Temples and Ghosts

I've created a north-of-Thailand bucket list for myself to ensure I see and experience all the things I want to before I leave Lampang at the end of the semester. The longer I stay in this country the bigger my list gets despite me ticking things off weekly; Thailand has so much to offer and explore that I fear I'll never be done - perhaps I'll just have to stay! One place on this list was the city of Chiang Rai which is in the far north, close to the Laos and Myanmar borders, surrounded by mountains. Not long after I met my friends in Chiang Rai it started to rain and during rainy season in Thailand it can be beautifully hot and sunny one minute and before you know a tsunami-like wall of water is thundering down from above threatening to knock you out of your fake Havaiana flip flops.

We visited Wat Rong Khun, or White Temple, in Chiang Rai - each feature is symbolic - the outreaching hands symbolise unrestrained desire and the bridge is the road to happiness if you forgo temptation and greed.

The temple was built by a local artist about twenty years ago as an offering to Lord Buddha in the hope that it would earn him immortal life.

This clock tower, in the middle of a Chiang Rai roundabout, has a music and light show every night at 8pm.

Chiang Rai night market.

Mr Dam, one of the Thai teachers of English at my school who I drive in with every day, sometimes takes me to nearby Mae Tha village to eat ridiculously tasty khao soi, a northern Thai dish with noodles, chilies, chicken or beef, a curry-like sauce with coconut milk, garlic, shallots and lime topped with crispy pork crackling. During one of these lunch excursions, whilst driving through tiny villages populated with wooden houses on stilts, Mr Dam pointed out a house that seemed to have a lot of visitors sitting in a circle on the floor under the raised part of the building; he explained that people come from all over Thailand to speak to the ghosts of their dead loved-ones through the famous spirit medium that lives there. Ghosts are a big deal in Thailand, outside every building there's a spirit house where sweet, red food and drink is left to appease any malicious ghosts and it's common for those that lose a family member to see a spirit medium. As someone who is on the fence when it comes to matters of the afterlife I asked Mr Dam if he believed this woman and he looked at me incredulously and said that he had no doubts about her skills; when he visited her after his father, who was Chinese, passed away the elderly woman's voice changed when she became possessed with his father's ghost and she started talking to Mr Dam in fluent Chinese even though she has never learnt or spoken a word of it in her life before! A few weeks later I was told by one of the teachers that the ghosts had chosen a new spirit medium in the form of an eleven year old student. That day, in my school's gym, the girl had become possessed with the ghost of a person that the teachers used to know and after demanding to eat raw beef (?!) the spirit declared it's wishes for her to be a communication channel between their world and ours; her grandparents swiftly collected her from school and took her home in a frenzy - they don't want her to be a spirit medium as it means that she can never get married or eat meat! 

Thai iced coffee and beef khao soi - as they say here, "arawy maak maak" (very, very delicious!).

I'm pretty sure that the little girl behind me in the photo is the one who was taken over by the spirit.

These students - two girls and two kathoeys (boys who want to be girls) in dresses - performed an enthusiastic dance during the school's science day last month.

Another school activity - this photo was taken during craft day where many things were being made by the students from hair clips to lanterns.

I was asked to design and run a three-day seminar for Thai English teachers with two other foreign teachers - Sarah from America who I already knew as she lives in my town and Rachel, also from The States, who lives about an hour away from Lampang. All three of us are new, inexperienced teachers and so we couldn't understand why we'd been asked to run the seminar however we certainly weren't complaining as we were paid nicely for our time, put up in a swanky-for-this-part-of-Thailand hotel, spoilt rotten with incredible Thai meals and most importantly we were able to mingle with the best English speakers in the area and make lots of new Thai friends. Some of my fellow farang teachers in other parts of the country have been jammy enough to have been adopted by a Thai woman - aka 'a Thai mum' - who shows them around, invites them to their house, gives them a proper insight into 'Thai-ness' and helps them do everyday things that become a giant, confusing hassle when you can't read or speak much of a language (i.e. interpreting menus, booking bus tickets or knowing where to go to buy a button!). Before the seminar I hadn't been lucky enough to find one of these elusive angels however I found several at the seminar, in fact the teachers were fighting over who got to be our Thai mums and they were horrified that we'd had to fend for ourselves in a foreign country up until now!

