THAILAND - Ranong - Part 2

We got up the next morning in time for yoga. This was an amazing experience to be stretching and giving thanks this early while all the birds are chirping and its all quiet. The temperature was great before the heat of the day crept in. This class was about and hour and then we had an hour to breakfast. I got yogurt, fresh fruit, and granola and Moni got rice porridge. Both were huge portions, but equally delicious. Moni got homemade peanut butter with hers and it was drool-worthy. After breakfast we had to prepare a short class for the incoming village students to teach them english! We had to teach colors and animals. We worked with the other volunteers and we had a short little lesson ready after a few minutes. The kids came in screaming and all ready for a few hours of us! But before class started the assistant local teacher had the kids sit down and took out a metal bells to make dings while the students prayed. It was amazing how the sound calmed them down and they were so obedient towards it. You could see some of them mumbling under their breath prayers. After this we went upstairs to an area with a chalkboard and one table. The kids sat down and we used flashcards to show animals and describe their colors. We got up often to mimic the animals and noises they made. We crawled like crabs, barked like dogs, and hopped like frogs. What ever animal you could think of we acted it out, and then let the kids do the same. This brought some of them to belly wrenching laughs. At the end we sang the song "Baby Shark", which is supposedly very well-known but I never heard of it. I picked up the chorus very quickly though because of how repetitive it was. The time passed too quickly and it was time to head outside into the garden with the kids to help farm. We all put on matching hats and passed out scissors. Out in the garden it was hot and we squatted down picking weeds out and cutting fresh herbs for lunch that day. The kids helped me spot which plants to pick and what not to pick. We then went to pick some squash that was growing up on poles. We were lifting the little girls up so they could pick the highest ones. They loved this. And then we took a little tour of how they had a fish feeding system to water the plants. This was so cool! I have never seen a system like this. There is a description about it in the pictures. But there were big cement tubs full of catfish from different stages in their lives. After picking more vegetables we went to the chicken coop to get some eggs. Here we also saw the cutting board for the chickens heads... which then a little boy came up to and started playing with it like he was killing a chicken. Just slightly disturbing... Next we said goodbye to the kids and they went of their way and we got ready for lunch. I learned after this day that I loved working with the kids here. It was a magical experience and I hoped to do it again before I left for home. Lunch was once again amazing and super fresh. Every time we sat down Moni would just smile and moan because it was so damn good. The rest of the day we planned to visit another waterfall about 40 minutes away driving from the retreat. This waterfall was supposedly in a National Park so we decided to stay there 4 hours. The taxi driver that worked for the retreat was to stay with us the entire time and wait until our time was up and take us back home after at 4 in time for yoga. We got in the truck and after driving a bit we realized she was taking us to the waterfall that we went yesterday. So we told her to stop and turn around but she (actually another she-man) didn't understand so we had to go back to the retreat in order for someone to translate for us. After a while she understood where we wanted to go so we got back in the car and headed on our way. Moni and I had to put masks on since the exhaust of the truck was so bad. We got to the parking lot and had to pay quiet a large fee, considering how cheap others were. Once we were in we told our driver to be back at 4 to take us home. We looked at the map and then followed it to the waterfall. It was a short 5 minute walk to a huge... dry waterfall. No water. Or maybe a little trickle. But overall not as impressive as we thought it would be. Maybe in the wet season it would but not now. This was it? We thought there must be something more in this park. So we looked for signs and found a little nature walk up to a view point. Not too difficult it only took us 15 minutes of walking and we arrive at a helicopter pad that overlooked the rolling hills of Ranong. Very pretty but we couldn't stay long since the heat radiating off the ground of the pad was unlivable. We went down and ended up back in the parking lot. Since the whole excursion only took about 30 minutes we were ready to head back to the retreat around 1:30. But the only problem was our taxi driver wasn't in the car. We knocked on the door but no sign. We walked around the park and still no sign. So we waited in hopes she-man would return. Tired after an hour we decided to make the best of our time and head to the river to cool off in the water and relax. The water was a nice temperature since it was so hot and in there were fishes that bit your skin and nibbled at your feet which wasn't too pleasant. We laid on the rocks in the shade and watched butterflies fly all around us. One in particular stayed with us for 40 minutes soaking and drinking the water. This kept our minds focused for a long time since it was our only entertainment. Many pictures were taken of this close up butterfly. Very nice to have your mind forget about every other care in the world and to focus on something so simple. Fascinating. We decided to try and seek help in order to get out of this park. We went to the main park office and asked the ladies in there to call the retreat and then have them call the taxi driver to come back from where ever she went! We figured it out with rough translation but then when we walked out of the office, down the trail our taxi driver was walking. She said that she was just laying on a bench around the corner. Damn. We are idiots. So we got in the car around 4:30 and had a 30 minute drive back to the retreat, only problem now was if we were going to make it for yoga at 5. Just barely making it we didn't even stop in our room but went straight to the common center for class. We were smelly and out of breathe and the teacher wasn't even there yet. So we had time to relax and calm down a bit. The teacher was late so it worked out perfectly. Yoga was great but we were really sore from all our adventures from the passed few days. After that we showered and got ready for dinner which once again exceeded our expectations. We went to bed early that night and we would leave the next day.