Sunday 5th: Sport and Music, a delight.

Well.. another awkward misunderstanding. Turns out this AMAZING SPORTS DAY is day three of the Futsall tournament. PROPER HARDCORE. These guys are like machines, they just don't stop  -__- So we woke up nice n early… 9 am. We ate some fried rice. Kinda a custom here in Thailand, once you say you like something, you would expect to have it the next day, and maybe the day after etc etc. Sat at the bus station and did nothing. Went had a bubble tea. Then sat at bus station. Then  had beef and chips graciously thanks to Kanthorm. Then went for Bubble Tea then headed home… and here i am typing while Kanthorm plays his games next to me… very un eventful day today folks, lets see what the rest of the day brings ey ;) Soooo we went back to the bus station and were quaintly seated right at the front with the directors, deputy mayors, etcetc important people to watch the SINGNIG CONTEST. which was interesting to watch, but after seeing 10 people singing extremely EXTREMELY slow ballads, IN THAI, you kinda get bored haha, all in all though it was pleasant :) got free water WOOP WOOP! After we headed off with our host family to loud our selves with food. Like julius said, its like Hansel and Gretel, she is fattening us up!!! We had a whole chicken, then a bowl of rice with strips of chicken, then a huge plate of octopus and squid, when i say huge i mean big enough to feed a family of 5. Then we finished off with a huuuuge plate of special fried thai rice which we definitely couldn't finish!! Then things for amazing, we fell in love with our host, this very old fragile lady offered us to drink some beer, so we did!! and she was talking about how her favourite beer was Heineken and the only reason she doesn't drink anymore is cause of her high blood pressure, she also asked us out to sing karaoke but plans changed and we didn't, Either way, i LOVE this woman!! We headed home. killed about 100 little bugs on my bed, it rained. Cold. Sleep. YESS.

Saturday 7th: Not much to do here...

Well all i can say is, no-one does anything on saturdays. Well i mean fair enough there was the annual Fusball match going on from 9:30-7 pm but like hmmm, Im so used to always having a busy saturday, but here everyone… sleeps. Nothing to do really :(, well anyways, after breakfast me and Kanthorm slept until 1 then we headed down to the bus station next to the fusball pitch and pretty much spent the whole time there on wifi, i mean we really wanted to do something but there was nothing to do. So we popped out and cycled to get some Taro milkshakes which were AMAZINGGG!!! And each time we left and came back the announcer on the mic for the match would say something like "welcome to phana" or "goodbye" and everyone would cheer for us which was great!! After a few hours we were invited by Guilliene (host) to eat at a restaurant which i must say was BUFF has some nice special fried thai rice and some squid soup, really good!! :)) after we left them and chilled at the bar, had some beers, cycled home. Sleep. Tommorow is exciting though, gonna go see the PHANA SAKSEE SECONDARY SCHOOL SPORTS DAY!!! :))) Until then…  :)

Friday 6th: Culture Craze and yet more Celebrity life ;)

(it was an AMAZING day … but I'm so tired right now writing it so it may sound boring)

