เกาะ (koh tao)

    So as I have said before finding the motivation to keep writing blog posts is getting harder and harder as my life here turns to routine, and everything in Thailand starts to become everyday normal stuff. But I'll try to keep it up. This month I'm sorry to say I only have one update, but it will be a good one. So... This last week I went on vacation (I know, I'm in Thailand. You would think that was vacation enough.) The family that is hosting me found out that my birthday and the two other exchange students' birthdays are all with in a three month period of each other. They decided to give the three of us a nice trip to an island close to Bangkok, called เกาะ (koh tao). I won't even try to explain what anything looks like; I will just leave it all up to the pictures..

      First we left Udon Thani (my cit) on an overnight train to Bangkok, and I had to sleep on a top bunk. Let me just say that if I was a few inches taller and a little bit more overweight then I would not have fit.

The website is still not letting me rotate pictures. If you rotate this one left you  will see my friend Joao  on the top bunk sleeping away.

   Once we reached Bangkok we had a few hours before we boarded the eight hour bus to the place where we were to get on a ferry. In that time we went to the big mall (mostly window shopping), and we relaxed at the house of my host mom's sister. At the mall we got an interesting experience...

We went to a fish spa!!!

I hope you can see all the little fish, but let me just tell you it was something everyone should try at least once.

Here is my picture to prove that I have tried it...

    Then we went to the bus pick-up point, and found that after we had checked in we had another two hour wait. Luck for us there was a "walking street" (basically a market on the street) very near. We walked the whole street, found some cool stuff, and then found a nice coffee shop to wait the rest of the time.

The many different clothing and item sellers along the street, but this was only part of the "walking street".

    Finally it came time to board the bus, and we headed off on another overnight trip. We finally got to the port for the ferry really early in the morning, and we found out we had another wait ahead of us.

The bus ride. As you\can see some of us were pretty tired.

    After the last weight (of mostly naps) we finally got to board the ferry and take another two hour trip to the island, but once we reached the island all the traveling and waiting we well worth it.

Getting on the boat... 

The trip over (after it had stopped raining)

One of the smaller islands that surrounded the main island.

    The first day we got there in the early afternoon, so we checked into our resort/hotel and walked to the beach. We basically relaxed the whole day and went out for a nice dinner afterword.

The water on the beach was really shallow for like fifty meters or more away from the beach.

And it was so clear you could see the bottom almost anywhere.

The three exchange students with our host mom.

These three ladies are my host mom (left) and her two high school friends. The one on the right lives on the island, while the one in the middle lives in Bangkok and set up the whole trip.

     The next day we woke up at an easy time, and we headed to the most famous part. The place was not connected to the main island, but was made up of three smaller islands. We spent the whole day there. We got to relax, play a little American football, and snorkel. It was amazing! That night we ate barbecue on the beach, and we went for a little walk and saw fire!

No we can't walk on water, but we did our best to make it look like we could.

The water was so clear, we did most of our snorkeling right there.

Get ready for the throw....

And there it goes... I hope somebody was ready to catch it...

The island had a nice relax space...

We all finally got tired, and we decided to head back...

That's right, a fire twirler. He was pretty good and even broke out double sticks a little bit later.

     After what seemed like a long weekend (even though it was only two nights and three days) we headed back home. The trip back took just as long and was just as entertaining as the trip to the island. I won't bore you with recap of the trip back, since all you basically have to do is take what I said about the trip here an reverse it. But once I got home I was really tired, and I just recuperated the whole day... I hope you all enjoy the pictures and details. Please keep on looking for my next update.

Chinese New Year

       So I think I have probably said sorry enough for not "posting in a while". I would hope most viewers would understand that this blog is written by a teenager who finds himself in a position that laziness easily creeps upon him. So I hope all will forgive me from now on for any tardiness on updates to my blog. Now that being said, I hope I can make it all up to you by putting up some pretty cool pictures on this post. By the title I have posted you can safely assume that this blog is about the Chinese New Year, but it is about how I celebrated it and not how my city traditionally celebrates it. Instead of hanging around the city, enjoying its festivities like I can with any other festival, I went on a little vacation with my first host family and the two other exchange students in my club. We went to a place right next to the border of Laos, on the outskirts of a city called  Ubon Ratchathani. I don't know how to explain it, so I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves. But first let me show you at least one picture of my city decorated for the Chinese New Year.

This was at the entrance to the festival. They had these giant masks that anyone could come up and put on. We thought it was hilarious.

This was right after the entrance. Just a cool looking picture.

      So the trip started out with a long drive. We finally arrived at our "resort" and settled in. But we didn't stop for a rest; we went right into our first activity. Our boat/hike tour.

It started with a long hike down to the shoreline.

Then our boat took us on a nice tour of the surrounding area first.

On this tour we saw many fisherman from both Laos and Thailand out on the unsteady rocks.

This was the view pretty much anywhere we looked from the boat.

We even got to see a few small waterfalls here and there.

Even my first host parents were having a great time that day.

I even got a great patriotic (for Thai) photo shot.

The beginning of our hiking tour. A great shot if you ask me.

The rocks went on and on, on both sides of the river.

But that didn't stop me finding some of the coolest places within those rocks.

What this place was really known for is the shapes that mysteriously show  up all around. Like here, you can see good 'ol Micky.

This place is said to be in a music video of a famous Thai singer. Now, since most of you don't know any famous Thai singers, I feel confident in saying that statement is probably true.

