Second Host Family

      After four months in Thailand I have switched host families. This host family consists of my host dad, who runs a motorcycle retail and repair shop, my host mom, who helps out my host dad in the shop, my host brother, who is the same age as me, two younger cousins, and a sister, who is actually on exchange in Mexico right now. O, yeah, and I have a cat called seafood as well, but she is pretty elusive and doesn't appear on the video. We live above my host dad's Suzuki Motorcycle shop, and the house consists of four stories plus a roof that you can walk on. Enough explanation! Here is a video tour.

Ayutthaya and the Floating Market

   A few days ago my host father came to me and told me to pack my bags... I asked for what (naturally), and he said that I was going to go to Ayutthaya the next day! So, me being the good Exchange Student that I am I went straight away and packed. I found out the reason for going the next day. We were going because one of the host families had a friend who passed away, and that friend lived near Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya is really far away from where I live, so we were going to be spending one night there as well. So the host family took this extra time to give Joao, Raul (for reference to who these two are, look at previous blogs), and I a great experience of Ayutthaya.

     Now enough with the long explanations, and on with short ones with pictures! The night before I left I went over and slept at the host family's (the one taking us to Ayutthaya) house. The first morning we woke up around 4 A.M. and got into a bus to basically sleep for the 8 hours it took to get to Ayutthaya. I'm sorry to say that I didn't take any pictures of the funeral, but in short: the body is cremated, the hold the funeral at a normal Thai temple, and it's basically like a visitation for an American funeral (but all in Thai). After the funeral we drove for another hour or so until we got to the floating market. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves (well with captions too).

Just to be able to say I was there!

A restaurant on water.

We even got to see the cook in action.

Joao, Raul, and I getting ready for the boat ride.

The boat ride was a basic tour of the floating market and surrounding area, but it was at night! It made me almost think I was in Italy.

That's what we probably looked like.

Even the host mom decided to come along for the boat tour.

   The boat tour was the last one of the night, and it was late in starting besides. So to say the least, it was very late when we finally got to the hotel for the night. But it was well worth it! The next day we headed for the elephants! On our way we went to the elephant... farm I think... But it wasn't the main attraction. We headed to the elephant place of work, and got to have one of the best experience: elephant rides!

The elephant place of work from the outside. 

They had baby elephants for a first impression.

The most common look of elephants anywhere: the trunk (nose) in an upward angle.

Yes, we are all wearing the same shirt. A friend gave us each one and we thought it'd be cool to wear them that day.

And now for the elephant ride!!!!!!

It was actually rather short, only 10 minutes or so. But still getting to ride that animal was pretty amazing.

After our rides there was even an elephant show. They did some cool tricks like this one. It was an awesome spectacle to see. 

This was the biggest elephant they had. To give you an idea, where it is standing now anyone can walk under it without hitting there head. It was BIG!

   After the show we had the long journey back home, full of sleeping and well sleeping. We got home and basically went straight to bed with dreams full of dancing elephants (that was part of the show).

Pattaya

           About a week ago I went on a trip with Rotary to a city with the name of Pattaya. Now if you look it up on google images the first things you will see are a bunch of half naked women and bars, but that is NOT the reason Rotary took us there. The main purpose of the trip was for our group of Exchange Students to continue their efforts with raising money for the flooding relief in Bangkok. Now, granted, we did get some free time, so it wasn't all work and no play.

    First off the two other Exchange Students from my Rotary club and I decided not to go straight to Pattaya. Instead we headed to Kohn Kean, another city of Thailand, and joined the Exchange Students there in practicing for a performance for the fundraising. It was an interesting start to our trip, but it was very entertaining seeing as we got to be with so many other Exchange Students. The next day we woke up, got into two different buses and headed off to Pattaya.

Our bus consisted of a bunch of guys: (from back to front) Emiliano (American), Diego (American), Raul (Mexican),  Me (American, lol), Joao (Brazilian), Alejandro (Mexican).

    When we got there we went through some Rotary stuff, but then we found out that the evening was ours to do whatever we wanted. To give you an idea, Pattaya has a beach(!), Subway (hard to find here), and out hotel had its own pool. So as you could imagine we were overjoyed. That evening I headed to the beach for some salty fun. We decided public transportation was too expensive so we walked...