So today was pretty damn awesome. We indulged in an early awakening to go visit the secondary school in Phana. They were celebrating Asian week so it was pretty much an epic mess of asians. Really amazing, BUT nerve wrecking… as we had to sit in front of 1'400 students…. bloody scary!!!! I was sweating and fanning myself like MAD. All these little asian eyeballs just stuck onto me and Kanthorm. So after a few speeches and photos blabla, we were free too look around. It was basically was a huge fair in which there were different stalls for the 10 different countries in the AEC, Asian Economic Community. A bit like the European Union. Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Singapore and another three i can't remember. Pretty damn Awesome.. OOOO i forgot, there was this cool performance from a representative of each country, they were wearing the traditional clothing of each country and performed a dance to some epic sound track. So yeah, had some nice spring rolls in the vietnam stall, some amaamamamamamammamAMAMAMmamamazing sweet cracker things from the thailand one, some sweet stuff from another, and like there were tonnes of kids everywhere staring haha and like asking for pics but also like in general it was just amazing, great atmosphere, LIVE MUSIC!!, great food, and some greatly dressed and makeup-ed lady boys, seriously, hardcore high heels and strong makeup, very interesting to see hahha, after we had some spicy food with the teachers who are now our best friends. After the meal we headed back and went into the Thai massage section of the school. Where Kanthorn and the teachers received  amazing foot massages from what looked like 13 year old girls. Good thing they were actually 18! :) We decided to head off to the footsall tournament by the bus station as it seemed interesting and Kanthorm had been invited to play… but he chickened out and didn't do anything.. pfshhh. So we went and joined our german friend, Robyn, to play volleyball but once we got there we kinda got a bit bored and headed off to each with Pitong, THE BEST FOOD EVER. Chicken with fruit salad and chips :)))))))))))) sooooo amazing, weird how much we missed our western food!! XD bubby i labbyouuuu i hope your okay mishuuuu, after we headed off to the bus station to indulge in some good old wi-fi which consisted of skyping with le papa and ended in me and Kanthorm saying our quick goodbyes and RUNNING out of the place… the whole place seemed to be infested with mosquitos which is a total pain…We cycled off to our fave local bar and shared a jug of beer which got to us as we realised when we were cycling, nearly crashed into Kanthorm about 3 times XD hhehehehehe good fun through, we decided to make a small stop at a market and buy some chicken, turns out it was squid hahaha… awks…. and the lady smothered it in chilli, me and kanthorm speed cycled home IN PAINNN --INNNNNNN PAINNNNNNN …. well Kanthorm had 1, and I had 5 cause he chickened out… I felt like my mouth was going to melt off, HOWEVERRRRR, i think i am ever so slowly enjoying the spiciness, its i don't know,

 tasty ;).So yehhh, got home. Sleep. rain. coldness. YESS :)

Thursday 5th: The fun begins... (PART 2)

Part 2:

OMGAHDDD TODAY WAS SOO FUN!!!!!! So basically after washing our clothes, Kanthorn fell asleep for a bit and i was just chilling likaboss listening to my music, our hostess calls us down for dinner which is pretty nice actually, over sized pork sausage with rice and more rice and rice and more rice and more and more and more and pineapple and rice and soup… which we weren't too fond off honestly. After we both set out to bang out le wifi once again but as it had rained it didn't work :(( sorry bubbly!! labyuuuu, was meant to Skype with the wife…. prob hates me right now.. XD So we had nothing to do.. we were approached by some creepy bin man who kept on talking about how i should join the Ubon football team… PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEE I'm like the most unfit person, i don't even have to show him he can just look at me.. I'm chubby … chubby people don't do football, its a rule of life xD but he didn't seem to grasp that and just sat there staring at me and Kanthorn… weird mann, weird. So we decided to cycle to the end of town, this plan soon changed and we decided to go hunting for our bungalow in which were moving into next week tuesday, which failed cause we reached the end of town and we got nothing, so we decided to head back and look for it again coming back. So we were on our way and we spotted this trendy little bar/restaurant where like there were little huts where we could sit down and drink etc so we went in and were pretty scared to order beers cause we thought we would like get KILLED AND SHUNNED by the WHOLE town XD, so we asked for a large bottle of coke to share between me and Kanthorm. We entered our hut and we received our drink and plenty ice. Super nice, me and Kanthorn were having the biggest laugh and we also spotted some fancy gays hahaha, one was wearing a huge medallion, pink pants, and a pink shall and was walking around asif he was the princess of persia hahaha he seemed great though, bless him XD no offence to anyone ofc! so … we were on the phone to sally…. and it started to rain… when it rains in thailand … a light drizzle is like a DEALDLY STORM in London, so we drank our coke quickly, paid, and were on our bikes, we managed to find our bungalow which was trendy and nice and huge!! ANDDDD its is literally placed right next to the giant telephone/signal/wifi pole, whatever it is, so we were assured to have the best wifi in town ;) we then cycled down the back alley and BOOOOMMM a huge golden labrador was chasing us, now, we have had a few barking dogs who approached us on their bikes but this was legit…. this bad boy was PROPER trying it!!! me and Kamthorn went all tour de france mode and out cycled the bugger HAHHA. we then cycled back home and well the rain got stronger and stronger, till we arrived home not needing a shower….

all in all, BEST DAY YET!! 

