Hot Hot Hot!

Oh Canada, I am home! After 4 airplanes, 5 airports, 26 hours, and 1 cancelled flight, I'm just happy to have made it back safely. I've been stuffing my face with all the foods I missed eating (like my mom's chocolate chip cookies) and telling lots of stories of my adventures.

Before flying home, I spent my last two days in Bangkok, in the blazing summer heat. I stayed in a hotel on Khao San Road - where tourists like to party and shop at the market. I bartered for a new backpack and souvenirs to fill it with.

I also did a bit of gallery hopping around the city and shopping at a huge seven storey mall. I was crossing the street to the art gallery when a tuk tuk driver stopped me to tell me it was closed...hoping he could drive me somewhere else. Don't trust anyone in Bangkok, people say. (It was definitely open!)

The Grand Palace in Bangkok is a complex of historical buildings. It used to be the official residence of the king of Thailand from the 18th-20th century. Every day, thousands of people travel to see the palace's gorgeous jewels and the emerald buddha.

Thank you Erica and Victoria for your marvelous hospitality!!!
Bye for now! Until my next adventure!
Michelle

For one week, I volunteered in the mountain villages north of Chiang Rai, Thailand. The volunteer organization is a volunteer run, non-profit medical social organization helping the poor, underprivileged and marginalized hill-tribe communities of Northern Thailand.

We stayed with the poorest family in the Akha village and brought food to share. The people were so generous and welcoming. We cooked our meals over the open fire inside the house (actually the teenagers did most of the cooking!). The food was so spicy I had to blow my nose after I ate.

We slept in a bamboo hut on the floor with blankets and pillows. We started our day at 7:30 AM, waking to the cackle of roosters. Across the road there was a squatting toilet/bath house built by a group of previous volunteers. In the morning, people from the village came over to see the doctor. My job was to count out the pills for prescriptions, which were mostly vitamins.

We packed up the truck and drove for about an hour, up a mountain and through a river to a new village. A teenage boy and two girls from the Akha villlage traveled with us in the truck (which was donated to the organization). We played a game called Co-co, where the kids piled their flip flops into a pyramid and started chasing me with the ball we made out of bamboo splinters.

The man living at one hut we stayed at took us into the forest to collect bamboo. When we got back, he chopped the bamboo trunks into thin strips lengthwise and dried them flat in the sun. Later we helped him build a side of his house with the dried bamboo slabs.

The next aftenoon we walked down the mountain to a swampy river where the kids fished for little sardines with their bare hands. I ended up knee deep in mud. We cooked the sardines in a piece of bamboo trunk on the fire for supper that night. It was an exhausting day, especially climbing up the hill in the intense heat.

Dr. David has written and published articles about Burma and is an activist for human rights. He will run the organization for three more years, until his students who have been sponsored to go to medical school can come back and take care of the sick people in the villages. He said that he is teaching them to fish for life instead of giving them a fish everyday.

Laos is an extremely poor, landlocked and mountainous country which borders north eastern Thailand. It is called the Land of Smiles because the people are so kind. On Easter Sunday, Erica, Victoria, their friend Jane, and I traveled 23 hours on the night train to get there.

We stayed one night in the capital city Vientiane, where we endulged on baguettes and pastries. Laos is heavily influenced by the French (unlike Thailand) and there is a large amount of bakeries in the tourist area. We also walked to the market and perused traditional-style clothing, table cloths and scarves made from beautifully rich coloured fabrics.

We rode the bus to Vang Vieng for a day of adventure. In a group of 20, we explored an elephant cave shrine, then went tubing in a cave, and kayaking down the river for a few hours. With two people in each kayak we forged through a few small rapids.

We brought our boats to shore at the last bar along the river to go swinging on a zip line and jump into the water. (Some people needed a few drinks at the bar before mustering enough courage to endure a 10 metre drop.) Weeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

Erica and Victoria teach English at two schools and a hospital in Surat Thani. They took me to their elementary school so I could see what teaching in Thailand is all about. The kids are very cute and full of energy. The huge school building has open air hallways and luscious green landscaping.

I happily watched three English classes in the morning, ranging from kindergarten to grade three. Vikki and Erica are both fantastic teachers who play lots of games with the kids to make learning fun. They often divide the kids into teams for relays and word games.

A few days later Erica told me that her class (the one I visited) had renamed their team name to "Super Smart and Pretty Michelle"! hahaha. She said they will remember me for weeks!

I was very lucky to travel to Chiang Mai, Thailand's biggest city in the north, with another English teacher from Surat Thani. Chiang Mai's night market was filled with tables of gorgeous textiles and handicrafts made by artisans of the northern hill tribes. There was a food market as well with fresh fruits, vegetables, and fish. Training how to care for an elephant at the Elephant Conservation Centre was a highlight of the trip!

The mahouts have a special relationship with the elephants. They fetch their elephant every morning from the jungle, feed it, ride it, and bathe it. The people at the Elephant Conservation Centre also rescue sick elephants at the hospital and make paper out of elephant dung!

As mahouts in training, we bathed our elephants and learned how to command our elephants in Thai. Our guides showed us how to get on our elephants from the side (stepping on the elephant's front leg), the front (leaping onto its trunk), or the back (stepping on the elephant's hind leg and crawling over its back while it is sitting). We tried all three! The elephant is tough and its skin is thick and leathery.

We also went to an umbrella factory, where workers carved, assembled, and painted paper and silk umbrellas.

We flew to Bangkok from Chiang Mai and took a bus to Kanchanaburi, where we climbed seven waterfalls in a national park. The hike was filled with many breathtaking views of plantlife, monkeys, and incredible waterfalls.

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