Thanksgiving, Monkeys and Harry Potter

Happy Thanksgiving!

On Thursday, Olivia and I headed off to Suphanburi to have Thanksgiving dinner with several other teachers from the program. There were 11 of us total and we started off with dinner at Lin’s Place. On the menu for Thanksgiving dinner was a wonton appetizer, KFC mashed potatoes and gravy, chicken and rice (provided by the chefs at Lin’s), followed by a dessert of delicious pineapple and Thai donuts. Nothing compared to home but overall a pretty tasty Thanksgiving dinner.  We went around the table and each talked about what we were thankful for.

(Side note: the word thankful does not exist in Thai. I found that out when none of my students understood my Thanksgiving lesson…)

Dinner was followed by a trip to the Cowboy Bar which had some pretty great live music and dancing. It was wonderful to be able to spend Thanksgiving with fellow Americans even though we are half way around the world. J 

I didn’t have class Friday because we had originally asked for it off to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving in Bangkok. Our plans changed but we still had Friday off, so Olivia and I headed to Bangkok Friday morning. We hit up Khao San Road (the popular backpacking district) and did a little Christmas shopping. It definitely felt weird to be buying Christmas gifts in Thailand in the 90 degree heat. After spending a lot of baht on gifts we decided to treat ourselves and go see Harry Potter. I almost forgot I was in Thailand until they flipped on the lights at the end of the movie and we were the only non-Thai people in the theater. A great afternoon in Bangkok!

After Harry Potter it was off to Lopburi to see the monkeys!

Got up early Saturday morning and ventured out for a cha yin (Thai iced tea). We were walking around and ended up by the famous ruins, AKA monkey central. We stopped to admire the monkeys and snap a few photos however it was not even a minute before a monkey spotted Olivia’s iced tea. He climbed up her leg and reached for her tea which she quickly gave up. Seeing that there were about five monkeys headed my way, I willing surrendered my drink to avoid the imminent monkey attack. They took our drinks and ran away into the shade to enjoy our delicious tea.

After our close encounter with the monkeys we decided to hit up the famous sunflower fields nearby. It was an hour bus ride outside the city. We walked around the fields looked at the beautiful flowers and then bought some yummy sunflower seeds.

We came back, walked around the ruins, saw some more monkeys and wandered through the museum. I am not going to lie monkeys kind of freak me out. I am pretty glad I don’t live somewhere where they freely roam the streets.

 Coming back from Lopburi was definitely an adventure. We had to come back to U-thong Saturday night as we had to attend an “exhibition” with our school on Sunday. We found this out on Wednesday and couldn’t say no since they had been kind enough to give us Friday off.

We got to the bus station in Lopburi only to discover that there were no more buses to Suphanburi and we would have to wait until the next morning. We were really confused because it was only 3:00pm. We figured out that we could go to Ang Thong and get on a bus to Suphanburi from there, so we got on a rickety old bus and an hour later we got off. Our bus driver was kind enough to wait with us and show us which van to get on. We got to Suphanburi at 6:00pm to find out that there were no more buses or vans to U-thong (what is with the bus schedule??) We were stranded and none of our friends were in town. A song-taw driver offered to drive us for 500 baht however we kindly refused.

We called our teacher friend Tu to ask what we should do. She got on the phone called around and ended up calling the school van to come pick us up. We felt so bad that someone had to drive to come get us (about 30 minutes) but there was no other way to get home. We were thinking we were going to have to wait a long time for the driver to come get us but not even 10 minutes later the van shows up. The driver opens the door and the car is filled with teachers from our school and a few of my students. SO embarrassing. They happened to be in Suphanburi as part of the “exhibition” going on this weekend.  They were all laughing for a good five minutes and we kept hearing the word farang. They thought it was hilarious. I couldn’t help but start laughing too. Traveling is definitely an adventure that is for sure!