Laos Laos - more adventures....

So it's taken me forever to update this thing, and most of you know why... Well yes I am lazy, this is definitely true, but I have a real excuse (!) - in fact it's going to take me twice as long to write all of this because of it... For those of you who did not know this already, I have broken my hand. It's now been 4 weeks since the unfortunate incident, and I can report that my hand is still broken - more about that later.

I left Chiang Rai on Sunday March 1st when Marianne arrived from her little town. I met her at the bus station and minutes later, we were on our way to Chiang Khong, the border town with Laos. That 3 hour bus ride was pretty much the only time she and I truly spent together, because that very night, we met the kids who would become our traveling family. Daddy Calvin (ironically the youngest of the clan) from Toronto, Mommy Matt (definitely not a woman, but our apparent mother nonetheless) from Bristol, and Zoe and Claudia two more English girls who already knew each other from "uni." Needless to say, after 4 weeks of traveling with Brits, I now speak with the British accent. Ha, no that would be pretty ridiculous if that were true. But I have to say those English expressions are catchy. I've even caught myself saying things like "loo roll" or "spag bol." Spag bol means Spaghetti bolognese by the way, I'm not sure why the English found the need to abbreviate and uglify one of the most delicious dishes ever, but so it is. I digress.

We woke up bright and early the next day to cross over to Laos. Let me preface this post with this: March was anything but drama-free. I'd been looking forward to a relaxing last couple months before heading back to the stress of reality. Apparently though, that was not in the cards, literally! The moment I arrived in Laos, the drama began. Within seconds, the Laos officials managed to LOSE my French passport. Not quite sure how that happened, but they wound up finding it a few hours later. I tried to ask what had happened, but you learn to just be happy with the moment. They had found my passport and that was all that mattered. But I guess it was an omen or something...

We took the slow boat down to Luang Prabang, which I recommend to anyone. It was the PERFECT introduction to Laos. As the name specifies, the boat trip is slow and that's what you need in Laos. I thought Thailand was a slow country, but Laos makes Thailand look efficient - crazy. I fell in love with the lethargic atmosphere though, it's impossible not to let yourself slow down to the pace of the Mekong, as per the Laotian way of life. We met so many interesting people on the boat including an awesome French family who decided to take the year off and travel around the world with their two children. This made me realize I want to be like them when I grow up! I also met Heather and Jason, the coolest couple from Seattle, and Patrick from Bristol, sort of.

We arrived in Luang Prabang two days later after spending a night in Pak Ben, a little village essentially populated with overnight travelers like us. Now the previous day I had told my new friends about my meeting with a Tarot card reader in Chiang Mai. One of the more notable things this tarot card reader told me was to not get onto a motorbike during my travels, because I would get into an accident. What did Juliet decide to do when she arrived in Luang Prabang, day 3 of traveling? Get on a motorbike! To be fair, we decided that if I wasn't actually driving the motorbike, it would be ok. So when Heather and Jason said they were heading to the famous Luang Prabang waterfalls by motorbike, Patrick offered to take me along. There was something eerie in the air that day... Moments before leaving, a mosquito bit my left arm and I sta

rted bleeding. a lot! Anyway, I got onto that motorbike and just knew.... 5 minutes later, Patrick lost his concentration for less than a second and we veered off and tipped over. I put my hand out to break my fall, but broke my hand instead! My hand swelled up immediately making it impossible for me to take my rings off. Not realizing that my hand was BROKEN, we decided to carry on (after sitting for 45 minutes) and go to the waterfall. Well, I'm glad I still went because it was by far the prettiest waterfall I've seen in Southeast Asia. There were pools of turquoise water where we were able to swim in... The picture here was taken at the waterfall with Patrick, little did we know that my hand was broken, but upon looking at that hand, I can see how swollen it was!!

The next day, my hand was still swollen, and I started to think this was more than a little sprain... I headed to the pharmacy and when the pharmacist saw my hand, she sent me immediately to the hospital. The Luang Prabang hospital was eerie! There was no one there, so strange. In fact, thank god for my tuk tuk driver who helped me find a doctor to take care of me. When I found out my hand was broken, I nearly broke down, but the nurses told me "Bo pen yang!" Bo pen yang is not only Northern Thai but also Laos for no worries, a motto that is now forever ingrained in me. With that, I decided that I should just accept my fate, and continue on with my travels. Yes, traveling with a broken has been no easy task... I couldn't get my hair up in a ponytail or open water bottles for weeks! After learning to be self-sufficient for 4 months, I had to be completely dependent.

