Planes, trains and automobiles... The Thai way - Chiang Mai, Thailand
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Happy New Year everyone, sorry it's a little late but the first 2 weeks have been incredibly crazy and really just incredible... A sign of things to come for 2014 I'm hoping! I gave up making New Years resolutions a long time ago but as this is looking to be a whole year when I will not touch ground in England (although you never know) I am going to make the most of the beautiful weather in this part of the world and just generally of my time away from home! I'm also going to start with a little advice for the year, and for always... Do NOT leave a hotel room without checking the safe... More on that later! So, after Christmas Day in Bangkok, mum had a chance to see where I work for a morning on Boxing Day. As much as I would have loved for her to see a normal work day, it was sports day, and so that was what she saw. We each took one child to be our own responsibility for the morning. I chose to take a boy called Somsak, who due to his autism is a difficult child to handle at best, and I knew that he probably wouldn't be given a chance to come by anyone else as he needs constant attention and is really quite exhausting... We had a great morning together, even if I did spend half an hour sweeping away leaves that he threw at me, apparently his new game... Repetitive tasks calm him down. For Mum I chose a boy called Jew (pronounced Deu) as he is extremely able and well behaved... Both of us discovered the beauty of using food to silence and distract any child... Somsak ate chicken nuggets and chips, a pad thai, a bag of crackers and some pet maak (very spicy) fish which left tear streaks all down his talcum powered face... He wasn't even slightly phased by the chilli that left me stuffing ice cubes into my mouth for 10 minutes. The morning was really fun, although no sports were performed by us, and mum now knows just how exhausting my job is (I do actually work hard, even though work is really just play). For New Years we flew a tin can plane down to Chumphon to catch a ferry to Koh Tao. Simple? Not as simple as we would have liked. We (stupidly in hindsight) hadn't booked a ferry, and even though we managed to get one for the same afternoon, it took a few phone calls and a lot of confused Thai/English and an almost full blown game of charades outside the airport to explain that no, we didn't want to spend 7 hours on a night boat but one hour on the high speed catamaran leaving at 2pm... Bearing in mind this is 8am and we had been up since 3, even that prospect was pretty draining. Not as draining of course, as the boarding of the boat, which consisted of too many queues of a lot of people with no clue what was going on, not even the staff... My choruses of, "it's just the Thai way, it will all work out" did little to quieten mums growing impatience, and by the end even my own. We ended up leaving around half an hour late (early for Thai time), sat surrounded by a dozen Scandinavian lads (we think) who we had seen earlier all in a line, each with identical red, hard shell suitcases... Go figure! We sat in the top deck of the boat in the sun, which despite getting drenched within 5 minutes and nearly falling into people's laps despite sitting down, we were in the best place on the boat. The other option was downstairs in the inside cabin, where the rough seas rendered 90% of the people in there horrifically sea sick. Even where we were sat, mum and i were surrounded by sick bags and spent the last of the journey desperately looking at the horizon (apparently that what you're supposed to do) in an attempt to keep down lunch... We succeeded, just, and arrived in Koh Tao in desperate need of Vodka. I couldn't be in Koh Tao without going diving, so I arranged that on the first day... I normally get quite cold anyway, but this was the first time I've ever seen an instructor shivering like mine did... He spilt his coffee he was shaking so ***********e girls lips were blue.. I did comparatively well I think! For the rest of the time we lazed around the beach, had some lovely meals and an amazing New Year's Eve on the beach, complete with fire skipping, fire limbo and an extremely stubborn Chinese lantern! After New Years we were heading up to Chiang Mai from Koh Samui so had to get another ferry the day before our flight out. Luckily this one was no where near as rough, and would have been a pleasant journey, had I not remembered 5 minutes after it left, that we had in fact left our passports in the safe back in our room on Koh Tao... Mums panicked face and the ridiculousness of the situatIon was enough to set me off laughing... What else could I do at that point? Luckily the situation was sorted by a man back at the hotel who sent our passports on a later ferry all on their own for us to collect on Koh Samui... Moral of the story, always make friends with staff at your hotel, and more importantly don't be as stupid as we were in the first place! Chiang Mai is definitely one of my favourite places after our 5 days there... Within an hour of being there I had possibly the biggest surprise of my life and 2 suddenly became 3. We went to Tiger Kingdom where I was bitten by a tiger cub (of course it had to be me), we spent a day with the elephants where we nearly had to leave mum to live out her days with them, we went white water rafting where despite some solid effort from the rapids I did not fall out, and spent part of my birthday zip-wiring and abseiling through the jungle. All in all we had an exhausting but amazing few days, and I have returned to Pakkret a year older, a little wiser, but I think somewhere along the way I definitely lost some dignity... I say somewhere, I know exactly where I left it, in the jungle with the elephant I was trying to climb onto... Neither ladylike or elegant if anyone was wondering. We had 2 nights in Bangkok to finish off the holiday, where we had an extortionately expensive round of drinks at the Sky Bar from The Hangover II... It was totally worth it and an amazing way to spend the last night. Three has now become one again, and I have returned to work, I am currently (for 3 days a week anyway) the only volunteer at Fueng Fah so communication is a little tricky, and the kids have to listen to my random babbling as there's no one else to listen... It's like therapy but free from judgement or understanding of any kind... It's a good thing they can't understand me really! With 4 volunteers leaving just after Christmas, our a quiet little house is now down to just 4 and next week we are losing another girl but gaining a boy who should be joining me at work... I'm so used to this house having 10 girls in that it's very strange and quiet around here now so we shall see how a boy copes with us... This could be fun!