Loi Krathong

After a busy weekend of lots of people visiting and an awesome night out on Soi 11 again, we escaped the hectic-ness of Bangkok by retreating to one of the local parks on Sunday evening.

Loi Krathong is a special festival held in Thailand on the evening of the full moon of the 12th month according to the Thai Lunar calendar which this year worked out to be the 17th of November.

Loi means to float and krathong refers to the lotus-shaped container which floats on the water. The "boat" is traditional made from a slice of the trunk of a banan tree and then banana leaves are elaborately folded over for decoration along with flowers, incense sticks and candles.

Thai’s celebrate Loi Krathong for various reasons, but for the most part it is to float away any anger and bad feeling you may have and start afresh. You can place a hair or fingernail on the Krathong which is seen as letting go of the dark side. Once the Krathong is then released on to the water you can watch it float away and it will bring you good luck for the year. The further it floats and the longer your candle stays alight the more good luck you will have. A small coin is sometimes included as an offering to the river spirits to pay respect to them as they will bring you all the luck. 

With love from Thailand xxx

Lopburi – Monkey festival

Last weekend was spent visiting Faye, Jenny and Liz in their placement town of Lopburi. It is a cute town just over 2 hours away from Bangkok, so we managed to get there after work on Friday evening with enough time to go to one of their local bars for a few drinks and meet some of their work colleagues and friends.

Saturday was packed full of adventure. The 9 of us (the visitors Jess, Leigha, Hanisha and Lindsey with the locals, Jenny, Faye, Liz and Ruth) took a pickup truck taxi for the day which firstly drove us to some beautiful sunflower fields. We spent a while here being typical girls taking hundreds of photos in different poses.

Next stop was a tranquil lake. We chilled here for the rest of day having a casual dip in the lake and waiting about 2 hours for our food to arrive. Standard Thai etiquette.

As dusk fell we headed back to Lopburi and stopped at a bat cave to watch them wake u and venture out for breakfast. Unfortunately even Jess’ amazing camera couldn’t catch the thousands of bats that flew out over our heads.

After grabbing some cheap street food (was so nice not to pay Bangkok prices the whole weekend!) and a little nap we headed out for a few drinks at a bar nearby. It was a lovely chilled evening chatting to new people that were also visiting Lopburi for the weekend either as travellers or fellow teachers. The night soon turned as the drinking games started along with dancing in the street.

We woke up with a trip to a local restaurant for a hangover breakfast to cure our needs before heading to the monkey festival. On a normal day in Lopburi monkeys roam the streets like dogs do in any other Thai town or city. They steal food, jump on cars, and climb up street lamps. Wherever you look you are bound to see a monkey cheekily staring back at you. But don’t get too close or taunt them as they can be vicious and attack. The monkey festival was slightly different as all the monkeys, hundreds of them, were gathered at the monkey temple (an old ruined temple were they live) to be fed. The people of Lopburi had bought a variety of food to the temple for the monkeys, from fruit and vegetables to ice and lollypops. Lots of tourists and locals showed up to give them food and take photos. The monkeys did not hold back they took food out of your hands and would jump on you if you let them. Jess and Lindsey were brave enough to let this happen. I was happy to just watch.

The monkeys were satisfied and so were we with an awesome weekend exploring a new town so it was time to head back to the city ready for the next week of teaching ahead of us.

With love from Thailand xxx

Teacher Beth

So I've officially been a teacher for 2 weeks now (how grown up does that sound?) and been loving every second of it. I work for a company called Speakez, and I live about a 20 min walk from our office in Bangkok. So the commute is nice and easy each morning. Everyday I go to a different school, but my schedule is the same each week. So every Monday I go to the same school and teach the same classes, so still get to know the students, its great as it's a bit of variation each day.

I teach from Kindergarten all the way to P6, which are the oldest students in Primary school. The kindergarten students are adorable and always want to give you a hug, however they can be very hard work as their English is at a very basic level, and it is hard to get them to remember words. P4-6 can be a bit more fun as you can play games which they understand and have a bit of a laugh with them.

(Sorry this photo is from the summer camp I

 taught at not got any photos of me teaching yet)

Each lesson I introduce new vocab and get them speaking it as much as possible throughout the lesson through the use of games and activities, they then get to do a fun worksheet at the end. The lessons fly by and by the end of the day I'm shattered, but still finding it so much fun.

I think my biggest struggle so far as been trying to get them to say my name correctly. Thai's can't pronounce the TH sound, so I'm either Bet or Bes. Thanks Mum and Dad for not giving me a universal name!


