How Many?

A simple question and a pretty easy one to answer really. Last week we tried teaching it to the youngest class, but they didn’t get it. Continuing on from the mind map we had worked on with the older kids last week, I decided to try ‘how many’ with these guys.

The car and the mind map was still on the board. So I moved on to the wheels. “How many wheels?” “Wheels?” “How many wheels does the car have?” Blank looks. That’s fine. Lets see that they know what wheels are first.

A bit more ini-mini and “Stand up!” I point at the board, he walks up to it. “Wheels.” He looks at the board and points at the world wheels. “Good… where?” He looks at the board again, blankly. I think he thinks he got it wrong. So I go up, point at the word wheels and say “Yes!” With a big smile on my face. Then I do a sweeping point at the picture. Suddenly he gets it. He points at the wheels. “Yes! Sit down.”

So let’s keep trying. How many. I’m trying to think how I can do this. “One wheel?” I get blank look. “Two wheels?” Blank looks. “Three wheels?” I keep looking and pointing at the board. I’m looking around, trying to see if any of them think they might be getting it. Then we get a look from one of the boys. I walk up to him and say “How many wheels?” He grins… “Two wheels?”
“… four wheels?”
“YES! Well done!!”

I write it on the board, the question; ‘How many wheels does a car have?’ and the answer; ‘The car has seven wheels.’ Some repeating of this so they know how to ask and answer the question. So, do they all understand it?

Ini-mini time. “Stand up. What’s this?” I ask, tapping the desk.
“Desk?”
“Yes! Okay. How many desks?” She looks around the room, she doesn’t understand. Others do and are already counting away. They ‘whisper-shouted’ the answer to her once they had counted them up. It was sweet. I had her sit down and picked someone else. We repeat this exercise until everyone of the kids has had something to count, and the last person up is the girl who didn’t understand at the beginning.

Some of them really got it straight away, and some didn’t. So we will revisit this later on.

The Day After The Night Before

The first time I wake up is as the sun is rising, around 6am. I go back to sleep almost straight away. The second time I wake up is around 8 or 9am as people are arriving on the beach. The third and final time I wake up is when the ocean starts lapping around my feet, dangling off the deck chair. I stretch. I feel pretty rough, but not as bad as I was expecting.

Standing up I s.t.r.e.t.c.h again. Urg. What time is it? Damn. Check out was... twenty minutes ago. I need some free wifi, I need to get in touch with Ben. I need to find the hotel. We need to get back to Saraburi. I need to get back to the school. I need some money. I check my pockets. Phone. Yes. Okay free wifi it is. Money? Lets see, about 1p in change... receipts and oh! 500 baht! That’s like ten quid. Oh I’m alright now. I’m not as panicked. Not that I was panicked. All things considering I was pretty chilled.

I get off the beach and start walking down the road. This is tourist heaven. There will be free internet, or even just internet, around here somewhere. Then I see it. Massage. I could really go for a massage right now. But I haven’t showered in… actually 16/17 hours isn’t too bad and I haven’t done any running around or anything. A foot massage too. I did a lot of walking on hot sand yesterday and this morning. This is my new priority. And at just 100 baht an hour? Yup.

I think I’ll skip writing about the foot massage and write an entire post of its own as to why I like it so, so much. So I get the massage and continue walking down the road on what now feel like heavenly feet. After about half an hour of looking I find some free wifi. Great. Load up his facebook page. YES! We have his phone number. Score. Okay… my phone has no signal and I don’t know how much it will cost from a payphone to call a mobile, or where a payphone is… or how to use one here.

“Suwadee cup” Oh yes. For now, that’s as far as my Thai will stretch. “Do you speak English?”
“Yes” With a big smile.
“Ahh! Great! I am lost! I need to find my friend.”
“Where is your friend?”
“I don’t know, but I have his phone number. But I have no phone.” I said clutching my phone. I get a strange look. “No! This, no signal in Thailand! UK only! Use Wifi!”
“Ahh. Okay.” They get out their phone and pass it to me, again with a big smile.
“Thank you so much! Cob-corn-cup!”

