Friday – February 3 – Dayday and I spent the night at her sister Regine’s house. Both of their husbands were out of town, so we just had a fun girls night. Cooked dinner and just watched some movies and hung out. Her house is up on a bit of a hill and it was so cold there! Probably the coldest I’ve been here! The next morning we went to town and bought a few things. Then I went back home and spent the rest of the weekend just hanging out.
Monday – Feb 6 – I went to school and it ended up being the only day of the week I went to school. Our flight for Thailand was on Wednesday morning so Karen and I decided to go to Manila on Tuesday and just stay the night. I told the principal my plan and she said why don’t you just take Tuesday off and not worry about coming to school. So that’s exactly what I did! I slept in a bit and finished packing my things and cleaned my house a bit. A couple of the teachers begged me to just come to school that morning anyway, but I said hey the principal told me not to worry about it so I’m not going to do it : )
I guess I should say why we went to Bangkok. Phyllis, a retired teacher who is a volunteer up in Los Banos, Laguna, has some friends from home (San Diego) who are doing a tour and were starting their trip with 3 days in Bangkok. It’s 3 ladies she taught with and then one of their husbands. We had been at lunch a couple months ago and she said I’m going; you guys should come with me. So Karen and I decided to go with Phyllis to Bangkok. Just a fun, random trip! Pam was going to go too, but then decided not to go.
Tuesday – Feb 7 – After I messed around the house in the morning, I went to town to meet Karen and go to Manila. When we got to Manila we checked in at pension and walked to the mall. I got a pedicure for the first time in the Philippines, and now I’m paying for it. I have an infection in my toe! I’m not really sure if it’s an ingrown toenail or just like a hang nail type thing. We found Sbarro at the mall so had to eat a piece of pizza! That night we just hung out at pension playing cards and using the internet.
Wednesday – Feb 8 – Our flight to Bangkok was at 10:30. It was only a 3 and a half hour flight and we gained an hour in the time change. When we checked into our hotel we asked the bell boys which way to walk just to be able to stroll around and find a place to eat. They got us to agree to go to a Gem Factory. They said don’t worry you won’t have to buy anything and it’s just 50 baht for the ride. We told them, look at us, we’re not fancy or anything. We don’t have any interest, but we went anyway. The hotel car pulled up to take us. It’s a nice leather Toyota camery. We were like hmm ok, it’s the hotel people so it should be fine. We go to the Gem Factory, they had free welcome sodas, and then you walk through a factory and see the people making the jewelry. Then walk into a huge room just full of jewelry cases and tons of jewelry! It was actually kinda neat to see, but kinda weird too. And we couldn’t take any photos in there. After that the driver told us he had one more place to take us. We pulled up at this place called James Tailor. The driver told us to just go in and look around for 15 minutes or so. So we are like ok, we are here, why not. We walk in and it’s just walls lined with fabrics and a few manikins. The man in the store told us to take a seat on the couch and he’d show us some catalogues. Then we look at each other and are like uuuh let’s go. We walked outside and the driver sees us and tells us I told you to just stay for 15 minutes. So we get in the car and he asks us how much. We told him, they told us 50 baht. He raised his voice a bit and said I told you to stay 15 minutes, it’s 500. We were just silent the rest of the ride back to the hotel. We get out and he doesn’t say a word. Karen just hands him the money and we walk away. It was strange and I guess we learned our lesson. Karen and I then just walked around like we wanted to do in the first place. We found a little hole in the wall to eat at, which now I know was the best Pad Thai I had the whole trip! It was very cheap and good. We went back to the hotel, found a movie on the tv and fell asleep early. Phyllis got in about 11 that night. We talked for her a little when she got there, but we were asleep.
Thursday – Feb 9 – We got up and went and met Phyllis’s friends. Their flight got in late Wednesday night. They said we might ask their tour guide if we could join them for the day. They thought they would have some extra room. We went and talked to her and she said sure we could come along too. We asked her how much it was going to cost and she said we might not have to pay anything. I think because it was a set tour already and they had some extra room. I’m not really sure how it worked. But we didn’t have to pay anything! And Phyllis got to hang out with her friends. We went to two different temples that morning. They are HUGE places and so detailed. I didn’t realize how extravagant they would be. We got back around 2 and walked to a place across the street from our hotel for a late lunch/early dinner. That afternoon Karen and I walked around some. We learned that everywhere in Bangkok is a huge market. It doesn’t matter where in town you are, there are tons of booths and lots of clothes and other random things. That night we just hung out in the hotel room and got some drinks and snacks from 7-11.
Friday – Feb 10 – We went on the tour with the group again. This day we had to pay I think $60, but we figured everything was taken care of, like transportation, and we would get to see a lot and it would be worth it. We started off the morning walking through a flower market. Just a bunch of flowers for sale down a whole street. Then we went to the palace. To go into the temples and palace you had to be wearing long pants and a sleeved shirt. Short-sleeve is ok, just not sleeveless. Won’t lie, at the palace I lost a bit of interest and was getting rather tired of seeing all the temples and everything. We had lunch as a group on the river. This was included in our tour too, so even more reason to do it. After lunch we took a canal tour. There are so many canals all through Thailand. Many people live on the canals and get around by boat. Pretty amazing. People sell produce and we even saw an ice cream boat! That was probably what I was most amazed with. Who knew you could by ice cream on the canal from the ice cream man in a boat?!? That afternoon/evening Karen and I walked around town some more and found a place to eat. We ended up eating at a Vietnamese restaurant. Who knew in Thailand we would eat Vietnamese food.
Saturday – Feb 11 – We decided not to go on the tour. We figured there were still some things we wanted to see and could find on our own and then we could go at our own pace too. That morning we got up and ventured to another side of town that we hadn’t been to yet. We could tell we were in a different area. It was a very nice area. Seemed a little more local than tourist, and seemed like a pretty wealthy area. None of Bangkok seemed too poor. Our country director from the Philippines had recommended a place for us to eat so we thought we’d give it a try. It’s called Cabbages and condoms. I took a picture of the history and posted it in my pics on facebook. It’s an organization trying to promote family planning. Thailand was becoming over populated with an average of 7 kids per family. It was actually a pretty neat place, the food was good, and it was a huge restaurant with tons of tables. After lunch, we ventured to the other side of town where they have a huge weekend market. The market is so big and sectioned off into different areas like clothes, food, handcrafts, plants, and a couple others. We enjoyed walking around and checking it out, mainly the handcrafts section. We found several souvenirs to buy there. We took the sky train for transportation which was pretty cool and inexpensive. That evening we hung out with Phyllis’s friends in the hotel room. We didn’t go to dinner until about 8:30, but our flight was at 1:30 am. So we were trying to stay up late and kill some time. We flew into Manila about 5:30, finally got on a bus and out of Manila around 7 and I made it back to my house just before 10. I tried to sleep for a while, think it was only an hour. And then hung out at my house and just relaxed a bit the rest of the day.
Now I’m back at school trying to figure out exactly what it is I do here. I feel like I need to concentrate more and come up with some projects, but I have yet to really do that. Maybe that will come soon! I have two more weeks of school, and then my parents are here for a week! I’m looking forward to their visit, along with everyone else here. It’s funny how people are excited to meet my parents. I don’t have any of the week planned yet, so I hope my parents have a clue what we will do! I have several ideas, but haven’t finalized anything and don’t really know what our schedule will be like. The week after that I go to Manila for a conference for Peace Corps. So I will be gone from school for two weeks! We all thought me being gone 4 days last week was weird, we won’t know what to think when I’m gone for 2 weeks!