(from back to front) Ken(Japanese), Victoria(Canadian), Clarissa(American), Kayla(American) 

The street was quite interesting actually. The white slopy things you see are actually benches!

   This event seemed to be less stressful than usual Rotary gatherings, because the next day we were allowed to sleep in. Once we woke up we ate breakfast and headed for the road (walking not driving) and began our own parade to try and raise money along the streets.

Some of the outbounds and I even stopped at some businesses along the way, hoping they would give. 

In action, holding the box high, and asking random foreigners for money.

    At the end of our personal parade we came to a stage, and found out it was time to present what we had been practicing in Kohn Kean: our dances. I'd have to say it was actually pretty fun, and we raised over 50,000 baht! (Now you can convert that to your own currency, but I think it sounds more impressive in baht.)

The Americans did the Cha Cha Slide, and well anyone else who thought they could do it joined as well. 

The Brazilians amazed us all with the native dancing, but in the end they couldn't resist asking others join them.

This was interesting dance, (if i remember correctly: The Tango). It was well done, and the audience really enjoyed it.

  After we got another few hours of free time, and the same outbounds I was walking with in the parade pulled me along for another excursion to the beach. I was completely unready for it, but I went anyway and had a great time.

The outbounds convinced the Japanese student, Ken, to let them cover him with sand... 

The group of Thais, plus a Japanese and an American... Hmmm..  Can you guess which one is me???

   At dinner we found out we were presenting the same show as we had earlier that day, but this time it was for a bunch of Rotarians. And also this time we added the traditional Thai dance, which I'm proud to say I got to take part in.

Traditional wear for a Thai dance. (And no we didn't get to keep the outfits, but I did ask for one for Christmas and might just get it.) 

The full group plus a few extras.

    The last day I woke up early and, with a few others, went out to view a temple. But this temple was on the beach, and to get to it we got a free ride in a horse in buggy (in Thailand!).

It was a small buggy, so we put the fourth guy (who took the photo) next to the driver. 

To get any closer we had to pay an extreme amount of money, so we settled for this. I think it turned out all right.

   That evening we spent another night in Kohn Kean, but we were so tired that we didn't do anything. The next day I basically woke, got into my host dad's car, and headed back to Udon Thani.

Loy Kratung/Phu Kradueng

      Ok, so I left off with a long blog that had to deal with a month full of stuff. I'm gonna try to do better from now on. So here is my first installment of improving my blog updates:

     Last weekend (the 10 through the 14) I went on a long trip to a place called Phu Kradueng. If you look it up it's a very spectacular mountain with great views, and I hope to not let you down with pictures of my own.

    The first day we arrived we had to spend the night at the base of the mountain, because they allow no hikers up the trail after 12 in the afternoon. Even though this seemed a little annoying, it was actually a great opportunity. The day we arrived at Phu Kradueng was the same day as a national festival in Thailand: Loy Kratung. Now I don't know how many of you readers have watched The Hangover II but they have the same thing at the very end of the movie. I don't really know what it stood for, but we went to the a festival near us and celebrated it with the locals. There we got to see a beauty pageant, play some fair games, and float off candles. Here are the pictures:



This is one of the exchange students from Mexico. She got to participate in the beauty contest, and I think she won second place.



I couldn't really take a picture of myself doing this, but my friends did. I'm sure they will be posting the pictures on facebook later, so be looking. 

All of the floating lights behind me are lanterns that people have lit. It was really cool to see the sky lit up by stars, the full moon, and these beautiful candles.

I thought this was a really cool picture, because it shows the fireworks we saw but it also shows one of the lanterns floating right next to the bright explosion.

     After the festival we went to a little resort and went straight to bed because we had to wake up by 6 the next morning for the hike up Phu Kradueng.

    The next we arrived at the base of Phu Kradueng and dropped our baggage off (we were having porters carry it up the mountain for us, yay!!!!). We started our trek up the mountain around 8 in the morning, and 5 hours (yes I said 5 hours) later we arrived at the top. The trek consisted of small slanting slopes to considerably steep slopes that I almost had to use my hands to climb up. And sometimes there was only sheer rock cliff that had stairs built onto it. Then when we got to the top of the cliff and felt all accomplished we learned that we had another 3 kilometers (a little under 2 miles) to where we were actually sleeping. We then went on our way and finally got to our camp and had dinner.

