Hakuna Matata

These past two weeks have been long and eventful. My computer was magically broken when I got home on Sunday so I delayed writing this blog post until I could upload pictures. I just talked to my host dad and he's going to Bangkok until Tuesday and will fix my computer when he gets back. I wasn't going to leave you all hanging until then, so I will upload pictures in a seperate blog post later... and now, for the good stuff.

Two days after the Lai Rua Fai festival I was off on a VIP airconditioned bus to Korat where I would meet Bam, her twin sister Bell and her parents. I lucked out and got the very front seat of the double decker bus, which meant lots of legroom, the best view and the easiest spot to sleep in. So for most of the 8 hour bus ride I did just that - and looked out the window. It was a jungle out there, literally. Down the side of the windy forest road were slopes the plummeted deeper and deeper until you couldn't see the bottom. And yet, the trees that grew out from the bottom of the ravines were taller than any tree I've ever seen in Canada. Completely bare trunks without a twig or blemish until the top quarter that is covered in branches and long leaves. Then there were the mountains, not a single stone mountain in sight. Every mountain, every hill, every rock is covered in grass, or trees, or bushes. The world is green and blue in Thailand. The blue of the water, the green of the foliage. It was breathtaking and I couldn't help but start to see tigers running around in the thick jungle, monkeys climbing on the vines and every species of bird taking flight into the sky. There was a thick jungle, there were vines and the sky was as clear as crystal - but the animals were a figment of my imagination.

After the seemingly short busride [I don't even notice long rides anymore, I can stare out the window for hours and never get bored with the trees] I arrived in Korate where Bam and Bell were waiting for me under and umbrella to protect themselves from the sunrays. Classicly Thai. That night we went out shopping, went to the market and ate dinner on their floor [some more classic Thai].

On Friday we set out in their mom's car to Bangkok which was only a 3 hour drive away. But of course you need to take into account that Thai people LOVE buying food, even if they aren't going to eat it and they're giving it to someone else. So you need to add roughly two more hours on top of that to cover stopping time. On our journey we stopped at the side of the to get peanuts from a can [why some woman decided the best way to sell her peanuts was on the side of the highway.. I will never know], corn juice [delicious], 8 cobs of corn, gas station/chocolate and finally.. heaven. The best icecream I have ever had is made at a small fresh milk farm with a ow in the window and everything. They also have amazing milk candies, that I ate too many of. Anyways, I will never look at icecream the same again, that short pitstop inspired me to make icecream for the rest of my life. We'll see how that goes.
We arrived in Bangkok and proceeded to go to 3 DIFFERENT MALLS. At one of said malls there was a giant crowd of overly rambunctious girls screaming at some Korean pop band that was playing in the foodcourt.

I also became aware of just how many foreigners there are in Bangkok. It disgusts me a little, not that there are foreigners, but just how "un-Thai" that city is. I felt like I was in Toronto, except that all the shopkeepers were Thai. The worst part was that everyone just assumed I was another foreigner who doesn't know how to say anything in Thai and so they spoke English with me. Even when I explained IN THAI that I could speak Thai and understand them, they still struggled over speaking English. Oh well, I was a traveller in Bangkok, I could deal with being a traveller in Thailand for a week.