P Book, the lady overseeing the seminar, bought us traditional Thai outfits which is what I am wearing here. Thai teachers wear this outfit to school on Fridays - they wrap material around them as a skirt and usually wear it with a patterned, high-neck top with wooden toggles.

Some of the colourful Thai spreads we were treated to; we were introduced to many new dishes that weekend, some of the best being hung lay, a curry with pork belly, and tab tim grob, a dessert with water chestnuts and coconut cream.

Teaching teachers how to teach...

Teachers' visit to Lampang night market.

One of our new adopted Thai mums, K-Pop, offered to show Sarah and I around neighboring province Lamphun. K-Pop took us on a tour of the stunning golden pagodas and mirrored temples of Lamphun and to a Thai buffet restaurant where we made our own somtam which is a salad made with green papaya, lots of chilies, limes and crushed-up mini crabs; it's one of my favourite Thai dishes and it's only a proper somtam when it's so spicy that every hole in my face leaks and I'm momentarily blinded.  After Lamphun Sarah and I made our way to Chiang Mai where we met our friends, Rachel and Kiren, for the weekend - Chiang Mai has become a regular hang-out spot for us and we often spend the weekend there sampling the nightlife and wandering around the markets.

Making my own somtam with a giant pestle and mortar.

This temple in Lamphun, called Wat Phra That Hariphunchai, has a giant golden pagoda that houses one of the Lord Buddha's hairs.

This mirrored temple, out of the hundreds I have seen in Asia, is one of my favourites - the inner chamber was like a mirror maze.

K-Pop even took us to see her house - we had been dying to see what Thai houses look like on the inside! There's a shrine to the king on the left and the sofas are made out of wood only.

The Dog's Eyebrows

My adventures as a teacher in the Kingdom of Thailand continue as I pass the halfway mark of my first semester! I teach eighteen classes a week (an average of about four per day) that last fifty minutes each and the rest of my long day at school, when I'm not making lesson plans or running English club, is free time; since there isn't much to occupy me in the expanse of rice paddies that surround my school I tend to spend this free time in my office reading, speaking to students who come to visit, writing my blog and surfing the internet (the latter can entertain me for hours - just the other day I went online to research the countries I want to travel to next and two hours later I somehow found myself reading articles on the employment of eunuchs in Imperial China?! Don't ask...). My weekends usually involve some kind of mission to another part of the country and August was full of these adventures; there was a two-day religious holiday at the beginning of the month which meant I had a four-day weekend - thanks to Buddha - and I was dying to emerge out of the middle of nowhere (a.k.a. my hometown) and let my hair down somewhere fun. That place was Koh Samet. Once again, armed with my trusty backpack, I got an eight-hour overnight bus to Bangkok and then travelled for a further six hours by bus, songthaew and boat to Koh Samet island where we discovered that everyone living in Bangkok had the same idea - to escape for the long weekend - meaning it was hard to find a room and prices had increased; because of this my two friends, Kiren and Stacey, and I had to stay at a different guesthouse on each of the three nights we were on the island and spent around 1300฿ (£24) a night for a triple room when we usually pay less than a third of that in Thailand. We spent our long weekend in the sea, getting massages, following a pair of eyebrows (see below), meeting new friends, eating crepes on the beach and mango and sticky rice on the street and going for nights out at the beach front bars where we watched fire shows, danced in the sand and got covered in UV paint. After a crazy, amazing four days I made my way to Bangkok and caught a short, 900฿ (£16) flight back to Lampang on the Sunday night before school started and spent the entire week dog-tired but buzzing from the memories of our mini holiday.

Sometimes my weekend adventures involve touristy places full of backpackers but Koh Samet was full of fellow English teachers enjoying the long weekend. 

