Thailandish Weekend Warriors

Soooo, we just got back from yet another sweet weekend in the town of Kanchanaburi. Prior to the weekend we had another busy week helping with spelling bee word pronunciation, feeding puppies, and eating an amazing dinner hosted by our new friends James and Taygan (local falangs, the Thai word for foreigners with white skin, who we are soo happy to meet!). The range of emotions I have felt (and that I know Graham has felt) since we got here has been really all over the map. Last week was hard because English teachers are being shuffled all around, and we never know what exactly we are supposed to be doing. I feel like I am already pretty go-with-the-flow, but seriously after this I could be a Taoist teacher. Either that or I might turn into a water puddle, I'd go with the flow so much! Life in Dan Chang is treating us well overall though.


Now to the weekend -
Kanchanaburi was by far the most touristy place we have been to thus far (obviously minus Bangkok). There were tons of falongs marching around, generally in male-female couples. It felt a bit weird to go from being one of 6 white people in an entire town to sort of blending in. The touristy vibe was nice in several ways though, for instance we were able to fill our pizza craving -best pizza ever, at least subjectively speaking :) - and having a few locals who speak English to help show you the way was a nice bonus as well. It is a fun little town, and our hotel was right on the River Kwai, walking distance from the infamous bridge that the movie was filmed about (great film!). We had a beautiful swimming pool at our $12 a night hotel, and on Friday we went swimming in the dark under the moon. It was magical.

But the definite highlight of the trip was going to Erawan National Park and seeing the amazing 7-tiered waterfall. We will post pics later this week but suffice it to say that they were straight-up the most amazing waterfalls I have ever seen, and I consider myself somewhat of a waterfall connoisseur. The color of the water was light aqua and it was so clear, like in a fairytale land or something. I was disappointed not to find any unicorns - BUT THERE WERE MONKEYS!!! I spotted monkeys on two different occasions (I guess my training in Costa Rica was not entirely forgotten, and I remembered to not stand directly underneath them) and we watched them for a while. It is just unreal how human-like they are. The way their move their hands and bodies, and their facial expressions are just so like ours. It was amazing to watch them in the wild for a while :) We went swimming in 4 of the waterfall tiers; under the waterfalls to see the famed "backside of water", in the caves underneath, over the rock-slides, etc, and we even let the little sucker-fish latch on to our feet and clean them for us. Yep, there were tons of fish is the waterfalls. Obviously I was really excited to see that the place still boasted such a healthy number of fish in the streams, but it was also a little scary to get in water when there were a hundred fish just waiting to start tickling your feet. Graham and I were both a bit jumpy at first, but then we got used to it and it felt pretty good, it was still a little weird though. I guess there is a first time for everything :) Sitting there in the magical jungle waterfall with fish sucking at my feet, never thought in a million years I'd be doing that!

The entire national park was gorgeous, it was so great for this bio-nerd to get out of the city and sugarcane monocultures, to my real home, where the wild things are.

And with that thought-I am going to bed :) Sweet dreams! Love to everyone!