Life here continues to surprise...

I was preparing for my lesson this morning when in walk the children and the Director of the school chanting, "Singapore. Singapore is here!" This bemused me rather, but when I went outside I realised that they meant some GCSE-age children from a school in Singapore, plus their teachers. The teachers came and talked to me (in pretty damn good English - apparently in Singapore they use English as their official language). They started by asking me if I could give a speech to their students about the history of the school. Surprisingly enough I said no on the grounds that, as a clueless volunteer I didn't know anything about the school at all.

The Thai children then showed off their aerobics/dancing before the Singaporeans (if this is the correct term), split up the school into boys and girls. The boys went up onto the field to play football/what appeared to be netball without an actual net. The girls did some colouring in. It's very strange (or perhaps not so strange at all) that everything in schools here is so divided along gender lines. It's a really good thing that this isn't the same at English schools.

One of the teachers kept asking me strange questions such as, "Do the children live here at the school?" and eventually it turned out that they had been told by the tour company that brought them that they were visiting an orphanage. Now, considering that 3 of the pupils at the school live with me and most decidedly do have parents, I had to disabuse them of this notion and tell them that this is just a plain old government school. I think someone had taken them for a bit of a ride...

Anyway, they were all extremely nice and friendly, offering to show me around if I was ever in Singapore and asking lots of questions about my life and what I was doing. One teacher praised me highly for being so wonderful and kind as to volunteer and work here without a thought to money etc. He kept saying things like I must have a "very generous heart". It was most embarrassing and most un-English, but very nice of them.

As they were leaving, one cheeky girl in P4 said "Bye-bye Amy, go Singapore," and tried to pack me off with them. Not sure why she wants to get rid of me exactly but she and her friends seemed to find it very funny.

The other interesting thing that has happened recently was my trip with Lucie, Julia and Jane (other volunteers) to Khao Phanom Bencha National Park, just 20km north of Krabi. It was very beautiful and quite tiring - but not as much so as trekking up Tiger Temple. We walked for about 4 hrs through the rainforest, up to a not very exciting viewpoint and a couple of waterfalls and back again trying to cling onto trees to stop ourselves falling down the very steep slope. Notable things on this trip included:

the biggest tree I've ever seen ever, Lucie was just a dot in front of it when we took pictures;

the noise of the insects which was so loud it was almost deafening, it sounded like a really huge computer trying to dial the internet or the soundtrack from an avant garde horror film;

the biggest spider I've ever seen ever in the biggest spider web I've ever seen ever, which I just walked under not realising it was there, until I turned back and saw the others cowering in fear;

and the huge waterfall I looked down into, and more specifically the rockpool above which I fell into holding my camera.

The walk back down the dizzying slope in soaking wet clothes was interesting too. So, tomorrow's task is to buy a new camera. Strangely enough I wasn't even too upset about the whole thing. I think being in a predominantly Buddhist country (albeit in a Muslim area) must be rubbing off on me. I felt rather zen about it all. I might not have been so calm, I suppose, if I hadn't put all my photos on CD the day before. As it was, it was actually quite funny. I fell onto my front and then immediately thrust the camera out of the water shouting, "My camera, my camera." Lucie then pointed out that I should probably actually check I hadn't hurt myself before worrying about electrical equipment. On the way home in the bus, we kept shouting "My camera" and then dissolving into giggles.

I actually only have one week left at the school now, which I'm really happy about because although I've enjoyed it here, and I'll miss the children and the other volunteers, I'm really looking forward to traveling. I'm ging to start in Bangkok (where I have to go to get my visa for China) before going west to Kanchanaburi to see the Bridge on the River Kwai and the Death Railway. After that I'll return to Bangkok and get a night train/bus up to Nong Khai on the Laos border, before crossing over into Laos and visiting Vientiane for a few days, then Luang Prabang, for a few more. I wanted to go and see the Plain of Jars at Phonsavan, where there are these fields of probably 2000 yr old jars put there by some mystery civilization. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll have time for this, because I've heard that transport in Laos is pretty slow. I figured it's probably best to go to a couple of the main cities and see what day-trips I can do from there because of time constraints.

After Luang Prabang, I'm going to take a 2 day boat trip along the Mekong to Huay Xai on the Thai border, cross into Chiang Khong and bus it to Chiang Mai. I'll stay there a few days and then go south back to Thailand, stopping at Sukothai and possibly Ayuthaya on the way if I'm not sick to death of temples/if I have enough time. This should get me to Bangkok just in time to meet my lovely Mum and sister when they fly in and together we're going to go to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, before traveling down to Ko Chang, an island National Park with lovely beaches, forests etc.

Hope this itinerary makes you all insanely jealous - I plan to have a very good time indeed.
(Can't wait to see you Mum and Lucy. Twill be great.)