 Koh Samet is an island just south of Bangkok, it's much easier for me to get to than the more well known islands further south.

This beach dog was always hanging around the bars and clubs rocking his giant eyebrows and getting a lot of attention!

It's rainy season in Thailand at the moment and, whilst we did get some sun during our break, the island got its fair share of watering from above, hence the umbrella. 

August was also the month that I turned 27! Last year, a week after I left the UK, I celebrated my 26th birthday on the 'rooftop of the world' in the Indian Himalayas and this year I celebrated on the rooftop of a Bangkok skyscraper at an open air 'sky bar' called Octave! I decided to treat myself to a flight to Bangkok and back this time since it was my birthday - I usually bus one way to save money but I wanted to make the most of my time on this occasion. I went back to the English pub that we'd found in the Sukhumvit area twice that weekend for a mega fry up and a beastly Sunday roast - both reminded me of home and were far safer options for a hangover compared to Thai food with its fish sauce and chilies. On the Saturday night Kiren, Stacey and I, along with Ashley, who we'd met in our hostel, met up with people we'd made friends with the week before on Koh Samet island and all of us went to Octave skyscraper bar; the gentle breeze that relieved us from the stifling city heat added to the views of the twinkling Bangkok skyline all around us, the neon lights of the bar and the funky house music all provided the perfect scene for a magical birthday! After a few hours of taking photos, drinking cocktails and leaning over the breezy edge of the sky bar six of us wanted to get a taxi to our next destination, a sprawling super club complex called Route 66, and we didn't want to pay for two taxis so we flagged down cabs until we found a driver who was willing to cram six of us into his car and drive us through Bangkok; long story short I ended up with only my legs in the car whilst the rest of me, from the waist up, was dangling out the window with the wind in my chops like a pet dog on a road trip.

After a night out in Bangkok on the Friday we spent all Saturday having (ultra cheap) massages and facials ready for my second birthday night out.

The quality of my photos from here on is terrible because my camera broke on Koh Samet and I'm having to use the camera on my phone.

This sky bar, despite still being pretty pricey, was a lot cheaper than the ultra posh Lebua sky bar I went to in another part of Bangkok last October.

My 27th birthday at Route 66 club in Bangkok.

After two big weekends away I was looking forward to having a day off from school on the following Wednesday thanks to mother's day being a national holiday. Mother's day here falls on the Queen of Thailand's birthday, and father's day on the King's, because they see their much adored monarchy as their country's 'parents'. On the Monday after my birthday I noticed huge chunks missing out of some of my male students' hair; after secretly wondering if there was a bizarre new hairstyle craze or perhaps an infectious hair disease going round I was informed that boys in Thailand have to keep their hair extremely short at school and, if a teacher thinks their hair is getting too long, they will shear off a single, giant clump leaving them looking ridiculous which therefore sends a not-so-subtle message to their parents to cut their hair! On the Tuesday before we had the day off for the Queen's birthday all lessons were cancelled (as I've mentioned before there's barely a week that goes by without at least one day off or cancelled lessons due to special events and national holidays) and every mother of my school's 250 students scooted through the surrounding country lanes and into the school on their mopeds and motorbikes to celebrate mother's day; the mothers, or grandmothers and aunties if the mother wasn't able to make it, sat in chairs in the gym whilst the students knelt at their feet and presented them with gifts, poems and general hysterics as they wailed and cried and told them how much they they loved them. The mothers also sobbed and sniffed into hankies and then they ceremonially tied a white string around their child's wrist to symbolise their wish for them to have a prosperous future.

Mother's day at school - you can spot a few teary eyes being dried!

The mother's day celebrations in the gym also included singing and dancing as well as award presentations for the best mothers and most well behaved children. 

I try to theme my classes and this week I asked my younger students to make western-style mother's day cards.

Some of my students like to plait my hair and chat with me at lunch; they always have a barrage of random questions in a mixture of Thai, English and miming e.g. How much do you weigh? What's your blood type? Have you ever been bitten by an anaconda? How many ghosts live in your apartment?(!)