MicahJohn

I’ve now been in Thailand one year.

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far has the LORD helped us.”

1 Samuel 7:12

God is good.

The last day of the trip we spent the morning at Chokchai (where we had eaten lunch the day before). Chokchai is the largest dairy farm in Southeast Asia. We were given a tour of the milking facilities and a brief glimpse of the processing facilities. We also watched a cowboy show and an animal show. The sights and smells made me feel at home.

The drive home was long. I got better at singing Thai Karaoke.

Christmas day opened with a breakfast of fried eggs, ham, toast, hot dogs, and fried rice. Breakfast finished we piled into the tour bus. Our first stop (which came after a good deal of driving) was the longest dam in Thailand. I’m not entirely sure why we bothered to drive there. Sure a three mile long dam is a challenge to build, but all there was to see of it was a long, low, narrow hill with a road on top of it. There were people sitting at turnstalls to collect a bathroom usage fee.

That took up most of the morning, but on our way to lunch (back close to where we started) we made a fun stop at a sunflower field.

We ate lunch at the Chokchai farm steak house. The picture below says “Happy New Year 2552″ (the current Thai year is 2551).

After lunch we swung by a vineyard, and tasted some grape juice.

We then went to Khao Yai National Park. Khao Yai is the first, and I believe the largest national park in Thailand. On our way into the park we transitioned from the tour bus to five pickup trucks.

On our way through the park we saw a lot of monkeys along the road.

Our main stop in the park was a waterfall. It was good to get out of the vehicles and do some walking. I was getting quite tired of sitting down.

We wrapped up with night time spotlight tour of a small section of the park. Apparently elephants can often be seen. Tigers are rarely seen. There are some funky buffalo sorts of things that wander around to. We mainly just saw deer. We did see a baby deer and an angry mother.

This morning I got on a bus with fifty some students, a few other teachers, and the EP secretary. The first three hours of the journey the students sang karaoke. They asked me to sing. I said I’d be happy to if they had a song I knew. We finally found one, but by the time it came up in the play list, we were stopping for lunch.

When we walked into the restaurante the food was on the tables waiting for us. Every table had its own pig’s leg; it’s own fish; four loaves of Chinese bread; a pot of soup; fried vegetables; and rice. Each table sat about six people. There were a lot of leftovers left behind (This would be an appropriate place for a frown emoticon if I believed in the use of such things).

Back in the bus, we transitioned from karaoke to a VCD of some Thai television show. I preferred the (sometimes bad) singing.

We arrived at our resort around three in the afternoon. After getting our baggage to our rooms we were given tickets to use in the resorts activity area. I shot a few arrows (impressing the watching students with my archery skills). I paddled around in a paddle boat. I then watched others do things like go karts, zip lines, etc.

After dinner and a quick dip in the pool, I was asked to share a little about Christmas. I think that went pretty well. I spent a lot of time chasing questions down rabbit trails. Thai people in general are not nearly so familiar with the basics of the Christmas story as American people in general. Unintentionally using the word “kings” in reference to the Magi, can lead to several minutes worth of near futile explanation.

When that was finished we (primarily I and Manoraj (who studied in the States)) sang a few carols. With the carols finished, we somehow switched gears to ghost stories. I’m a entirely unsure how that transition happened. The Thai ghost stories I listened to were not fictional, they were retelling of personal encounters with the unsettling, often involving death. A little strange for Christmas Eve.

I was invited to eat lunch and see a waterfall with Pi Lek (my next door neighbor) and Pi Gee (my guard). The trip was not exactly what I expected, but it was time well spent.

On our way out of town we grabbed some roadside snack food. We got grilled eggs on a stick and rice in a cane.

When we arrived at our destination, I discovered that lunch and the waterfall were both side trips from the main purpose of the journey: the sale of copied CDs. My neighbor sold 2000 baht worth of CDs to a policeman. It is the intent of the policeman and his wife to resell the four boxes worth of music and movies.

By the time the transaction was completed it was three in the afternoon. By the time “lunch” was finished, it was four. The waterfall got crossed off the to do list. We did, however, get to see the remains of an 11th century temple.

On our way home Pi Lek stopped to purchase a thatch roofed table. The table made a very nice place for breakfast this morning.