From the Land of Smiles...

Phukradung

Hey Everybody,

Sorry this has taken me so long to post, but I just changed host families last night, so its been a pretty crazy week.

Oh, and I'll post some pictures after i've gotten the whole computer situation at my new host family's house figured out...

The whole trip was so much fun. I met so many amazing people, and had such a great time. It's weird because after meeting them all, my whole outlook on this exchange is suddenly soo much better. Its funny how that can happen.

Alright, so, on Saturday morning my host mother, host sister and a friend of my host mother drove me to Chonburi. When I got there I met the three guys that I had met at orientation; Hugo, Chris and Nicklas. We all drove up to Korat together. It was really good to see them again. Then we got to Korat and checked into the hotel. We went a day early because the bus was leaving early the next morning. When we were at the hotel we met a bunch of other people. I'm not going to write out all of their names, but there ended up being 11 of us staying at the hotel, and then 2 girls from Korat came and hung out with us too. We had so much fun that night, and it was really cool to meet all of those new people, and of course, it being the first time that alot of us had met, we had ridiculous amounts of things to talk about.

The next morning we all got up early and had breakfast before going to the Korat bus station. Then we all got onto a bus (not our own bus, there was other thai people on it too...i felt sorry for them). Then I met all the Korat people too...and there's alot of them. Oh, and that morning at the hotel I saw my friend Katrina, who's from the same district as me. I barely recognised her! Her hair's short and red and it makes her look completely different. It was so good to see her though. Then we embarked on the very long bus ride up to Phukradung, well, the bottom of it. We stayed in little cabin-like houses that night, and many more people came. You have no idea how much trouble I had trying to remember people's names over this trip. Oh, and I got to see Bailey, who's also from the same district back in Canada. She dyed her hair blond, so she looked really different too.

That night was alot of fun too, since we met even more new people...I don't think we could have ever run out of things to talk about...One thing that I did realize after talking to people is that i've been sooooo lucky to get my host family. Some of them hava had alot of problems with their families. I've been so lucky to get such a wonderful one.

The next morning we all got up early and took nice, cold bucket showers. That was fun, lol... Well, everyone didn't have to have bucket showers, but our shower was broken... Then we all got into a bus and drove to the base of Phukradung. We had a big breakfast there, which, let me tell you, was not the best idea before the climb. The whole thing took me about just over 3 hours, which i'm pretty happy with. I beat alotof people up, even with my knees killing me the whole time. That's definetly all thanks to some of my new friends though, who were nice enough to walk up with me, and even come back down and walk with me. That was so awsome of them...

When we got to the top we had to walk another 4 km to get to the camp. Once we got there we had some lunch...which i wasn't hungry for, but decided to eat since i was really dizzy...and then after a bit we went for a walk to check out one of the cliffs... Later that afternoon I also got the pleasure of having an ice cold shower...honestly, it seemed too cold to still be a liquid, and it seemed to get colder over the days that we were there...We had a pretty good dinner that night and just spent alot of time hanging out and recovering from the climb...and preparing for the next day...Oh, and you have no idea what the stars looked like there. The night was perfectly clear and I don't think ive ever seen the stars so clearly, or seen so many of them. And I saw 3 shooting stars, so I was pretty happy about that...

The next morning we all (well, not everyone) got up and met at 5 am to go and see the sunset. We had to walk to the cliff that we had gone to the day before. The annoying thing was, that after getting up that early and waiting for the sun to rise, it seemed to rise over to the right of where we were, and there was alot of clouds...So we decided to go and find it, and ended up following what seemed to be an animal path, complete with lots of deer prints, and we thought we saw paw prints, but it was probably our imagination. We thought we were goign to get completely lost, but miraculously ended up at a road, where we walked back to camp. It was an adventure, even though we didn't find a better view of the sunrise. That day, after breakfast, we headed off on a 20 km hike, that turned out not to take us to see all that much. We saw the buddha statue on the platau (i dont know how to spell that), and saw a waterfall, but only from the top, and we also saw a big cliff, where we stopped for lunch...Then we had to walk all the way back. My feet and legs were killing me, especially since I hadn't recovered from the climb up yet...I did get to see a bit of a sunset on the way back though, although it was blocked mostly by the clouds...

That night we had barbecue for dinner, which we cooked ourselves on lots of little pots with fires in them...ohhh, and I also found out that one of the guys knows deep tissue massage, and he cracked my back for me. It felt so good...especially since i haven't gotten it cracked in 4 months, since there aren't any chiropractors in Thailand. Then that night, we were all hanging out in one of the cabins and 17 of us ended up falling asleep in there. I still am not really sure how we did it, I ended up sleeping on the floor in front of the door...but it was a fun night...

The next day we luckily had free time, so after getting up and having breakfast, a bunch of us went back to our cabin and had a nice nap. The only thing scheduled for the day was a soccer game, which most of us didnt participate in, which is understandable after all the walking we'd done..and my lack of soccer abilities... After the soccer game we decided to go and swim in the waterfall that was close to the camp. It was good, but didn't have all that much swimming room, so a bunch of us went and walked until we found the next one where there was room to swim. It was soo awsome. There was a point where I was just standing there looking out and It all just seemed soo surreal. I mean, I was swimming in a waterfall, on top of a mountain, in Thailand...it can't get too much better than that...

That was definetly a cold night though, because we stayed too long and ended up getting back to camp (after a long walk) soaking wet in the dark...and it definetly was not above 10 degrees....

That night we had another barbecue, and discovered that if a bunch of people sat around it and had blankets wrapped around the outside of all of us, it keeps the heat in really well..so we spent alot of time sitting like that, still trying to get warm from the walk back.

The next morning we packed up and walked down the mountain, which took me almost as long as it had to walk up...then after lunch the first group of us left for korat. It was kind of sad, but then we realized that we're goign to see everyone again in 2 weeks for our next trip, so we were just really excited... That bus ride was, for some reason, alot longer than the one to get there, but I slept alot, so it was okay with me.

That night the group of us stayed in Korat again, and we went out for mexican food for dinner, which was really good, and lebanese food for breakfast the next morning, before we were picked up to go home...

-Lauren

posted by Lauren @ 9:42 PM