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So Thailand is still pretty awesome in case anyone was wondering. Enjoying delicious fruit and beautiful scenery every day hasn't gotten old yet.

This is a snake I found hiking the other day. I'm not sure if he's poisonous or anything, but he didn't seem particularly interested in biting me, so I guess I'm not too worried about it.








A few steps later I saw this crab. Apparently in Thailand, crabs live in creeks and waterfalls in the mountains. I personally had never heard of such a thing.









This is a rubber tree, and the white stuff is latex flowing out of it. I learned how this all worked the other day, as its the main source of income in the community I live in. The rubber hangs out just before the cambium layer, so two out of every 3 days you cut down another half inch or so
releasing the rubber. There are rows of these trees everywhere, looks kind of like a darker aspen forest. I'll have to take a picture of that sometime and put it up here.


Sunday I went on a bicycle ride, and got what seemed to be a completely unprovoked flat tire. I patched it, started pumping it back up, discovered a new hole. After going through this sequence until I had 5 or 6 patches in the tube, I realized my rim tape was jacked up, probably from getting 8 flat tires in Chainat during peace corps training. Chanthaburi has much less thorn action going on for which I am eternally greatful.

Anyway, yesterday Balat Tanin, the government officer I'm currently staying with, drove me down to the neighboring community to see if they could fix it. Apparently cheap bikes don't use rim tape? which I did not realize, so we headed down to the next town, which still had nothing, and then decided to go into the city to it fixed. There we found a legitimate bike shop, that fixed me up for 75 baht, about 2 dollars. Another Peace Corps volunteer Shawna (green shirt and jeans in the center of the picture) lives near the city of Chanthaburi, I called her up to see if she wanted to get lunch before we left. But, instead of going to work after lunch, Balat Tanin decided to take us to first, a dolphin show (left my camera in the car), and then a waterfall Namtok Pliu. It was pretty hilarious when Shawna's mom called her, and she replied over the loud music "Sorry I can't talk, I'm at a dolphin show." No, Peace Corps was not what we expected. Namtok Pliu is pretty beautiful despite the absurd amount of people. Definitely the most amount of other farangs (foreigners) I have seen since Bangkok.

Songkran

So the last week has of my life has been occupied by Songkran, the Thai new year which I'm assuming is Thailand's biggest holiday. Its the hottest time of the year, which I guess is a big reason why it is celebrate by pouring water on each other, or shooting it at people with squirt guns, whatever the case may be.

So last monday night (you know you're in thailand when they wait til night to have a giant squirt gun fight because its too hot out) we headed off into the city of Chanthaburi, about 70 km away, with 3 50 gallon tubs of water in the back of the truck, around 15 or 16 people, each armed with a few squirt guns. And yes, 1 truck.

As soon as we start getting into town, other trucks set up similarly start passing us, and so basically it turned into a bunch of drive by shootings, except with squirt guns. Once in town, probably every other car was involved, as well as people driving around on motorcycles, usually in pairs with the person in the back holding the squirt guns. There were stations where people were refilling tubs of water, as well as selling giant ice blocks so that everyone's water could be nice and freezing cold. I'm not sure that the picture here does justice to how bad this messes up traffic. We were there til 1 in the morning. Oh, and people played loud music which quickly turned in to dance parties in the middle of the street.



Also a big thing in Thailand is putting baby powder on your face to help cool off, so some people would go around with baby powder spreading on people's faces. The police officers were covered in the stuff. I had trouble getting a good picture. My little point and shoot water proof camera with water on the lens taking pictures at night with bright lights everywhere isn't the best.

This is our group. If any peace corps people read this, don't worry, I was being entirely safe about my riding in the back of a truck activities, I got into the front when we went down the highway at 140km/hr. Most of the time in the city we were parked anyway. Oh, and kid in the red shirt is named Fook. He lives right next to me, and can open a beer bottle with his eye socket. Also rides a bike like a pro.

The rest of the week was more relaxing, we went on this house boat trip in the neighboring Jangwatt where we played cards, drank wine coolers, and sung karaoke... Which sounds a little odd I guess, but karaoke is really popular in thailand, and completely heterosexual guys drink wine coolers without even thinking about it. I went on a few bike rides, which were never too hot since people were throwing water and baby powder on me the whole time. Riding long distances soaking wet is a little tiring though.

Anyways, hope you're all doing well, give me a shout (or email?) sometime if you want to hear more.

Thailand!

So yeah, I kind of bailed on the blog thing for a while...

I finished hiking the AT, with the exception of 50 miles in the smokies where I got swine flu. Then did some kayaking, some biking, a couple really cold backpacking trips, and then shipped out to Thailand January 17 2010, and haven't been cold since.



I spent 10 weeks training and trying to learn Thai in Chainat Pronvince. I got to site almost 2 weeks ago. I'm in the Northwest of Chanthaburi Pronvince, trying to figure out what kind of community development I can do, working more on my Thai speaking skills, but mostly having a really awesome time. And my site is also within biking distance from the beach and surrounded with mountains :P !