this market leaves something to be desired. so the rain starts pouring off the roof in waterfalls on each side of the market. there were also some mini falls coming into various places of the interior. thai's love there brooms, and some of the market people could be seen sweeping water into sewer grates. i wandered around as much as i could thinking it might let up, but i looked at the clouds and there was no sign of a break. since it is only a 5 minute bike home i decided i should go for it. well, let me just say that i didn't need the swimming pool that day! i got completely soaked. the rain went into my jacket through the collar even though it was zipped all the way! it also made a waterfall stream down my front that decided to pool up and form a small pond that went down to my underwear! good thing it was about 85 degrees out. i got home, hung all my clothes in the bathroom, and looked out the window. guess what - it had stopped raining!

4. when chris and i came down the mountain from doi suthep, we noticed a sign for a waterfall just past the zoo. so the other day we decided to go check it out. well once you get past the zoo, it is pretty much straight uphill until you get to the sky. so i decided to walk my bike a bit. it wasn't too far though. there is this little area with some places to eat and such and then you get the entrance of the national park and you are pretty much right there at the foot of huey kaew waterfall. we climbed up and over all kinds of huge rocks and found a cool sitting spot in the shade. chris set up his tripod while we stuck our feet in the water. amongst other things, we saw a GIANT spider. then some other people started to gather around our rock area, including a small group of middle school looking girls. (well, at least they looked it to me - but everyone here looks so young!) they came over to luke and i while chris was taking pictures. the started talking to us, and it tuns out they were doing a school project for their english class. we talked to them about their town, lampang, which is two hours away. two of the girls were really outgoing and had pretty good english. they were super cute and giggly and took our pictures and then we filled out an evaluation for their class.
after that we climbed back down and found a path that went up to the top. well it was sort of a path and also giant pieces of rock to climb over. at this point it is getting really hot out, as usual. we made it to the top of the cliff, overlooking the waterfall, and in true thai safety style, there was no railing! so we sat down and leaned our heads over so as not to be freaked out! the path kept going up and we saw a little hut across the way to explore so we kept going. the view was really good from here on up. at the top of some more waterfalls - the whole park is a series of cascading waterfalls all on the same river. the water flattens out and then falls again over and over. at what seemed to be the top, we had to cross a mini fall to get to the lookout hut. i got a pretty cool picture of luke jumping over it:
after the lookout we hiked down. there was a road right there, but that option would involve direct sunlight and pavement for a good bit. so it was decided to walk through the jungle trail - which was made of dirt and about a foot wide. i was less than thrilled about this, as it was pretty steep. but we made it down and no scorpions found me! i also hardly got any bug bites, there are a lot less bugs here than i thought. at the very bottom we had to go down this super steep rocky pass, and that was the hardest and last part of hiking. when we go to the bottom, there was a sign on our path that said no climbing!

next we found an amazing restaurant at the bottom of the trail area that had a patio overlooking the waterfall with really good food! yay! our reward for being tough hikers.

5. we discovered a delicious japanese restaurant near us. the miso soup was amazing and we had japanese food that i have never tried because they didnt have sushi there. we talked to the owner because they forgot our soup and she brought it out. she was so super nice and her english was pretty good too. definitely going to be a regular spot.

6. last but not least i had my first student. i am helping her prepare for a medical residency interview in youngstown ohio of all places!!! her english is pretty good and we have 10 hours to go over interview skills, practice, customs, and resume writing. i have 4 more sessions with her. if she is accepted into the residency after flying to OH for her interview, she will be there for 3 years.

spontaneous day

yesterday i ventured out on my own to hang up some more english help signs around the other side of the university campus. i ended up finding the language institute building this time. in my search for a regular posting board (not a fancy one covered in glass), i saw some postings for a thai conversation class. the latest installment started already, but i though i would ask about it out of curiosity. the girl in the office directed me to the guy in charge. he spoke english with a britich accent, which was really intriguing to me. once he explained a little bit about the class and the cost, he asked if i had an hour. since i had no real plans, i said yes and he offered to take me to the class and observe the last hour for free! it was pretty cool. it was only the second day, so the teacher was teaching many things that i have already learned myself, so it wasnt quite so scary to walk into the middle of the class and have to recite things in thai! i will probably not take a class there because it is much more expensive than the ymca, but it was a cool opportunity none the less.

after lunch, even though it was a little misty and cloudy, chris wanted to go to doi suthep, a place we have been meaning to go but it has been so cloudy! doi suthep is a wat (temple) on the closest mountain to us. you can see it from our apartment window. we tried to catch a truck truck from our house, but they wanted 300 baht to go there when it should cost 40! so we jumped on our bikes to ride to the foot of the mountain. we found a truck, but the driver was determined to get 10 passengers to make the ride worth it. after waiting about 15 minutes, there were a couple europeans that were interested in going. the guy from switzerland spoke thai and he got the driver to leave without a full load of people, but for just a bit more money.
it was a 20 minute drive up this really curvy road where everyone ignores the lines in the road!
the temple is really cool and is its own little village at the top of the hill. you have to walk up 306 stairs that are lined with naga the dragon to get to the temple. there was lots of gold and more buildings than your usual wat. when you go to the one side there is this amazing lookout to chiang mai. you can see everything. luckily it cleared up a lot by the time we got there and we had a really good view. there are pictures up on shutterfly. here is what the lookout looks like.