Another notable thing to mention about Luang Prabang... Umm ok, I'm not sure how some of you are going to take this, but please don't hate me. I ate dog and snake soup. Our guest house offered it to us. I only had a little piece of dog, which essentially tasted like crispy pork, but the snake soup was DELICIOUS. I LOATHE snakes, but I will certainly eat them!

Another member of our family Chris from Australia joined us in LP. From Luang Prabang, we headed to Vang Vieng. After a beautiful 6 hour drive through the lush Laos mountains, we arrived in VV exhausted and crashe

d in the first guesthouse who would take us all. I've never done the whole Cancun Spring Break thing, but if I had, I would guess Vang Vieng is not that different. VV is famous for its "tubing." And by "tubing" I mean drinking bucket after bucket (buckets= buckets of mixed drinks typically vodka redbull), getting absolutely smashed, swimming in the river from one bar to the next, and let us not forget, dancing in the mud. Imagine doing this with a broken hand. Right. I guess this was fun for about 2 days, but when the others wanted to go a 3rd day, I opted out. I guess I'm getting old! I decided to chill by the river closer to town, which was absolutely beautiful, as you can see in the picture to the right.

After Vang Vieng, we headed to the capital Vientiane which I had been told to spend as little time there as possible. I ended up staying there for a day, but I thought the place was cute - definitely a French influence there... I thought the picture to the left could give you an idea...

We overnighted it to Southern Laos and ended up on the glorious island of Dondet in the 4000 islands. The 4000 islands are where the Mekong widens into a large delta before crossing into Cambodia. Life in Dondet is so slow, you really move at the pace of the Mekong there. This place was completely underdeveloped, the only power was between 6 and 10PM. This was a challenging place for my hand, but well worth the trouble. Perhaps the most active thing I did there was with Patrick. He had forgotten our friend Zoe's painting back on the mainland, so we decided to go on a canoeing adventure and fetch it. Once I got into that canoe, I thought, oh God, why did I get myself into another risky situation with the same person who broke my hand!? It ended up being a blast, poor Patrick did all the work, with my broken hand, I wasn't much help. After braving all the currents, and getting some help from some locals, we found our way back to the mainland and found Zoe's painting! We rewarded ourselves with a nice bottle of red wine, yessss.

We ended up staying in Dondet for 5 whole days we loved it so much. A huge portion of the time was spent relaxing in hammocks while Patrick played the guitar - sweet life...

(Actually, the night this picture was taken moments before my falling down the narrow wooden stairs and rehitting my broken hand - nice one - and badly bruising my foot leading to an internally infected bruise about a week later - Laos was a painful place!)

No account of Dondet would be complete without a little mention of the phenomenal Australian baker who resides there - he is in the pic below, hard at work, yummy. He makes the best chocolate banana donoughts ever! One day was revolved around picking up our caramel slices, which were seriously out of this world.

All in all, Laos was one of the most relaxed countries I have ever been to. The people there are simple and kind. They barely speak any English, but my less than nidnoy (little) Thai worked a few times. Some of the older generation speak a bit of French, but the French influence there is mostly limited to the baguette sandwiches that can be found everywhere. Unlike Thailand, baguettes were cheap and good. However, when in a restaurant, be prepared to wait an hour for the food to come out. seriously.

We finally tore ourselves away from Laos early on March 16th and headed onwards to Cambodia....

How time flies....

I'm leaving Chiang Rai in less than 2 days! This experience has had its really tough moments, but all in all, it was probably the most amazing thing I've done for myself. ever. I just can't believe I'm off. I'm really ready to move on, what lies ahead is so exciting. Yet I cannot deny that Chiang Rai has really had a serious impact on me and I will miss it - for all my complaining, I will miss it!

We finished teaching two weeks ago, so the last two weeks having been about soaking up everything that we had not done yet and doing everything one last time. I've just sent my two huge suitcases off to Bangkok and now all that I have left is my backpack! So surreal!

Anyway, I will miss it, but I am so so excited for my travels to Laos, Cambodia, Southern Thailand, and Hong Kong! My friend Marianne who has been teaching in Tha Wang Pa, a little town a few hours away from here is coming to meet me here and then we are off on our adventure!

Pu Chi Fah - birthday weekends!!

I've been to Pu Chi Fah, not once but twice in the past two weeks, that's how beautiful this spot is... The first time I went was with my friends Lisa and Kim who came up for my birthday.


