Wat Pho and Ayutthaya

For some reason the weekend of May 18th to 20th everyone from campus 1 and 2 decided to stay in Bangkok. I'm not sure why people wanted to stay, but it was best for me because I was running a race on the Sunday.

On Friday night we decided to to just go hang out at Old Bar (local resto) it was fun to see everyone from both Campus one and two. After old bar everyone went out to another bar and I went to bed because I am a granny and it was past my bedtime.

The next morning we slept in (til 8!) and then went to the weekend market with the Brandon Practicum students (who are super cool). We spent 3 hours at the Chatuchak weekend market and I bought 2 pair or sunglasses, lol, everyone else bought tonnes of stuff because the market it is the biggest one you will ever see, which a booming 15,000 estimated amount of stores. I guess I was not in a shopping mood.

After Chatuchak we took the BTS-skytrain to the grand palace and Wat Pho. We decided to go visit the temple of the Reclining Buddha first. It was HUGE! I knew it was big, but I had no idea how big.

We did not end up returning to the Piya apartments until about 5 in the evening. 
That night, a large number of teachers were heading to a place called "Skybar". I unfortunately had to stay behind because I had to be awake at 4AM the next morning for the race. 

As I said, the next morning I was up at 4 to be picked up at 4:30. The race was a "quarter marathon" on a giant port in Bangkok. There were quite a few runners (maybe 400 or so) at this one. IT WAS ROUGH! about 2km in I knew I had started too fast, because I already wanted to stop. It was about 32 degrees and humid at 6am when the race started. As soon as the gun went off so did two super fast Ethiopian women. There was a Thai woman in from of me at the start who I passed right away, but at about the 3rd km she blew by me again, but I cased her for the rest of the time. She ended up finishing about 30 seconds ahead of me, not even looking tired. So I ended finishing 4th in my second race in Thailand, got another trophy and also won 2000 baht ($65CAD). You'll notice in the picture, I am the second tallest woman on the stage, I don't know if that will every happen again! My time wasn't great(45mins), but we couldn't find anyone with a garmin to actually confirm that it was actually 10.5km, I choose to believe it was more like 11k :). It was definitely the hardest 10k I've ever run, might even have been one of the hardest runs I have ever done, just because of the heat. The men's side winners were all from Kenya and super friendly/funny, as usual for Kenyans. They were telling me Bangkok is was hotter than where they are from(haha)!

By the time awards and everything was over, we got back to the apartments around 10am. Of course instead of going back to bed, I decided it would be a great idea to go out to the old capital city for the day. So myself and 2 other UofMers and Brandon girl hopped in a cab to the BTS, to the bus station where we took an hour bus ride to Ayutthaya. It was crazy. 

When we finally got to Ayutthaya, we found a tuktuk to drive us around for the day. We saw SO MANY RUINS, it was super cool. In Thailand, everyone is allowed to walk all over the ruins, I felt like I was going back in time. To be honest, the whole time I felt as though I was in the movie "The Jungle Book" and I actually watched it later that night (and now I am actually reading the book on my kobo). 

All in all, it was a great weekend, but not relaxing in the least. It was a rough way to start the next week. I was pretty exhausted -AND STIFF- to teach the next few days.

Ayutthaya was a fantastic day trip, but as you may be able to see the expression on my face in the pictures, it may not have been the best post race activity.

Kanchanaburi

Here are a few highlights from our weekend (May 11-13) in Kanch...

Friday night we drive from the Piya Pat apartments to our hotel called Pong Phen, which was very close to the Bridge over the River Kwai. That night we walked a few blocks down and grabbed a beer at a street bar called the "10 baht bar" - really shots were 10 baht there, but I didn't dare.

The next morning I got up and did a short run and grabbed a slice of french toast from the Pong Phen resto (amazing!) and jumped on a tour bus for 8am.

Our first stop was Erawan National Park, an amazing set of 7 tiered waterfalls. We spent 3 hours walking from the bottom of the mountain and walked up stopping and swimming in most of the waterfalls.

In my opinion, the 3rd waterfall was the most beautiful, although the 5th one you could slide down on your bum. The 7th waterfall was well worth the hike, what an amazing view!

After Erawan we were taken to the rafting portion of the tour, when they pulled us up the river and let us go. I thought it was going to be a white water rafting experience, although it ended up being a relaxing current ride down the river. 

As soon as we got of the raft we jumped up on some elephants and went for a ride. Riding the elephants was an awesome experience, although I don't think that I will do it again during my stay in Thailand. For some reason it seemed unethical for those huge animals to be stuck giving foreigner a ride around. Apparently the place we went to was actually more of an ethical camp for them. None of them had tusks because they were adopted after having been abused by poachers and stuff. I still felt bad (although my face does not show it!)

After the elephants we went to catch a train at a station on the death railway. The death railway (from Kanch to Burma) was made by slaves that were starved to death in the second world war.  They say that more than 90,000 people died in its construction. 

