How much can you fit into one weekend?

This weekend was an exhausting but wonderful experience. It began Friday at about 2:30 pm when two Thai teachers we work with picked up us volunteers in the city. We were going to pick up the other volunteers and head to Surin for the 49th Annual Elephant Roundup. We thought we were going to be staying in Surin for the weekend....boy, were we in for a surprise.

Surin is about 6 hours south of Nakhon Phanom and so we arrived at about 9:00 with all of the stops and gas and whatnot. We originally had 4 to a room (with only a king or queen bed) but managed to get another room in our hotel. We were then told that we had half an hour to get ready to go out! During this time we also found out that we were not going to be in Surin Saturday night, but Khon Kaen (about 5 hours away).  In any case, most of us mustered up the energy to go out and off we went to a Thai 'music hall'. We were told it was disco but it wasn't really...Spent some time there and then headed back to the hotel. First time we have all really been out in Thailand!

The elephant roundup was amazing...at all Thai festivals it seems like a market or carnival is set up around the perimeter so there was a fair amount of shopping and food available. We arrived at about 7 am for the show to begin at 830 and with our extra time of course we did some shopping. For the festival, there were over 280 elephants in this huge arena/field. There were several different activities during the show such as a Battle Re-enactment, Elephant play time, Foreigners vs. Huge elephant in a tug of war game, and the actual round up. We were able to walk down to the edge of the arena/field and take pictures...it was awesome! The elephants were absolutely enormous and the babies were adorable. Of course they were about my size. But hey, still babies!

From there we headed to an ancient Ankor Temple (the biggest in Thailand) that has been restored. It was beautiful...called Phanom Rung. After that we headed to Nakhon Ratchasima to visit a pottery village. (Keep in mind we hadn't planned on ANY of this). We got in the van at about 230 Saturday and didn't reach our final destination of Khon Kaen until 9:00 at which point we had dinner with a bunch more Thai's we didn't know who spent the majority of dinner walking around and taking pictures of us eating. Of course, it is at this point that I accidentally eat a pepper. I haven't been in that much pain in a very long time - I almost started bawling at the table. They're absolutely terrible to eat, they make your mouth hurt so badly! I can't describe this feeling. But of course I was laughed at (the farang ate a pepper! ha ha ha). Needless to say I was done with the food after that.

We were met with another surprise after dinner  - we were staying in a home stay! I think the couple was a friend of a friend of a friend and they had no idea that there were 13 of us total. That was a debacle but we figured it out. We slept on beds, floors, couches, benches...any available surface. Luckily they had an amazing amount of pillows and blankets and most people slept comfortably. A gorgeous house, one of the nicest we've been in for sure.

Sunday we insisted we sleep in! until 8:30...then we had another string ceremony (they actually happen to originate in Khon Kaen) and were on our way to...THE MALL! it was wonderful. Real coffee and actual books and school supplies in ENGLISH. amazing. I walked around outside the mall for a while with another volunteer and found the same coffee I had in Laos! We also got some fruit which is always freshly cut on the street. Then off to the van to head back to Nakhon Phanom. Our driver was flying down these roads, I thought we were going to take off. A few close calls but no worries, I'm back safe and sound.

Here are some pictures from the trip :).

The Thai music hall/disco bar. It was actually a pretty good time and certainly interesting. They sang a lot of English songs too! After the performers, there was an awesome DJ.

This is in the middle of the street in Surin. Literally elephants everywhere. And they are all asking to be fed - their handlers have bags of sugar cane or cucumbers and its 20 baht to feed them which we did once or twice but were done after that. It actually got a little overwhelming with the number of elephants that were actually trying to hand us bags of food or wrapping their trunks around our arms! I started avoided them in any way I could...very unexpected. 

Elephants leaving the arena holding each other's tails!

During the elephant roundup, elephants everywhere.

Some of the Thai dancers in the Elephant Roundup.

The restored temple from the Ankor Empire.

This is for you kel! The pottery village - I thought you'd like this picture. nooo idea how they made this but it was pretty cool. Its about 10 ft tall.

I slept on the floor - it was actually super comfortable. As you can see two of us slept there. But we've all gotten very good at fitting lots of people in small spaces.

So there you have it. The completely surprising but awesome weekend. We're going to try to throw together a thanksgiving dinner this weekend (with Duck and Chicken - the whole turkey thing was met with blank stares when we asked if we could get one...I guess they aren't in season). So happy thanksgiving everyone! enjoy some turkey for me.