Ring ring. Ring ring.
“Ben!! Where am I? Erm… ‘where am I?’ Southside. Wait! Near the McDonald’s! Yes I have some money. The bus station? A taxi? Yes. Okay. When? Now? Okay. See you soon.”

“Follow me, I show you taxi bike. To bus station, 15 Baht.” The guy walks me outside the café, round the corner and up a main road. We turn another corner and there are lines and lines of taxi bikes. He talks to one of them. Then turns to me and says “15 baht.”
“Cob-corn-up! Really! Thank you very, very much!”

I jump on the back of the bike and we speed off up the road. It takes about half an hour to get to the station, and I find Ben almost straight away. He has my bag, with all my stuff I’d left out packed away. But the bad news is we’ve missed the last bus back. We can get a bus via Bangkok, but that would involve big detours and long waits, turning a four hour journey into a nine or ten hour journey.

Ben is asking around at the various stops and then tells me and the other guy to just wait where we are. He disappears around a corner into the lorry-stop. Ten or fifteen minutes later he re-emerges, waving at us to join him. We turn the corner and find him talking to a truck driver. This particular truck is of the old world war two canvas style trucks. The kind you’ve seen in the film that soldiers pile into.
“Get on.” Ben tells us. “He is going Saraburi.”
“Great!” I say, and pull back the canvas cover at the back of the truck. But it is rammed, completely full of boxes. There is no space at all. I look at Ben who says;
“Not in, ON.” And points up. I look around at the side of the truck to see his mate climbing a material ladder, sewn into the side of the truck. Jesus. I climb up and to my shock we find a few baby seats and basic seat belts stitched into the fabric. We sit down and buckle up. As we begin to set off Ben turns to me with a massive smile and says; “Bridge… duck!”

The wind, the bugs, my face. Like my face didn’t hurt enough already after last night… it was an experience. A very cool one for the first fifteen minutes. But four and a half hours leaves your entire body numb. But who am I to complain? We got dropped off at Saraburi and they driver didn’t charge us a penny. I was happy to get home and crash on my concrete bed. I went to sleep very early that night.

"That one has an adam's apple!"

Pattiya. Oh my god Pattiya. Generally I've kept everything on this blog pretty civil, pretty family friendly and inoffensive. I don't think this will change much in this post to be honest, but just as a word of warning, this city is the centre of the sex trade in a country famed for its sex trade.

So where to begin? Well, we left on Saturday late morning. We got a lift into Saraburi from Ben's brother (so far, it was just me and Ben). There we met up with Ben's friend, the guy who I had met before during the whole 'throwing fireworks into the packed river' incident. We got a coach, direct to the city. So what did I know about Pattiya? If you've been following this blog for a length of time, you'll know I really don't know anything about the country. Especially the cities. So I know nothing about Pattiya. Nothing passed it was where Ben went to University at least.

So we finally arrive, it was a seriously long journey. Ben is zeroed in on where we need to be when we get off the coach. We walk down a few roads and jump in an open backed taxi. We ride the cab for some thirty minutes, all the way down to the beach, and then along the beach for some five miles. We jump off, and Ben's friend pays. I ask how much I owe for the fare. "Thirty Baht". Wow, I owe 60p for a half hour cab ride. I get out the money to give to him. They look in my hand and say "No, no!" Ben takes 10 Baht (20p) from my hand, and said "Thirty Baht total. Ten each." What can I say, I LOVE HOW CHEAP THIS COUNTRY IS!

We walk up and down some side roads with various hostels and hotels. We hadn't booked one. Ben wanted to make sure we had air-con and it wasn't too expensive. So we had a lot of looking to do! We got various taxi-bikes around about a 5-mile area before we finally found one. It was a decent room, three people, air-con, and three beds, hot water, showers, western toilets. The whole shibam! Seven hundred Baht (about fourteen or fifteen quid).... total. So a fiver each for the night. Not too bad! At all really!

We get showered and prepare to go out for dinner. I'm told not to take my camera out. I don't. I'm glad for this, there is no way I would have kept a hold of it or not damaged it somehow!