The train never came to get us...

Apparently it broke down that day and our driver had already left. So we had to walk along the tracks across a few bridges that were VERY high and not safe in the least - fun and scary!

Last stop on our tour was the Bridge over the River Kwai which was bombed in WWII. They rebuilt it and still use it today (when the train is working).

For the rest of the day we relaxed and sat around and ate. Many people went out on the Saturday night (a few of which got some Bamboo tattoos), but tame little me went to bed at 8:30.

Very fresh, I woke up the next morning and went for a long run. I ran along the highway and through ton. There are not nearly as many dogs in Kanch. :) During my run I saw a huge bull and a beautiful track, where they held some sort of Asian Championships! I almost wanted to run on in, but no there were guard dogs!

For the rest of the day I walked to the Kanch market and bought some jewellery. It was a great place to buy nice gems and such.

All in all I really enjoyed this trip. If I were to go again I would have seen the tigers at the "Tiger Temple" as well as doing the elephants the first day.

Weekend Fun in Pattaya and Hua Hin

Team Building in Pattaya

I guess it is time to fill everyone in on my awesome weekend in Pattaya and Hua Hin. My weekend started early Friday morning with a pool run and jumping in the cab to school as usual although, it was not going to be another day of planning. Campus 2 admin had planned us a wonderful team building day with the foreign teachers and Thai teachers. It started off with a car rally. For those of you who do not know, a car rally is a kind of scavenger hunt done in cars. The whole car rally was in Thai though so we had to try to communicate as a team and find the things they asked us to find. We were one of the last teams to reach the second checkpoint so that's when I got super competitive! We were supposed to have a meal together as a team but, we said that we should just do it on the road so we can be faster! It turns out that we were the first team to make it to the destination in Pattaya, but apparently in car rallies in Asia it doesn't matter who gets there first! So then we went out for lunch at a great Seafood place on the ocean. My favorite thing there was a kind a green curry with scallops and squid.

Once we git back to the resort, there was no time to mess around and we started all of the team building activities. The resort itself was pretty nice but we didn't really have time to relax. We played team building games all afternoon until 6. At that point we had a little bit of down tome before supper. That's when we took off for a run. Not a long one, but enough to see a bit of the town. Pattaya is a pretty neat place. There are lot's of tourists that go there, mainly coming from Russia, which seemed bazaar to me, but apparently it's not a lot weirder than Canadians going to Mexico. When we got back to the resort we had a beautiful meal followed by karaoke,which the Thai teachers loved, but none of the foreign teachers participated. I was in bed pretty early, exhausted from the long day.

Hua Hin

The next morning, if was raining, which was disappointing because I wanted to lounge by the pool, instead I went for a short walk. We left the resort in Pattaya at 9am and drove back to school. We got to the school at about 12 after some brutal traffic. We then got picked up by a different van and got driven to Hua Hin. We got to Hua Hin at about 5pm and went out for supper at a place called "Admirals" which had Thai and Western food options. After super we went looking for some Thai boxing, which unfortunately, there was not on Saturday. On the way back to the hotel we hit up the night market, which was a huge market(at night obviously). I didn't buy anything major at the night market, but it was still awesome. When we got back to the hotel the power went out in our rooms. It was kind of a sketchy hotel. There were bugs and our toilet kept letting out massive air bubbles that we thought was a giant basilisk! The next morning I woke up at 4am. This may seem a bit crazy, but in reality, I have been waking up at 5 or 5:30 most mornings. I got up at 4 to run a half marathon. Luckily my running buddy (lets just call him "D-Machine"), stayed with a friend the night before and they picked me up at the hotel at 4:15AM. D's friends were wonderful. They drove us all the way up to the start line and dropped us off. When I say "all the way up", I mean UP! The 9th annual Preserve Heavy Half Marathon started at 5:30am and went straight down hill for a km. D went off the line like a rocket an I hung back to be cautious. At about mile 8 or 9 I caught up to him, but he heard my bike chaperone (because I was in first for women) coming up behind hi so he sped up. On the last few downhills, he gapped me enough that I couldn't catch him on the final climb. He ended up finishing about 20 seconds ahead of me and I finished in 1:35. Obviously, not my best time, but I was happy with it considering the heat, hill and I had only been here for a week. For winning the race I got the biggest  trophy ever, it was actually quite embarrassing bringing it back to the hotel with me.

For the rest of the day, I went to the beach with the other U of M students and in the evening went back to the night market.The next morning, we headed to "Monkey Mountain", which is obviously a mountain with many monkeys. It was a fantastic experience, minus the insane amount of of stairs up to the temple. I unfortunately was insanely stiff from the hills the day before.

My apologies if this isn't very well written, I'm extremely tired, must go to bed!

