Adventures with Tuk Tuks and Hebrew

A View from Wat Arun, picture taken by Matt Parr

What a weekend. Too much to even write about, really. Saturday we went about an hour and a half south west of Bangkok to Amphawa to teach English camp. We were there all day, teaching kids games. IT was quite fun, and quite the adventure.

After that we went on the river to the floating market in Amphawa. What a crazy mess! People every where! I couldn't shop because there were just too many people. But quite the experience! After poking around the market, we took a boat up the river towards, well, I am not sure where.

The boat was pretty scary. Fist I nearly fell into a hole in the bow of the boat, then the captain refused to depart until we all put on our life jackets. No other boats used life jackets. And by the sound of the tiny boat, we were all sure we were going to die. But we made it to a resturant where we had a 7 course meal of chicken (of course I didn't eat it) and four differnet kinds of fish. It was delicious!

After dinner we got back on that scary boat and headed further up stream to watch the glow worms light up the trees. So amazing! The glow worms looked better than Christmas lights!

Sunday my friend M and I went out to the old city of Bangkok. I had been there before my first full day of Bangkok, but he had yet to see it. I played guide and we went first to Wat Arun, spending nearly four hours there taking thousands of pictures.

I even climbed up the steep stairs to the half-way point of the wat.

picture courtesy of Matt Parr

The veiw was worth the shaking legs and sweaty brow!

Afterwords we went back to Wat Pho, or the reclining Buddha. It was good to see each one again, because I saw things that I had not noticed before. Because first you are just so overwelmbed by the size and detail of everything, that the second time you can notice even more!

We spend all day in the sun, getting out of the touristy area right at rush hour, so of course no one wanted to take us back towards our hotel. I decided to start a walking towards some other toursity areas. Naturally, my sun burn started to get to me and I started to get a bit on the cranky side. I pushed on past huge dec-a-wat stores (huge stores full of Buddhas, alters, and anything you could dream of decorating a Hindu or Buddhist temple) to the giant swing--which by the way is just a huge arch, no swing.

I was quite cranky and so tired from the heat that M desperately hailed a Tuk Tuk. Of course Mr. Tuk Tuk Driver wanted way too much to go to where I wanted to go, M finally agreed on a way lower price, but the condition was that we had to visit a shop first before we could go any where else. M, or Mr. Silly Pants, agreed to do so even though I was dead set against it.

So we got dropped off at a tailor's shop, and the condition was that we were to stay in for ten minutes. The Tuk Tuk driver said that it would be easiest if we pretended not to speak Thai or English. So M, decided that he would speak Hebrew. Well as soon as I saw the tailors I knew that was a very bad idea. And sure enough, as soon as M started to speak Hebrew, the tailor answered back in Hebrew. I about died laughing.

M continued to put up the rouse, holding his own, and of course asking me things in Hebrew-- like I know how to reply! I was a bag full of head nods and shakes, hoping I was replying correctly to the Hebrew. But thankfully the tailors didn't talk to me, but talked through my "husband." We got out of ther pretty quick, with out spending any money, and even had M scared that I was pissed because I got ot play the role of the pissed off wife. But we got into the tuk tuk and laughed the whole way to our destination.

But who knew that a Thai talior would know Hebrew? Lesson learned, let Carmen speak Welsh, cause no one is going to speak that. Hahaha!