We hit dinner. I order a whiskey and coke. It was an expensive one, something like three or four quid. I drink about two thirds, and the glass is topped up. Yea why not? This happens another three times before I finally say to Ben "Why do they keep topping up my drink? I can't really afford to buy drinks this expensive!"

"No, you bought the bottle."

Challenge accepted.

Two hours later...

Challenge complete.

Let's go for a walk along the beach, skip some stones. Have a good heart to heart. End of the beach and grab a beer. Now let's walk up 'Walking Street'. Oh my god walking street. Either side is open bars, with live music, various things to pull in the punters like Thai boxing, Karaoke and all sorts of shows. But, Every. Single. One. Have strippers just dancing around the tables. There isn't a single one that doesn't have strippers. Not one. We walk all the way up. They have women lining the streets with adverts for prices of various drinks to tempt you in. Every single one of these literally hundreds and hundreds of women were prostitutes. There's not even an attempt to be discreet even a little bit.

We settle on a bar, a non open bar, one that was underground. It had signs saying all foreigners must have ID, but Ben talked me in with no problem. Let's get some more drinks on. Drinks here are costing like 20p for a whiskey and coke. Deadly. After about an hour or so, a group of girls came and sat with us, with extra drinks they passed to us. I still had mine. It was dark, and I was squinting at the girl in front of me. The light's spinning around highlighted it and I sat back quickly when I realised that yup, that was a very pronounced adams apple. I turn to Ben and just as the music changes track and goes very quiet I said very loudly; "That one has an Adam's apple! I'm not drinking that!"

She gave me a seriously dirty look and slapped me. I got up and went to the bathroom. As I stood up I said to Ben "I'm leaving, meet me outside."

From there went to another bar. A great bar. The tables all surrounded a Thai boxing ring with some boxing going on. Watched it, it was all pretty tame to be honest, but I was drunk enough to really enjoy it. I was also drunk enough to agree to the following;

"Anyone here want to get in the ring and give it a go?"

Ben; "Go on!"

Me; "Not a chance..."

Ben; "YES!" furiously pointing at me.

"Come on up sir!" The very America voice bellowed on the speakers.

They didn't care that I was drunk. In fact this seemed to be a plus. They showed me where to keep my arms, how to do a kick and a punch. I nearly fell over. They went along with it anyway. Then in showing me how NOT to block, the guy hit me (not that hard at all) in the stomach. I jolted my arms down, in a flinch gut (no pun intended) reaction. This left my face totally open to a punch. Not that hard. But hard enough to go down without question. Everyone burst out laughing. I stumbled to my feet and the gut said thank you and I could return to my seat if I wanted. I heeded those wise words and climbed out of the ring.

It was getting late and was time to leave. Places were not closing, but they were emptying. We left 'walking street' and got back onto the normal roads. Ben grabbed my arm and would not let go. I got pretty shirty with this. Also, I didn't want to go home. So I did the smart thing and as soon as he let go of my arm I bolted. I have the hotel card in my wallet, I'll be fine. I jumped on another open cab and headed down the beach.

Everyone got out at the same stop, I got out the back and got into the front. I started asking the guy to take me to a kebab shop. I kept saying 'gin' (ga - inn) which means eat. He took me to a MaccyD's and charged about 5p for the ride. In the McDonald's I ordered a DOUBLE BIG MAC! Oh yes! Good times! But I didn't have enough money. I thought I had more. I thought I had my wallet. I remember nope, just brought cash and my phone with me. Dammit. But they let me get away with it, and I paid about half the price. Really nice of them!

I ate my food and started walking along the beach. I knew I had no idea where the hotel was, wasn't sure how to find it, my phone was only good for internet, a lot of places around where I was were closed. I was lost. I was very happy. I stopped off at another bar and the guy gave me free bottled water. Again, really nice people! I was there for maybe an hour or so before I thought it was time to get on the move again down the beach. There was a deck chair about 500 meters down. I walked over to it, slumped down and fell asleep.

I'll worry about everything else in the morning. It's fine. I'm cool. Goodnight world.