   After the great tour, we all went out to eat, and then after went back and settled in nicely to the resort. The next morning we woke up before sunrise. INTERESTING FACT: Ubon Ratchathani is the first place to see the sunrise in Thailand. So what did we do??? Well of course we headed out like good little campers, scrambled over the rocks by the river, all just so we could see the first sun rise of the day in Thailand. But it wasn't all for nothing, we got some great pictures as well...

Well let's just start out with the best one...

The guys on the trip...

The sun coming up over the trees on the other side of the river.

Well the sun was up, so time for one last picture and head back...

On the way we see this cool phenomenon. 

      After we got back, we packed up and headed on our way. But my host mom and dad had more in store for us yet. The brought us to an elephant showing company (Yes, Another one!) Sadly we got there right at the end of the last show, and they weren't giving out anymore rides for the day. They said they would be open again the next day, but we all made a consecutive decision that we were all tired and just wanted to head home (That, and we had done it before). But that being said, we made sure to not leave without photos...

Got to love these cool elephant pictures...

District Conference

     I know this is kind of late, but my district of Rotary had a district conference in the middle of December. The conference was held in the northern city of Chaing Rai. Well the other exchange students from my city and I arrived late, because on the way up we stopped by the city of Chaing Mai. There we went to it's walking street and say some pretty strange stuff.

Just a random statue near a restaurant in the walking street. 

We found some lady boys who found a fancy for the Mexican exchange student Raul.

    Needless to say we finally arrived to the conference and were reunited with our friends, and made some new ones as well. The exchanges students from one other district came as well.

They gave us some weird snack food, but it didn't kill us.

     That evening we came back and had a nice dinner with our friends, but then we had to perform once again for the Rotarians. Luckily we weren't the only ones; the other district also had a group that would be performing, but I'd have to say they were much better than we were.

I still didn't get to keep the costume!

They had guy dancers too, but they only danced for a short time while the girls danced the whole time.

    The next day, the Rotarians who took us told us we could skip out on the rest of the activities and go with them to the northern border and Thailand's famous white temple. Who would disagree with that? 

This was at the border crossing. There is a river behind us.

This is the river that was behind me. There was some random kids that happened to run into my picture as well.

This is the awesome white temple. It was actually kind of weird, as you can see by the skull topped cones beside me.

This was just like a small pond of hands, and if you look closely you can find a hand that has the middle finger up.

Just a great group picture.

This was inside the temple (a place where you are not suppose to take photos).  On the walls they had painted famous movie characters. There were most of the superheros (Spider man above), supervillains made an appearance as well, and just some random ones like Neo from the Matrix and the Predator from Aliens vs. Predator.

This temple looking building was actually the white temple's bathroom!

    It was an amazing trip, and I met many new friends from the other district. Hope all enjoy the photos.

The Holidays in Thailand

         Thailand, a place of wondrous beauty, easy going peoples, and... religiously Buddhist! When people from my home talk about the holidays, they normally are talking either about Christmas or Hanukkah (depending on religion) and the New Year. Well here in Thailand they basically skip the part about Christmas and Hanukkah and only think about the New Year, because they are Buddhist (Buddhism is considered the practical atheist). So the only Christmas spirit I received here in Thailand was that of the local shopping centers, who use the Christmas theme as a great selling technique, a package from home carrying home baked goodies and a few small presents (thanks mom and dad), and a nice Christmas eve dinner with some of the other exchange students in my city.

We ate an Italian restaurant where we were served a 4 course meal. It was ok, but nothing like homemade Christmas eve dinner.

The two ladies in the middle are family of the workers in the restaurant. Fabio (the guy next to me) is partially Italian and can speak Italian, so he knew the people pretty well.

    So after Christmas comes the New Year. It was at least more celebrated. I saw on the T.V. that there was even a count down in some of the bigger cities of Thailand. As for me, I got to spend some quality time with my new host family in a place called Radburry (pronounced really weird, so that even I haven't completely mastered the pronunciation). We left on New Years house with the whole family, even the cat came a long! We stopped a few places a long the way, like an aunt's house and other family members' houses. We finally arrived at Radburry at around 9 or 10 at night, and we were fed a bunch of food.

See the fish? Well it just happened to be the best fish I had ever had! This was where I have come to find out I love fresh fish! It was delicious.

    Well we all stayed up for the countdown, but the biggest celebration was locals shooting of fireworks near enough to hear. After the countdown I was pretty tired and just headed to bed. The next day I woke up and one of the family members took me to the river near by. There he showed me the process of selecting fish to sell that had already been caught.

They catch the fish and then bring them up in buckets from the river.

Then they weigh the fish and dump them into large tubs in the back of trucks for transportation.

   After that we went into town (which was right next to the river) for lunch. It wasn't that exciting, but it had a great view. The next day turned out to be the most interesting. We went to a floating market (my second one), but this one had stuff for sale that you could buy right out of a boat! It was an awesome experience, and I had a lot of fun watching other foreigners look like complete tourists.

Now I know some of these pictures are turned sideways, but I have found no way of rotating them with "Blogger". So if you can stand of few minutes of neck cranking I hope you enjoy the pictures.

I went with my whole family. My host mom is sitting behind me.

My host brother and host cousin look at the cool stuff to by, while my host mom looks for my other host cousin.

The canals got crowded toward the end of our boat ride. But it made it that much more interesting to see how the Thai navigate their boats.

This guy had a huge snake with him. I don't really know what he was doing, but I hope he never looses sight of the snake!

After the floating market we went back to the house and packed up. We took a lot of stuff to deliver to family on the way, and we even took and extra passenger home with us...

Our new dog, named Brown (but pronounced blow with Thai accent).