This picture here is of Lisa and me as sun was rising. Lisa keeps a fantastic blog and her account of our weekend is perfect, so here's the link : http://expatescapades.blogspot.com/2009/02/phu-chee-fa-sea-of-fog.html

This is Kim pointing to the sun.

I ended up spontaneously going back two weekends later for my roommate's birthday. We went us four Chiang Rai girls, Kristen, Jen, Alicia , and me in that order. I have a funny face in this picture because we were having very bad luck finding an adequate photographer, and I guess I was just not having it anymore :)

Anyway, Pu Chi Fah is not in any guide book, but is an extremely popular Thai destination. We were the only foreigners for miles - this is what we call the "farang show." Basically everyone stares at us and says "farang, farang, farang." Both times I've been, we've made friends with a group of young Thais camping next to us. Both times, they haven't spoken a word of English and both times we've managed to find a way to communicate. It is so rewarding when you can finally make yourself understood, or better yet when I understand what they've told me in Thai! I'm slowly understanding more and more... Just as I am leaving , of course! Anyway, we then woke up the next morning when it was still dark and hiked up the mountain to watch the sun rise, absolute bliss....


I can't think of a more unique birthday than my 25th on a mountain on the border of Thailand and Laos!

Videos are coming!!

When my family came to visit me for Christmas, my mother gave me a flip camera for me to start recording this experience via film. In the last few weeks, I've filmed my students talking to me or attempting to ;), and moments in class. I've been desperately trying to get these up here, but the Internet has not been cooperating at all! I'll keep trying and will eventually get them up here, stay tuned, because they are SO cute!!

Saving Face - losing face...?

One of the most striking aspects of Thai culture is "saving face." I might have mentioned this in some previous posts, but essentially, Thai people never really let their true emotions seep out from the facade. Many times, when they feel uncomfortable about anything, they just laugh it off. When I'm irritated for whatever reason (I can think of a million and one things that make me want to scream here), Thai people just laugh, making my irritation all the worse. Ok, so maybe I'm just an impatient westerner or farang. When I had been warned about this cultural difference, I had thought , well when in Rome do as the Romans, I'm sure there will never be any reason to show any anger, since I'll be in Thailand. But when I first arrived here, it became apparent to me that I'm just not as laid back as I thought! If something angers me, well I have a hard time holding it in. Not that I ever really lose it and scream, but I definitely let my frustration be known.

I've noticed lately that this is all starting to change. I'm improving on this regard, I'm learning how to save face more... I don't think I'll ever really be fully Thai though, I think some emotion is good, even necessary sometimes...

So you can imagine my surprise when a few weeks ago, I saw my coordinator lose face. My roommate and I announced to him that we were leaving Chiang Rai for good at the end of February. He had told us that we would be done teaching mid February, so we were free to leave at the end of the month. Apparently, this was a COMPLETE misunderstanding (how many more misunderstandings will I endure? ha), and he had been under the impression that we were just going to hang out in Chiang Rai during the entire month of March, just for the prestige of having foreign teachers. Clearly they don't really need us, they were just going to keep us on for the sake of having us, it's an appearance thing. So bizarre to me! As we very awkwardly told him that we had made plans to leave and couldn't stick around in March ( I mean, let's be honest here, there is no way I'm just sitting around for appearance sake when I have all of Southeast Asia to explore), I watched his face decompose and I saw emotion - EMOTION! He seemed very upset, my roommate and I had never seen anything like it. Luckily, I had to leave to teach immediately, but she had to stick around the office which she told me was highly uncomfortable.

Last week, as I was waiting to meet up with Bertrand and his friend for dinner, I was sitting in my usual spot in the open space of the night bazaar. I was quietly reading my book when I suddenly heard loud voices. I looked over and saw a woman speaking in a very high-pitched tone to another pointing her finger to her. Pointing is definitely not polite in Thailand. The screaming escalated until the woman got up and starting pulling at each other's hair and wound up in a full blown cat fight! I was flabbergasted.

So there you have it, even Thai people let the facade crumble down to expose their true characters. We are all human after all!

My goobye note to my school...

So my coordinator just announced to us that we needed to write a paragraph for the school newsletter about our "feelings" about our experience here. I just wrote this up really quickly, and although it's definitely quite cheesy, I thought it was worth sharing it with you. Despite the cheese, it's actually quite genuine..Oh and by the way, I don't think anyone will understand it, ha.

Being an English teacher at Damrong High School has been an incredible experience for me. I know my time here was brief and am sorry to be moving on so quickly, but I have enjoyed every moment of teaching here. I have loved getting to know the students and hope that I have had a bit of an impact on them. Every student here has the potential to become an excellent English speaker one day (some are already there), so I hope that my presence here has encouraged my students to not lose faith and to keep practicing and in turn one day to be very successful.