It was fantastic weekend out and about. Miss you all back home! XOXO 

Alice

Welcome to Lertlah, Campus 2

Macro Bangbon... Ra rien Lerlah... If you start at the Piya pet apartments and give these directions, you will get to Lertlah Campus #2 75% of the time. At least, those were the odds today. Out of the 8 cabs that left the apartment this morning, two cab drivers did not know where "Macro Bingbon" was and tried to take us there anyways.  Luckily, we were able to correct him in time for him to turn around at the next u turn. Not bad considering we can't speak Thai and we don't even know what Macro Bingbon means. 

This is a picture of our school. It is four stories tall and several buildings. Most rooms in the school are air conditioned and mostly every area outside is covered (I'll post more pictures later). 

The kids haven`t started school yet, the school year starts May 17th. I`ll be teaching P3, which means Primary 3 (grade 3 in Canada), which is good because that is what I taught in my practicum this year. The school system is different here, there is Nursery which is optional, but then there are 3 K level which signify Kindergarten. I believe they start in K1 when they are 3 or 4 years old. After K1, K2 and K3 we go to P1, P2, P3 and P4, which are again the same as back home. In grade 5 the student move into the ''M'' stage until they reach grade 9 and then they go to another school.

The school is owned by a the Sari family, with one ''Ajarn Sari'' at each school, which is the director. I was a bit nervous to meet the director of my campus, but there really was no need. Although she is very important, she is extremely welcoming to all of the foreign staff and I don't think of her as more than a regular principal.

In our offices there are several staff that are there to support us. There are foreign staff administrators who are very approachable and nice. There are all key stage leader who take care of each of the K, P and M levels. My key stage leader is extremely helpful and is ready to lend a hand whenever you need it. There is definitely a hierarchy in the school, but I find it very fair and helpful to have so much support whenever I need it.

Myself and my teaching buddy, who I came here with from U of M, as I said have P3. We will be teaching Math, Science and English classes to two groups of kids. I have the /1 and /3 groups. The strongest students in each grade are put into the /1 class and /2 class accordingly and the rest are put into /3, /4. Before school starts, we will plan our units and decorate our class rooms. So far, we have already planned science and math, and we still have to do English. We had to type up a letter to the parents describing to the parents what exactly we plan on doing this year, along with a little bio on ourselves. 

Right now my days look like this:

5:30am - Wake Up, eat a snack, pool run or swim

6:15am - Get ready for school

6:45am - Go downstairs for breakfast and jump in cab (80 baht = 2.50 CAD between 4 people, drive to school)

7:30 - get to school - Get some coffee, snacks at 7-11 (45 baht)

8am-11:30 - Meetings/Thai Lessons/Planning

11:30 - Lunch in Cafeteria (free)

12:30 - 4:30pm - Planning/Prepping for kids  

4:30 - Jump in Taxi back to Piya Apartments

5:15 - Run followed by swim

7pm - dinner on the Soi (street food) Salad rolls and dragon fruit smoothie = yum

9pm - Bed

They are long days but it seems to be working for me. That's all for now.

Alice

The answer is YES! You can run in Bangkok!

I have now been in Thailand for 5 days and so far I have ran 5 times, done two pool runs, and one swim. If anyone ever tells you that you cannot run in Bangkok, it is not true! Although heat can reach up to 40 degrees Celsius, and sidewalks are complete mayhem, I am finding there are many exciting places to run in Bangkok. 

My biggest challenge running here is not the heat, nor the traffic, although both are extreme, so far it has been the dogs. There are dogs EVERYWHERE! Every family owns a dog whether they want to, or not. Dogs are not leashed in Bangkok, they are free to roam as they please. Which means they will roam in my direction. Now, keep in mind that I am not a dog lover. I own a dog, but they are not my best friends. Dogs here will bark at you, and bare their mean fangs.

I do admit that going to the travel clinic prior to coming here may have been a mistake. The nurse that administered my shots made sure to let me know that if I get bitten by a dog, I will get rabies and die. Now that I am extremely paranoid, I will do everything in my power to stay out of contact with dogs. In fact, with any animal. I have not seen many animals here other than dogs, one cat and two or three bats. While running, when I see a dog, no matter what it looks like, I let who I am running with go first. There was actually one time today that a dog barked at us on the way by and actually jumped behind my running buddy to use him as a shield. Last night after my run, I was going to jump in the pool to cool off, but there was a small mange looking black cat sitting and guarding the pool. Okay, dog are a serious threat, but  a cat? I love cats! It looked just like my cat back home! Nope! I turned right back around and went to bed. This morning I went for a pool run at 5:30. It was great except the bats that kept swooping down at me. Logically, bats are not scary, they don't bite humans, they're no harm to us! Every time a bat swooped down towards the water, I would flail my arms and splash it with water.

What's happening to me? I'm turning into an animal hater! What's going to happen when I meet actually dangerous animals at the tiger temple or, a komodo dragon that has been seen in a local pond? I guess we'll find out!