english help

we went to the office last week and luke found out that he will be teaching one on one english for the next two weeks. the SAT course that i was going to do however, is not running. i think this is a weird time for us to get here because the next two weeks are a break from school, so of course no one wants to take the SAT class! as it turns out i might be teaching english to 2nd graders! i somehow cannot avoid teaching young children! but it should be easy because i can just read them books about animals and such. that won't start for another couple weeks, because of the school break. i still need to find out more anyway.

so yesterday luke and i started our first entrepreneurial venture. we made signs for english help and posted them around campus. offering help with tests and papers and such, we are hoping to tutor students who are already in a class but might need some last minute or extra assistance. that being said, i got the first phone call about 3 hours after we hung the fliers on campus. it was a girl wanting help with anything...and she is not in a class. so this could be interesting. luke and i searched the internet for possible materials, but i am waiting for her to call me back. we shall see.

other than that we have been laying kind of low, exploring our neighborhood on foot and on bike. one new thing that we did was venture to the night bazaar market. that was really crazy. it is much more touristy than the wonderful sunday walking street, but it can be really overwhelming. everyone comes up to you trying to sell you anything and everything, including people at food stalls shoving menus in your hands and little girls with puppy eyes trying to sell you flowers. you have to have a good backbone to not spend money here! (which we successfully did). i think we will probably go back to see the big building which we did not go in, but i would much rather buy things from the more local sunday walking street. most things at the bazaar were junky tourist items and fake tiffany jewelry.

the weather here is pretty much always cloudy with a 60% chance of rain, and 80-90 degrees depending on whether it is before or after a rainstorm! in november the rainy season ends, so hopefully the clouds will clear up.

elephants and the jungle

today we went on a one day tour trekking adventure into the jungle! there were about 10 of us in a big van lead by our adorable and friendly thai guide. first on the day's agenda was elephant riding! we went to an elephant camp and they have elephant keepers that ride on the head of the elephant. then luke and i say in this saddle seat thing that was strapped to the back. we crossed a river and went up the mountain! our elephant was not interested in following the group, but was rather hungry so he felt the need to eat every bit of bamboo in sight! which was a lot, considering we were in a bamboo jungle! luke rode on the elephant's neck when the guide got off and lead from the ground with a sling-shot, but i was just fine sitting on the seat where i had something to hold onto!

next step was to eat lunch and then go to the village of the Karen people. this was a weird experience. the moment we arrived we were bombarded by small children trying to sell us their little bracelets for 6 cents over and over and over again. all the weavers have their silks and scarves out and are trying to sell them to you. i do suppose that the village has a weird sort of symbiotic relationship with tourists, but it still seems invasive. also, they were basically selling all this stuff on their front porch, because their houses were above us. we bought one of the weavings. you feel like you have to support these people.

then we hiked in the woods for a bit to a waterfall. because of all the rain the river was raging and we could not swim in it. it was really cool though. after that we made a quick stop at another village and then on to bamboo rafting! the river here was quite fast also due to the rain. the rafts were flat and made of several pieces of bamboo lashed together. you definitely get wet. luke and i sat on the bamboo while chris and our guide stood up at either end with a big stick of bamboo puching off of obstacles on the sides. we definitely had a few close calls with tree branch obstacles! it was very fun though, and for the cost of the trip so worth it. the elephant riding alone was worth it - that was my favorite part.


a tidbit, especially for ally: there are lots of elephants everywhere - on clothes, statues, logos, etc. i asked our guide about this and she said that long ago there was a war between thailand and burma. thailand won because the king fought with elephants - the thai people had domesticated them and had them on their side. so from then on the elephant was considered lucky. if you give the king a gift it is usually a white elephant because they are the most rare and the most lucky. unless of course you are at a white elephant christmas gift exchange in america...then maybe not so lucky.

it was cool to see rural thailand - which is more like the exotic place that people picture when you think of the south pacific. so many banana trees! and i also saw a papaya tree.

wheels in chiang mai

yesterday we ventured to the big wal-mart like superstore, tesco lotus, to buy bicycles. it is weird to think that they have stores like that all over the world. anyway, it enabled us to get really cheap bikes, so that we do not constantly have to pay for truck taxi's and the like. we ended up going to a bike shop to get new seats too. so yesterday was a day of exploration on wheels. no more tired feet, just really sweaty and covering more ground. the craziest part is that the traffic goes backwards here, so you have to really think before you navigate. let me just say that i am glad to be used to road biking. and also glad to have mountain bike tires to prevent flats around the crazy city streets and curbs here. now all i need to do is learn how to bunny hop so that i can keep up with chris and luke when they jump 10 curbs in a row to avoid traffic! here are the gems, after we removed the lovely "extreme turbo" decals. mine is blue.


so today we went on a bike adventure to the zoo! it was only a 15 minute bike ride, not bad at all. and it was much cooler today, probably 75 or so. the zoo is really cool and it makes you feel like you are in the jungle because of all the hills and trees. we got rained on pretty good while we were there, and broke down and bought crappy umbrellas. luckily it stopped raining for our ride home, which was all downhill! all in all it was a good escape from the city, and i definitely want to go back and see the pandas when it is not raining!

tomorrow we are going to ride elephants and swim in a waterfall!

i am glad that you are all enjoying reading this and thanks for the comments! we are having a good time. i am excited also to get into more of a routine when work starts. (and also have a little more play money!)

just a note for you picture viewers: i am going to start labeling the pictures month by month on shutterfly unless we do something special where i take lots of pictures. so i will be adding more pics to existing albums, fyi. i also hope to add some pictures soon that chris took, and i will give him his own album. he has been taking tons of great photos here!

xo