Katie's Surprise!

On Thursday 5^th of December it was the Kings birthday meaning a national holiday. This meant on Wednesday we could celebrate! People from Speak EZ joined with a few added friends from my TEFL course went for dinner followed by a few (too many) drinks, making a fun random night ending back at our apartment (four of us that work together all live in the same apartment block) playing drinking games to the early hours. It was then decided in our hung over state the next day that we would go and surprise our friend Katie in Mukdahan for the weekend.

On Friday Jess, Tom and I got on a bus to travel overnight 10 hours north-east to the town of Mukdahan near the border with Laos. We arrived at about 6.30am which meant we got to spend the whole day being shown round the town. It was so nice to get out of Bangkok and see where Katie had settled and was making a very different yet very exciting new way of life. She is one of very few foreigners living there so we were stared at the whole weekend, attracting lots of attention. There are no taxis or motor bike taxis unlike the capital but everything was close enough to walk too. It was a lot cooler up north that I actually wanted to wear a jacket for the first time since being here. Katie has also had the opportunity to make Thai friends and see so much more of the culture here and the Thai way of living – there’s no McDonald’s in site!

Laos in the background

Katie showed us the huge murky river which is the border between Thailand and Laos, my first view of Laos which I will be sure to visit when I start travelling. After breakfast we wondered round a market before finding a quite lunch spot looking over the river. The afternoon was very chilled and we discovered a temple full of monkeys. However these monkeys were slightly different to the ones in Lopburi at the festival, they were little scarier and slightly aggressive. We had no food to give them so before being attacked made a quick exit!

 

 

That evening we went to a local bar for some drinks the Thai way – order a bottle of whisky and mixers and drink away. We were the only white people in the whole bar so created a lot of attention. We then created even more attention when we moved on to a Thai Club. This was a whole other experience. With lady boys to our right, Thai men saying how beautiful we were (Tom included!) to our right (because of our white skin) and a stage full of Thai girls only wearing their underwear at the front. A few songs were western, a few Thai (which we knew from hearing them out here) and a few we had never heard but still had a good dance. You know you’re the minority when you go to order drinks at the bar, they ask where your sat, you respond with “the Falangs over there” and they know exactly where to take the drinks. Falang is the word Thai use for foreigners.

We woke up the next day after sleeping in to go to one of the local hotels to use the pool and sunbathe before having to say goodbye to Katie and catch the overnight bus back to Bangkok. We arrived back at 6am in time to get to work to start the next week. Luckily Tuesday was another public holiday so we could catch up on sleep.

 With Love from Thailand xxx