Mind Maps

In this final week of teaching for Vanessa, we worked on mind-maps. If you are unfamiliar with them, or you call them something else in your country, let me explain. You take a subject and put it in the middle of the page, then draw lines branching out and write as many things to do with that subject as you can. We did English mind-maps. The idea was that they would come up with as many things related to a subject (for example, car) that they could. They were not allowed to use dictionaries or the various books they had. They could share their ideas and discuss it with each other, and ask us anything and for the most part we would answer. If they could give us an answer, but didn't know how to spell it. That was fine, we would help them spell it.

First, we did the example of a house on the board, with every student having to give one answer. A house was easy, they could have pretty much anything really. The different rooms, furniture, pets, all sorts. Then in their books they had to do car. I was really impressed with what they knew. They first did the easy ones, different colours. Then they did 'wheels' and 'windows' and things like this. Some of the kids did brands and some were able to do 'brakes' which really impressed me.

Doing this took up the whole lesson. That's fine. We have plenty more with them this week. So you may be asking, what's the point of doing the mind map? They clearly know plenty of words, and you have said many times, they know lots of words. Well, part two of the mind map is taking what they have done and turning into simple sentences. The next lesson began and we worked together as a group, putting up all the answers they had come up with in the last lesson. There were a lot. Now we throw them into the deep end. They clearly know what's going on. They know words, you keep pushing them bit by bit and they just get it. A few minutes is all it takes and for one it clicks. Then it clicks with the rest of them. There was only one colour written on the board; red.

"Right!" I said, looking over the board at the answers. "What colour is the car?" I did my little, walk around the class room thing, repeating the question several times. "Colour?" "What colour?" (I just want to say at this point, these are the moments I loved most of all when teaching out there). Only about two minutes passed before I could see the cogs going for one of the girls, not the usual one, another girl who has slowly been coming out of her box.

"Res?" I know what she means. I smile and tell her to stand up. "Oooowwwww!" She stands up and I walk up to the board.

"What colour?"

"Res?"

I point at the D in red

"Re-D?"

"YES!!! Well done!"

On the other half of the board I write the question. "What colour is the car?" We repeat the question several times and I 'ini-meni-mini-mo' a few volunteers to stand up and repeat the question. I write down the answer. "The car is red." We repeat it a few more times.

Now, do they actually understand what the question is? Pick one of the smartest out. Pandetta. "What colour is the desk?" She pulls her 'why pick me? I don't know!!! Owwww!' face. Not having any of that. I'll let you think for a minute. Repeat the question a couple more times. Then it hits her. She slaps down on the desk, eyes wide realising what I'm asking.

"Brown!"

"Yes!! Sit down!! Very Good!! Okay! Ini-meni-mini-mo, catch a tiger, by the toe, if he hollers, let him go. Ini-meni-mini..... mo! Stand up! Okay... what colour is the sky?"

"Ummm....."

Others spin around, all eyes on this little guy as he really tries to think. Not ten seconds go past and one of the kids 'whisper shouts' "Blue!" He looks at me...

"Blue?"

"Haha yes, sit down. Stand up!" I shout over to the girl who gave him the answer. I do a sweeping "SHHHHHHHHHHHHH" to the rest of the class. "What colour is the tree?"

A wide smile appears on her face. She pulls a face, a 'I think you are asking me a trick question, but I know the answer anyway so HA!' and she says;

"Brown and green!"

I am now jumping around for joy. So happy. They've got it!

This mind map has taken words they know, and I'm going to turn them into short sentences and teach them how to both ask and answer questions with the words they already know. From here on, it starts to get more difficult for them, but we still manage to keep it fun and exciting.

Summaries

I'd like to return to Thailand now. Firstly, thanks to everyone for all your comments and suggestions. Have a lot of research to do, people to talk to and things to work through, but will keep this updated about it. Even at Papworth (transplant clinic) they said probably best not to go for a while anyway, but with the latest news saying that the FO are advising Britons to leave Tokyo and the French pulling all their people out of the city, things just look to be getting much worse.

