Let's do the time warp again...

Holy smokes, ladies and gentlemen, I have stepped through the looking glass! After a seventeen hour flight next to a drunk bear, I stepped out into another world. Are you aware that there is a twelve hour time difference between Thailand and the US? I was not.... The time warp has worked to my advantage because those around me believe that I am a morning person happy to wake up and offer alms to the monks at 6am. They also believe that I enjoy riding a bike for hours and hours a day, and all I can say about that is my fanny hurts and I am glad there will be no more biking on this trip! However, I just returned from the most amazing adventure and if the rest of my trip compares to what I have just done, I am in for quite a ride! I was greeted at the airport by my new friend and tour guide, Willy. He showed me my hotel for the night, gave me directions to the town center where I could get food and told me he would meet me in the morning. I was too tired to get lost (which is inevitable if I do not have Collette around to guide me...) so I ate some oatmeal cookies and passed out at 7:30pm, only to wake up every three or four hours expecting it to be morning time. I was bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning when Willy came to meet me. We traveled north and visited two ancient temple ruins. The first one was built in honor of a king's parents and had Buddha statues lining the inside of the wall surrounding the temple. All of the heads of Buddhas were missing and when I asked Willy why, the following conversation occurred: "People stole them and sold them for corrections." "Corrections? What does that mean?" "You know, when people correct things that they like." "Oh! Collections!" "Correct." This is when I knew Willy and I would get along. The Thai have a difficult time distinguishing between Ls and Rs and SHs and CHs, and this proves for some very funny miscommunication. As soon as Willy discovered that I was a teacher, whenever he would have a problem with his language he would come to me and say, "Teacher, is it the ship or the chip?" and then we would have a little English lesson. At the second temple (on the sight of one of Thailand's former capitals) we walked through the ruins and then went to the restored temple where I came upon the largest Buddha I could possibly imagine. Apparently, it is not the largest Buddha that the Thai can imagine. As we toured the temple, Willy told me many fascinating tales about Buddhism and explained some of the traditions and taboos. For example, you are never allowed to point your feet toward Buddha (and should never point them toward another person if possible) because your feet are the lowest part of your body and considered unholy. Likewise, you are never supposed to touch the head of a Buddhist because the head is the highest part of your body and the most holy. After a nice lunch and a stroll through the local market where I stumbled upon live turtles and eels in the meat market, we boarded the rice barge that we would travel on for the next two days. We were joined by a very sweet Austrian couple and off we went. (Side note: I have discovered that I do not know how to say Anne without a southern accent. When I introduced myself to the Austrians, they said "Ian?" "A-yun?" "How do you spell it?" Only after I spelled my name did they understand...) Finally, we embarked on our adventure. We immediately ran into a problem when the barge would not go under the first bridge because the water was too high. No problem--we'll start our adventure here! We got off the barge with bikes and rode to the nearby elephant grounds. Yes, I said elephant. I fed elephants and baby elephants and one of them gave me a leaf cut (the equivalent of a paper cut) because he snatched the food out of my hand so quickly. I also saw a five day old baby elephant and it took all my will power (and the knowledge that mamaphant would stomp me) to not run over and caress the tiny baby. Next, we biked to a mango grove where each mango was wrapped individually in its own bag so that worms would not get them. Willy plucked a million herbs from the ground and made us sniff them and guess what they were. They would all be used for our supper that night. After our herb lesson, we reboarded the barge and set sail for our slumber destination. Alex (another crew member that I formed a little crush on after he wove a jasmine flower into my hair) gave me some fruit with the common fruit dipping supplement: a combination of sugar, salt and a little chili powder. I had no idea how much fruit I have been missing out on! Have you ever had dragon fruit? We supped and then Willy explained that we would be anchoring in a very small and quiet village for the evening. When we arrived at the village, there was a temple festival going on! Somewhat like the local fair that comes to town, each village has a temple fair one night a year and we happened upon the village on that one night. The bass was bumping and there were neon lights and games and goods for sale. Highlights: 1. I sampled dry, squashed squid. Not as bad as I expected. 2. There was a barbie-like doll for sale called "Benign Girl" 3. There was a ride for the children that was something like a mix between a carousel and one of those big flying swing things. The ride was propelled by a small fan on the top. 4. There was a game where you tried to catch a fish in the water with a net made of a piece of paper--impossible. After exploring the fair, we got back on the boat, drank a few beers and I passed out around 9pm. The next morning we were woken up at 6am in order to give alms to the monks that had so delightfully entertained us the night before. We stood on the side of the road with the other villagers waiting for the monks to approach so that we could give them the food that had been prepared for them. Six monks came and stood before us, we took off our shoes, stepped forward and I went down the line and scooped rice into each monks' pot. After we had each presented some food, we knelt (feet facing away) in front of the monks and they chanted a prayer for us. Monks only eat the food that is presented to them and they are not allowed to eat after noon. We returned to the barge for our own breakfast and then set off for our morning bike adventure. The town we had stayed in was known for its