I would like to thank the school for inviting me here in Chiang Rai and by doing so, giving me the experience of a lifetime. Thanks to my time here as a teacher, I had the immense pleasure of getting to know the staff, my colleagues, and the students whose kind welcome I shall never forget. Moreover, I have also had unique access to learning and understanding Thai culture – one that has had a tremendous impact on me. Thank you so much for an unforgettable experience. Until the next time, chok dee.

My weekend chez Monsieur et Madame FinLAND

This past weekend, I had an adventure unlike any of the others I've written about on this blog -- I did something that is completely foreign to my life here in Thailand.

Before coming here, my grandmother, who was quite nervous to see her little granddaughter venture across the world to teach English, reached out to the one person she knew in Bangkok, the Finnish ambassador's wife. I didn't think much of this contact, because it didn't seem real to me. That is until about a month ago when she spontaneously phoned me and insisted I come down to Bangkok for a visit. My mother told me I should absolutely take her up on this invite, I mean, when else will be invited to an ambassador's residence?


So when we found out rather last minute, as always, that we were going to have 6 days off, I decided to give Brigitta a call. Six days off meant I should definitely do something with that time, but as I'm coming to the end of my semester, I am also a bit travel weary, not a good sign since I will be living 6 weeks out of my backpack. Brigitta immediately invited me to come spend my days off with her. So I thought, I could definitely use a weekend of pampering, hot showers, and good (maybe western?) food.


I got on the bus on Wednesday night, with scrapes all over my legs, running on two hours of sleep from the previous night (my roommate and I decided to have a crazy night out since we didn't have to teach for another week) - anyway, I was definitely ready for some real comfort.

Real comfort doesn't even come close to what this place was like. It was absolute luxury by any standard, let alone my Chiang Rai standards. I arrived at dawn on Thursday where she showed me my room. I thought it was a mirage: a queen size bed, the pillows were soft, and the bathroom was huge with hot water of course. She insisted on serving me some biscuits as I must have been starving. I zoned out till noon when I had lunch with her of course served impeccably by the butler. After our afternoon tea where we of course ate only the best scones in all of Bangkok, as she said " out of this vvvooorld! " (oh she is from Austria, hence the accent), she took me to her favorite chic shops downtown.

The next day I spent by myself strolling around Bangkok, going to Jim Thompson and then meeting up with Phil and Waqas, my program coordinating people for lunch and the whole afternoon. I had such a nice time seeing them that I nearly missed high tea, where of course my scones were waiting for me.

That night, Mr and Mrs Finland hosted their friends for a dinner party. Everything was perfect. The pictures you see here are from that night. Everything from the table set, the menu, the flowers was impeccably planned. The life of an ambassadress is busier than you would imagine! I mean, she often times wakes up at 5 in the morning to do her hair (it takes her about one hour) so that she can be at some function by 8 in the morning, busy busy busy. It's one dinner party after the other!

To the left is a picture of my name tag and the delicious menu. I had wine and champagne!

The next day, we woke up early to do more shopping. We met her friend Mrs. Copland and invaded the Jim Thompson outlet. I went a little crazy there, but who can resist when everything is about 6 dollars!?

We then headed to their favorite designer friend MarIIIIsa, who is really fantastic, but completely and utterly out of my price range despite it being Thailand. Finally, we had an incredible lunch at the Blue Elephant where of course Brigitta knew the owners.

I spent my last day there sitting at the pool devouring my book. These next two pictures are of the garden, which Brigitta takes huge pride in.

All in all, I had a wonderful time there, but I felt so utterly out of place. As their little houseguest, as they called me, I was also treated with the utmost respect. It was nice, but I almost felt a bit uncomfortable -like I was faking a life that is clearly not mine right now. I can do posh in Europe or the States, but in Thailand... it feels just so foreign to me. Even from my wardrobe... I had a very difficult time finding clothes to make myslef look appropriate. Of course, Brigitta was dressed to the nines, even when having breakfast. I felt like I stepped into a different universe, one in which I for the life of me couldn't quite relate to.

It was amazing, don't get me wrong, but it felt so funny having a butler wait on me. I mean, when in Rome do as the Romans. I enjoyed it and will definitely be going back. And Brigitta showed me a whole other side of Bangkok that without her I would have never seen! Plus, I'm sure that after living out of backpack for x amount of time, I'll be ready for some more real pampering... :)