Week 5

Before we launch into this past week's events, I need to quickly report on our activity last Saturday which was fantastic. We hiked to the biggest waterfall in Chiang Rai, Khun Kon, and did some swimming and trekking down the river while it rained. We were literally walking through rainforest jungle with all the jungle sounds around us, ducking through bamboo groves, and swinging on lowhanging branches.

Some things that went on this past week...

Monday night bocce ball. Several of he boys here served missions in Australia and they started talking in Australian accents which turned into English, Scottish, and others as they kept playing the game. It was too dark to film so here is just a sound clip if you'd like to have a listen...

"the beautiful lass" is referring to Rosemary

One night this week, Pim bought all of us floating lanterns. They're like mini hot air balloons, except you don't float up into the sky with them and they have fireworks. The Thai people light them and send them away in floating lantern festivals in November or December. Really cool...slightly dangerous.

Thursday, on our way to a soccer tournament with the soccer school kids, we took the long way in the back of the truck and it was one of the most beautiful drives we've taken. Stuff like this is when Holly thinks, "Wow, I'm in Thailand." (direct quote)

Thirteen farangs (white people) versus 4th through 6th grade Thai boys made for an intense game, made all the more fun with the huge turnout of parents, teachers, music, announcers, and a halftime show by the girls in Jordan's dance class. We had full on uniforms for both teams and the field was legit, some of the volunteers went and painted it the day before.

Pi Pi let us help her make her sweet green curry. She doesn't have a recipe, apparently that's only what Americans do, she just goes by taste and look. I (Holly) took notes though so we can make it for everyone when we get home.

We watched the Mexico v. South Africa game at a bar/restaurant that had a separate room with a pool table and dancing. Rose got serenaded to and a man at least twice my age who thought I was Scandinavian bought me a drink. (Don’t worry mom, it was only Coke). I had Dave go talk to him. Turns out he works for an NGO that works with some hill tribes here in Chiang Rai and our organization might end up partnering with him. Awesome.

This week new volunteers have been coming for the second part of the trip, so yesterday we picked up one more and drove straight up to Mae Sai, up to this mountain with a temple at the base.

It's famous because there are monkeys swarming the place. The people make a lot of money off the tourists who go and buy bananas to feed the monkeys, but the monkeys aren't very nice. They nearly attacked two of the volunteers and kept making really menacing noises and rolling their eyes back in a way I've only seen Andrew do on fast Sunday when he really wants his steak dinner.

At the same temple, we hiked up stairs Holly felt we should've crawled up rather than walked because they were so steep and uneven. But at the top there was a big cave with a Buddha shrine inside and a cavern full of screeching bats. Some of the guys banged on the walls to make them go crazy. Our hair got slightly dirty...

Two weeks ago, we did some marketing and art therapy with the kids at AIDS Access and last night at the Walking Street Bazaar, we had two booths selling their paintings, bracelets, journals, and keychains to raise money for their organization. We also had a face painting and a fishing booth.

It was so different to actually be part of the market rather than just tourists walking through. However, since it is the rainy season, the inevitable happened. Rainstorms here come on full board in about 2 seconds and we barely got all the stuff under cover in time. As the sheets of rain came pouring down, we stood under the tarp while the more prepared natives stood under umbrellas and covered buildings, but it wasn't long before we decided "Why don't we take advantage of the situation and captive audience and double dutch for donations?" so that's exactly what we did. We got our ropes, ran out into the street and cheered each other on as the Thais looked at us like we were crazy for standing out in pounding rain. It worked though, tons of them gave us donations and after a while we moved down the street to entertain more people. We're pretty sure we raised more money doing that than if we'd just been sitting at our stall the whole time so even though the rain tried to ruin our project, it didn't work. We did sell more products when the rain stopped, though.

Hanging out at the markets are pretty fun here. There was one whole strip dedicated to food and we walked down it looking for some dinner and spotted whole chickens hanging from spiggets. Naturally, as four girls, we bought one, bought some sticky rice to go with it, sat down in the rain and dug in with our bare hands. One of the best meals yet. Mostly cause we were so cold and hungry (cold is a relative term).