Pha Yao

       Our first outing! We had a packed weekend last weekend, complete with teaching, traveling, dancing shrimp, and waterfalls. 

Saturday morning, we taught an English Camp for high school students from the villages of Nan province.  There were about 100 students and each of the four of us led an activity for a bit.  Dana was playing a game involving running and steeling each other’s chairs, and during one of the rotations, her group was sooo loud that I had to move my group outside.  The Thai English teacher who was with me said, “That group has a lot of bisexuals. They have more… ah! oy! (insert dance move here)!”  Sure enough, Dana had a lot of lady boys in-the-making in her group. That was the highlight of the day.

After English Camp was finished, we ate lunch with the other teachers, then came home to pack for our trip to Pha Yao, a neighboring province.  Kim, who is Thai/Indian/teaching English at a nearby school, was driving to visit her friend from Chiang Rai, so we hopped in her tiny car and made the three-hour journey. It was a doozy of winding roads and beautiful scenery, with lots of sudden stops for stray dogs that ran into the road.  We finally made it into town, turned the corner, and saw a huge body of water- surprise! Turns out the town was intentionally, then unintentionally flooded around 40 years ago, so now there is a large lake in the middle.  Just a casual landscape transformation… We met up with Mateya, Kim’s friend, and had a feast of fish, seafood, and “dancing shrimp” at a restaurant next to the water. The dancing shrimp are tiny little guys that are tossed with spicy sauce, then served still jumping around in the dish. It’s like seafood poprocks! Kind of.  Post-dinner, we walked around a little night market, then stopped by the BM Pub. Needless to say, bowel movement puns were out of control and only added to the amusement of the night.

Sunday, we took a little boat out into the lake to a small shrine that stood out of the water.  Apparently, 20 years ago, some people discovered the remnants to this temple/Buddha shrine, so they excavated it.  It was a small but beautiful statue on a little dirt mound in the middle of the lake, and the trip was even better with our bright orange life jackets and fishermen hats.

That afternoon, we drove outside of town to a waterfall.  We started hiking up a trail alongside a small creek, waiting for a huge waterfall and pool to pop up around each bend in the trail, but it turned out to be more of a rambling waterfall with lots of levels.  Even better! We hiked/scrambled up until level 5, when the trail got too sketchy.  It was so good to get out and see the crazy jungle foliage and move up an incline! I had missed it.  Don’t worry, we took a lot of self-timer pictures.