Life of Wrecklessness: Amy and Monica Take Thailand: Week 1

Day 1 of our time in Thailand went fast. Since we missed our first official day 1 due to flight delays and what have you, we played catch-up.

First with a special ride from Bangkok to Hua Hin.

Bangkok is HUGE!

We went with the whole "Red Shirts" group we were part of for our first class. Which really was like a crash-course in Thai culture and being a Thai English teacher. That day, I learned that all females are expected to wear skirts or dresses, all the time. But you can consider "feeling it out" with your school, to see if business pants are acceptable. Check one for the list of things I didn't need to bring.

We broke for lunch, and went to this awesome Thai restaurant down the street from our classroom. It was my first experience eating Thai food in Thailand and I played it super safe. I got fried noodles with chicken and sat with Monica, one of our classmates, and two XploreAsia employees. The guy was really nice and told us that we should focus on learning Thai numbers first since not a lot of Thais know English numbers, and we're in Thailand, so we conform to them, they don't conform to us. The huge bonus of this class is how close to the beach we are. This was a regular post-eating lunch break:

Chocolate Peanut Butter Brownie.

Thai tea!!

I'M IN A NEW OCEAN!

At the end of the day, Monica and I were taken to the mall to go buy our Thailand burn phones. This is when we really started making friends. Another girl came along with us. She's from South Africa. And through pointing and broken English and charades we learned that any phone with a red sticker by it was out of stock. So we got the third cheapest phone there and continued on our way.

After wandering around the mall we learned we actually had to find our own way home. But there were so many of us, and I didn't know that people just jump in front of you to get on a single that I couldn't make it on. And so Monica and our new friend Danni waited with me to find a new one. 20 to 30 minutes later we're on our way home.

The next few days kind of blur together. We'd get up, take a songtow to class, go to class, have lunch, more class, go home. Maybe go to the mall or check out the night market. One day after class we went to Muoy Thai! I had a good picture of Monica and I at the end but accidentally deleted it off my phone before it got backed up.

So here's a not-so-awesome one

There's the Muoy Thai ring.

After Muoy Thai we got a quick transportation tour and were then again told, "Find your own way home."
But the day that everyone was really waiting for was Thursday. It was a day filled with activities. We started off with sleeping in (personal victory). Then moved on to the real fun. We went to a Buddhist temple and did a thing to get a fortune where we just shook sticks out of a cylinder, kind of like pick-up-stix and the first number to fall coincided with our fortune. My number, unfortunately wasn't there.

Boats on the way in.

A little shop.

The monastery building.

Chinese Buddha.

Thai monks.

This is where the fortunes are.

Hipster shrine.

Next we did a 5 minute meditation thing AND got blessed by monks!

Real monks.

And the final thing we did at the temple was hike up to the top and check out the lovely view.

Thai Buddha

This statue is huge. And at the top of a mountain.

The next activity was to go to a pineapple farm to eat, buy, and collect pineapples to feed the elephants!

This is what a pineapple farm looks like. Farmville lied to me!

Not in trees.

This is our songtaw, filled with a truckload of pineapples.

Our final event of the day was to go to an elephant sanctuary. We w three elephants. And while they seemed to have had their fill of pineapples, we did get to feed them bananas. And they went crazy for bananas! One old one ripped the bag of bananas out of someone's hand and I swore that was the end of our elephant fun time.

Monica feeding the elephant.

Then my awkward elephant interaction.

I dropped the banana.

The last elephant we saw was seven. She paints, plays soccer, plays the harmonica, and poses for the camera! She also followed me when I had the banana bag and I freaked out. No one would take it away from me so that she could follow someone else!

She painted that!

Soccer.

And very musically talented.

After the fun-filled day, a tropical storm hit on Friday. Class was cancelled and so was the celebratory ban planned for the beach. Instead we hung out at the hotel, tried to go to 7-11, and suffered as the power and the internet was down for most of the day.

Look mom, no hands!!

But everything got rescheduled to Saturday, including class. The beach was still getting reassembled when we arrived. It was all totally worth it though.