Sadly, we left our Thai village, Tha Phon for the last time and the 8 of us packed into the 4WD. How many elephants can you pack into a mini? The way we are eating (plus the swollen ankles) that is probably not a bad description!
A long trip to Khao Yai National park was interuppted by the usual toilet stops with the accompanying highly distracting market stalls. While travelling along the way, Bruce (uncle) said ‘It’s a shame we haven’t seen any elephants. As he was saying it we looked to the left and there were 6 enormous elephants swaying in a ‘conservation park’. Peter pulled over immediately… because he is an extremely tolerant and patient bloke! According to his mother (my Grandmother) he has never raised his voice in anger in his whole life. Surprisingly that includes driving us around Thailand and putting up with our tiresome habits!
The elephants were dauntingly large but we got to sit on their knee, feed them and Col and I had a ride through creeks and paddocks for 15 minutes. Sitting on an elephants knee with it’s swinging trunk and big eye right next to your face is quite an experience.
While we were having our ride, the others went to a shopping place up the road. The shopping centre was built to look like Venice and was quite stunning. If we had more time it would have been lovely to inspect it more closely but we were already running typically late.
We got to the Khao Yai national park at 4pm and considering how much we paid to get in, it was unfortunate that stopping to see the elephants had made it so late in the day. The advantage of this was that there were plenty of animals out. Our drive through the park took about 1 and a half hours. We dodged plenty of elephant poo and saw lots of deer, monkeys, lizards with the occassional cobra (stick) and boa constrictor (imaginary).
We arrived at Petchabury (spelling?) our destination in the dark and discovered that where we had planned to stay, had no vacancies. After trying several places we chose to keep driving. Once we finally found somewhere to stay, my headache and upset tummy had reached a new height and I was feeling so sick I went to bed and left the others to go and have tea. Lorraine (aunt) was also sick with what seemed to be the same bug.
Our next stop was Ko Sumet. Hmmm beach!

After a frantic shopping trip, we walked to the village Loy Krathong festival where the entire village celebrated. Locals floated hand made Katong down a river with a candle in it.  “Katong” means a Lotus shaped vessel made of banana leaves. The Katong usually holds a candle. Again, we were the only non-Thai people there and the mayor welcomed us and instructed the locals to be nice to us and professional (!), translated by Eiam.

After a ‘Miss Thai Phon competition, Thai boxing and dancing, we went to float some Katong down the creek and let off giant hot air balloons (see pic). Having watched the local women making the Katong the day before, it was very special to see them floating around with their candles lit.

We arrived home at about 11.30pm and went to sleep to the sound of the very loud festival music, ready to wake early (ish) to leave Tha Phon for good the next morning.

19/11/10

Random Thai wedding

Eiam asked Lorraine, Lee and I to escort her to a wedding in her village, Tha Phon. Feeling ill equipped for a wedding, we ate breakfast at 8am and adorned ourselves in our least shabby clothing. I found a pair of thong/sandals which my swollen feet would fit into and off we went, 10 minutes late. We had walked a little way down the street when a motor bike arrived and the girl on it told us that the wedding was waiting for us so we needed to hurry. All along the road, people were waiting for us and once we reached them they joined the group. By the time we arrived at the wedding, there were about 35 people walking with us.
The bride’s mother was so excited to see ‘felang (non-Thai people)’ that she took us to the bride and groom to have our photo taken with them and to pour water onto their hands. We were photographed with the bride’s Mum, at her insistance and then led to our table where we were greeted by many excited guests.
The girls at our table insisted on pouring me rice whisky and on our eating every morsel of food which arrived (in abundance). Every 5 minutes we had to do ‘cheers’ with our glasses and swallow more whiskey. I tried desperately to sip mine delicately, but it kept getting topped up. At 9am in the morning, having already eaten breakfast, and with the extreme heat I was begining to feel a little squirmish!
After much food, drink and laughter we were dragged onto the ‘dance floor’ (grassy patch of back yard) to dance. By then Colin and Mal had also joined us and were dancing in the heat too.
We left when it was polite to do so (about midday) and went home to the washing. Within an hour, we discovered that ‘the party’ had arrived on their motor bikes to ‘rage on’… and so it went!
It was lovely to experience the Thai culture first hand in a small village with such lovely friendly and fun loving people.

18/9/10
The motel in Phimai cost $14 Aus per room so we should have no complaints but there was no top sheet and the bed was not the most comfortable. The fridge didn’t work and the hostess had attitude (for good reason). Breakfast cost us about $1 Aus per item (porridge with pork, chicken or prawns being one of the highlights). This all combined to make it yet another funny adventure and part of the excitement of ‘doing it semi rough’!

