Surin Elephants and Loy Kratong!

Last Friday evening all of the volunteers converged in NKP for a weekend of, you guessed it, more festivals!  We spent most of the night catching up on stories from the last week and watching Takraw, which is an insane sport, and awesome to watch.  Its basically volleyball, but played with feet instead of hands.  The kicks and flips the players do are incredible.

At midnight we piled into vans and were off to Surin to see the Elephant Round-Up. We got to our hotel around 6 am, dropped off our bags and were off to the stadium.  We wandered around the makeshift market set up for the event and had a breakfast of sticky rice and fried eggs, as “breakfasty” as you can get in a market. 

The cast of characters around were quite unusual to see.  First, there were the elephants – just roaming the streets until it was time to put on the show.  What a sight to see!  But perhaps the strangest sight of all was all of the tourists.  Everywhere we looked we would see a Farang (white foreigner).  Almost two months into our Thai adventure, we’d become completely accustomed to being the only farangs in town, with the few ex-pat or creepy husband exceptions. Here in NKP we play a game that entails earning points for spotting a farang (very similar to Yellow Car, I win!) but playing in Surin was impossible because of all the tourists.  It was definitely weird, especially because it was a lot harder to point out and gather all of us together.  We did find another volunteer group, CIEE, and were able chat with them a bit at first in the night market, and then again when they showed up at the same bar we’d found later that night.  Having looked into CIEE before deciding on WorldTeach, I was interested to see how their program compared.  To make a long story short, while their stipends are 3 times as much as ours (totally unnecessary), I am so glad I went with WorldTeach. 

Anyway, back to the elephants!  It was an incredible show, and so cool to see all those elephants all together.  The elephants and Thai performers reenacted religious and historical events, including an outrageous battle that included legitimate artillery.  By far my favorite part of the show was when they had the elephants do tricks and then play a soccer match!  It was like polo, but with elephants, and the elephants actually kicked the ball.  The elephants all displayed so much personality that it was hilarious to watch!

We spent the rest of the day napping and exploring the city of Surin, which was pretty cool.  We headed back to NKP bright and early Sunday morning to make it back to our villages to celebrate Loy Kratong.  Loy Kratong is an important holiday in Thailand, where people float (loy) either lanterns or small boats in the river to release all of their bad thoughts.  I celebrated in That Phanom, where the sight of all the kratongs was amazing.  Both the river and the sky were lit by these gorgeous creations.  After releasing all of my bad thoughts, I asked to be returned home, where I could catch up on my sleep and plan for the week’s lessons.

For Pictures:  

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2070603&id=1326450028&l=601641ef80

Next blog, coming soon (I promise)... Thanksgiving – Thai Style!