sword makers back in the day and now they have switched from sword making to kitchen utensils. (Willy gets the words chicken and kitchen mixed up, which has also provided many entertaining miscommunication) We went into the shops where the men were forging the utensils and I saw flat spoons and axes. We rode rode rode and then stopped at a place where they were making coconut milk. There was an entire room full of coconuts and one person would remove the skin, the next would feed the coconut meat through a grinder and then the ground coconut would be pressed (like olive oil) and the milk would be all that was left. Mmmm! After this, we biked to a school in the next village and had the fortune to arrive just as the students were changing classes. We made our way to the English classroom and Willy asked the teacher if we could help teach the lesson. The teacher separated the students into three groups and said "teach." I somehow got stuck with all the boys (these are upper middled school kids) who had absolutely no interest in learning to speak English. Nor could they speak any English. I tried to start with the normal conversational type things: "Hello" they say "Hello" I say "how are you" they say "how are you" I say "now you say I am fine" they say "now you say I am fine" etc. This was obviously not working. I grabbed a map and showed them where I was from and how far I had traveled, they yawned. I grabbed a book of verbs and acted out each verb as I had them repeat after me. I got a few laughs with this one--they loved my fake hiccup. Finally, the teacher suggested we go over parts of the body. I pointed to parts of the body, they looked at me with empty eyes. I wrote the words down, had them spell them to me (they at least know their letters), made them guess what part of the body it was, then had them repeat after me and point to said body part. This went on for a while and was a little amusing to the kids but quickly became boring. Finally I had the brilliant idea to make the kids stand up and I taught them the "head and shoulders, knees and toes" song. They loved this and the teacher loved it and I ended up teaching the entire class and finally felt as though I had made a minor break-through. The teacher thanked me afterwards and asked me to teach her the song as well. After a relatively successful teaching session, we boarded the barge at the next pier. A quick lunch and then we would travel down river to another temple. On the way, Alex asked if anyone wanted to take over the captains position and the Austrians were quick to decline--just as quick as I was to accept. Captain Sparrow stepped aside and I was given the reigns to the barge and I guided us between tugboats and coal ships for a good 40 minutes with no help. Captain Sparrow joked that he would have to step down and Willy joked that he was not yet married--neither would have said such a thing if they knew of my sense of direction... Had they let me guide the boat much longer, I would have ended up back in North Carolina! We got off in another small village and had a rather uneventful, but very scenic, ride to the next pier. Right before we boarded the boat, we stopped at a shop where a man makes traditional headgear for Thai dancing. As we looked around the shop, Willy placed one of the pieces on my head. The crafter immediately went to the back room and brought back traditional clothes. Before I knew it, I was decked out in full traditional Thai dance costume. This made up for having to miss Halloween. Finally, we got back on the chip, had a lovely dinner and I went to bed immediately because my sweet baby brother passed along his nasty cold right before I left... I had a rough night's sleep due to my inability to breathe and my concern for keeping the Austrians up (we all slept in a bunk below deck). I finally got out of bed at 7am this morning and took a cold shower and went up for breakfast. Today we started biking at 8:30 and visited a temple in the middle of a rice field. We had to bike along a winding dirt road, through large puddles where the road had worn away, to the temple that had a large Buddha that was being protected by his many headed cobra (we also saw a dead cobra in the road!) and there was a giant white elephant that served as a bell tower. Think Trojan Horse, but white and an elephant. I (obviously) climbed inside of it and went up to the bell to check out the view. Next we biked over to a rice field where a man was plowing an empty field to prepare for next year's harvest. I made friends with his dogs and got some wonderful photographs of him working. We biked on, went to a few more temples and markets and then boarded the barge for our last meal. Sadly, we had to barge (what do you do with a boat if you don't sail it?) back to Bangkok and my health rapidly declined. I napped on deck after drinking copious amounts of tea and Willy and Alex kept making jokes about me crying because it was our last day because I was sniffing so much. Now I am back in Bangkok and I meet up with the folks that I will travel to Laos with tomorrow after Willy gives me a tour of the city. They actually arrived this evening and I waited in my room for hours to meet them until I was too hungry to wait any longer. I went downstairs and asked the lady at the hotel if they had arrived and she looked horrified and said she had forgotten to tell them that I was waiting and they had already gone out for supper. I accidentally got mad at the lady because I was starving and sick and tired and didn't want to have to eat alone/get lost on the streets of Bangkok. The lady was so sweet and understanding, she asked me what I wanted, hailed a tuk-tuk (think Taxi/tricycle/golf cart) and took me to her favorite pad thai joint. I apologized profusely for being cranky and she apologized profusely for forgetting to let them know I was at the hotel and then we had a lovely conversation about traveling. We walked back to the hotel together and she pointed out some of the sights along the way and maternally grabbed my arm each time we crossed the street. Now I will go to bed and hope that I can breathe in the morning. Tomorrow I will try to upload some photographs if I can figure it out.

(the space bar on this computer is only the size of two keys)

PS I forgot to mention the trees full of giant fox-faced bats that we saw today. I want to ride one.