So I wanted to take stock in this post. We have arrived at my third week in Thailand. This really is a watershed week for me, the other volunteer finishes and I'm left to run the classes on my own. I've also concentrated a lot on the travelling around the country and some of the teachings. I wanted to take a step back and focus on some of the things that I've learnt out here about life for the families and people out here. I will try and point out some big cultural differences as well.

Dogs! Didn't have the rabies vaccines since three injections of 70 quid each was only going to give me an extra 12 hours to get to a hospital. Twenty four is enough! Discussing this with the nurse she said: "That's fine, and a lot of people do this. I mean you just need to avoid dogs." I nodded my head, just as naive in thinking, just avoid dogs. They are seriously everywhere. I am not exaggerating. I have photos of them all over the place, in the streets, in the temples, in the fields and in the school. During the day they loaf around and don't really do much. Sleep and eat. One night Vanessa had some badly swollen ankles and I was on the phone to the volunteer project coordinator. I had to leave the school, walk a few houses down and find the guy who worked in the pharmacy and put the coordinator on the phone with him. As I started walking down the road I was told "And Nick... watch out for dogs. At night, they fight you!" And they barked at me, some chased me down the road. I don't like the dogs at night.

What's the most shocking thing? Very few, if any, are actually strays. These are peoples pets. But they don't keep them in the house because the animals don't like it. They will 'own' some three or four dogs, but they just roam the streets. The dogs will fight and badly hurt and even kill each other.

Food. Everyone knows what Thai food is, if you don't, go to a Thai restaurant. Trust me, it will be westernised. The dishes will be generally the same though. But the flavours would be quite different. For lunch at the school there was normally three or four different dishes, so it was a help yourself to whatever you want. Most days this meant there was at least one thing I liked. About 90% of the meals were severed with rice. It was a kind of rice that I had never eaten before, it was very lumpy and starchy. Very filling. When a meal wasn't spicy (it was either not spicy or ON FIRE!!) there were condiments to go on top of it. Some kind of chilli powder, salted water, fish sauce and... most strangely... sugar. Sugar was put on the main courses and not the deserts. I did this once and it wasn't really great, putting sugar on Pad-Thai!

When it comes to dinners out here, not just for me, but for the people who live here, eating out is the thing to do. Food is so cheap. From the vendors all over the town about three or four miles away, you can get a meal and a drink for 20-30 Baht (40-60p). I didn't really learn anything about the poor out here. But the way the people in the village lived was to eat out most every night because it was cheaper than buying the food in shops and cooking at home.

Family and respect. A lot of commentaries say the problem with the UK is the lack of respect people have, for family, for elders, for the community and for others in general. I'm not going to chime my ideas here past, there is a hell of lot more importance in showing respect to everyone and how important family is out there then here. Families are large and many stay living together. Generally people don't tend to travel and leave the areas they grew up in and so communities become very tight and know each other very well. People know who the dark horse of the area is, who you need to be protected from, and you can be trusted to go out for a weekend of drinking with.

Religion is a big part of life out here. I wasn't as aware of it at this point as I will be later, but I was really building up my understanding of how important this aspect of life is. The local Wat (temple) is the centre of the village. Festivals are held here of all types (including non-religious ones, e.g. the Kings Birthday). I didn't really know much about how the monk's lived in the temple at this point. And right now I won't go into it, I want to talk about that in a later blog after visiting and talking with some monks. But everyone here is deeply religious and donate what they can to the temples.

There is a lot of other aspects of life I wanted to include, and I will as this blog develops. In the next instalment (assuming real life doesn't intrude) I'll talk about the final week with Vanessa and the plans that have been made for the next few weeks.

No names, except Lopburi

The day after the kings birthday, the Monday, was a public holiday so we had the day off. We spent the day driving around the province (Saraburi), visiting different temples and cities. I confess that for the most part I don't know the names of the places we visited. As I write this, I will try to find them online, but seeing as the best information I have about these places is 'it's a temple in Saraburi province' (which is like saying it's a church somewhere in the Midlands) so I'm not sure how much I'll be able to find!

