January 24, 2010

Before coming to Thailand, I was feeling guilty about my amazing life (hehe). I thought that coming here would be my chance to be challenged and work hard to give back to the world without having everything handed to me. Working as an English teacher has certainly been a challenge, but this past weekend had me wondering yet again what I've done to be such an incredibly lucky person.

On Saturday a group of us visited the Tiger Temple.
"Wat Tham Seua (Tiger Cave Temple) 5 km from Krabi Town is a small temple built inside a long shallow limestone cave, surrounded by natural forest. The temple, one of the south's most famous meditation centres, takes its name from a stone formation nearby which resembles a tiger's claw. Today, about 250 monks and nuns live in the temple compound." (www.krabi-thailand.org/sight/index.php)

We climbed the infamous 1,237 steps to get to the top of the limestone mountain...each step being the size of my calves and the width of my foot. It was quite the experience holding onto the railing to pull myself up each "step". Luckily there are landings at each flight of about 50 stairs to take a quick breather every so often.

Once at the top, dripping in sweat and nearly out of breathe, I remember thinking that I had never felt so genuinely rewarded. A massive golden Buddha sits in the middle of a huge platform, along with a pagoda and several other beautiful Buddha statues. We had intentionally arrived at the temple extra early to avoid the intense heat and hundreds of tourists, so we were the only ones at the top. I stood there in amazement circling around the big Buddha and taking in the 360 view of Krabi, the surrounding areas, and the sea. It was the most perfect combination of spirituality and nature, and I loved that we had to work hard to have the chance to see it.

After making our way down (which was much harder than you'd think), we sat amongst all the scary looking monkies that live around the temple area. I had been anticipating my first encounter with wild monkies for months...maybe even years. My vision of cuddling with a cute little monkey did not quite match my experience with the dozens and dozens of crazy monkies jumping around at the Tiger Temple. They were everywhere, and they were vicious! They jump and swing around grabbing anything in sight...which unfortunately included my reusable water bottle! I stood up for a second to take a picture when this sneaky monkey jumps along and snatches it away from me. He was very infatuated with it, cuddling it, tossing it around, and eventually untwisting the cap, so I decided to let him keep it (ha ha). Thank god he didn't decide to go for my camera!

After returning from Krabi after some shopping and pizza (pizza had never tasted so good after being apart from one shred of cheese for two weeks), I didn't think my weekend could get any better. That's when I was informed that this woman named Bum was calling GVI trying to get a hold of Ella and I. We had met her at Pa Pui's house the weekend before. She is the sweetest woman, married to the chief of Ao Luk police department, and she loves practicing her English with us. GVI couldn't understand what message she was trying to relay to us, so Bum showed up out of nowhere looking for us. She told Kerry (one of the staff members here) that she wanted Kerry, Ella, and I to come sightseeing with her on Sunday. "Pallywat pick you up at half 6 in the morning. Wear bikini." And so we did....

We had previously met two photographers from Bangkok at Pa Pui's house, who are currently working on helping Pa Pui's family advertise their soon-to-be homestay and the areas surrounding Ao Luk to lure in tourists. So we went on this boat trip with Bum, two friends, and the photographers to model for the adverts. Since it was bikini modeling, they wanted very skinny models so I was saved from having to do sexy poses on rocks like my thin friends did. This all probably sounds very sketchy and weird, but the photographers and Bum are the most down to earth people and their main intention was to the capture the beauty of the area...keeping in mind the style of advertisements that generally appeal to tourists. We were taken out on a motorboat to the most peaceful limestone islands and beaches. Our main task was to kayak around beautiful islands while the photographer took shots from the boat. This was actually quite difficult because not only did we have to steer the kayaks at the right angles, but we were being shouted directions in Thai the entire time--very entertaining. Bum was feeding us exotic fruits all along the way, taking such good care of us. We went swimming, visited a beautiful white sand beach, and ended up at Mu Ko Hong, many Thais' very favorite island. The sand was white, soft, and doughy, and the water was sparkling clear. I swam in the water, fed gorgeous yellow fishies, ate a shrimp stirfry that appeared in front of me, and slept on the beach until we were the last people in sight (there were many tourists at first). We headed back home in peace, watching the sun hide behind the karsts and communicating as much as possible (which was very little considering the language barrier). When I thought our perfect day had come to an end, we arrived at an amazing seafood resaurant on the edge of the water, where we were treated to the freshest (and biggest) crabs, shrimps, calamari, and delicious flaky fishes.

the photographer

Mu Ko Hong

Ella, me, Kerry

Bum

Sak

My legs are still pulsing from Saturday and I am more sunburnt than I have ever been (not an exaggeration), but it's just my body's way of constantly reminding me of my incredible weekend.