Tiger Temple, Room 69--Krabi Town

First and foremost, Happy belated birthday Grandpa! Hope it was a good one!

This weekend was a pretty eventful one! On Saturday, most of the volunteers (including myself) went to the Tiger Temple to climb the 1,237--yes 1,237--steps to the top for the most amazing view of, what felt like, all of Thailand. We woke up around 830 and ate breakfast then drove the forty-five minute drive to the temple. Once we got there I thought to myself, Okay this doesn't look thaaat bad, I can do 1200 steps no problem. First 200 steps took like 1 minute and then reality set in. At about step 500 I was already soaked in sweat, breathing abnormally loud, and asking myself if this trek is even worth it. Also, there are sketchy little monkeys everywhere! If you have a plastic bag they will literally snatch it from your hands, hiss at you, and then eat all your food! There disgusting stench also was NOT making the climb up the steps any easier. Monkey poop is not a good smell, let me tell you.

It was pretty funny, I videoed myself along the way so starting off you can see how high my spirits were and then 500 steps in life started getting a little rougher. At about step 700 is when I hit a wall haha. The footage gets even worse, I'm sitting on a step trying to talk about the view but it's so hard to understand cause my breathing is sooo loud haha. Then finally I actually made it to the top! I was really stoked and proud of myself when I stepped onto the temple floors at the top. However, a good minute later, my sour stomach set in and I ran over to this side of the temple where no one was and left the monks a nice little offering--my breakfast. Yes, I got sick on the very top of the Tiger Temple. Twice. And don't you fret! I captured that special little moment. But at least I can say I left a piece of me there I guess?

After that we all went into Krabi and ate lunch--pizza of course. Then last minute, I decided to stay in Krabi with a few other volunteers and go out. We stayed at the Smile Guest House again and the people, again, were soo unnecessarily nice! I love them there. They were soo excited to see all of us again and we sat and talked with them for a bit. The woman that owns it with her husband invited me to her house to make Rad Na (my faaaavorite noodle soup) so sometime soon I'll be able to know how to make that delicious meal! We went to this place called Blue Juice that's a dive shop, bar/restaurant, and hostel all in one and started drinking some beers there pretty early in the day and played a looot of games of pool. Somehow, 5 hours passed and we decided to go back to the hotel and get ready to go out. We all went across the street to the Kereokee bar and sang kereokee for a good 3 hours. It was horrible. I've never heard such an awkwardly bad range of voices in my life haha. Me, the only American at the time, 4 british people, 1 australian and 1 Canandian...you can imagine how awful all the songs sounded with that little mix. Me and this english kid killed it though with our own rendition of ACDC's Highway to Hell haha. But yeah it was hilarious and really fun. Especially the english music selection they had there. After that, Thip (the woman who owns Smile Guest house) had her son drive us to Room 69--an all Thai disco.

That place was reaaaaaaaallly rad. They had a live band that had about 6 different singers. The music ranged from like emo/punk, to rap, to reggaetone, to classic rock, and then of course a ton of Thai stuff. We got "bottle service" which means they hand you a handel of rum and some coke and let you make your own concoction. We split this amongst us teachers as well as a few of our students we saw partying there haha. But yeah, we stayed there till about 2am, danced, talked to the local Thai rapper for a bit--that was pretty hard seeing as all he could really say was "beautiful" and "i LOVE new york city" so that was about the extent of our conversation haha but he was a really cool guy with a good voice and rapped a lot of english songs. A thai rapper singing in english? Never thought i'd see that, let alone had no idea that even existed ha.

After that we got a ride back to our hotel with one of our students and were in the mood for a late night snack. The only place open was, of course, the pizza place! Pizza at 3am was not even the best part of this late night munching session. The owner, Chan--a middled age guy who loves playing guitar and classic rock, stayed open for us, baked us 2 cheese pizzas, sat with us outside on the stoop and serenaded us with all his favorite american classics. I loooved Chan. He played everything from Johnny Cash to The Eagles to Sublime. So we ended up eating the pizza, singing/listening to Chan play, and just enjoy life till about 430am then headed back to the hotel.

Got back to Smile hotel, passed out for a good few hours and took the bus back to Ao Leuk. It's sunday night here so we have our sunday night meeting in 30 minutes at 8 so I gotta go. BUT, forgot to say, THERE WAS A SNAKE IN OUR HOUSE TODAY!!! AHhh it was so scary, me and my friend Charlie were sitting working on lesson plans and she sneezed and felt something land on her head. She thought it was just a piece of paper but then started screaming when she realized it was this skinny, long, green snake squirling about the floor. I screamed like a baby and jumped up on my chair yelling for the boys to come down and get it out! This Canadian put on these huuge rain boots and proceeded to sweep the snake out to the outdoors but it slithered into a hole under these tiles so who the hell knows where it is now..SCARY. Okay, well I'm off to this vegetarian festival. It's this Chinese tradition where one week out of the year a lot of people stop eating meat and then they believe they have all these crazy powers like self mutilation. So there are people walking on hot coals, knives, and sticking skewers through these cheeks. I have a feeling I may be getting sick again tonight after watching this but when in Rome I guess? Hope everyone had a good weekend! Miss everyone! Love.

Picture Captions:

1: Monkey at tiger temple

2: Last steps on the way down! Reppin' Windowseat Pictures henry haha

3: Me sitting next to the Buddha, it was huuuge

4: Big Buddha