The first place we went to was a large site with a series of temples. It was called Wat Phra Phutthabat. It was beautiful. The most famous thing about this temple is the Holy Buddha FootPhot Hill of Satchaphanthakhiri Hill. For a footprint it is pretty big, 21 inches wide, five foot long and 11 inches deep. Discovered in the reingn of King Songtham (1624- 1628), it was believed to be the footprint of Lord Buddha's Footprint. As I said, the whole place has some of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen. Photos are below.

From there we moved on to the city of Lopburi. Along the way we called in on a steakhouse, apparently owned by one of Ben's relatives. The steaks were great and exactly what I needed after the disappointing cold food in Ayutthaya.

Lopburi! For reasons beyond my understanding, the city is full of monkeys! We visited some museums in the centre of the city that were encircled by a giant wall. There were no monkeys here and the whole place had a very colonial, southern European feel to it in the style of the buildings. The museums were really interesting and housed many artifacts found in the cities various ancient temples, as well as some mock-up Thai village huts and how lives were lived on the rivers.

Afterwards we visited Prang Sam Yot, the Khmer temple (pictured below). Lots of monkey's here! As you go around the grounds you are escorted by someone who fends off the monkeys from trying to steal your things. Our escort was a boy, no older than 10 years old. He carried a stick and seemed to antagonise the monkey's more than anything else. You can go inside the temple, which is barred up so monkey's can't get inside and there are people on the entrance gate.

As the afternoon drew to a close we headed to Saraburi city. There were festivals and large markets going on. We parked about a half hour walk from the large market we visited. It was far more my kind of market than many of the others I had visited. More going on, more variety and a friendlier atmosphere (people were not trying to flog me stuff every thirty seconds). There was also a game of what looked like a Thai version of hook-a-duck. Except with fish. Living fish. And a fishing net. Made of paper. It looked so difficult. I didn't have a punt, for a number of reasons. I had no idea what the actual goal of this was. I didn't see anyone win a fish, I wasn't sure if that was the aim. I'm just guessing from watching. Also, what the hell would I do with a fish? Cook it and eat it? Probably.

The evening drew to a close, and plans changed quickly. But we got some fast food at the market near the school and headed back to the room.

The ruins of Ayutthaya - Part 3, Closed for the Kings Birthday??

The heat in this country really does kill it. By the end of the day we were both exhausted. I had my heart set on a western style dinner. Give me a steak, a burger, chips! The works! That's what I want for dinner tonight. The hotel we were staying in did do these meals. Western meals with western prices. Expensive for Thailand. But oh well. I want this burger. I want those chips. I'll pay. So I got the food, as did Vanessa. But the food was cold. It took forever to arrive and when it did it was cold. I wasn't going to let this bother me... but Vanessa wasn't having any of it. We sent it back and another long wait. It was reheated and came back a little warmer. I didn't care. I was hungry, it was a cheese burger and chips. Nothing shall get between us now.

The next day we headed out to find that floating market again. We headed further down a long path that seemed to lead to nowhere, but there were a lot of cars heading down. We first came across an elephant circus, which left me feeling very uncomfortable. I don't mind riding them if they seem happy and it's something that will help pay for their upkeep. But this is just not something I'm okay with because of the sorts of things they were doing. If you know me, you know I'm not massive animal rights person at all. I'm more of the kind of person that I imagine most of you are, something just seem wrong and this was one of them. Carrying on down the road we found the floating market!

I was not what we expected. Firstly it was a tourist thing. Not a traditional floating market that has turned touristy over the decades, but it was built up to cater for tourists, both national and international. Secondly, it was closed! Closed! They were doing a massive refurbishment and nothing was open market wise. You could walk around and get a general idea of what it will look like when it's all open. It does look amazing, even too good. There were various bridges across the 'rivers' and the main central one had a giant English postbox on it. No idea why. It was far to big to be of any use, especially considering the average height of the country. This box was some 9 feet tall. Silly really.

Disappointed, we headed back to the hotel. From there we organised a lift to a real floating market that supposed to be next to the coach station. So we can explore the market and then jump on a coach back to the school.

Today, as I've mentioned in other posts, is the Kings Birthday. It's a national holiday and there are many celebrations going on all over the country. Everywhere is busy for the weekend, and we have tomorrow (Monday) off from school. We needed to get back to the school for 7pm to make sure we are on time to take part in the school and villages celebrations.