Thursday 5th: Rain and Cleaning... (PART 1)

Part 1: 

sooooooooo woke up 30 mins before the alarm today PROPA HARDCORE. Sweaty as per, literally i was just thinking earlier, i haven't stopped sweating at all from the moment i left the plane in bangkok, LITERALLY every single second I've been alive in this place… I've been sweating… good thing is its rainy season so you get the odd mini monsoon… HHAHA speak of the devil, it has currently started to rain… HOLY CRAPPPPPP its raining ice … i think... ITS SO LOUDD!!!!!!!!!! sorry I'm getting excited, not used to this mad rain, its like PROPER hardcore. Any hoo …. -3 hours later-  Sorry, had to turn off all appliances, if i had left them on i would be at risk of being electrocuted by lighting. Which is bloody scary. Its something everyone does here, they turn off everything because the chances of getting struck by lighting here are pretty high. Alright, so after i woke up, had a shower, we ate our breakfast which consisted of about 3 bowls of rice, tonnes of fruit, some interesting slime, and another thing… we headed off on our bikes, me and kanthorn (new and improved spelling of cameron's Thai name hehe) headed off onto our bikes into the town to the bus station where we banged out a bit of wifi along with a delicious Iced Latee which again was a lovely 1 part latee and 30'000 part ice :) Didn't really ponder around much, twas boiling today, as most days so we simply headed back home and … oh! I forgot, something really awkward happened today, as i was parking my bike at the bus station it fell, and threw off another bike next to it which landed on some guy… PROPER AWKWARD. but yeah, we arrived home and as normal hospitality in Thailand goes we were off to our hosts sister's restaurant where we ate the best food yet. We had the most amazing fried chicken and this noodle and vegetable thing which was incredible literally incredible, and it was nicely topped off which some fresh coconut water/milk, SO BUFF! Although kanthorn wasn't too happy with it. We headed back home and i started writing todays blog then the rain started blabla you know the drill, although while it rained and i had to abadon my laptop, me and Kanthorn were in need of some clean clothes so we decided after a week we outa wash our laundry … yeah i know MEN. Well me and kanthorn though that the washing machine downstairs would do the work… pfshh life isn't that easy. Turns out the water wasn't working so it had to be done by hand, which to be honest is the most popular method in Thailand, usually you have a washing machine simply for trend or something. So yeah, let me go through the procedure:

1-Wash clothes in water then rinse.

2-wash clothes in soapy water.

3-leave for 30 minutes.

4-take clothes out and rinse and put into empty bucket.

5-fill another bucket with clean water and dump clothes in.

6-lift each piece of clothing up and down in clean water, rinse, then dump into another empty bucket.

7-Repeat for each piece of clothing.

8-once finished, empty the bucket with the now soapy water and repeat steps 5-8 FOUR BLIMMIN TIMES.

9- Repeat steps 5-8 one last time but instead add comfort fabric softener to your clean water.

10- after rinsing, hang to dry xoxo

This took me 3 hours man…. 3 HOURS…. JUST to do 1 small basket of clothing, damnn life is hard when you've lived a what i now see as a spoilt life in london! Was fun through, spesh when Kanthorm sucked the water pipe to get the water moving and he ended up swallowing some dirty water, PROPER FUNNY. So here i am, typing away, not knowing what comes next… doesn't seem like an eventful day tbh… i guess ill update y'all ina wee bit :)

TO BE CONTINUED...