With love from Thailand xxx

Escaping Bangkok

We left the beautiful island of Koh Samui after 3 weeks of our TEFL course and making some best friends for life. It was time to go back to busy Bangkok and go our separate ways off to our placements. Some people were up off north, some down south, some a 10 hour drive away some only an hour. A few of us, myself included are staying in Bangkok to teach.

Between finishing the course and finding an apartment in Bangkok, I had about a week off, so instead of stressing that I couldn't move in to an apartment and rather than staying in the city, Jess (who was in a similar position) and I decided to escape Bangkok and go to Koh Samet.

Koh Samet is a small tranquil island about 4 hours drive on a bus and a short ferry away from Bangkok to the south! The perfect get away for a few days. We decided the night before to go and booked a random room in a hotel. Well I'm not sure you could call it a hotel, it was more of a block of rooms, the reception area was in a shed next to it. We turned up on the last ferry on Thursday evening and had no idea how to get to the hotel. Luckily it was next to the pier we landed on and Jess recognised it from the photos! The hotel/room was basic but was great for what we needed, a bed, shower and air con!

We spent 2 relaxing days just chilling, sunbathing and reading our books on the beach. It was so nice to just not do anything for the first time since arriving in Thailand. Unfortunately I was not very well one night we were on the island, but then the next night we made up for it and went out for a lovely meal on the beach. Although the meal wasn't that lovely.....we ordered fired noodles with chicken, Jess had hers with sea food and we ended up getting those fat, slimy, jelly like noodles, that neither of us could eat. The chicken and veg it was with was good though! We then went on to some other beach bars and shared a few buckets of cocktails. While sipping are cocktails and having a good girl night we were wondering where the best place to go dancing on the island was or even if there was a place to go dancing when we got chatting to two foreigners also living in Bangkok. They showed us one very cool and busy bar/club at the end of the beach were we danced the night away!!

The next day with a slight hangover we had to make the dreaded trek back to Bangkok to face the reality of starting to teach!

With love from Thailand xxx

I guess I should do some teaching.....

After doing the TEFL course for a few weeks it was about time we put our teaching skills to practice in front of real kids. We spent two days in the south of Koh Samui at a school doing a English camp for two days. Despite there being no air conditioning in the school in was a lot of fun.

We all taught a lesson each on our own and then in a pair two. The rest of the days were filled with group activities and games all leading up to a sports day at the end of the camp. The school was right next to a gorgeous beach so after sweating for the day we all chilled in the sea. We also found an amazing sideways growing coconut tree over the water which made for some great photos.

With love from Thailand xxx

Just keep swimming......

Koh Tao

After the sunburn had gone down and we had recovered from the exhausting hike the previous day we took another boat trip to Koh Tao and Koh Nangyuan for some amazing snorkelling. First we stopped at Koh Nangyuan, which is two small islands joined together by a strip of sand. Some of the group walked up to the top for an awesome view (thanks again Jess for the photos- she did bring 4 different types of cameras to Thailand so bound to have good photos!) but I was to lazy to do this today and just chilled watching the fishes swim past my nose, bobbing up and down. I've never properly snorkelled before so was completely mesmerized by the under water world, the beautiful coral and colourful fishes!

We also got lunch included in the trip which was a delicious buffet of Thai food with lots of salad, which strangely I had been craving after three weeks of rice and noodles! After lunch and a bit more snorkelling we crossed a small stretch of water and jumped off the speed boat in to a bay of Koh Tao. The fish here were even more beautiful and there were big schools of them too. It was then time to head home after not being able to find Nemo.


With love from Thailand xxx

500m of hell for the most beautiful view ever!

Angthong National Park

After a week of TEFL training and 2 days at the summer camp, we boarded a boat to adventure off to Angthong National Park which is a scattering of beautiful islands. We stopped to jump in to kayaks for a paddle closer to the islands. The water was crystal clear and the sky was a gorgeous blue (which can only mean one thing......despite the repeated application of sun cream I did burn by the end of the day). We paddled in to an empty bay which just had one little stall on it selling shakes (my new favourite thing is a fresh banana shake, and is great for a hangover!!), and a short climb up some very steep steps for a lovely view down into a mesmerizing lagoon.

The next hike after lunch on board the boat was just a bit more strenuous..... 500m of sheer rock climbing with just a rope to pull yourself up on. The rocks were sharp, jagged and baking hot from the sun. I don't think I've sweated that much in all my life. Hanisha's first comment when she saw us once we had returned "Oh you've already been in the sea" Nope we're just wet from sweat....lovely! Luckily I packed my trainers to climb......unlike some silly people in flip flops....Tom! We stopped at each view point and the view progressively got more and more breathtaking until the top.

After a real dip in the sea we headed back to Koh Samui to crash for the evening and apply copious amounts of after sun to the burn!



With love from Thailand xxx