in the land of smiles.: railway market.

This past weekend was filled with excitement! Friday night, the Kindergarten hosted a party for all the teachers at the school and at the primary/secondary school. It was a new years celebration for everyone and also a celebration for the owner, kwanthip, for her birthday. We were told earlier in the week that each department would have to put on a performance at the party……..so Bradley, Johnson, jamshed and I had to come up with some sort of performance to do at the party. We procrastinated all week and on Thursday we couldn’t put it off anymore and finally decided to do a dance. Johnson suggested we dance to Celine Dion’s “I’m Alive” song so Bradley set to work choreographing a dance for us. We ran through it a few times and figured we would just wing it and do the best we could Friday night.

The school had the event catered and there was tons of food set up on tables for all of us. It was kinda weird Chinese food, but it was fun to hang out with all the other teachers and to watch everyone perform. Our dance was ridiculous, but we powered through it without a hitch and all our friends cheered us on. All in all it was a really fun night.

Saturday was spent sleeping in and just relaxing. That night the girls and I headed into Bangkok to get some Mexican food. We went to a place called Charley Brown’s….no where near as good as the Mexican food I had on christmas night, but it was ok. Bradley and I called it a night after dinner since we had plans to wake up early and head to the railway market!

Sunday morning Bradley and I woke up early and headed off to the market! We had gotten directions to the place from another English teacher at the school. We picked up a songtell (aka riding in the back of a pickup truck, which cost 12 baht or 45cents) which dropped up off in Mahachai, where we took a ferry (3 baht…or 10 cents) across the river. From there we walked 10 minutes to the railroad station where we hopped on the train (10 baht…35 cents). An hour later we were at our destination…the Maeklong Railway Market. The unique thing this market is that a trail literally runs through the market about 8 times a day. When the horn of the train sounds, market vendors have to quickly fold down the awnings of their stalls, pull back the tables to allow juuuuust enough room for the train to pass. The train runs right over trays of produce that lay on the ground and within seconds after the train passes, the market is laid back our and business continues on! It was really crazy to see and kinda scary how close the train came to us while we were on the side of the market!

So we spent the afternoon checking out the market and the town. We had a few hours to kill before the train would return to take us back, so we wandered the streets and found a place to get thai massages! So it took me 3 months, but I finally had my first thai massage, and let me say…..they’re AMAZING and CHEAP! I got an hour long body massage for 100 baht…..or about 3ish dollars. It’s supposed to be 200baht, but the lady only charged me 100, lucky day for me! Of course I had to take photos with her and 2 of her friends once my massage was done, but what did I care, she gave me a massage for ½ the price! So we got our massages and headed back to the train station, to catch our train, to take the ferry, and to catch our sontell back to the dorm! All in all a very successful day!

Missing everyone back home! Love you all!