Let the Traveling Begin!

Our next adventure came Tuesday, February 20 when we traveled with Aranya’s family to Nakhon Sawan for a Chinese New Year festival. Nakhon Sawan has a lot of Chinese immigrants so this is a big celebration for the city and we were told it gets bigger every year. This year, the King of Thailand was supposed to visit the city in honor of the festival. As we drove to Nakhon Sawan we heard that the King would not be able to come but one of his daughters would. There was a route that the Princess was going to take through the city, participating in various presentations and ceremonies. We staked out one of these locations along with many other people. We were basically in an alley way, sitting on the pavement. Aranya’s mother, Saakhorn, told us that in Thailand if you keep someone waiting on you for a long time they say that waiting for you is like waiting for the King. At our location, they had some Chinese performers dressed in traditional costumes. At one point the performers like up ready to greet the Princess and we thought that she mustn’t be too far away, then we waited for another hour. I think we waited for over two hours! Just before the Princess arrived, the security personnel came by several times to remind us of the rules: No Standing, No Photos, No Cell Phones, Be Quiet! The Princess’ arrival was heralded by a swarm of media with their cameras of all kinds. Then as she walked by we caught a glimpse here and there. With all the media, security and other onlookers, a glimpse was all we got. However, we’ve been told that we’ve seen more of the Princess than some Thai people. It was certainly a once in a lifetime experience.

After the princess had gone, we walked around the area that had been meticulously decorated and got some pictures. The picture of Karl and I was taken near the location where we saw the Princess of Thailand! The purple flag that I am holding is the Princess’ flag. Purple is her color and there is a special emblem on the flag that is representative of her. Each member of the royal family has a special emblem. Karl is holding the flag of Thailand with “Long Live the King” written on it. If you are wondering why we are all wearing yellow shirts, it is because yellow is the King's color and this year is his 80th birthday and the anniversary of 60 years on the throne. The next picture shows the beautiful paper lanterns that were strung across the streets. After enjoying the decorations, we went to see Chinese acrobats. We have seen a small example of these incredible performers in Disneyworld, but this performance literally made our jaws drop! Due to the poor lighting and quick movements of the performers we weren’t able to get any pictures. So, just imagine kids that are able to bend themselves into shapes that would break a normal person’s bones. They would also balance various things on their heads, hands, feet, nose, chin … well you get the idea! They balanced things like bowls, balls, other performers, really tall flag poles, tables, large pots. I think anything that happened to be available! Some of the most amazing stunts were those done while the performers were dangling high above the stage. There was no safety net if something went wrong, but nothing did. What really impressed me was that most of the aerialist stunts were done while the performers were spinning in wide circles. It made me dizzy just to watch them!

Wednesday was our last day at Wangpikun and I spent much of the day helping some teachers set up blogs of their own! So you now have three more blog sites that you can check. Tangthailand.blogspot.com is the one that I helped Tang set up a few weeks ago and she has posted lots of pictures from the recent school trips. KhuYing.blogspot.com is the site for Ying who teaches the computer classes at Wangpikun. Since her experience is with C and windows based programming, she was excited about having a website. The last one I helped to set up was BoySportThailand.blogspot.com. This site is for Mr. Boy who also owns a shop that makes and sales sports clothes. At the end of the school day we went around and said good-bye to all the teachers then we went to stay at Mr. Boy’s house in Bueng Sam Phan.

Thursday morning our bus was scheduled to leave Bueng Sam Phan at 10:30 am so we had time to drive around and take some pictures. Here are a couple of the pictures Karl took from a temple that is on a mountainside just outside Bueng Sam Phan. Each time we drove from Wangpikun to Bueng Sam Phan and back Karl would say that he wanted a picture of this temple. Well, we got the picture but it’s good we didn’t wait any longer! One of the teachers, Pi Towee, who lives at the school and took very good care of us, drove from Wangpikun to see us off at the bus stop. She is always telling me that I should stay in Thailand with her and send Karl home to work and send us money! We took a bus from Bueng Sam Phan to Korat and then transferred to a bus that took us to Nang Rong.

We are staying at the P. California Inter Hostel which is where we stayed the last time we came to Nang Rong three years ago. The owner, Wick, speaks English and is very good about making sure his guests enjoy their stay. Wick also sponsors a volunteer program for teaching English in the schools around Nang Rong and most of his volunteers come from the European nations. Thursday evening we were invited to dinner with the director of a local community college. In Thailand, students at a community college range in age from 16 to 21.

Today, we went to a small school outside of Nang Rong to meet with the director of the school. This school is very small and includes Kindergarten, primary school and the first three grade of secondary school. They have all these grades in the same school because the families in this area are too poor to send their children into Nang Rong. After the students finish at this school they are only 15 years old and can finish school in Nang Rong if there parents have the money. Unfortunately, some families can’t even afford the 3 Baht per day for the bus fare to Nang Rong. 3 Baht is about 8 cents. We taught one of the classes for about an hour. In the pictures below, we are teaching the class the song “Ensy Weensy Spider”.




Also this afternoon we met up with some friends that we made last time we were here. We were happy to find that they remembered us and they were happy that we came by. I’m sure we will spend more time with them during our stay here!

This last picture I’m posting just because I think these kittens are cute. They were at a restaurant where we stopped for lunch one day. They were having quite a bit of fun wrestling each other and chasing each other through a pile of junk behind the restaurant.