Mae Sot Part 2

Sorry for the confusion in the last post. Again, I didn't mean for it to sound so dramatic. It turns out that some folks read the end as "I went to bed and never turned on the air-conditioning because I WAS DEAD", when in fact it should have been read as "because I was a little cold". Sorry. I didn't realize how it sounded until I read over it later. Anyway, I'm not dead.

Also, I didn't mean for it to be a week between posts. School has been very busy lately, and I've been staying late to tutor and just haven't had much time lately.

And now back to Mae Sot...

I woke up Sunday morning feeling much better. My fever broke overnight, and while I still felt weak, I wasn't nearly as sick as I had been the day before. I woke up before my alarm, and met Geoffrey for breakfast at 7. We checked out of the Hotel Erawan and were back on the road by 8 (I remember this because the national anthem plays on the TV and radio every morning at 8 and every evening at 6).

On the way back over the mountains, we stopped in at a market on the side of the road and got some fresh fruit to take back to town. I got some apples and grapes.

at the market

We also stopped in at some hot springs. There were several Muslim families picnicking and celebrating the end of Ramadan. Thailand is too hot to really get in the hot springs, but it's really popular here to boil eggs in the water in nets.

We drove on a little ways, but after a while we pulled the car off the main road to a small temple.  It turns out that the temple is inhabited by monkeys, and for 10 baht you can buy a bag of food for them.

We got out of the car and tossed monkey food to them. There were some Thai families there feeding the monkeys too. They were so funny! They weren't aggressive or anything, but they would all race to get the food. Some of them had babies with them.

And one climbed on top of our car while we were parked!

a mountain behind the monkey temple... I've never seen mountains like the ones here in Thailand

We drove on a little ways longer, and around noon we stopped for lunch at a gas station/restaurant like the one we stopped at on the way home from Kanchanaburi a few weeks ago. Geoffrey and I were quite excited to see royal project honey for sale at the store!

As we were nearing Bangkok we stopped at one last site. Geoffrey drove up a small mountain to a big golden temple. It was a holy day, and there were people inside praying, and we didn't want to interrupt and go in. The view from the top was incredible though!

Geoffrey dropped me off at my apartment a little around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. I still wasn't feeling my best, and spent our Monday holiday resting. I ended up going into the school clinic on Tuesday, and was feeling fine again by Thursday.

I really can't describe how great and rewarding the weekend was. Even though we had a lot of fun and got to see some of the country, my experience at Mae Sot will always be defined by the village in the dump site.

Either that or the monkeys. 

(But seriously... the kids at the village).