But instead of visiting the market, we were taken straight to the coach station and put straight on a minivan (a packed one that people moved for us to sit down in, very nice!) I'll let it go. It is already getting a little late. We get back to the school after a three hour drive at just after 4pm. I get a haircut and a cut-throat shave, oh and a fifteen minute scalp massage for 70 Baht (less than £1.50). Then we get a lift back to the school after buying a bit of food and drink from the shops and markets.

We shower and get ready for the night, and are taken out to get some food before it all starts. From about half five the perpetrations begin. The young kids are all dressed up in an incredibly over the top manner (see pictures). The older kids are dressed up as Thai boxers and use black pen to draw on 'tattoos' and facial hair. Was a lot of fun helping with the preparations and I loved it. Got a few pictures of the kids and with the kids.

Once everyone was ready we headed out, across the road to the local Wat. There was a stage and a lot of locals there. The shows that were put on were various dance routines and singing. We were welcomed by the locals and given prime spot to the side of the stage. Just after it began Ben arrived. He was back from his holiday and he brought... yup... fireworks! This is a good night! As the show came to what felt like a sudden end we were given candles and candle holders and light and make prayers to the king with. The wat quickly emptied, and me and Ben set off the fireworks! Nothing went wrong this time after a "I hold this yes?!" episode.

The night itself ended early, was all over before 9pm. So we walked through the village and bought some beer. Eventually we headed back to the room and to bed. Tomorrow Ben will be taking us around Lopburi and to some Wats around the province.

The ruins of Ayutthaya - Part 2, I Got Pooped On

So we move on to the next destination in the tut-tut (pictured above). The second place we visited was Wat Na Phra Men. Here was the first large image of the Buddha I would see. I would see many more today, and many many more throughout Thailand.

Outside the Whan are several markets and a chance to walk along the river. There was a chance to ring the bells, I have no idea what they are actually fore and what they are supposed to bring. Nore how to do it, how hard or how many times, but it was fun!There were some more buildings here, but these were of Chinese origin. Considering how much of a tourist city this had become, there were no English information signs about these beautiful buildings.

From here we moved on to the Grand Palace, also known as the Ancient Palace, the residence for every king of Ayutthaya. The grounds are a maze of various buildings, markets, wats and whans. We wondered through a maze of a market, at times there was no way of knowing where you were, it was completely covered in large cloths and totally hidden from entrences, exits and any readable maps. After finally making it out alive we found ourselves at Whan Phra Mongkhon Bophit. Phra Mongkhon Bophit is a large, bronze cast image of the Buddha and was originally located outside the grand palace. Sadly after it was moved by King Songtham and covered with a Mondop it was badly damaged in a fire during the second fall of Ayutthaya. Below is a picture of the reconstruction.

We then moved on to the ruins, encircled by 'the wall'. In here there are a whole host of wats and whans and I must confess, looking around I didn't pay attention to which were which. The area was very large and we didn't have much time to take it all in. I love looking at ancient ruins, and I just wanted to get some good pictures. Below is one of those pictures.

From there we moved on, but not very far. Just to the front of the palace but still by tut-tut. Here were visited a small temple called Wat Maha That. It holds one of the most famous images from Ayutthaya, the one that is being engulfed by a fig tree. It's understandable why the image below is the most photographed in the city. This whole area is one of the few places that wasn't destroyed by the 2nd Burmese invasion and so one of the least disturbed sites. It was probably one of my favourites, it was the oldest of the 'still standing' ruins. The reason for this is, according to legend, is that during the last attack on the city a Burmese cannon miss fired and killed their own king. This was not forgotten during the the second attack and was left in peace.

Now onto the final place that I cared about. Wat Phutthaisawan. Despite what happened, this was my favourite place. The grounds surrounded it were beautiful and it's multiple layered base was great to climb. And you really had to climb. This is Thailand, there is no such thing as health and safety. There are no safe steps or anything built up to make it easy to get up. It took a few times around before we found the way up. You could climb right to the top, and inside there is a place to climb through that used to be a tomb, filled with valuable objects. These objects are now all in the museums and it is empty, but it is still fun to climb through.