Wednesday 4th: Celebrity Life ;)

 SOOOOOO great sleep!!! ughhh i needed it so badly after tuesday's ordeal, woke up like a new man! Got ready super quick as we were late then we ventured off into Phana, arriving at the only secondary school in Phana, which housed 1'700 students… yeah a lot. Especially when the population averages out to 2000… dodge ting. So basically imagine being brad pitt and walking through new york or suttin. Thats what it felt like going through the school, i mean seriously  EVERYONE stares at you!!! it was absolute madness!!! we went and observerd our friend (robyn) 's class where we had our first taste of a Thai education. They're quite a hectic bunch but definitely lots of fun!!! Met this really cool guy, had the best english in the class and was extremely respectful and nice. He talked about his incredible ambitions and how he wants to fight Tourists in the country… Yeah he mentioned his mis-pronounciation of the word Terrorist, my heart stopped when he said what i thought was Tourists haha. So after that we ventured upstairs to see the other classrooms with the younger ones… dear lord… lets just say that in 5 minutes me and Cameron had a queue of around 50/60 students wanting our autograph… so we obliged of course, i mean how rude would it be to say no ;) so we moved up the classrooms and the pupils got calmer and calmer as we went along until we reached the 18 year olds whom were mature and really cool to speak to, wish i coulda stayed more but meh, next time… well tomorrow, me and cammy are planning on going there tomo and having a bit more of a longer taster :)… Anyhoooo after that the teachers kindly took us to lunch to some super hidden place in what was pretty much a jungle. Like it was a restaurant covered in vegetation and, may I add infested in fire ants, WHICH lead me having 2 fire ants biting my foot YES ladies and gentlemen, i survived 2 fire ant bitings, which BURNED SO MUCH!!. So I had some real nice noodles, well two plates of it thanks to their hospitality! We travelled to the bus station and indulged in a drink which was 1 part lateé and 30'000 part ICE but hey it was nice. Its kinda something you get used too, the overload of ice in everything, even in water they literally fill glasses with ice until its a balancing act of ice just above the glass! So after that we went back to the school and were surprised by robyn with the news that we were  going to teach a class… GREAT. Completely unprepared, we jumped into it and well it was fantastic, we taught them HEAD SHOULDERS KNEES AND TOES, and everyone responded in a lovely manor, such a good lesson! loved it :)) So after that we ventured to the infamous Thai massage. Absolutely quality. My masseur was the fantastic Nikki, a wonderfully flamboyant but quiet dude who gave the best massage ever. Cammy was blessed with the serious, not so great looking 40 year old man. But hey he was moaning half the time so mehh, to ones own ;) After an hour of moaning and laughing we headed home and ventured to the bus station where we indulged into a land of WIFI where i skyped with my bubbly <3 !!!  GREAT DAY!!!! :))

Tuesday 3rd: Dying...

 ILL SICKK DEAD DYING PAIN HOME DEATH MORE FEELING OF DEATH. Is all i could feel today, honestly the worst day i have ever had so far. Had three hours sleep before waking up at 1 am and staying up, heard practically every single animal in the ecosystem screaming out god knows what. My head was in SOOO much pain, blocked nose, extreme body pain, sore throat, complete mess. It was all bad.  highlight though was in the morning at 5:30 am we sat outside on little chars, SOO tiny… omg i was so certain that thing was gonna crack, but yeah we sat down with a plate of offerings, mine had 10 little marble cake slices and kanthorm had 10 little packets of sweets or something like that. Suddenly these powerful looking monks, 4 of them at first, came up in a line and we had to bow our head and give them and offering each, into their little pot, which was INCREDIBLE but soooo SOOO scary, i was SHAKING, they looked so serious. Then after that we had another 6 come by and we did the same thing. Absolutely intense, sosososososoos intense. It was as if all the pain in my body had left…. but just for that moment, soon after i was dying again pffshhh… LONG FOR MAN. We then had to join Pitong said PEE-TONG, to some council meetings for pensioners. I won't talk about them as it was FAR from being my cup off tea. And i refuse to banter away negatively about it so, its best to be forgotten :) We went to this AMAZING restaurant called… i can't remember actually, but the owner was lovely, i told her her food was ARROY MAI KAP (very delicious) and i thought she was gonna cry hahaha so sweet, her name is MUAY said MOO- EYE, and her food is exactly that, DELICIOUS. Sooooooo amazing, i will definitely be returning there! AND the plate of food cost less than £1 which is ridiculous, Thailand is FARRR too cheap its MAD.