They had this map at the bottom. For me a little intimidating, but for this Japanese exchange student he almost seems happy for the long hike up.







This was one of the more rockier sections. The climb was no walk in the park...




Along the trail there were stopping points, and some of the points had great views. This is one of them.




This part was so steep and uneven they had to put a hand rail.



At the top they had something unexpected: Pine trees. I have seen them no where else in Thailand, and they immediately reminded me of my home in the USA.

   The next day we woke up early and headed for a cliff where we could see the sunrise. I apologize in advance for I have no pictures of the sunrise, but it was beautiful and some pictures might surface on facebook. After the sunrise we headed back to camp and got ready for a day long hike to the other side of the mountain. Phu Kradueng has probably 1000 acres of relatively flat land at the top, so we got to walk a lot at the top. Around lunch time we reached our destination, which was another cliff with a great view. After we ate lunch we walked back to our camp on a different trail that followed the cliff edge. Along the way there were many stopping points with different views. The last one we stopped at and watched the sunset (Yes, I got to see both the sunrise and sunset in the same day). After that we headed back to camp, had some dinner, and headed to bed for the next day.



This is the map of Phu Kradueng. The right side is where we started for the day, and the left is where we ate lunch.




These two French exchange students pose for a picture in front of a pond along the way to our lunch site.



This is the most famous cliffs of Phu Kradueng. You will see it if you look up the mountain in google images. It was a long way down where I was looking.



I love this picture. The sun was setting, and some one pulled out my flag. Sage, and exchange student from the USA,  just happened to be in the right place, and now I have a wonderful patriotic picture for him.




This sunset wasn't extremely pretty, but combined with the view it was still amazing.

      The next day we were suppose to all go to some waterfalls together, but I slept in. When I woke up everyone but a few people who had the same idea as me were gone. I got up, took a shower, and ate some breakfast. Then just laid around and talked to the other people who stayed behind until lunch. At lunch everyone returned from the waterfalls and said how wonderful they were. So this made me really jealous, and I headed out on my own tour of the waterfalls by myself. Along the way I saw a somewhat scary sign, many waterfalls, and trails that reminded me of my backyard back home. After the waterfalls I headed out to the cliffs to try and catch another sunset.

This is the somewhat scary sign. I always thought elephants were peaceful creatures. Sadly enough I didn't get to see any of the wild elephants.

This is only one of the trails that I found that reminded me so much of my backyard at home.

For you Culver-Stockton fans, I actually brought a Culver-Stockton T-shirt with me to Thailand. This is how I represent my future college standing in front of a waterfall.

To be honest, I think that this sunset it much better than the first one. I also stood on a different cliff for this picture.

    Just like the previous days I went back to the camp, ate dinner, and headed back to my cabin for some sleep. Some things I haven't mention yet: The nights on top of the mountain were really cold, maybe around the low 40s in Fahrenheit. All combined I walked probably over more than 50 kilometers (30 miles) over a 3 day excursion. And lastly, the mountain top was covered in leeches! I got one between my toes! But I only got one. Other people got like 5 or 10. We learned pretty quickly how to deal with them, but it lead to checking ourselves each night before we went to bed.

    The last day finally arrived, and we had to wake up early again! We had to go out around 6 and drop our bags off with the porters who would take them back down the mountain. After that we had two hours to eat breakfast and get ready for the climb down. We set out around 8 with the first 3 kilometer hike to the trail that led down the mountain. At the trail I met up with Sage, the one from the USA, and Kin from Japan. To my surprise the three of us headed out first and stayed in front of everyone the whole way. We didn't sprint, but we did move rather fast and got a good time. What took me over 5 hours to get up, took me only an hour and a half to get down! We got to the bottom, and to our disappointment had to wait over an hour for everyone to show up. Then we had to wait another couple of hours for our rides to finally get there.

I found some watermelon for sale along the way. I thought it was quite impressive eating while walking/running down steep slopes.

The first ones.

Ahhh! So proud of that time seeing as we started at around 8:30 down the trail, 9:50 was a pretty good time for me.



Some of the exchange students surrounded the Phu Kradueng sign in exhaustion, after their long hike down the mountain.

      After everyones' ride got there, we all said our goodbyes and headed home...