Then it happened. A bird crapped on me. It went all down the back of my neck and my bad. Dammit. This ruined my day. Using tissues, cleaned myself up as best as I could. There was no bathroom here, but we were moving onto one final place and there was a bathroom there.

This final place was a giant lying Buddha. I didn't get to see it, I was just interesting in washing myself up. We had another hour left, and we cracked a deal where we would go back to the hotel for fifteen minutes so I could shower and change and then move on to the final destination. We did that, and after a shower and a change of cloths I was in a much better mood. The very final place was a very expensive massage place. We were hoping to Kanchanaburi prices, 100-200 baht for an hour. Here it was 500-700 baht an hour. I had the foot massage, the cheapest option. This is where my addiction began.

In the next post I will talk about the end of the day and the final day in Ayutthaya. Depending on the length I may even get into the celebrations for the kings birthday at the school.

The faithful may have noticed something new. Addverts on the side and at the bottom. Click these please! (Not sure if I can say this... I know I can't incentivise you to click them, but I'm just asking!) They are google based adds, not dodgy ones haha!

The ruins of Ayutthaya - Part 1, Wat Chai Mongkhon

As I said in the last blog, there are many ancient Wats and ruins across the city. These can be some four miles apart from each other. There are two recommended ways to get around the city. Rent a bike and ride around with a map, or rent out a tut-tut for the day. Let's be realistic. There is no way the bikes are an option. It's like 30 degrees plus out there. I would be happy to do that if the heat wasn't so devastating! So, a tut-tut for the day.

Tut-tuts are three wheeled cabs. Compared to the UK they are seriously cheap. You should do some haggling with them because they are normally charging about double what you should pay (so 50p instead of 25p... these are still the sorts of prices you're talk

ing about). Tourists who don't know this can really get ripped off and charged western prices, like five quid for a lift. To stop this Ayutthaya have implemented a set rate for all tut-tuts. It's 150 Baht an hour (3 quid). You rent one out for say, 4 or 5 hours and you take in all the specific tourist places, go somewhere for a lunch and maybe a dinner. So to driven around in a private cab to all the different places is pretty damn cheap really. We did four hours. 600 Baht, or 12 quid, between two of us (not each). That's tasty. Plus most of the places we visited had free entry because it was the kings birthday. So plus!

The morning started early for me, I don't know why I woke up so early, around eight. That's two hours later than usual, but it's still early really. I watched a movie on the TV because I didn't want to get up. It was a Japanese movie, in Thai, with subtitles of another Language (not Thai or Japanese). I later found out it was called 'android girl' or something like that. I am ashamed to say I loved it. I was still in the missing flick mood and the film grabbed me. I want to see it again where I actually understand what's going on, and see how it ends! Since I don't know how it ends.

A western style buffet for breakfast. Not amazing. Not nice. But toast. My god toast! It's been some two weeks since toast!!

Then we begin with the tut-tut tour! The first place we visit is Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon. It's dominating feature is a huge chedi, built on multiple bases (see the above picture) and all over the bases and dozens of Buddha statues. The statues are all dressed, like every Buddha statue I've seen in Thailand. This particular chedi was built by King Naresuan to celebrate his victory against the Burmese. This temple used to be known as Wat Pa Keo and almost definitely predates the Ayutthaya period. The reason for this is the discovery of two Dvaravati-period Buddha images at the site. Officially the Royal Chronicles date it at 1357. Its construction was ordered by King U-Thong.

This also housed one of the only two lying Buddha's I saw in Thailand. The second will be later today, but I wasn't in the mood to get a picture. All will be explained in due course.

From the top of the chedi you get a great view. You can see other ruins, Wats and chedi's off in the distance and around the city.

We were here for about forty minutes before jumping in the tut-tut and moving on. I don’t want to over-do the information in these blogs. I visit some four more temples in the day and I personally find the information behind them fascinating. So I’m going to leave it at that for now, and pick up the story with the next destination.