Where in the world is Dee: Monkeys, and fish and elephants.. oh my!

At the end of a market on the
Bang Pakong river in Chachengsao

The weeks seem to go by so quickly here. I can’t believe it’s already been a month, yet at the same time I feel like I’ve been here forever. I’m loving Chachengsao the more I get to know it. I’m finally in a routine at school, and have a blast teaching most of my classes. Today I got 46 students to yell out “Angelina Jolie” instead of “Angerina Jorie” when we were talking about famous American actors. I also got them to say “Vin Diesel” instead of “Win Dies.” Sometimes, it is hard not to laugh in class, when you have 46 students so excitedly yelling out things at you.

Jessica and Me batiking in Chachengsao!

Two weekends ago, my housemate Jessica and I decided to explore Chachengsao, and found ourselves stumbling upon this community group doing art work. Jess, being an artist herself, wanted to stop in and see if we could get in on the project. We found that they were ‘batiking’ where you use wax to help and that it was a closed community group. However, a math teacher who works at our school recognized us and invited us to join their activity and we spent the day painting with the Chachengsao women. Afterwards we stumbled upon an interesting market and got a bite to eat on the water (at a restaurant that apparently the Thai princess herself had visited) and met some more farang (westerners) who were in our town. We found out that there were about 20 or so farang in Chachengsao, and its such a tight nit community that we started seeing them everywhere.

After exploring some more, I found a semi-American coffee shop (Thank god!) where I will easily be spending my Sunday mornings, reading English newspaper!

A whole other week of teaching went by and Jess and I met up with our friend Alyssa in Kanchanburi and trekked out to Erawan national park to do some hiking and camping. I must say, the hiking was unbelievable. We hiked up this seven tiered waterfall, where you can swim in pools at each tier. The further up you went, the more rigorous the hiking got and by the fifth- seventh tier.. it started looking pre-historic…I felt like I was coming out of the movie Jurassic Park. It was unbelievable how clear and beautiful the falls and the water was. There were also monkeys swinging in the trees above us, and fish that eat the dead skin off your feet in the pools (which was kind of creepy—even though people will pay money to go to these fish spas where fish will gnaw at you!).

The tent by the pavilion at our campsite

The camping spot was beautiful, and we rented a tent and sleeping bags. What seemed like a great idea, turned out to be.. well.. lets just say a little noisy. I swear there must have been five or six frogs that were right outside our tent making some mating calls all night, and that doesn’t even count the other creatures we heard. I stuffed my ipod in my ears, hoping to drown out the sounds, only to realize that the nature sounds were drowning out my music..oh well.