How can people do this?

After a wicked first month in the Kingdom I had a few days to chill out in Ayutthaya before heading to Chiang Mai for the Loy Kratong festival where it is celebrated most. Dave and Chelsea were going up a couple of days before me because their visa was going to run out, they decided though to extend it so they could experience the celebrations before going to Cambodia. They had booked a sleeper train and Fai and I took them to the train station where we waited with them till the train arrived. It was at station where we came across a boy of 13 'Geng' who looked to be on his own, he came and sat near us so Fai asked him what he was doing and where he was going. He was very reluctant to say much and it took a bit of digging for him to tell us his horrific story. It turns out he had been sleeping there for three days now, he told us how he went their with his grandma and his two younger brothers and his grandma told Geng to wait at the station while she went with just his his two brothers to Lop Buri about 1.5 hours up the line. We couldn't believe it he had clearly been abandoned there and had no money, surviving only on some food that some people had offered him, we thought this was unacceptable and wern't going to leave him at the station any longer, our first thought was to take him to a temple to see if a monk would take him in, the monk however told Geng he should go home so that we did, he lived about half an hour away in quite a bad very poor area and as we knew nothing about this boy or his family for our safety we picked up some of Fais friends to come with us, when we arrived he knocked on the door of his house but no one was in, we really weren't sure what to do so after giving him some water, food and 300 baht we had no choice but to leave him here, we added him on Facebook so to follow up with him, it made us feel really sad. The following day we drove back to his house to try and find out a bit more about this and that if his parents really didn't want him any more we knew where we could take him. Nobody was in but his neighbours were, we asked them about it but they gave very few answers saying only his mum works nights in a factory and they were very poor, she told us last night when we dropped him off he knocked on there door and they took him in, they said that he was at the market at that time so we left hoping he would contact us on facebook at later stage to tell us he's ok, as of now he has said hello a couple of times but that's about it, he doesn't speak/read/write English so I have to get Fai to help with that, (Google translate with Thai language is absolutely useless) I will update on this if we get any update on his situation.

First Month of Adventures

Its taken me a while but I've finally, after a month got round to starting this thing. I was fairly pleased with my first ever attempt at blog writing that it would be silly not to continue documenting my adventures this time round. For those of you that read my "final thoughts" on my first blog you will know I have decided to come back to this part of the world but this time with a much longer duration in mind, the foreseeable plan is that it will be indefinitely. I will be travelling around much like before until March where I will be doing a TEFL course in Chiang Mai which will enable to me to get employed full time as a foreign English teacher, where exactly I will be employed I don't know for sure but I will be pushing for Ayutthaya, a place that I have grown so much to love.

I set off on the 29th September and arrived in Bangkok the following day, I was greeted by Fai who drove me to Ayutthaya where I stayed in my usual guesthouse (Ayutthaya Guesthouse) where I relaxed and caught up with my local friends for a couple days. On the 2nd of October Fai and I headed to Khao San road to surprise Dave and his girlfriend Chelsea who had just arrived from Australia where they had spent a year working, the night went pretty crazy as you'd expect, including one crazy ass tuk-tuk driver fitting 6 of us in the back while he was trying to pop wheelies at every available opportunity. On return from Khao San we all spent a day or two in Ayutthaya where we took Chelsey on a little tour to see the city via motorbike.

October the 6th saw us head to Koh Pangan for the full moon party. We had prebooked a very cool place to stay "Hua Laem Bungalows with a view of the sea and very close but far enough away from the main Had Rin beach, it was hilarious when we found out that to get to the beach we had to walk along the very sketchy bridge we had once encountered on our last visit to the island. We could go snorkelling right off the rocks from our bungalow which was pretty cool, although we didn't see much because it was a bit rough we did see a monitor lizard on the rocks, this lizard is known as a "here" in Thailand (a very offensive thing to call people in Thailand). October the 8th (full moon) came and us four spent a good couple of hours painting ourselves up in the obligatory UV paint and by the end we looked pretty dam awesome. It was then time to hit the party where thousands and thousands of people gathered, it was an insane night. The rest of our time on Koh Pangan we went exploring on motorbikes and came across some incredible sights including a spectacular sunset on the other side of the island. The roads of Koh Pangan are unbelievably steep so it wasn't always an easy ride but so worth it to get to see the whole island.

After an amazing time on Koh Pangan we took a boat to Koh Tao where Dave and Chelsea had booked a PADI course, I have a friend who will be going to work on Koh Tao later on and he can get me a discount so I was gonna hold fire on the diving for now and just spend some time with Fai and go snorkelling. We went to many different beaches on the island and saw some absolutely unbelievable aquatic life, I have never seen anything like it first hand it was truly incredible there were some fantastic corals and all sorts of colourful tropical fish and plant life. The best place for snorkelling was the small island (technically a connected group of three small islands) called Koh Nang Yuag just 10 a ten minute taxi boat away. There was a 100 baht entry fee (30 baht for Thai's) as it is a private island, I tried blagging the Thai price but it didn't work. Our evenings on Koh Tao we mostly spent at Fish Bowl Bar, where on a couple of the nights I got up and played guitar and sung with Dave also getting involved for a few playing the drums as my accompaniment, the bar also had fire shows down on the beach which is always good to watch. Now I'm sure a lot of you have heard about the recent brutal murders of two British people on Koh Tao so of course we were a little worried about this, they had an apparent confession from two Burmese migrant workers but I strongly believe these guys did not do it there are now stating they were tortured by police into the confession, and knowing Thai police this is highly likely and more probable because things like this severely hurt the Thai tourism industry, in any case life on the island seemed normal, they were a lot of farang still arriving everyday in waves, we just made sure we stayed away from AC bar which is where the two had been drinking on that fateful night. Our time on Koh Tao was coming to and end and stupidly we didn't think to book a boat until the day we were supposed to leave and catch a plane back to Bangkok (plane was cheaper than the train due to a promo) we ended up having to forfeit our plane tickets and take a boat and train because the only boats available would have made us miss our flight.

So here we were back in Ayutthaya I had no immediate plans Dave and Chelsey were due to head to Chiang Mai however I had contacted the company for which I had worked before to see if they had any English Camps coming up, turns out there was one in two days in the Sisaket province of Thailand and Dave and Chelsea were up for it so off we went a 7 hour car journey to Sisaket where we would be spending the next 6 days. We had to fit 6 people into a 5 seater pick up truck car but this is perfectly normal in Thailand and Chelsea opted to ride in the back. This camp was great fun but incredibly tiring, we were working two different 3 day camps running back to back, the first camp was for P1 to P3 (7 to 9 years old) I'd not worked with this age kids in Thailand so it was good to be able to experience that, they were all very cute but kept you on your toes constantly, the second camp was P4 to P6 10-12 years old) The day at the school were very long (8 till 4 then 6.30-8.30) so we didn't have much rest, it got to the point half way through where they tried to keep us on half an hour longer and I got so pissed off with it all (bearing in mind they were paying us just 500 baht for the whole day) I walked back to the hotel without telling them, I basically stormed off but when they returned back to the hotel I told them I'd had enough and they offered me a rise to 700 baht a day which made me feel a bit better. Unfortunately because of the way this camp was conducted (very long hours and terrible pay, even at 700 baht) I'm not sure I will do any more English Camps with this company. The many camps that I did with them were a great blast but this one was just too much.

So that was a very brief summary of my first month in Thailand, I will try to make sure I keep this blog updated in line with the way I did my other one and not leave it so long to do posts. Next up we are off to Chiang Mai for a halloween party and to celebrate 'Loy Kratong' a very big national festival here in Thailand.