Monday 2nd: Lazyy memory.... sorry

Writing this one week late, sorry, can't really remember much. Visited the monkey forest, that being 1km off freakishly scary wild hot forest which inhibited 700 monkeys. Scariest things ever. You walk in and they all stare at your ferociously as if they're about to attack. Visited some amazing temples, one of them having a HUGE gold buddha, said to be 300 years old. Absolutely amazing, everything gold plated and incredible. After we headed off with our hosts sister to her primary school where she teaches, to enjoy the traditional and amazing music performed but the young kids, literally AMAZING, so damn shocked at how crazy everything is here. Pretty much all i remember, fshhh… read on.. it gets better ;)

Sunday 1st: We arrived!

WE ARRIVED AT PHANA!!!! our home, our dream, our everything XD Although we were soooooo damn tired!!! and Pitong, our host, bless him, as we got off the buss, he starts taking pictures with his Canon, THE CUTENESS! he's such a great person, so humble and so nice! The kindest man i have ever met! But yeah, pictures…. So we arrived to our host family's house which is basically this old lady called… Gillienne said GILI-EN-EE - THIS LADY IS UNBELIEVABLE, she is the kindest, most open hearted woman ever, every time we see her she smiles at us and asks if were hungry, she over feeds us with what is practically everything in her house. it really is the most moving and incredible thing i have ever seen. She is also always laughing which is amazing, honestly everything you do our say makes her smile and you smile along with her, she's an amazing laugh and her english is good enough to trade some healthy words between eachother, its simply amazing, and weird at how in a few days, she feels like our Thai mother. She is just the cutest!! --- I'm typing this on thursday, cause I've kinda been lazy with this blog so I'm going back and doing everything, so i now know how she's like with us and ugh!! Such a soul, it was POURING down with rain and she gets on her little bike and she holds her little green Thai umbrella with little green frogs and cycles into town to buy us food, she always does this, she would cut off a limb just for us. A very inspiring woman. ANYWAYS back to imagining that today is Sunday. So we got home and settled down, left our stuff around in our rooms, which i must say are amazing, cozy and convenient in every way. We went down stairs and were presented with the most amazing food!!! Rice, amazing traditional thai omelette, mango skin curls, purple sweets made from FLOWERS IN HER GARDEN!!!!!, we also ate flowers in her garden which was surreal, we also had soy sauce with garlic and mine and Kanthorm's favourite… ..sorry i was about to announce it but like, we've had three different types of this stuff and they all taste the same… so basically its three different things we've had but they all tasted the same.. so yeah its…. 

SOY MILK/ BROWN RICE MILK / BLACK SESAME SEED MILK. omgahd its incredible. After our meal we went straight to our beds and slept like sweaty babies :) A few hours later we were up again and of course still tired, we had a nice tour of Phana by Mr. Pitong. which was great, got too see the cute small town (2km big) the post office, police station, Tessoban (council), our- to be- house, primary schools, secondary school etc. Pretty cool. Headed home.. and ATE another feast hahaha.. oh goshh they love feeding us man… and well you guessed it.. Sleep.