Bam and Bell wanted to take me to JJ market, the biggest market in the country that is roughly the size of three football fields and sells items from all over the country. You can pretty much buy anything there and according to my fellow exchange student Micheal "If you can't find it, you weren't looking hard enough". JJ is a weekend market that opens up very late on Friday night and closes on Sunday night. They decided we should go right when it opened at 3am and try to get a bargain on stuff. So at 3 am on a Friday night their older sister came with us to the market and we walked through the mazelike corriders of stall upon stall of clothing until 7 am when we figured we should get some sleep before Bam and Bell had to go to their class. We were woken up at noon to drop off Bam and Bell and then their older sister Beem took me to JJ again, to look through all the stalls that hadn't been open the night before. It was a completely different place during the day.
First of all, there were a billion foreigners [which was to be expected seeing as we were in BANGKOK], you could barely move through the corridors it was so crowded, and all of the amazing things were now for sale. I spent most of the 5 hours that afternoon looking through the hundreds of stalls with artifacts, jewellery, leather and silk from chiang mai, and another big chunk looking at all the pets! I have to tell you, saying there were pets there does not do justice to just how much of this market was isolated for dogs, cats, squirrels, turtles, tarantulas, gerbils, hamsters, snakes and bunnies. They were adorable, I wanted to take home almost every animal, especially the squirrels who had to be sedated and looked really upsetting.
It was the most amazing place I have ever been, everything seemed so magical and colourful. You really could buy anything you were looking for. If it weren't for the mass amount of foreigners I would camp out and sleep there for the rest of my trip. I ended up spending WAY too much money [for a Thai person to spend that is] but I bought all of my Christmas presents and even a bunch of stuff for myself. I have now made myself a deal that I will not buy anything else until my trip with the exchange students in December.

The next day we went to this pottery village on a boat tour of the river. We had to cross the river to the small temple at the other side first, and to get to the river crossing we had to walk through ANOTHER temple. That night it had rained a lot so the streets were flooded. We had to walk across sandbags and planks of wood so we didn't trudge through the foot deep water, and then we had to sit in the back of this small carriage while a Thai man pulled us with his bike. It was an interesting experience, that's all I can say. The boat tour falls into the same guidelines as a car ride - you must stop a billion times for food before you get to the destination. They pulled the boat over at 4 different dessert shops for people to get out and buy food. The only stop I enjoyed was the stop that was next to a wat. I made my merit with incense, candles and gold and then we got to write our names on tiles that they were going to use to redo the roof. I guess now I will officially be a part of that temple; that's pretty cool if I do say so myself.

The rest of the week went by slowly, I wanted to go to the English bookstore so two seperate days they took me to malls and finally I found the Twilight Series and have read almost all four books since I bought them - one week ago. That proves to you just how much time I have on my hands. On Wednesday I went with Bam and her friend to see Eagle Eye [IN ENGLISH!]. It was a pretty fattening and foreign day - we had icecream from Swensens, I had KFC and popcorn, and we watched Shia LaBoeuf running around in an English film with Thai subtitles. It was unsettling being so "non-Thai".

On Thursday we headed back for Korat on a bus with a crying baby sitting in front of me. It wasn't quite as pleasant as the car ride to Bangkok. Then on Friday we went to Khon Kaen so that Bam and Bell could take part in their orientation meeting for Rebounds and Outbounds.
I ended up meeting up with 18 other exchange students who came in from the villages around Khon Kaen and we spent the weekend hanging out together. I can't exactly say what we did all weekend, some people might not appreciate how rambunctious we are, but we did get to know each other really well and I can't wait to see them again. My favourite moment had to be when Clayton put on his ipod to "Hakuna Matata" [in Portuguese] and we all sang the lyrics in our own language while jumping up and down on the beds. Having Hakuna Matata sung in 5 different languages really brings people together, and Hakuna Matata is the best way to reflect the Thai lifestyle - it means no worries for the rest of your days.

October 24th -26th had to be the best weekend I've had since I've been here, one of the best in my life. It sounds silly to say that when I just met the exchange students on Friday, but I consider them all amazing friends and I know that leaving them at the end of the year will be extremely difficult. We have so many memories just from this one weekend, and I can't wait to make more with everyone in our future trips.

I came home on Sunday night at 7 pm to find Nakhon Phanom just as I left it: full of misquitoes, humid as anything and with my host mother ecstatic to see me. I really did miss her, when I have to leave families it will be tough to live my first home behind. I walked in the door to a package from my mom, a Halloween card that sings the Ghostbuster theme song from my sister, and one of my favourite foods waiting for me on the table.

"We are the world"