Last week was a short week at school due to 2 (related?) Buddhist holidays, Asarna Bucha day and Khaopansa. Khaopansa is the start of "Buddhist lent", where the monks are supposed to stay in their temples and avoid going out for alms rounds etc. The history of the holiday is that this is the rice growing season, so the monks would stay in their temples and in order to avoid traveling around by foot and damaging new rice plants. So, since the monks are supposed to stay at their temples, the people bring them supplies to last them through the lent period; food, general goods, and historically candles for light to read by. The candles became a symbol of the holiday, so now there are parades where huge candles are carted in the back of pickup trucks to temples, and some places even have giant wax sculpture candle festivals.
In any case, school was off for Thursday and Friday, so we had a 4 day weekend.
On Wednesday evening after school, I caught the train to Bangkok. It left at 8PM and was going to arrive at 5AM, so it was optional to get a ticket in the sleeper car, which I did. First time I have been on the sleeper here. It was pretty nice; the car has a central aisle with a double-level row of bunks partitioned on each side and curtains you can close to block out your partition. The bed space was pretty good, not long enough for me to stretch out but not so short as to really cramp me in either. So, I got some pretty good sleep on the way there.
On Thursday morning, I meet Teay at the main train station in Bangkok. We had plans to meet up with Namwan and Uncle Neung, but it turned out that Uncle Neung had to go to a funeral. I had a new laptop to deliver to Namwan, so we met her at Siam Paragon, a large mall. We had some lunch at a Japanese restaurant, and Namwan got to test out her computer on the wireless in the mall.
Then we went up to the top floor of the mall, which has a bunch of theaters. We decided to watch the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Namwan was interested in watching it on the IMAX screen, and Teay had never been in an IMAX, so we did that. A ticket to a normal screen movie is 100 baht, or about $3, and the IMAX was 200 baht -- so I figured it was a good deal compared to $7 for a movie or maybe $15-20 for an IMAX in the states. I thought the movie was excellent, and I think Teay and Namwan enjoyed it also.
Namwan headed back home after the movie, so Teay and I went to a night market and looked around for a while before eating supper at a steak restaurant. I had a beef steak for what I think is just the second time in the year plus that I have been in Thailand. Pork is quite a bit more common, although it isn't impossible to get beef by any means, I just tend to enjoy pork more with Thai food. But at this place I had a sirloin steak medium rare, and it was quite nice.
For Friday, Teay had some plans to meet up with some friends and take a road trip to Pattaya. Pi At is a friend of one Teay's friends, and was providing the car and the driving for the trip. Once we got to Pattaya, we picked up Teay's friends Som and Bo. Then they decided it would be a good idea to extend it even further and drive to Rayong, pick up another friend named Wa, and catch a boat to Koh Samet island. I had been to the beach at Pattaya once before, but never to any of the islands in Thailand, so it sounded like a great idea to me!
So we parked the car at Rayong and got on a medium sized converted fishing boat to shuttle us to the island. Our boat was slow, so it took about 45 minutes to get there; groups can charter a speed boat and get there quite a bit more quickly for a bigger fare. We arrived in the afternoon, about 3PM or so. We asked about housing, but due to the holiday extended weekend we heard that it was pretty likely that everything would be full. So, we got a pickup to shuttle us down the beach until the road stopped, and then walked a bit further, asking about rooms at all of the hotels. We eventually found one that would put up tents, and we figured that would work fine.So we had 3 tents put up, walked the beach, and ate good seafood before packing in to the tents for the night.
Teay and I woke up pretty early on Saturday to walk the beach and look around. I had a good breakfast of fried rice with bacon, and Teay had seafood spaghetti that was quite nice also. We ended up taking a pickup back to the docks and riding back to Rayong a bit before lunch, and everybody ate Phad Thai (Thai-style fried noodles) at a shop there.
From Rayong we went back to Pattaya, and did some shopping before heading back to Bangkok and saying good-bye to Teay's friends. Then we went back to Siam Paragon to eat supper -- I chose a shop similar to a Panera that makes sandwiches in bagels, and soup in bread bowls etc. It was great, particularly because fancy bread is pretty uncommon in Thailand. Rice is a large part of essentially every meal, but wheat and breads from wheat flour are rare.
Sunday was a pretty early morning, so I could be dropped off at the train station at catch the 8AM train back to Uttaradit. Pretty nice train ride back, but shame the weekend wasn't a bit longer!
I think that is all for now.
Here is a link to the gallery of photos from Koh Samet:
http://picasaweb.google.com/JonFrahm/KohSametTrip2008