Phi Mai ancient temple

After breakfast we managed to pack our growing luggage and ourselves up and go to see the ancient Phimai temple. This was both beautiful and inspiring, with its magnificent trees and ancient ruins.
Our trip back to Tha Phon was interupted by lunch. The guys thought it was just lunch… but us women discovered silk shops all along the streets of the little place, Nong Mai Kaen, we stopped at. After eating lunch, which consisted of PORK because that’s all they had, we took to the shops and discovered beautiful and cheap bolts of silk and clothing in about 6 shops. Many hours and $$ later, the guys managed to get us back into the car with even more luggage, stuffed into every spot in the car possible.
The last part of the trip was a little hot and squishy with about 4 more hours of driving to do. We arrived at ThaPhon, greeted by the dogs and Eiam’s Mum who had made us roast pork and rice. Hmmm that was really delicious!

17/9/10
I discovered an odd assortment of exposed wiring into an electrical socket behind my bed head at our hotel at Nong Kai. I managed to keep my pillow in place overnight and avoid getting electricuted!
After packing up, we drove to immigration and attempted to convince them to extend our Visa by 2 days. The sign out the front said, ‘Come and see our happy smiles’. We didn’t see any smiles at all. The woman at the desk told us that we could not extend our Visa but to overstay it and pay a penalty at the airport (2 days late). This would amount to 1000 Baht each (about $30).

Lunch was at Our next task was to find a silk making place in Chonnabot. After much driving, many U turns, asking locals where to go and and discussion about directions we discovered that the factory was closed on that day. We proceeded to find some silk shops to satisfy ourselves. One of the locals who gave us directions, offered to take us to a house where a woman weaves silk. We walked down the back of the village into the bottom of a house, which was on stilts) and watched a woman weaving on the dirt floor with dogs and chooks running around under her feet. She was paid 100 Baht a day (about$3). It was an amazing experience to watch her skill and the conditions in which she worked. Afterwards we went to some silk shops in the street. these were quite expensive but one of them offered to show us out the back where they weave the silk. The conditions here were pretty much the same, only it wasn’t underneath somebodies house!
Our journey ended at Phi Mai, where we found the only hotel in the village and paid $14Aus for the night.
Eiam took us to the night market where we inspected the incredible food produce. Fried crickets,

16/9/10 Having driven the long drive to Nong Kai to visit Vientiene, Laos for the day, we set off with our passports to immigration. Many many hours waiting in queues we took off with our hired guide, equipped with a 12 seater bus.

Our first stop was to a temple in Laos where we were asked to hire Laos wrap skirts (women) before entering. Bare shoulders were allowed but we were not to go Laos skirt free! Just to be rebelious, we jumped onto some bikes in our skirts!

Our guide thought we had vanished because we got distracted with markets. The guys found some screwdriver/torch gadgets and almost bought the market out of them. By the time we returned it was 3pm!

The next stop was the an arch in Vientiene, which was built to replicate the Arch de triomph, with a Thai flavour. Bruce, Lorraine, Colin and I climbed to the top and were amazed to see the market stalls set up inside.

Our last stop was at another temple. By then it was 4pm and we were shuttled back to the border to return to Thailand.

After more queues and forms, forms and more forms, we were about to jump back onto the bus over the bridge, when I realised that our Visa had the 30th of November on it. Our flights out of Thailand are for the 2nd of December, so this was something of a concern. Several of us tried convincing them to give us back our original date but to no avail. It seems that the Bangkok airport give you a 30 day visa, but once you leave the border it is revoked. Then when we came back to re-new our visa they only gave us 15 days. The thought of imprisonment or a fine only made us laugh. There is hope… we would drive to the immigration centre in the morning and try pleading with them. Watch this space!

All 8 of us piled into a 4WD and took off for Tha Phon, which should have been a 4 hour drive but ended up 5 or 6 due to a 5 car pile up on the road and 3 stops along the way (4 including the supermarket  at Petchabun). The squish in the car made for very cozy conversation and poor Peter (uncle) had to listen to our ‘are we there yet?’ pleas along the way.
To our amusement, the Tesco supermarket in Petchabun had everything under the sun you could ever want. We thought we were off to the country and all civilisation  would be gone!
Tha Phon is a little village with about 3,000 people in it. My uncles house is the recently built’mansion’ of the village. Each of us couples had  an enormous room each with queen size bed, ensuite and air-con. We got the best one because we are the favourites (!) It had a balcony looking over the mountains. The house is stunning and so is the area we are in.
Ahhh, the serenity!
For the equivent of $15Aus we got takeaway from the restaurant, enough to feed all 8 of us!
After a visit from some pommy characters (friends of Peter and Eiams) and another dose of Thai beer to cool us down, we took off to bed and woke to the sun shining on the mountains.