Saturday 31st: SHOP SHOP SHOP

Saturday was IMMENSE! Everyone was in the mood to SHOP. Typical british nature pah. Soo i woke up around 9 ishhh meant to meet with peeps at 10 ishh but as per usual with my ironic life i lost my wallet. HOOOOMYYGAHHDDD thousands of baht and my debit card and my insurance, medical, ID and contact card all lived in that wallet. Basically my whole life to be honest. Sooo after 30 minutes of looking and then sinking into the traditional thai custom of being late, i found my wallet. Where? The place I had left it in order to keep it safe. My bag. jheez… so after trekking to the station and sweating so much we could refill the ocean, we went on the metro and then the infamous sky train… pretty much a fancy DLR. We got to a well known MBK, a great and big shopping mall for all :) bought adaptors, camera, phones blablabla twas boring but new ey, ate some cool soup, asked for the shrimp one but the lady just screwed me and said no and pointed at a picture, so i politely said yes in fear… WAS AYT. Then we took le sky train and ventured into the tackiest yet most amazing shopping mall ever…. TERMINAL 21. hahhahahahha oh lord…. basically, each floor has been decorated according to a different country. There was london, paris, san francisco, tokyo etcetc , it was alll amazing and fancy blabla, please look at Facebook for photos XD. All in all the best thing about today was getting my bum washed. Yes ladies and gentlemen. After a nice number 2 i pressed a button and a modest little nozzle simply sprays temperature controlled water into my …crater? all i can say is the aim is perfect and the feelings is awfully weird, seriously i was just laughing my head off, it was so surreal having water sprayed into my ass i mean seriously, but it was cool. My first water nozzle experience. After that great day, mainly thanks to my butt washing moment, we trekked home, got our bags ready, and got onto a taxi to the bus station… we boarded a cool coach WHICHH had a massage machine built into the chairs… SOO BLOODY AMAZING!!!! But yeah…

12 hours later on this wonderful over air conned coach…

Friday 30th: First Taste of Thailand! yummmmm

We boarded our Second plane which was a decent 4 hours and then we arrived. Everyone was PUMPED!! We had just arrived at the place where our dreams would definitely come true and where our lives were headed for a completely different path. We met the lovely Lucie, who is basically the coolest white gangster in the world, thats the best way i can put it. She's sweet and cool. Alright, so i hope your not bored yet, I'm ACTUALLY putting effort into this. kthanks. So this was the legit moment we were gonna board the minibus and meet bangkok with open arms. Instead we were met by big hairy sweaty arms (humidity), Yes the humidity hugged us tight and didn't let go. But things changed when we began to drive through bangkok to the hotel. Dear lord all mighty, bangkok is AMAZING. It is incredible, it balances tradition and modernism so exquisitely its simply fantastic to look at, feels like going through willy wok's factory. So me and Kantsom (cameron (cammy) ) were peering out constantly and admiring everything. Soon we arrived to the hotel. This was the first time i had lifted my bag onto my back, which is something I had to do to take it to my hotel room. OH MY DEAR LORD. 30KG of clothes isn't ideal. but hey, the rooms were nice, people were great, the sleep was nice too, my iced coffee was lush, the walk with Jelle, Kantsom, Tom and myself duh, was awesome, had a little lick of Bangkok. The strange highlight was seeing so many 80+ old american men with 18-25* toyboys. Very strange indeed. In the evening we headed off to PINNACLE HOTEL to feast on our first thai dishes, which was immensely immense :) The food was amaze balls :) THE FOLLOWING IS HARD TO EXPLAIN CAUSE IT WAS SO AWESOME. We were taken up to the most amazing AMAZING bar ever called CLOUD 47. It was a huge balcony penthouse bar where you could see the whole of Bangkok. SO AMAZING. We indulged in a few beers and a few cocktails, some great live music and after an amazing funk DJ, Such and incredible night! Saw my first ladyboy too!!

Thursday 29th: Where it all begins...

EARLY MORNING WAKE UP! for my family, i stayed up talking to my bub^_^ was uber nice hehe :) well today was the day it all happened. The day my life would change from the moment i would step onto a plane. PROPER DRAMATIC. So it was great seeing everyone again at the airport again, and also meeting the parents of the volunteers who are basically reflections of their children, spesh annalesse, dude your mum is your twin! Anyho, so we said our quick goodbyes and then, btw ily julius, we were off on our own. This actually felt like proper independence! So i banged out my independence with some good ole' costa. Very quickly we boarded the fancy JET AIRWAYS plane, which was awesome, the indian air hostess's were lovely and the roof/walls were smothered in glowing mood lighting ;). Food was great, snacks were awfully spicy, like there was this thing which pretty much resembled a spicy cornflake. 9 hours later -_-We arrived at Mumbai, India… Well, all i can say is India is interesting, not my cuppa tea but it was interesting. Nothing more to say.